The Monster as a Player Character: Part 2

Taking up this matter further.

A person might ask, "Why does it even matter?  Why not just let the baby have his bottle?"

I'm going to tell you a secret about managing people.  People, even hard working people, don't get along very well.  Whenever you give them something they want, you have to look the reward over very carefully, asking yourself, "Is this something that's going to help them work together, or is this something that's going to bend them apart?"  The more you give to a group that bends them apart, the flakier things get.  As Yeats said,

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre / the falcon cannot hear the falconer.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold / mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / the ceremony of innocence is drowned;

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity."

Yeats is speaking of England imbecilically sending troops to Ireland in 1919, but the metaphor holds.  Don't fuck with things just because they can be fucked with.  It just makes a mess.

There are many tangible, creative ways to prove one's individuality in D&D, through problem-solving, self-sacrifice, risk-taking and group dynamics.  Beware players who opt for reskinning their character superficially as a means of "expressing themselves."  Especially avoid players who use specifically those words as an argument.  As hard as it may be to imagine, if you want to keep a good solid group together, you must clamp down on the wrong kinds of individualism.  Make everyone play by the same rules and make them understand there's a reason why the default settings on character creation deliberately minimize options.  Originality comes from within — and not from which race you play.

Let's pick up Gygax's essay again, from page 21 of the original DMG:

"From all views then it is enough fantasy to assume a swords & sorcery cosmos, with impossible professions and make-believe magic. To adventure amongst the weird is fantasy enough without becoming that too! Consider also that each and every Dungeon Master worthy of that title is continually at work expanding his or her campaign milieu. The game is not merely a meaningless dungeon and an urban base around which is plopped the dreaded wilderness. Each of you must design a world, piece by piece, as if a jigsaw puzzle were being hand crafted, and each new section must fit perfectly the pattern of the other pieces. Faced with such a task all of us need all of the aid and assistance we can get. Without such help the sheer magnitude of the task would force most of us to throw up our hands in despair."

Oh, how I wish that what's said here was respected by the author himself, his company or anyone associated with him!  Is it not bewildering to hear these words spoken about plunking a dungeon next to a village from the man who built his career on such an approach?  Of course, I did not know in 1979, the book fresh in my hands, that these words were written by a fraud and a hypocrite.  Let's not quibble.  I ACCEPTED THESE WORDS AS DOGMA.  Without question, without hesitation, without a week going by between my having this book in my hands and my starting on the task, I set out to build a campaign milieu of the kind described.  Granted, that was in part because my first DM was committed to that ideal, as was every other DM I knew at the time, living as I did in an urban hotbed where I'd spoken to no less than 10 DMs before getting my hands on this hardcover book.  And, without a question, that first effort was an unmitigated disaster (about which we shall not speak).  Yet I do not concede the point; if I asked for a justification, for guidance, for emotional support for the creation of a personally built campaign setting, THERE are the words, good enough to be carved in stone on Gygax's mausoleum ... if the man hadn't been a faker and a cheat.

"By having a basis to work from, and a well-developed body of work to draw upon, at least part of this task is handled for us. When history, folklore, myth, fable and fiction can be incorporated or used as reference for the campaign, the magnitude of the effort required is reduced by several degrees. Even actual sciences can be used - geography, chemistry, physics, and so forth."

 Abso-fucking-lutely.

Gygax is speaking of human essentials and foundations, human behaviour, human habits, culture and mores.  He's saying, so much of the work has already been done for you!  Read, find what works for your setting and steal, baby, steal.  The genius is that these things have already proved their worth with millions of storybook readers and fireside tale-tellers.  Not just in this past few decades but for centuries.  These are things that every writer and inventor steals from!  Again and again we go back to the earliest works, the fundamental themes, the science of human endeavour, learning it, sorting it, shaping it in new ways and expressing it to a willing and anxious audience.  These melodies have proven themselves.  We don't have to sweat and cringe and hope the listeners will approve!  If we play the notes and chords well, if we practice our fingering, if we study and stretch ourselves, the spectators will pound the tables and stamp their feet with joy and approval.

But if we hold ourselves above such things ... if we're "too good" for the mass of human knowledge ... well Gygax has an answer for that too.

"Alien viewpoints can be found, of course, but not in quantity (and often not in much quality either). Those works which do not feature mankind in a central role are uncommon. Those which do not deal with men at all are scarce indeed. To attempt to utilize any such bases as the central, let alone sole, theme for a campaign milieu is destined to be shallow, incomplete, and totally unsatisfying for all parties concerned unless the creator is a Renaissance Man and all-around universal genius with a decade or two to prepare the game and milieu. Even then, how can such an effort rival one which borrows from the talents of genius and imaginative thinking which come to us from literature?"

It is in these words that I find my utter distaste for a game like Call of Cthulhu.  My feeling has long been that basing a role-playing games on a small set of books by a single third-rate author, whatever his peculiar appeal, makes for the dreariest game sessions.  Having read a half-dozen of the man's books, I find them formulaic and clumsy, not to mention hackneyed in plot development.  His plot contrivances, used in the same way in every novel, are painful once recognized.  Everything that is written down is always lost in some convenient way.  Every proof is confounded.  Every would-be witness goes mad, or is never found again.  As a juvenile experiment, Lovecraft has his value.  Every 13-year-old should read him, when they're young enough to be taken in by the mystery and bafflegab.  But an adult who strives to spend every Saturday playing out the same themes again and again?  Please mark such places on a map so I can well avoid them.

A "Renaissance Man" (or WOMAN!) would only become such if they were thoroughly steeped in "the talents of genius and imaginative thinking" that has gone before.  Such a person wouldn't think to throw away human resources any more than did Spencer, Shakespeare or Milton (sorry, I know, three people never heard of, and certainly not influential on fantasy literature).  Yet how often do we hear of yet one more DM on a blog or a podcast chatting on about the "new campaign" they're going to make based upon some profoundly esoteric original theme? — only to never hear of these things actually being crafted or envied after.

Willy nilly, I am not a Jedi or a superhero; I am not a vampire or anything else that sounds like a thing I'd get tired of in a weekend.  I'm a human being.  I like human beings.  I'm interested in playing games where human beings take part, where they pursue human achievements and they don't depend on themes that barely extend over the 357 pages of a book.  My players can burn through a book length's store of material in two or three sessions.  I need MORE.  I need everything.  Less is asking me to compromise in my imagination and I'm not going to do that.

I'll let Gygax finish his end of this argument:

"Having established the why of the humanocentric basis of the game, you will certainly see the impossibility of any lasting success for a monster player character. The environment for adventuring will be built around humans and demi-humans for the most part. Similarly, the majority of participants in the campaign will be human. So unless the player desires a character which will lurk alone somewhere and be hunted by adventurers, there are only a few options open to him or her. A gold dragon can assume human shape, so that is a common choice for monster characters. If alignment is stressed, this might discourage the would-be gold dragon. If it is also pointed out that he or she must begin at the lowest possible value, and only time and the accumulation and retention of great masses of wealth will allow any increase in level (age), the idea should be properly squelched. If even that fails, point out that the natural bent of dragons is certainly for their own kind — if not absolute solitude — so what part could a solitary dragon play in a group participation game made up of non-dragons? Dragon non-player characters, yes! As player characters, not likely at all. 

"As to other sorts of monsters as player characters, you as DM must decide in light of your aims and the style of your campaign. The considered opinion of this writer is that such characters are not beneficial to the game and should be excluded. Note that exclusion is best handled by restriction and not by refusal. Enumeration of the limits and drawbacks which are attendant upon the monster character will always be sufficient to steer the intelligent player away from the monster approach, for in most cases it was only thought of as a likely manner of game domination. The truly experimental-type player might be allowed to play such a monster character for a time so as to satisfy curiosity, and it can then be moved to non-player status and still be an interesting part of the campaign — and the player is most likely to desire to drop the monster character once he or she has examined its potential and played that role for a time. The less intelligent players who demand to play monster characters regardless of obvious consequences will soon remove themselves from play in any event, for their own ineptness will serve to have players or monsters or traps finish them off.

"So you are virtually on your own with regard to monsters as player characters. You have advice as to why they are not featured, why no details of monster character classes are given herein. The rest is up to you, for when all is said and done, it is your world, and your players must live in it with their characters. Be good to yourself as well as them, and everyone concerned will benefit from a well-conceived, well-ordered, fairly-judged campaign built upon the best of imaginative and creative thinking."

There are many things about Gygax I don't like.  One of them is the squirmy way he has of avoiding responsibility.  Like the side-step I addressed with regards to poison, he equivocates.  One moment, he says "squelch" the idea, and the next he throws out an ambiguous, "by restriction and not by refusal."  What's that now?  Oh, and hey, while this is a rule book that I've taken a year of my life writing, that's meant to codify the greatest game milestone in a century, by all means, "you do you."  Bleh.

You are NOT on your own with regards to monsters as player characters.  You're at the mercy of your players, whoever they may be, and if you allow yourself to get jerked around by their sob-stories and pretended curiosity, you deserve the jacking you're going to get.  Remember, while you're letting the player have his bottle, as DM you're the one that has to make this slouching beast fit into your campaign.  You're on the hook for writing the details of monster character classes that Gygax didn't add.  It's your time, your imagination, your patience, your game structure that gets fucked with, while you muddle your way through so your player can strut his fucking hour on your stage.  Remember that. And remember that while you're pandering to this monster-runner, there's a shit ton of things you should be doing that you're not.  So no, friend.  You're not on your own.  You're not that lucky.