Hard Lines

I like to use movies and books as examples, because they're universal.  Either the reader has seen it or might see it; anything can be easily downloaded and watched in minutes for a few bucks.  The more popular the media, the better it works as an example.  The source doesn't have to be good; in only has to be relevant.

Near the beginning of 2008's Taken, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) approaches the performer Sheerah (Holly Valance) about his daughter wanting to be a singer.  Sheerah blows him off, but after he protects her against an attacker and recovers, she answers his question:

"So your daughter wants to be a singer ... you know, it's not what everyone thinks it is.  Once the glam wears off, it's just a lot of hotel rooms.  Lots of airports." {producing a card} "The first number is Gio, my vocal coach.  If he says she can sing, she can sing.  He'll give her the coaching she needs.  The fee is on me.  The second number is my manager.  If Gio clears her, he'll make sure she gets a shot."

Realities.  Most artists will never get an opportunity like this.  The gift Sheerah gives Mills represents about fifty hoops that his daughter won't have to jump through.  Most artists who jump through the hoops or get this opportunity won't get past Gio.  Why does Gio get to decide?  Because Gio knows what he's doing, and the manager knows Gio knows.  Most who get approved by Gio can't afford Gio.  That's how it goes.

Life is full of hard lines that you and I will never be permitted to cross.  You can't pass the courses and handle the material, and survive internship, you don't get to be a doctor.  If you can't make it through boot camp, you don't get to be a soldier; and if you're not a deliberate sort of person, you probably won't survive on a battlefield.  We pretend these hard lines are arbitrary; we pretend that Gio doesn't know, or that medical school or the army rooked us ... or for that matter, we weren't really fired from McDonalds.  We were cheated.  Better we believe that than we accept the shame of being fired from McDonalds.

[I wasn't, as it happens.  I was fired from Burger King]

We cannot talk about cultivating players without first talking about which players we allow past the hard line of our game world.  If you don't want to impose a hard line; if you think being a DM is about being "democratic," or you have to be democratic because beggars can't be choosers ... I think you better stop and look at the hard line on which you might be on the wrong side.

You've got to control your space.  You've got to manage the people in it.  That "management" is compassionate, forgiving, encouraging and supportive ... but it is also provisional.  Your players must be "seeds" you can grow.  Otherwise you're wasting hard work, sun and water on what might as well be small stones.

Don't try to find four players.  Find two good ones.  This is hard.  You've got to find two.  They've got to know what they're doing, why they're there and what to expect.  Find two players and the third is easier.  If the third lasts, finding players after that is shooting fish in a barrel.  The fourth player and those after find themselves sitting at a table with a capable DM and three true believers.  The DM can comfortably decide who's allowed to play thereafter.

There are several hard lines here.  You've got to be a capable DM.  You've got to find the two good players.  You've got to make the 3rd player want to stay.  The two good players have to acknowledge you as capable, by their standards, not yours.  You fail on any of these lines?  You fail everything.

You can get bad players.  You can get two or three or ten.  They won't hold you to any standard.  You, absolutely, won't be allowed to hold them to one.  Bad players don't want to be held to a standard, not even their own ... otherwise, they wouldn't be bad players.

Understand?  No hard line, no payoff.  No cultivation, no player investment, no immersion, no expandablezs game world.  Just indifferent players demanding plot hooks and upgrades.  Enjoy.

What is a "good player"?  Don't raise your expectations too high.  A good player is one who is polite, respects the rules, has consideration for other people and at least a year's experience with the game.  Among adults in any other activity, this would describe virtually everyone.  In role-playing games, this sounds like shooting the moon.  And we want two of them?  Napoleon might as well go to war against two Dutchmen.

Says something.

'Course, this presupposes a DM who's polite, respects the rules and has consideration for other people.  So, in fact, we need three of them.

The RPG game culture is toxic.  This is why every discussion of D&D has to be filtered through arguments like, "I knew this group of people who when they tried this thing it turned out so bad which proves it doesn't work."  Or, "I just want to feel like I'm allowed to be myself and do my thing without being held to a standard that I didn't invent."  Or, "I hear what you're saying but it makes absolutely no sense to me."  Or, "Maybe that's true ... for you."  Hold your head up and draw a hard line somewhere and you're going to be challenged.  Finding hard lines and challenging them has become a sport.  It's easy to get lost; to wander aimlessly between the maze of existing opinions; to self-doubt; and ultimately, to do nothing.  To resist getting a game started at all; or to resist taking the two or three toxic players in your campaign aside and ask them politely to just go.  "Please.  I like you fine as human beings, but what you're bringing to my game every week isn't what I want.  I'm sorry.  I'm going to have to cut you."

It cultivation terms, this is called "weeding the garden."  We weed the garden so that wanted plants can grow.  If the goal is just to "grow plants," then we can leave the weeds there, let them starve out everything that isn't a weed and succeed at our goal.  Come September, we will certainly have grown plants.  The weeds will be tall and majestic and devoid of edible material.

That's the option.  If the garden's going to thrive and produce food — the usual reason we plant a garden — then the weeds have got to go.  The weeds are not going to appreciate a game world where fictional creatures and persons deserve respect and affection.  They're not going to be concerned with the well-being of others, players and non-players alike.  They're weeds.  They spread through the soil, they make it toxic, they destroy everything except themselves and they produce nothing.   It is absolute stupidity to advocate for a constructive, layered, complex game world and immersive milieu if the weeds are going to puff themselves up, suck up the water, blot out the sun and make every plant of value die.

This is not optional.  It's this hard line or it's a garden full of crap.  Your decision.

Having weeded the garden, the cumulative result is always positive.  Gardening is not rocket science.  If you pull the weeds — and this presumes you recognize the weeds, which can puzzle a noob — the other plants will drink the water and find the sun.  They'll grow on their own.  As a DM, have faith in that.  If you pick the weeds out of your campaign, what's left will thrive.  In game terms, this describes players capable of appreciating the DM's efforts; players who want the DM to do well.  This promotes a mutual understanding of the Player-DM dynamic, from both sides.  Each player gives sufficient room and respect to the others.  Each gives deference to the DM, who views the players as cherished participants in the game process.  Jocularity and jovialness replace snark and attention-seeking.  The group as a whole bonds together.

Inclusiveness is a terrible premise for a group activity.  As a society, we often pay lip service to it, especially in the ears of children.  As DMs, there's space for only so many people.  Save that space for people who deserve it.

As you work up the gumption to recognize the needfulness of this, we'll continue on our discussion of making a garden, er, a D&D world, without false fronts and cardboard people.