Why D&D Takes What Boardgames Do and Makes It Better

The last post was quite negative, so let's balance that and talk about the good functions of boardgames and their relationship with D&D.

Despite the stories I've told, most whom I've played board games with came to the game wanting it to be a good, positive, honest experience.  I've played hundreds of times with my daughter, who is presently the owner of said games (having inherited them from my parents), and she continues to play the same boards, with the very same cards, houses, counters, money and additional bits and pieces I played with 50 years ago.  She and her friends continue to get joy out of those games, as I did before becoming the jaded, blunted D&D player I am today.  I have good memories of many of those games, including thousands of shouts of "hurrah!" at a moment of good fortune, many moments of triumph and very much nostalgia for the little jokes and details the games included.

Discussing yesterday's post with my daughter today, she reminded me that there are two versions of the game "Careers" in her possession.  In the earlier 1950s version, the game gave an opportunity to "Go to Sea," and potentially die horribly.  In the later 1970s version, sea was replaced with "Go to Space" ... where there was the potential to die horribly.  Yes.  Die.  I cannot help but appreciate a board game for children that included a rule for "lose everything" and go back to the beginning ... but there it was, long predating D&D.  Was I perhaps subconsciously prepared for the role-playing result by participating in frank, condition-conscious boardgames of the period?  Perhaps.

In the newest version, space has been replaced with "Computer Science."  Somehow, I think there's no die horribly option.  I couldn't tell from the image linked; the boxes are two small to read.  Still, perhaps there's "Get electrocuted and die; lose all your hearts, fame and money."

Boardgames survive because they are communal, relationship-building activities, especially when cooperation is more important than "winning."  My father was always generous about letting others win, while my mother wasn't; as a boy, I swung hard between the two poles, until recognizing there were more important things than winning a board game.  Quite possibly, D&D settled the conflict for me.  D&D is absolutely co-operative, once there are firm protocols in place that make it clear who are the enemies and why player-vs.-player is toxic.  In all the rules versions that were put out between 1974 and 1985, there are NO paragraphs promoting or condoning player-vs.-player.  I'm not sure it's even mentioned in AD&D ... if it is, it isn't called by that phrase.   I was able to find an excellent article from the Dragon Magazine #75 written by Lew Pulsipher (which I could easily highlight positively in a post), from 1983 (p.41):

"... sometimes the chemistry (or lack thereof) among players will ruin the session, because they're looking for different forms of recreation.  For example, players who get their kicks from backstabbing and player-vs.-player competition will not get along with players who enjoy cooperative or even regimented adventures.  How could one GM possibly satisfy both groups at once?"

I could have written that ... except there would be more swear words and I'd say "DM."   Rightly managed, D&D is supremely cooperative ... much more so than a boardgame that promotes a winner or a loser.

Another positive aspect of board games is their ability to teach us how to set goals and be patient.  Strategy requires the capacity to accept and tolerate trouble, set-backs, losing all your money or finding yourself forced to rethink your strategy in mid-stream ... without getting angry and upset.  Young players need to be coached on the principles of waiting for things to get better ... when stress arises at not getting something that's wanted, right now, the solution is not to dip into the bank and give the child another $500 ... because, as some parents might be convince themselves, "It doesn't really matter anyway."  Loss isn't the only lesson that needs learning!  Forbearance, faith in an expectation, knowing that the next hand or the next die roll might change everything ... these future things have to be conceived as if they were real, to counterbalance what is happening right now.  If the future cannot be appreciated, then all that's left is stress!  If your child is overwhelmed because everything up until now has gone badly, it's most likely because they're assuming the past is determining their future.  This is never the case ... but if they don't learn otherwise, they'll carry a distrust for the future with them all the rest of their lives.  Boardgames and card games can teach them otherwise, if they can be made to see it.

D&D goes one further in this dynamic in that if things are going bad, they're going bad for the party as a whole.  One player with a run of bad luck in Monopoly necessarily enriches the other players during that run.  But one player with bad luck in D&D is a burden everyone shares together.  If Fred rolls six fumbles in a combat, the others aren't enriched, they're challenged further, especially if Fred dies and they've lost an ally.

This example can reveal the inherent nature of all the players.  IF the others turn and snipe at Fred, demanding to know why he can't roll better, or tell him to pick a different die, or in anyway dump their new troubles verbally on him, then as a DM you have a troubled, toxic party that needs addressing and possibly trimming.  What we want are other party members to step up and call out, "Don't worry Fred, we're got you're back.  We'll hold them until things turn around for you!"  This positive response reflects the party's understanding that they're in it together ... and that whether Fred rolls a 1 or a 20, he's embraced and upheld either way.

ANY sports coach worth his salt recognizes the importance of a team that "pulls together" ... and the necessity of trading away or benching even the best player on the team if that player cannot learn to play well with others.  D&D gives a tremendous opportunity for game participants to play together and succeed together ... or would, if the game's masters weren't busy making sure they have super-individualized avataristic personalities that cleave vast gaps between their attempts to fraternize and join forces.  There's a reason all the members of a team wear the same jerseys!  Sameness breeds trust and friendship, brotherhood and sisterhood and a sense of family.  Individualism breeds spite, entitlement and disunion.

When D&D asks a group of players bent on ego and eccentricity to form together and build a strategy, one they can all get behind together, the result is a ghastly mess.  Everyone wants something for themselves, and without the binding strength of a "party," everyone wants it right now and in great heaps.  But a group of players who are used to thinking as a friendly, supportive collective are instantly able to decide what's best for the greater good; and with the support of their friends, they're able to play the long game ... they don't need to be enriched today, because they know that it's going to come as soon as the battle's finally won.

It's a tremendous pity that most DM's will never experience this sort of party ... but it must be understood that this is because they don't understand their responsibilities AS a DM.  A party must be brought together, they must be encouraged and taught to act together, they must be REWARDED for acting together ... and those who won't act together must be kicked off the team.  There are no ifs, ands or buts to this program.  There's no other method, no great adventure module that will smooth over those rifts, no clever voices the DM can speak, no new RPG that can be switched to in hopes of better results.  Make them a team, or make them go home.  Do not play board games with players who throw fits and tip over the board; and make sure everyone feels they belong.

Point in fact, the "fudging" solution is an effort to keep players who would tip over the board from doing it, by ensuring they "win."  This is the unsaid part of, "I fudge so everyone has a good time."  It automatically equates "a good time" with "nothing goes wrong."  People this fragile need to re-train themselves at checkers or Candyland.  They don't belong at a D&D table.

The best boardgames enhance creativity and self-confidence.  The latter is far easier to obtain when the others around you are cheering you on, but let's move on from that argument.  Confidence in a board game arises from discovering for yourself a strategy that never occurred before.  This can be a very simple discovery ... for example, realising there are more hearts on the board than either stars or money in Careers.  In D&D, small adjustments to a character's possibilities arise all the time: in the weapon we pick, in the amount of armour we choose to wear, in recognizing there's a clever way to use a spell we'd never considered and so on.  But let me take an example from RISK.

For years, going back to my childhood, I took it for granted that the best strategy was to get hold of South America and hold it until the dice paid off.  If South America was unavailable, try for Australia.  But South America is better.  Even though it starts with two territories to be defended, it's adjacent to Africa with it's six territories; if these can be taken, there's four territories to defend.  Europe also has four territories, but if you break any of those the defender gets nothing.  The attacker has to break two territories, well apart on the board, to wreck the S.A/Africa block.  It doesn't always work, but it often does and I believed in it.

Then, in my 20s, I played with a fellow in multi-person games who consistently and deliberately avoided taking any continents.  His strategy was to work in the top of North America and Asia and just take territories that weren't in anybody's way.  While the other players were busting continents left and right, and losing armies as they did, he quietly accumulated 15 territories, getting the equivalent of South America without making enemies.  If the others didn't notice, he'd push to 18 territories ... and often he could do it because going after him meant letting someone else keep Australia or South America.  In the end, he'd simply edge out the opponents on territories alone.  I began to try the strategy; it works brilliantly.  The trick is to take one territory a turn and, like I say, make no enemies.  Perhaps it appeals to my Russian heritage.  I always had a special place for Irkutsk.

Learning little things like that about a boardgame we've played all our lives is huge.  It boosts our faith in ourselves, jumps up our willingness to be creative and gets us motivated to look for other bits of genius.  D&D excels at this.  There are so many aspects to the game, so many little ways to find bits and pieces and adapt them to new strategies and possibilities, that players who are free to innovate develop a habit for doing so.  This habit drifts over into their other activities, as what's being practiced are those cognitive skills that universities crave to invest in their students.  If such institutions had the least idea what D&D could be offering, they'd rush to invest in game studies and courses.  Unfortunately, the true virtuosity of the game is magnificently concealed behind droll, tiresome plug-and-play innovation-killing expectations.

Ah well.

P.S.,

Turns out, neither my daughter nor I remember the Careers board as well as we think.  Sea did not become space; join an expedition became space.  I'll be writing more on the Careers game soon.