Response

 

Thus demonstrating why I'm not hounding readers to buy the menu.

I bought Europa Universalis today.  Didn't plunge in and buy all the bits and pieces, but enough to address the very difficult learning curve it offers.  I have only a little time to spend on it each day, but I haven't bought a new game since last Christmas and it's clear this is going to soak up many hours in my future.  Time spent not posting here and not working on the authentic wiki.  But ... time recharging, problem solving and stepping away from reality here and there.

I'm thinking on the comment by Dennis Laffey for my last post, about "older editions" being all kill kill kill.  From personal experience I can attest that no matter how much source material, alternate game play or game nuance that I add as a DM, my players will always decide that, "This seems very complicated and just now I'd feel better if I could just kill something."  I bring this up because getting into E.U., where there's a terrific amount of nuance involved, far more than other logistics-wargame-formats I've played, it felt good to step away from the game.  I could comfortably sink into a much simpler wargame right now, something that was all kill kill kill, just to give my brain a rest.

We have to give credence to those people who resist elements of incorporated skull-sweat in their D&D game.  Not everyone enjoys thinking hard, juggling intrigue and guessing at what's the best choice among two or three indecipherable options ... even in half-hour installments.  In fact, it feels good to "prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around."  Swing the sword, collect our dopamine, slough off the cortisol and watch the solid, indisputable effect of our actions.  The problem with straight role-playing is that, although it's fun sometimes, a lot of the time we just don't know what we're doing or what's going to result from all this talking.  We hope we're accomplishing something, but much of the time the way a DM organizes the role-playing (judging from the videos published on youtube) is that the players do a lot of listening and not much acting.  Role-playing, most of the time, is a passive game function.  The players behave like an audience in response.

This is why we get Matthew Mantel's bitter sentiment, "If you're intent on avoiding the violence of D&D you are playing the wrong game."  We turn to the violence because it's satisfying, but then we find ourselves having to defend the violence simply because the game is complex enough to insist we deconstruct that violence as it takes place.  No one challenges the "violence" in checkers or chess; though of course there's killing in those games.  No, it's not the actual killing, it's the deconstruction of the killing ... the methodical eradication of hit points, the use of specific tactics designed to attack one or more persons at a time, the movement around the battlefield, the detail inherent in what a spear does versus a bow, a pole-arm or a battle axe — and what each weapon requires in terms of the number of hands and how many attacks we get.

The deeper and more intensively we expand the tactical information involved on a battlefield, the more likely we're going to be accused of fetishising the violence ... though in fact we're fetishising the tactics.  This viewpoint helps explain why so many tables struggle for heavy simplification of the battle structure: every weapon does d6 damage, there are no levels, every combatant has the same number of hit points, there are no rules at all for movement, etcetera.  The minimisation of battle tactics helps D&D more closely approach chess and checkers, thus removing the "stank" of all the violence without stripping the game of it's other desired elements.

The reactionary knee-jerk resistance to imaginary violence remains ludicrously out of place in a world of school shootings, politicians who incorporate the use of guns into their campaign ads (who then get elected) and a constant state of unrestrained warfare taking place in multiple parts of the world.  The terror-scenario that little Billy will become a maniacal killer someday because at the age of three he picked up a crooked stick and pretended it was a gun — encouraging someone to slap the stick out of Billy's hand — stands at the core of farcical social engineers who feel the world's made a better place when something imaginary is banned, while that very same thing that's real and insanely dangerous is granted dogmatic approval.  The only answer for the moron online or in real life expressing his or her "hatred" of D&D violence is evidence that they feel brave enough to condemn something where no one can turn and shoot them ... as opposed to condemning people who can award death in response.

Willy nilly, I don't care.  My point with the last post wasn't that "D&D is about violence," but that it's about a specific kind of violence ... where, very unlike a video game, the players cannot rely on their "playing skill" to guarantee a win every time.  Given sufficient hours spent, I'll get good enough at E.U. that I can clean the computer's clock every time.  But my 5th level fighter won't win every fight with an ogre, no matter how many years I've spent playing this game.  THAT was the larger, more relevant point.

People resist the violence of D&D for reasons having nothing to do with a dislike of violence.  No, no, it's the kind of violence involved.  A violence that dictates you won't always win ... unless I'm willing to fudge the dice for you, or ensure you never have to fight monsters stronger than you are, or play monsters like congenital idiots who don't understand how to use their own powers.

Some people LIKE this.  They like that the battle might go horrifically sour.  The possibility speeds the blood, dries the throat and wets the palms.  The tremulous, uncomfortable sense that a complex, paced battle, where the tide turns back and forth — because the combat system's design doesn't work like Monopoly — is going straight into the shit pile excites some kinds of players while deeply unnerving others.  The right answer to Mantel's answer above is to say, "If you're intent on avoiding the heat of dying stupidly in my kitchen, then don't play my campaign."

There is a big difference between "Fun, we killed a bunch of orcs!" and "Holy shit, we barely lived through that shit!  Let's not do that again."  Both are violent.  One is cartoonish.  The other is traumatizing.  The kind of violence you want to play defines what sort of D&D participant you are.  Some of you who like violence don't belong anywhere near my game system.