Recognisable D&D

Rule #1 of achieving immersion is not wanting to die.

Give that a moment to sink in.  I haven't said "in the game" yet.  That's because immersing oneself in life requires the same desire to NOT DIE.  That is, not behaving like this:

Long ago, I recognised that some players treated D&D exactly like the above.  Is what I'm doing cool?  Check.  Is it unexpected and provocative?  Check.  Will it put me one roll from death, with a half-way decent chance of survival, if I make the roll?  Check.  Gawd yes, let me do it.

Because game death only matters when the player cares, then there's no reason not to do the above.  Maybe my present character will die, and maybe the next one will ... but when the one after that makes the roll for whatever dumbfuck crazy-ass shit I've done, then I will be a GOD.  Worth it.

More than once, when a player's character died through the player's decision to perform such a stunt, I denied them the privilege of rolling up another character.  "Basically, that's it.  You've had your character.  You're dead.  And there's the door."

All things considered, drawing a hard line on a self-centered player is definitely a better feeling than lucking out at a whack die roll.  The reader can take my word on that.  But then, a lot of readers have stopped reading about sixteen words again, because what I just said is unacceptable.  Players, so it goes, should not be held to account for the way they play their characters, because they are in their perfect rights to play their character any way they want.

"Recognisable D&D" is an extremely fuzzy, subjective ideal.  Using the example of The Keep on the Borderlands, players are expected to tromp out to the Caves of Chaos, kill as many creatures as they can, grab treasure, retreat when hit points get low, heal up ... and go out again.  Each time, the characters who don't die are meant to climb up levels so they can steadily manage the whole thing — thus being entertained by all the clever little bits as they go along.

Suppose we don't do it this way.  Suppose, instead, we go once, grab a handful of gold, then leave the keep and head back to civilised parts.  There, we show a bunch of mercenaries all the gold we found, telling them we "Got it in a single day!"  If they come along with us, we'll give this gold we have now and help them get more.

Whereupon, in recognisable D&D, the DM already feels we're not getting with the "spirit of the thing" — that is, playing how we're supposed to play — and arbitrarily blocks us from raising a small army with the hundreds of gold we have.  So there's an argument, and we say we only want thirty persons, and it goes round and round ... but the DM eventually relents and we get our men and march back to the Keep.

Now, the DM assumes we're going to take our mass directly into the Caves ... and, if "recognisable D&D" means anything, the DM's starting to multiply the number of orcs, goblins and kobalds we'll encounter.  But we tell the DM, "No, we're not going to the Caves yet.  Instead, we build a fort about 1000 yards from the Cave entrance."

"Wait, wait, wait," says the DM, who doesn't know what we're doing, but it's definitely NOT recognisable D&D, so it absolutely cannot be allowed.  Remember that thing above, with someone saying that the way players choose to play their characters, yada yada, sacred blah blah blah?  That only applies if YOU DON'T USE YOUR BRAIN.  If you use your gawd-given human brain to circumvent the DM's expectations, or the expectations of the module maker, then you've broken the covenant and now you're fair game.  You're not allowed to build your own fort; you're not allowed to lure orcs and goblins out of their caves so that you can slaughter them with your own traps and fortifications.

If you try to build your own fort, the denizens of the cave will definitely come and attack you before you're finished, even though they have zero reason to suspect anything's happening, and they never choose to do so against the keep.  If you get your fortification built, the denizens will definitely NOT leave their caves, even though there's no logical reason why they would let interlopers casually start bonfires in their cave entrances, which are right there, ready to be seen.  Frankly, the FIRST thing anyone should do when seeing the caves is to burn everything on the surface forthwith ... as this will reveal every cave entrance and potentially suffocate the denizens with the upstairs fire sucks out all their oxygen.

But again ... this isn't recognisable D&D.

We often hear it said that D&D isn't about "winning" and "losing."  And in a traditional sense, the sense that's usually meant, no, it's not.  But so long as my character is alive and getting stronger, for my money, I'm happy; and when my character dies, whatever the reason, I'm unhappy.  I can usually see that the reason I died was because I failed to prepare enough.  If only I'd thought to bring along another three archers; or another half-dozen bottles of oil.  If only I'd approached more patiently, giving the flankers more time to get into place.  If only I hadn't used the fireball so early in the fight.  Because I think surviving D&D is about planning.  It's not about following the DM's lead.  Or acting as the DM expects.

Anytime I can move contrary to the DM's expectation, I greatly increase my chance of survival.  I had plenty of chances to experiment with this in the 80s ... and I got awfully tired of DMs, caught off guard, suddenly imposing fiat-driven rules to explain why no, I couldn't actually set the hillsides surround the Caves on fire.  There'd been too much rain lately — even if the DM hadn't mentioned rain a single time while we'd been travelling to the Keep or spending time there.  It wasn't the right kind of wood.  We didn't have enough flasks of oil to start a big fire.  Yes, there are trees large enough for kobalds to jump down from, or hide big entrances, but no, there really isn't enough vegetation here.  It was always something.  And after awhile, I didn't want to play anymore.  Not with other DMs, who resisted our using the WHOLE game world and setting to make our designs on how to overcome an enemy, survive and get rich.

That's why I stopped playing.  Because, faced with recognisable D&D, I wasn't allowed to "not die" as well as I was able.

Jump the clock forward more than thirty years, and I often find myself explaining something about how to build a game world, or how to set up an adventure — or how to encourage the players to seek goals that are larger than schlepping out to the Caves of Chaos for their sixth trip — and I am bound to be called to task by someone making an argument that says, "Oh but hey, what about recognisable D&D?"

Yeah.  Well, what about it?

My players sit down at my game world and make the characters that limit what they can constructively do in game terms.  Then, I tell them where they are, and what they see, and they make up their minds about what they want to do.  They decide, and I run it.  I don't care how many monsters they kill.  I don't care how they do it.  I don't care if they kill monsters at all.  Those things aren't up to me.  I don't agree that the game is necessarily about overcoming perilous challenges.  It usually ends up being that, and I'm happy to create peril, but it always happens because those are the choices the players make.

I believe the game is about deciding what to overcome, and then overcoming it.  Making a goal, then achieving that goal.  The best players are those that create the best goals.

The worst fucking players are those that create the worst goals.  Like, for example, deciding that doing something cool in this moment is way more important than not dying.  Or, thinking that making jokes is the reason they play; not paying attention and therefore not playing; throwing the die with intent to cheat; acting in a manner that preserves self and puts other players in greater danger.  And so on.

What is the best goals?  At bare minimum, something that increases the character's capabilities, endurance (hit points) and wealth.  Better still, something that increases the party's options on what to do next.  With great power comes great opportunities.  This is what I mean by seeing parts of the setting as "game pieces."  If we control this town, or we have the ear of the local nobility, or we know the way through the mountains, how do we use that power or knowledge to do bigger and better things.  How do we impose OUR WILL upon the game world.  Once we do "A," that let's us do "B" and "C" ... and maybe then we'll figure out how "C" and "D" will let us do "E," and so on.

I'm talking bigger things than the Caves of Chaos.

Now, I know that most players, propagandised and brainwashed into believing that they're only allowed to do what the DM wants, can't think on the level I'm asking.  In all the campaigns I've run online, it's been a tug-of-war just to convince the players that I'm really going to let them do things I haven't told them to do.  And that I'm not going to "just kill them" for trying stuff.  And that honest to fuck, I don't care what they want to do, I will not arbitrarily stop them from trying.  Repeatedly, I've had to repeat this until I'm blue in the face ... and I never do really see evidence that they believe me.

But off-line ... most of my players have never played "recognisable" anything.  They come to my world from video games, where you try everything in case it works.  Where there is no arbitrary DM's hand.  There's rules, there's what you can do, and there's what you can try.  Coming into my world, they have no preconception that I'm going to jack them.  They just assume that if it doesn't work, it's because they tried to bite off too much; or they didn't plan well enough.  They don't overthink.  They don't look for the meta-trap that savvy players know has to be there, because, "There's just no way the DM's gonna let me do this."

Honest.  Fuck recognisable D&D.  Rule #1 is survive.  Rule #1 of immersion is to consider surviving more important than everything else.  And Rule #1 of worldbuilding is making a game world where surviving is ALWAYS possible, and NEVER certain.

But there is no rule at all that says a game has to include such-and-such familiar elements, or such-and-such situations for the players, or a specific kind of organisation that enables traditional or recognisable anything.