Mentzer

It's torture to read Mentzer.  There's hardly a paragraph that doesn't stoke my ire, from his toxic interpretations of strength, intelligence, wisdom and so on to his clumsy, splattering approach to delivering game rules at random throughout his books.  Reading through the famously popular scene of "Learning how to play the D&D game," I want to bang my head repeatedly on the table as he unreservely, irresponsibly primes the reader towards the worst kind of railroaded gaming, ending with the absure and insulting, "You have just played a D&D game!"

No, I have not.  I've watched a hack write language imposing his actions and his choices on me, with flagrant use of the 2nd person, while making every decision in exchange for my tacit, momentary input.  Vomit.  Thank the fucking CHRIST I didn't read this fluffy, shit crap refuse until the 2000s.

It's indefensible.  For the record, "I thought it was amazing when I was an ignorant child" is not a defense, it's evidence of the brainwashery going on here.  I don't want to pull every bloody sentence and deconstruct this steaming drivel, but I could.  Oh, fuck, I could.

My point being that this is a considerable obstacle towards teaching people how to be a DM.  Not because they'll have ever read Mentzer, but because of this:  quoting from Dennis Laffey,

"I got the Mentzer Basic set for my 11th birthday, back in 1984. I'd seen the D&D cartoon, had a few Endless Quest books (plus Choose Your Own Adventure and similar 2nd person fiction game-books), and was into fantasy and mythology ... Anyway, that birthday gift changed my life.

I remember reading the Mentzer set's player introduction. There's the little tutorial where you meet Aleena the Cleric and Bargle. It gives you a bit of railroady interactive fiction and makes you roll some dice here and there. Explains some terms as they come up.

Then there's the "choose your own adventure" tutorial. Numbered paragraphs or sections of text with CYOA type choices of section to go to lead you through a solo game. It's possible to fail. Since it's just you and the book, it's VERY easy to cheat. But again, it helps guide you through some of the game mechanics and introduces not just game terms and systems (in a watered down fashion), but also the sorts of situations you could expect as a player.

And it worked pretty well. I got it. I think I cheated on the CYOA adventure the first time I did it, but I played it a few more times until I was able to beat it fair and square."

Sorry, Dennis.   I don't have no intention of diminishing your real emotions here.  I read the above last night and took your words as an inspiration to look at Mentzer in application to issues I've discussing with this series.  Unfortunately, I cannot get out of Mentzer what you did, because I come at this game from a very different place.

However, like you, many, many don't.  Mentzer's propaganda caught on and invested itself deep into the D&D community's consciousness ... and because D&D is an apprenticeship-style education for most of its participants, what Mentzer wrote nearly 40 years ago has been perpetuated and corrupted into the abomination that is 5th edition.

Naturally, I'm a voice in the wilderness.  People love and adore Mentzer's work for those examples Dennis gave, and more than a few are scratching their heads now (if they're even still reading) as to what the hell is my problem with this:

"It's hard to run with the cleric across your shoulder, but you finally get back just as the sun goes down.  Once there, you take her body to the church.  It's too late to help her, but they can give her a proper burial.  They thank you for your kindness, and offer a small bottle as a reward."

Wow, you tried to save her and you couldn't.  And the church was so moved by your action that they gave up something of theirs for you.  Isn't that wonderful?

Sigh.

The #1 action of a good party is to ask questions.  During an average game, outside of combat, I field between 3-5 questions a minute, maybe more.  The DM's #1 action is to answer questions.  THIS is the game.  The players ask, the DM answers.  The players ask, the DM answers.  This goes on all night.

Mentzer's "example" has no questions; because it cannot.  It's a story, which D&D is not.  The framework of the example totally denies the possibility of player expression, because of the format.  And the game IS player expression.  So how exactly have we played a D&D game?

And for that matter, what does the passage teach DMs?  Remember, the people who actually have to invent all this?  It doesn't.  At all.  Because Mentzer definitely isn't interested in teaching you how to DM.  The module will DM you.  This passage is teaching you how to obey a module.

You're a young, impressionable child, reading this, being educated to depend on modules ... and decades later that idea remains unsurfaced in your approach to the game.  So you think this is okay.  You buy some modules, play with your friends, have fun ... so it's okay.  You meet others, they have modules which they run, and soon enough it's time to go to college and still it hasn't occurred to you that nothing you've read has ever seemingly been written for specifically DMing the game.  2e comes along, imposes it's universal metric which makes writing modules — and balancing modules for different party strengths — easier.  3rd comes along and drenches the players with opportunities and possibilities, but what does it do for the DM?  Nothing ... except give the DM more to memorise.  Each step along the way, there's always more and more for the player, but for the DM?  We have this module.  Run this module.  We have lots of modules.  We'd prefer you run it as is.  Sure, you can rewrite it as you please ... but we're not going to help you do that.  We're not going to give you advice, hell no.

I started to seriously drop out of the D&D community by 1985.  I had my game, I was working full time as a statistical clerk making absurd amounts of money ... and the whole vibe I was getting from others was just ... ech.  I'd pretty much learned how to run tolerably well.  My best player at the time, who was deeply invested in the community still, told me around 1989 that I was the best DM he'd ever known ... and as he'd grown up in Chicago in the 1970s, he'd met Gygax and Arneson personally.  So I respected that compliment ... but honestly, I thought I was just doing what a lot of others were doing.  After all, one player has a pretty limited experience, this being long before the internet.

There's something to be said about my dropping out.  I didn't buy modules.  I had one party, so it's not like I could run the Keep on the Borderlands multiple times.  I learned how to write.  I learned how to perform on a stage.  I'd started in the debate club and moved into campus politics, so I knew how to produce a defending argument.  That was strengthened by my classics degree.  And through it all, I operated in a vacuum.  No contact, with anyone else, with regards to D&D ... for nearly 15 years.

So, I have zero nostalgic feelings about any part of D&D, period.  Not about AD&D, not about Basic, which I played for about four months before we all switched to 1st, not about modules, not about the forgotten realms books, not about anything.  Long before I stepped forward into the D&D community again, I'd so absolutely broken up every system I'd encountered that I had as much respect for them as a renovator has for the house he bought vs. the house he's rebuilt.

Those who taught me how to DM all did so in '79 and the early 80s ... and apparently then went on DMing in exactly the same way for the next forty years.  They waited for others to tell them what to change and what to adopt.  Essentially, they let others into their house, allowing repairs to made that broke the plumbing, broke the heating, weakened the foundation, fouled the wiring and — upon departing — left holes in every wall and scratched the floors beyond repair.  Because that was easier than making the repairs personally.

And now I read homeowner after homeowner with a house like this happily going on youtube and telling me, "It's GREAT!"

Definitely an obstacle.

Ask yourself, from Mentzer's observations on page 2:  do you want your player to "be like an actor," imagining they are someone else and pretending to be that character?  Do you want your player to be "a strong hero, a famous but poor fighter"?  Does that support a vivid, flexible campaign?  Do you want the party to "be playing different roles and talking together as if [they] were the characters"?  Have you experienced where that goes as a DM?  Do you want the players thinking that the game is "looking for monsters and treasure" with the result that "The more you find, the more powerful and famous you become"?  Is that how the setting works for you?  That despite the total lack of witnesses, when a group of rich pillagers and killers show up in a town covered in dust and blood, wounded, but with tons of money ... everyone automatically makes them beloved celebrities?  Really?

Is the equipment the party needs "very similar to what you would carry when camping"?  Is the choice to take weapons and armour, in order to invade an underground lair, properly described as "protection"?

Each description is there to blow right past any real issue a nuanced, thinking person would have with the activities supported and condoned by the work.  And the fall-out?  That's the DM's problem.  Is it any wonder that DMs have, for a long time, struggled with the concept of parties who act like murder-hobos ... when the modules that are made, the language that is used, the pandering position that's taken, encourages this.

I keep reading how the "answer" is to remove the reward system for treasure; that's not the answer.  The answer is to devise better adventures, ones in which the comfort level of the participant is challenged realistically, instead of enabling the players to be monsters.