The Mess

Let's start with a rewrite of yesterday's post including the "Introduction" segment ... rushing things less and being a bit more forthright and clear with the statements being made:

This book is about learning to be a “dungeon master” – a mysterious title associated with the game “Dungeons & Dragons.” The dungeon master, or “DM,” accepts the responsibility to coordinate and take charge of the game. It is a difficult role to play, with many responsibilities and the need for many talents. If you, dear reader, want to learn how it’s done, you’ve bought the right book.

The first thing you must know about Dungeons & Dragons, or “D&D,” is that there is no single game. During its long and tortured history, D&D has been turned, twisted and tortured by many authors into dozens of shapes, some of which still bear the game’s official name, while others are re-imaginings of the game in different clothing. With each iteration since its inception, the various versions of the game have grown less compatible with earlier versions, so that D&D has become a hodgepodge of contradictory rules, ideas and forms of game play.

If you have already purchased a version of the game – and perhaps spending more money than you’d intended – I’m sorry to say that it’s possible you don’t have the best version ... or rather, the one that’s best for you. In the hands of someone else, your cherished copy may be exactly what they’re looking for; but in your hands, it could be a disaster. Learning this may come as a shock. It’s surely the last thing you expected to hear from a stranger telling you how to manage the game. But it’s the truth. You may not now have the game you dearly wanted. The best thing you can do about that is to go online, figure out which version you have, and take the time to find out what the other versions are. This, I’m afraid, is your responsibility. All I can offer is that, if you find you’ve made a mistake, you can try to trade for the version you want. Or you can make the best of what you have, until you learn enough to make a change. This is the climate of D&D as it stands. The game’s existence is a complete mess.

This book won’t take time to compare and review the different D&D versions that exist, because unravelling the mess is not this book’s goal. My goal is to teach you how to dungeon master a D&D game – any D&D game. Thankfully, the skills and methodology of “DMing” apply equally well regardless of the version of game play. DMing is about providing game details, making formal judgements about what’s happening and enabling opportunities for the other participants. It’s about being ready with a great deal of information. It’s about knowing the rules – whatever they are – very, very well.

To help you master the game, this book will provide discussion, knowledge and ethical advice. It will define many aspects of D&D that have existed since the beginning, providing clarification that you will find useful in answering questions and directing the game. To handle the other participants positively and effectively, you’ll need practical knowledge about how to speak, relay information, create moments of drama and prepare yourself for each game session. This book will provide it. Once you’ve finished reading this book, you should have a much stronger understanding of how the game works and your part in it.

However, just so you know, that won’t be enough to make you a DM. It takes a long, long time to learn all you need know to be a good DM – and the truth is, you’ll never stop learning. This book that’s brought you and me together is just the start. To go further, to reach your potential, you’ll need to employ good sense and a great deal of self-investigation.

It’s up to you to dig down and discover what you can do. It’s up to you to commit to the game; to stay up all night as you draw maps or design the next big thing; to show patience in the face of criticism; and to say “yes” when it’s warranted and “no” when you’re prepared to stand your ground.

It’s up to you to believe in yourself, and trust your judgement. What I can do is help you understand the fundamental game, despite its trapping and confusions – and when we’re done, you’ll find you have the potential to be a better DM than you imagined.

Better.   Importantly, it buries two functional justifications I need to go forward: (a) I'm not responsible for the version you play; and (b) I'm free to define aspects of D&D that may not exist in the version you play, which only serves to argue that you're playing "the wrong version."  The upshot, however, is that I'm taking a risk here.  The text had better be solid, helpful and insightful going forward, or I end up looking like a self-righteous prick.  Which, of course I am, but it's best if I don't look like one.

This is the reason for softening the text above somewhat.  The truth is that D&D is a gawdawful mess; I don't want to pretend differently, and that would do no good for the reader anyway.  But if it's possible, I'd rather this was so because it is (and I think a visit around the internet supports that), and not because I said so.

There is a distinct difference between the "game" and the versions thereof.  D&D, whatever the specific rules, is functionally a game where the DM describes, the players react, the DM reacts to the players, the players react again to the DM and so on.  My desire is for the reader to grasp this, rather than the specific details of any specific game or version, because that structure is true of all role-playing games, not just D&D.

Managing this react-dynamic is the key to teaching DMing ... with a strong recognition that no simple format like "always say yes" is going to work at all well.  The game is too complex for that.  But let's leave this part on the shelf and return to Moldvay.

As before, we can see the text trying to do too many things at the same time, while adding details that don't remotely need to be discussed at this time.  With the first sentence, having been told to roll 3d6 on the previous page and apply it to the six character ability stats, the text on the right tries to jump straight to having the character pick a class ... and then realises, almost at once, oops, we forgot to explain what abilities actually are.  Nonetheless, we introduce the idea of a "prime requisite" — a term that offers the flimsiest value to the conversation, yet is there to confuse the reader — then shove pressure onto the character that "success" depends on having a high prime requisite score.

Now you and I understand this as a "duh" moment, since the scores are already rolled and the player's character is stuck with what's gotten ... but for the new DM, there's a sense of, "How can I get a higher ability score?" — which is exactly the kind of question I've fielded scores of times as a DM from new players, and those from other campaigns.

Language has a great deal of power.  Phrasing things in such a way that the player feels their whole success rests on the highness of their ability scores primes them in all sorts of horrible ways.  We see the same thing in advice like, "Any character with a strength score of 13 or above should consider one of the following four classes ..."  Pause a moment and consider.  Of course a character's class should depend on its higher ability scores ... but notice that nothing has been said about the underhand shuffle that's being forced here, where the abilities cannot be simply arranged as the player wishes, stated plainly in the earlier AD&D text regarding the rolling up of a character.

Why?   What does this fundamental change in character construction add to the game, except to build camps of people ready to battle stupidly over a rule choice that makes no fundamental difference to game play?  If the player wants to be a cleric, then why can't the 13 simply be put under wisdom?  Or put under strength if the player wants to be a fighter?  Why go through the complicated, apparently rational act of pumping the prime requisite argument with multiple sentences under each ability?  Because it's clever?  I'll be damned if I see how.  Or is it that we want to force players to play characters they don't actually want to play?  If so, that's a hell of a way to build the game as a support structure.

Can you not see that frivolous, essentially meaningless rule structures like this contributed long term to the impatience and indifference of would-be players, who found themselves stymied by arbitrary nonsense like the above?  Can you not see that resistance to this fanned the flames of a resistance to everything in the game?  Moldvay's version doesn't exist in a vacuum; there are plenty of copies of the DMG laying around, which Moldvay ignores, without a word of explanation about WHY he's chosen to ignore it.  Because there is no explanation.  He's gone with what he thinks is the "right" choice ... and fuck what anyone else thinks.

I remember clearly that this disagreement, and others, presented themselves in 1981-82.  Obviously, we couldn't see at the time how ludicrous these discrepancies would become — at the time they were a mere annoyance, largely perpetrated by an annoying kind of player and DM.

Writing a book that explains how to DM requires that every bit of advice we offer has to be absolutely defensible on some basis other than, "I feel like it should be that way."  Otherwise, we're wasting our time.  Or we don't really know what helps a DM to DM.  Which is evident in the sort of material that's written.

In the introduction above, the word "practical" stands out.  The advice we give has to have practical application, which means that it must adhere to actual doing and use, and NOT according to theory and ideas.  The reader must be able to read it, apply it and find that it succeeds with persons who are total strangers to the writer.

That is a damned high bar to clear ... but as can be seen with earlier attempts, writers like Moldvay and others didn't give a damn.  They felt so righteous in their beliefs that they saw no reason whatsoever to explain themselves.

Which is precisely how we got into this mess.