Thistles

"This is not something that someone just casually goes off and sets up a 1970s-style campaign, ex nihilo.  That just doesn't happen, and like, and when you're not the BROSR, and you haven't gotten two or three years of work into figuring this out and playing with this, it's like, you know, if someone actually has done all this, I guess it would be obvious.  But when you done know what you don't know, there's a lot of big process there to find out what matters and what doesn't.  And there's a lot of things that are going to like not necessarily work out."

 — Jeffro Johnson, BROSR

Okay, so why am I taking pieces from this podcast and deconstructing them?  I assure you, it's not to humiliate or disparage the "bros" — which, I confess, they make more attractive by mispronouncing Latin and statements that begin, "If you're not us ..."  But this is not my goal.  Rather, it's that much of what the bros say is based upon absurd bits and pieces of information, based upon what appears to be gut instinct than real knowledge.  That needs to be addressed, since they're plainly reflecting the messages they've heard and drinking that kool-aid.

Which gets in the way of a message that IS a good one, that needs adoption.

Agreed, obviously, D&D is a mountain to climb.  Any one can see one doesn't need to be "the BROSR" and that, in fact, it doesn't take two or three years of work to figure this out.  I and my friends, all 15 years old, began running our games during the winter of 1979-80; we had older people around us whom we could go to for advice, from whom we could get good advice.  By the summer of 1980 we were all fairly confident about DMing.  Going in rotation, playing twice a week — Friday after school in the cafeteria between 2:30 and 6:00, then Saturday between 7:00 and 10:30, by the end of 1980 we had some 300-350 hours of play under our belts.  Three quarters of that was play and about a quarter was DMing.  All this was after I had finished with football, which was only that fall in 1979.  I didn't go out for football again with grade 11.  And this doesn't count the time I spent playing in other campaigns, Empire of the Petal Throne and Chivalry & Sorcery.

By the summer of 1981, between grades 11 and 12, we had sorted out which of us wanted to DM and which didn't.  Because we were older, facing our last year before graduation, most of us were freer to play later hours before we had to go home.  I ran about 60-70% of our games because I was better prepared than John, and our time had shifted from 7 hours a week to 9.  So, 18 months after starting the game, I had about 225 hours of DMing to my credit.  By then I was also running Traveller on Sunday afternoons and occasionally switching D&D up for Top Secret.  Gamma World, Paranoia, Tunnels & Trolls and straight wargames, like Car Wars, got shoved in here and there ... the two months that summer gave all kinds of opportunities to play.

By winter of 81-82, two years after my DMing began, I was the only DM left in our group.  I was not a bro and I could already see there were huge problems with AD&D, none of which are the problems that any modern-day blogger bitches about.  Alignment was weak, but not because it didn't make sense or because it couldn't be perfectly defined, but because it got in the way of the players seeking higher expressions of their character.  Any literate person knows that human beings are NEVER of a single mind; they never commit to one behaviour in every circumstance.  We are a hodgepodge of badly thought out decisions and actions that are both cruel and noble ... and the alignment system, with it's stodgy "tell you what to do" approach was simply kindergartenish and unnecessarily restraining.

The weapons vs. armour class adjustment isn't hard to run and it does make sense ... but any capable, wargame strategist — which we all were — could figure out in a few runnings that certain weapons were plainly better than others ... which drastically compelled wise players to choose the more obviously superior weapons.  We agreed after playing with it a year that the constraint was limiting the spirit of the game, while liberating no special value of any kind, so we ditched it.  If you want an end to power gaming, eliminate any system that arbitrarily specialises a weapon beyond it's functional limitations.

A battle axe needs two hands, and a sword does not, permitting the use of a shield.  They both do 1-8 damage ... so it appears that the sword is superior.  Why would anyone use a battle axe?  Well, you can't cut through a door with a sword.  When a sword breaks, the whole weapon is useless, but a battle axe always breaks at the weakest point, the handle ... which is cheap and easy to replace.  The weapon is made that way.  In the long run, the battle axe is more reliable.  Like a car with a spare tire.  You can carry the extra handle with you, or pirate it from another weapon.  Meaning the sword and battle axe each have their strengths and their weaknesses.  There's no definite right or wrong choice.  This doesn't keep a simple-minded player thinking that one or the other IS superior ... but the game includes elements to make them change their mind.  On the other hand, if you make the sword clearly superior by creating arbitrary weapon-vs.-armour rules, then every player would be stupid to lessen their chance of survival by choosing an axe.  That's not power gaming.  That's sensible.

The larger point is that, no, it doesn't take two years to get a handle on this game.  Those DMs who stepped down after trying it were fine as DMs, if a bit overwhelmed.  I can still easily get overwhelmed while playing.  A DM is a particular personality that likes being overwhelmed, who sees it as a good thing, because it's exciting and a high.  He or she looks forward to the next time the opportunity to DM comes ... whereas others view the next running with anxiety.  There's only so many times one can be possessed by that anxiety before one quits running.

Understand, however, this isn't a sign of the game being comprised of bad rules, or of the prospective DM not knowing what needs to be done.  We can know perfectly how to run, and still fail at it because it's really not for us.

The bros make the pitch hard that by playing AD&D by the rules exactly, it's a much better game.  And they repeat over and over that it's "the AD&D rules" — and apparently, only those rules, that affords this better game.  This is nonsense.  The problem with 5th isn't that it has different rules.  It's that the rules aren't "rules" at all.  They're suggestions at best, easily compromised, badly defined and overall a ghastly mess for organising a campaign.  AD&D is superior to 5th not because it's a better rule system, but because it IS one.  Any consistent, structured, limiting rule system is vastly superior to 5th for that reason.

It's a good idea for an unsupported DM, without practical experience with wargames (which are all about hardcore exact adherence to rules), without access to good advice (which throws out everything on the internet), to adopt AD&D rules-as-written as a starting point.  I encourage that, whole heartedly.  Not because I think AD&D is a good system as written, but because, as a matter of fact, that's exactly how I started. 

Nor do I think AD&D's rules represent "how Gygax envisioned the game," which is a load of dingo's kidneys.  In any case, who gives a rat's boil what Gygax intended?  He's dead, we're still here, and humanity moves on from what inventors invent.  We don't make cars the way Henry Ford did, and guess why.

Most would-be DMs out there have had ALL their opportunities to learn viciously co-opted by morons and exploiters.  These poor DMs desperately need to stop viewing D&D as a set of guidelines and instead as a set of hard, strict boundaries, which have the capacity to change and discipline these DMs into new people with new perspectives.  Playing AD&D rules-as-written might do that.

5th is not about disciplining players.  And while I hate to sound like a christian website urging you to beat your children, "discipline" in the academic sense is necessary for building the strong, sustainable apparati that will keep a game campaign going, year after year.  Us old school guys who played 1812, El Alamein and Tractics had our mental spines broken over the backs of rule systems that permitted zero flexibility.  That's what we wanted.  It forced us to solve the problem using the games rules, and not solve the rule problems with our flippant imaginations.  And hell, regarding what Gygax "thought," he contributed to the design of the last one linked ... 'course, that was years before he lost his shit with TSR.

Every player faced those same rule constraints; and as it played out, it became clear that some could see how to move units in a way that would win a battle and some did not.  For those who did well at this, and for those who did okay and occasionally succeeded, this was a triumph of game design.  But for those who could not think like a commander, who could not make sense of strategy and tactics, these games were horrible.  Those people did not enjoy these games.  Yet no one ever spoke of changing the rules to suit their shortcomings.  Simulation, Avalon Hill and other publishers didn't pump out "basic" game versions for these games, designed to make sure "everyone had fun."  Fuck everyone.  "Everyone" could go to the fucking beach if they wanted fun.  We were playing games that challenged our intellect and our limitations.  We screamed at each other, we fought viciously over half an inch of movement, we tore the skin on our fingernails and on our knees moving units over carpet with the fastidiousness of a surgeon.  We did not speak of having "fun."

The crucifixion-cross of "FUN" for everyone has ruined D&D past the point where most players introduced to the game have any chance of experiencing the sort of game we played 40 years ago.  If it takes them two or three years to learn D&D, it's because they didn't learn the importance of rules at a young age, or because they were taught that "fun" was the only defensible hill upon which anyone would play a game.  If the bros above feel the need to self-aggrandise themselves as "the ones" — go Neos — who have seen the blessed light of AD&D rules-as-written, all power to them.  At least they're on the right path, even if they've decided to start on it 43 years later.  At least they're a tiny percentage of the community that's finally realised that Mentzer, Holmes and the string of fucked-up weak-player enablers who followed in their wake, were taking the game on a crooked, EASY road to Hell.  At least someone woke the Chriscakes up.

So, yeah, I'm annoyed by their ignorance and terse arrogance — but unlike a lot of people, I see the bed from which it's grown.  From soil that's done little but grow mould these last forty years, along comes these two thistles.  And they're pushing out a couple of flowers.  I'll take that over what I've had.

Still.

I can't resist deconstructing the donkey piss of misinformation they're dribbling out, so there are going to be a few more of these posts.  I hope my readers are wise enough to see the good in this process.