Wednesday, August 10, 2022

The World Turtle Bears the World

I know my readers have been waiting.  Forgive me for a little preamble first.

Sterling, I got the book.  I picked it up from my mailbox just before heading out today, so I've been able to glance through it and read your kind letter.  My grandmother was also a schoolteacher.

After not driving for 20 years, my partner Tamara has spent the time since the relax of Covid here in Canada chasing all the details that would let her regain her driver's license.  This involved communicating with the Michigan bureaucracy, where her last license was issued, getting Alberta to believe Michigan, retaking her learner's license test, taking driving courses to invigorate her driving habits, taking the test twice and passing, as of Thursday six days ago.  Tamara was anxious to get a car as soon as possible, so the last days have been filled with a visit to the bank, arranging financing, finding a car and then buying one, which we did yesterday, amid a rather ludicrous car price inflation that's ongoing.  We got a good deal on a Ford Edge.  Today, we took it out for a five hour drive around outside the city, visiting a provincial park and regaining some of our skills (driving comfortably in a new car for Tamara, navigating for me).  Once upon a time I had an interest in being a navigator for a rally car, but no opportunity to pursue that ever emerged.

Tomorrow, I'll be getting a full analysis from the lab for my yearly checkup; I've had to wait two months for an appointment.  It's possible I have a hernia; that's added to the list of other old man diseases I might have.  No biggie, but it helps fill up the week.

Then, Sunday, on the 14th, Tamara and I will be getting married.  We've been together continuously since March 30, 2002, so it's going to be a very simple ceremony.  We have the license, there's no need for a blood test and the arrangements have been made.  Just one more thing on my plate.  Otherwise, it's been work, exercise and juggling advice about cars, marriage brokers and other minor details.  This is why I haven't undertaken the post I promised.

Gee.  I hope I remember what I was going to talk about.

Looking around for a neutral example to discuss, to kick off a campaign description, this comes from  the one drive page from the Blue Bard, discussing Geoul.  I plan to discuss it out of context; if you'd like it IN context, read as much as you can.  It's time well spent.

"Bablemum, the great sultanate of the utter south has long been protected from its arch enemy, the Society of the Jaw: this by virtue of powerful leaders and, according to common myth, a seldom spoken of secret organization known as the Esoteric Order of the Twilight Princess.

"You live well, plying your trade and making reasonable money. But recent years have brought unrest to your heart and you begin longing for something more.

"Inquiry and risk draw you south, across the Six Kingdoms, to the quaint, hibiscus shadowed lanes of Geoul. Geoul is an ancient town of vineyards, scholars and painters, and there you receive your initiation into the Esoteric Order of the Twilight Princess -- hopeful that your new title "Secret Master" will begin your path to greater things. But shortly after joining this secret society, the building you were initiated in burns and the man who inducted you, a Master Elect of Nine named Nihs'Lohc, vanishes without trace."


I said with the last post that you'll decide the life the players will live ... here, they're being told that they're an initiate, which brings responsibility and awareness of a JOB the players will have in the campaign.  Succeed, and they're doing what's expected of them.  Fail, and there will be consequences.  If the EOTP works like most like orders, don't expect a lot of gratitude for doing their job.  That's why we're initiating them in the first place.

This sets a powerful tone for the engagement of the players, one utterly different from the one I set in my world, but NOT wrong.  This is important.  When I said that the campaign needed an ethic, I absolutely did not say it had to be my ethic.  Here is an ethic.  Here is a path to greater things (not necessarily known to a mere initiate).  Further, here's personal responsibility.  Their mentor, the guy that got them here, disappears and leaves them to bear up on their own.  "Get with it soldier.  Don't fuck up."

I said that you'll decide the monsters that will try to kill the players, and where they dwell.  What is the "Society of the Jaw"?  Do you think it's solved by one adventure?  By a string of adventures?  This is an arch enemy to a great sultanate.  Whatever The Jaw is, there are members in every village; in every round table; secretly camped near every military post; in elaborate tunnels under every city quarter; attached to every priesthood ... indeed, hiding under a lettuce leaf in the players' garden.  The Jaw are everywhere ... and they are the players' deepest, darkest nightmare of an enemy.  No where is safe, and no one can be trusted.  There are no "adventures."  There is a continuous, fluid power struggle that moves seamlessly from day-to-day.  Victories are as momentary as keeping back the tide; defeats are the smashing apart of age-old institutions and whole cities.  The moment the party finishes off the "big bad" in his lair, which they've spent twenty sessions getting to the bottom of, they must dodge an assassin's knife seconds before they learn that all this effort has been taken to kill a mere lieutenant.  There is no final victory, no final end to some episodic adventure.  NO, there's life.  Theirs, the world's, the battle to defend what's good, and their will to go on.  That is all.

I said that you'll decide what's real and what lies the players will be told.  Do the players really believe that these quaint, hibiscus shadowed lanes are what they appear to be?  Are they so foolish to think that the vineyards, scholars and painters are merely what they look like?  What is this entity they've been drafted into?  Are they truly the enemy of The Jaw?  Or ARE they The Jaw?  Do they know?  They cannot know.  They must decide on the evidence before them, from running to running, whom they really serve ... and what might be the true nature of what these beings pretend to represent.  They're not granted the luxury of absolute knowledge about right and wrong.  No one is.  For all they know, they're serving the enemies of Bablemum, and not it's protectors; for all they know, they're comfortable with that.  Perhaps there's no good reason to defend Bablemum at all.  In any case, it's up to them to decide.  This is THEIR life.  THEIR loyalties and actions.  THEY must choose the best path for themselves ... while always being careful what they trust.

After all, I said that you'll decide why all the things in your world live and what they want and what they'll die to defend — except the players.  The players are hurled into this maelstrom without guides, without assurances ... unless as a DM you're stupid enough to give it to them.  As DM, you hold the key to your setting.  The PLAYERS must find their own key, to unlock how to survive the DM's setting.  This is the game.

Let me draw on another quote from the Blue Bard.

"Here, you can see a fleshed version of the Country of Ormolu (formerly known as Wardale) and the city of Sanctuary that abuts the Marches. A good deal of player time has been spent in this vicinity, investigating the ruins of Copper Grove, exploring the Misthalls and Amharc Mountains, braving the crags of Geir Loe (the great peak that overshadows Sanctuary) and striking out on perilous missions into the march land."


I wrote with the last post, you need a place for the player characters to start.  Here it is.  And on the surface, suffering from the mindset with which D&D has poisoned you, you foolishly look at the above description as a series of "adventures."  But is it?  Are there any words in the above that state clearly that there's been an end to any of these activities?  Does "investigating the ruins" state clearly that the ruins have been cleaned out, or that the investigation is closed?  Is there no more exploring of the mountains and crags left to do?  Are "missions" a short hand for "adventures," with a beginning and an end, or are they in fact just temporal raids in an ongoing, potentially life-long operation where a thousand raids would still not clean out every villain, monster and demon from these awful places?

It depends on how you see it.  The "adventure" model is a stupid child-like perception of social realities ... the sort of thing that we watched naively when we believed that once the cops arrested the drug dealers that "closed the book" on drug crimes for good.  Nothing ENDS!  And why should it?  Why shouldn't another visit to the Copper Grove or Misthalls reveal yet one more secret, one further deeper undiscovered place, one other game changing fact that obliterates all our foregoing preconceptions?  Would you care as a player?  Would the ennui of knowing that you'll never kill every last orc, or root out every last evil treant from this forest, or kill the last city rat, sour your desire to play D&D?  Not me.  Not any serious player I've ever encountered.  Imagine bringing out another orc and have the players cry, "But I thought we killed the last one!  This sucks!"  More likely, "O gawddamn, another?  All right, I'll kill it ... you get the next one."

The mountains, the ruins, the halls and the march lands are always there, always ready for another sojourn, as soon as we recoup, attend to a few matters at home, clean out the chicken coops and whatever.  This makes sense in the game world.  The problems don't just go away.  They're not just solved.  At first level, they're surface problems ... but as the players go deeper, they find their original perspectives adjusted; they realise the orcs are just dupes, that the real evil is something worse ... until later on they realise how unsophisticated and artless was their earlier comprehension.  These initial problems are just turtles standing on the backs of turtles ... and it's turtles all the way down.  What really makes the world turn; what really drives the model; that's yet to be known.  But when it is learned, wow.  It'll blow the players' minds.

Yes, I'm saying that if you think you know what the ethic of my game world is, that's only because you've only played or seen the surface.  There are things about my world that I've never told anyone.  And they're BIG.

I said that as a DM, the monsters need to have their own agendas and things they'll die for.  They are alive, too.  And they're just as annoyed at these players that keep returning and making trouble as anyone.  You can't keep going back to the same mountains and ruins forever without someone powerful deciding that's it for you.  Sure, in the beginning you're a pest.  You're a tiny chigger draining your little bit of blood off the immense body whose existence you can't imagine.  But you take enough blood from that body ... you get big enough to get noticed, and felt ... something gargantuan and fast moving is going to slap you so fast and hard you won't know your body is about to be paste across the surface flesh of that being.  That's the game too.  If a DM isn't keeping one arm tied behind his or her back.

Sooner or later, the plundered become the plunderers.

Now.  If you want further explanation, and examples, you'll need to ask a question.  I understand this just fine, down to the bottom turtle.  If you want to understand it also, you'll have to tell me what you don't understand, so I can help you.  And everyone else reading this.

11 comments:

  1. You've touched on this in the past, but my own game and this post have me thinking once again: Since it's our responsibility to tell players where they are and what they see, are their only lifeline in fact to our game worlds, when and how does one introduce deception into the game?

    Is it even fair to, say, have an early sponsor/mentor betray or lie to the party? By all rights they can hardly afford to trust -nobody- so whomever you send along first MUST be trustworthy, right?

    Is a certain level of moustache twirling necessary to even give players a sporting chance to say "Oh hey, looks like this Saruman guy isn't as cool as Gandalf said he was, maybe let's not hang out in his imposing black spire." or what?

    Where is the line in a deception that takes it from "engaging twist" to "thing that shatters player trust in me and NPCs causing more headaches than it's worth"?

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  2. Pandred,

    We can make a distinction between deception against the players and deception that's baked into the setting, that doesn't require the players.

    For example.

    The players enter a goblin lair, lay waste to thirty or forty goblins over two visits, only to discover that the goblins are actually being run by three drow elves. In chasing down the drow, the players learn that the drow are in fact being funded with weapons and other things by a local human squire whose land is near the original goblin lair.

    So, that's two layers of deception against the players: first, these are not just goblins, second, the drow are not acting independently ... and we can learn further that the squire is specifically urging the drow to use the goblins to raid human lands the squire wants to buy.

    So, the players seek out someone strong enough to take on the squire; they locate a knight, provide the evidence and the knight agrees to join their expedition to root out the squire. ONLY, we discover soon after that the squire is in fact in the employ of the local noble Baroness, to whom the knight owes fealty; the knight succumbs, as he's sworn to GOD to remain faithful to the Baroness ... but he enables the party to escape, even though the Baroness has ordered the knight to kill them.

    Now, the party is fleeing the Baroness and her various subordinates ... and runs into the hands of others who HATE the Baroness. And so on.

    As each layer of the onion is pulled back, the players come closer and closer to the truth of what's going on, are never personally deceived against but ARE subject to the story changing and changing. Meanwhile, they acquire levels and speak among themselves of the day they'll reach a sufficient level when they'll KILL EVERYONE and let God sort it out.

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  3. Great as always.

    My players have just started to peel the first layer of the onion. It's finally getting interesting....

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  4. The characters are adults, who have probably spent most of their life immersed in a complex pre-industrial society. Their fighting or magic abilities mean their already have significant life experience. Their heads are full of intricate knowledge about your world's religions, lore, local weather, animal husbandry, leather quality, basic metalurgy, food conservation, architecture, social hierarchies, mating rituals and so on. The players don't have that knowledge. More importantly, there is an ocean of things they don't even know they don't know. How, when and at what pace do you bridge that gap ? And how would you recommend a new DM did it ?

    Personnaly I tend to take the easy road, and insist that all characters be "strangers in a strange land", exiles, adventurers or colonists roaming a land they don't know at all. This way I can adhere to a strict "ask me and I will tell you" procedure. Otherwise there are too many instances where PCs should understand something important through holistic reasoning, but the players can't, and simply giving them the information (directly or after an INT test) seems lame - or worse, conducing to railroading, if your players are prone to consider everything the DM says as important clues or direction.

    Now let the gentle beating of my half-baked preconceptions begin..;)

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  5. You know, ViP, I do mean the best.

    Since we don't have the character's perspective, it falls on the DM to provide the players with as much reasonable knowledge as possible of the pre-industrial society of which you speak. The DM must always be forthcoming about things the players DO know, such as how the realm appears to work, and certainly how the character's immediate relations and acquaintances' culture functions. I don't mean the players should be completely without a basis of reality ... but we all know that seeing the world through the eyes of an experienced 35 y.o. is very different from that of someone who's 18. The players are simply making that shift in experience much faster ... learning whose REALLY in charge, or what grifts are actually going on, or who might be friend vs. who appears to be. I have complete faith that players can roll with these punches and not end up paranoid crazies, because I've seen it.

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  6. So we have an onion, each layer revealing another one behind. Turtles all the way down. You've talked about this in the past, how each new level contains a hook to the next one.

    Does this process ever come to a natural end? Or do the levels only "stop" when the players step away into another arc of their own choosing, ready to be assumed again if desired?

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  7. That's right, Shelby. There's never only one hook. Consider the example I gave Pandred above. Suppose that instead of getting inveigled into a war between the Baroness and her enemies, the party asks the knight, "To where are you bound?" Whereupon he answers, his anger risen and his taste for the locale dissolves, "My only chance to redeem myself is to find a better place than this, outside the Baroness's control. I've heard the borderlands against the Ottomans are threatened more than ever; I shall journey to Kosice and see if I can be of use there."

    Whereas the party is free to decide ... do we remain embroiled in this, or perhaps take up with the knight and see what we can do on the borderlands? The party discusses it, makes up their minds and the campaign goes forward.

    There should be constant opportunities like this, as friends and foes enter the contest or step out ... or even when they're killed, and the players feel beholden to ensure that their ally's property is taken to the right people, perhaps in another country, perhaps another realm. It depends much on how invested the players are, and how ready they are to recognise that there are always other paths to take.

    One problem I've had with online players is that they're so trained to think they're expected to "fix" this bit of corruption until the very, very end before they're permitted to move on. But of course, everywhere is corrupt; and any "fix" is merely temporary, just as it occurs in the real world.

    "No matter how many times you save teh world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit? I feel like the maid; I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for ten minutes!?"

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  8. A question, Alexis, semi-related to the movie quote at the end of your last comment. How often, if ever, have you found it necessary to have an antagonist "monologue" to the players to ensure they catch something they may have missed? I've had hack-and-slash players in the past that I've had to almost spoon-feed information, not necessarily to railroad them, but to make sure they are at least aware of obvious hooks that should be slapping them in the face. If they still don't want to invest time there, that's fine, but sometimes I feel frustrated when what I think are obvious hooks don't even get noticed.

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  9. Croaker,

    That's because you're not painting your hooks with sufficiently bright glowing colours.

    Seriously, though, to answer your question. There were times online when I felt like I had to post a giant neon sign ... but that's because I couldn't see the players' faces and therefore couldn't see that they HAD understood, they just didn't feel it was worth comment. So I do get what you mean.

    This is a difficult subject, relating to exposition. Exposition is the bane of all narrative presentation, as it's necessary to explain, inform and describe what's going on to the players, or the audience, or the reader, but doing so blatantly is dreadfully bad form. The joke in the Incredibles about "monologuing" is a reference to bad writing -- exactly the sort of thing we don't want to do as a DM.

    It takes enormous practice to transmit information through any medium and make it FEEL natural and unforced ... while at the same time having that information smack the listener in just the right way. We could go into endless examples in film about how a particular element in the plot is foreshadowed at the beginning, only to become critically important at the end. This can be done clumsily, like in the film A League of Their Own, where Kit can't "lay off the high ones," but even then the payoff can work when Kit hits the high one and wins the game. Much better is the example from the aforementioned incredibles, where "Buddy" turns out to be the villain, while STILL retaining the carefully inserted characteristics of his former self (even though the film only has about 60 seconds to establish Buddy's personality among other details, very early in the film).

    I recommend what's called a "back-up" method ... where the same hook is introduced as many as three or four times until it sinks in. This can also be very clumsy, to the point where the players will "get the hint" and recognise that we're trying WAY too hard as a DM to have the players go to said castle or down said road. An example of staggeringly clumsy exposition of this kind is the use of the "force" from Star Wars, in which the concept is hammered into the dialogue so often that one might expect Obi-wan to be carrying around a forge around with him in what's called "hammerspace". Arguably, it worked in the film for many, many people; but honestly it's amateurish writing and if you try something like it with a sophisticated player party, you'll get eye rolls.

    [cont ...]

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  10. [...cont]

    A better example is with the recent film, Darkest Hour, where Churchill is repeatedly confronted during the May 1940 crisis with examples of perfectly ordinary persons providing him wisdom, until he recognises that the place he must go to extricate himself from the crisis is the endless source of ordinary persons out there. This is excellent foreshadowing and hook-making, as it's so subtle that you don't grasp the fact of it until very late in the film, when its already paying off; but this kind of hookmaking is far too crafted and subtle for use in D&D. The players would never get it.

    Consider a more applicable one, that from 2014's Draft Day. The main character is harassed, harassed and harassed about so many things from so many people in so many ways, until steadily the right picture emerges as more and more relevant details come to life about the quarterback Callahan. You can produce this sort of effect by concocting three or four different hooks, and then waving ALL of them at the players at the same time, so that the players can see the options but can't know for certain which one YOU want them to follow. 'Course, that means you have to run whatever the player's pick, but personally I don't care about that. The only bad scenario in D&D is having the players do nothing. I don't personally care what the players do, as long as it's SOMETHING.

    But, it's possible I'm not answering the right question with the right answer; or that I'm picking film examples you've never seen ... in which case tell me, and I'll pull out a different example. I have literally hundreds of choices.

    You might be asking me how to actually SAY the words, "There's a dungeon over here I want you to visit," without, of course, saying those words or even letting them know there's a dungeon. There are lots of ways. You can send the players there, like it's done in Hot Fuzz, with some official ordering the players to this remote not-at-all-important facility that happens to be near the dungeon. If you can't find a pretext for that, you can maroon the players on a road as their horse throws a shoe or their wagon axle breaks, like Cast Away forcing them to cope with the nearby dungeon. You can have them discover that someone ELSE, someone the players know or would like to meet, is about to walk into a trap and get killed, so the players have to rush in like Jack Ryan saving the day in the Hunt for Red October.

    Maybe you can get the players to help move a herd of cows, as a favour, like in City Slickers, and then the cows get slaughtered by the monsters emerging from the dungeon. Or the party could get rushed by a group of escaping gladiators who, like with Spartacus, only want help to get out of the country ... while at the same time being willing to kill the party, or at least scare them pretty bad, if they refuse to help. You can set a scene where they're jumped by mobsters ... who in turn are jumped by other mobsters, in the pattern of Kung Fu Hustle. There's always the choice of kidnapping a girl while right in front of the players, and hauling her off as she screams, like happens in Big Trouble in Little China. You can introduce an apparently weak, helpless character into the party's company, making them feel paternal and protective, while it turns out she's actually working for the player's worst enemies, like happens with the Guns of Navarone. Honest, there are hundreds of examples to make things happen without waiting for the players to agree to anything, except to follow their immediate instincts.

    [cont ...]

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  11. [...cont]

    Some things will work with some parties, and some won't. I've had parties that would let a little girl die rather than help her find her family; but usually, if the party thinks of themselves as "heroes," that plot line is a safe bet.

    Have I helped? If not, please clarify what I should have answered. For the record, occasionally, I have a villain monologue. But only when the players have really, really pissed the villain off.

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