Pursuing a Dynamic, Running Model

The matter of running players in a game world should be seen a problem, in the frame of something to be solved.  Like the riddles inside D&D, the game itself, and how it's mastered, is a riddle.  The joy and satisfaction inherent in being a dungeon master derives from one's fascination with this riddle, and the various efforts by which we set ourselves to solve it.

The verb "run" is commonly used for something a device does - for example, a car runs, or a watch runs.  And so for the present, I propose that instead of thinking of the game world as something that we run, that we set out to design a setting that runs itself.  Such a design would exist to provide answers to the riddle of how to master the game, providing for the intents and desires not only of the players but also the dungeon master.  The setting would therefore have to surpass the limitation of being an artistic rendering of maps, backgrounds and collections of monsters organised as dungeons.  In effect, the setting would exist to suggest, even compel, certain answers and explanations that the DM could draw upon during the game's running.

We have numerous frameworks in place that we can invoke to aid us in conceiving a dynamic formulation of the game's setting ... one in which the various active forces are out of balance, producing motion through the exchange of power throughout the system.  To explain that another way, we're seeking a world that is in a constant state of energy, potential and kinetic, that drives a pouring out of conflicts that the players may encounter at different times, and in different ways, as they move about the setting.

For the traditional theist, this sounds like a grandious embellishment of a far more moderate difficulty.  The solution, most would say, is simple: build a closed system, populate it with monsters, puzzles and traps, then introduce the players so they can investigate and sort the arrangement.  Repeat.  Various closed systems can then be strung together and that is called a "campaign."

I do not concur.  I believe the problem lends itself to a more dramatic design, though such requires the designer to wrestle with various metaphysical concepts, the scope of human knowledge, facts, fancy and narrative fabrication ... subjects that, typically in case of most people, are abandoned upon the day of one's graduation and never juxtaposed with activities seen as "entertainment."  The Venn-diagram of "play" overlapping with "think" presupposes a mere sliver of the populace ... but since I find myself in that sliver, let's move on with how we might achieve a dynamic setting design for D&D.

To understand conflict, we need to grasp the distribution of power within the game's setting, beginning with the single entity whose power is absolute — the DM.  Thus introduces the first problem: the DM cannot exercise power and maintain the game's integrity.  We must therefore restrain the DM's power to keep ourselves from using it.  Cosmetically, this is done by requiring the DM to adhere to the same rules at the players, including tossing the dice openly where they can be read and interpreted by everyone ... but there are too many instances where the game demands the withholding of information from the players in order to make the narrative functional, such as the space behind this as-yet-unopened door.  In such cases, the DM's power continues to be unrestrained.

We can provide limitation by insisting that the DM predetermine events before the players arrive on the scene ... but again, to rely upon this all the time depends on creating game elements that quickly become stale with repetition.  Dynamism requires the DM to react and respond intuitively to the players on matters that cannot possibly be predetermined, since the DM does not know what a player might say or do before that moment in the game.  Predetermination makes fair dungeons; it's a disastrous tactic when any other part of the setting is in play.

Therefore I propose a strategy in which the DM is required to share and divide his or her power among the entities inside game's setting [and not, to stress, with the players!].  The power division is arbitrary, of course; the DM possesses absolute power.  Once the division is made, however, the DM freely respects the division, having made it.

This division is profound and intuitive ... and naturally, the reader must be lost until it's explained how the division is made.  Patience ... these sentences can be read again once more context is gained and understood.  For the present, see the DM's power as a collection of game pieces arranged on a board; and suppose these pieces represent the dualism of the DM's personality: darkness and light, evil and good, despair and triumph.  Thus, a given power is not bestowed into one game piece, but two ... so that in the vast dynamic driving the mechanically running setting, there is a piece dedicated to destruction and evil, and a piece dedicated to nurturing and good.

For simplicity, imagine that we are speaking of pieces on a chess board; each of the 32 pieces represents a super-ranking power, something far larger than individual empires or religions, races or ideas.  Let's say for the present, individual powers that are too large to grasp.  At the moment when we decide that there will be a game world, none of the pieces have moved.  Yet we plan to move them, and have them war against one another.  Every move is up to us; we can therefore decide, before advancing white's kings pawn, the first move, that white will lose this battle.  Or we can decide that white must win.  In any case, that is not the only outcome we decide — we also decide the order of the moves.  If white is destined to win, there are still trillions of ways the pieces can be moved to ensure that win.  Until, of course, the game is set in motion.

With each move, the number of possible variations rapidly dwindles, especially if we already know that either white or black must win.  Consider: the game must be ongoing when the players are introduced into "the game."  When the game is over, so is the universe, so presumedly the players are introduced at some point when it's still impossible to tell which side has the better position ... especially since the board still has most or every piece upon it, in play, while importantly the players are utterly unable to see the whole board.

From the perspective of an amoeba poised upon the chess board, the setting's powers appear as an immense forest of immovable, unassailable towers of unimaginable strength and endurance.  That pawn is as large as a continent; it has stood there since the world's construction and it looks as though it will stand there forever.  This perception is all the more certain if the amoeba's consciousness is a few seconds, when a move on the board takes place once a minute.  And that move may happen on the other side of the board, out of sight, with the elimination of a piece the amoeba may never have conceived of, much less grasped the importance of its disappearance.

In dividing our power among the pieces, we limit ourselves by setting up the game's arrangement so that only a few possibilities are rational.  Yes, we could have white stupidly move its horse to an untenable position, but that would be devastating to white's survival.  If we want white to win, then we must not do that, no matter what our powers may be.  Nor if we want white to win, should we allow black to make a stupid move, because for our purposes the game is better if black fights back as best it can.

Nor will we simply restore white's horse, on a whim, using our absolute power.  We've agreed to distribute that power into the pieces, wresting it from ourselves.

To step out from the metaphor, then:

The various entities of the game world are a vast collection of individual pieces, each of which has a varying amount of power.  The combined influence of all the religions of the world, for example, has enormous power; a single goblin has much, much less.  Yet each possesses it's tiny influence, like the butterfly's wing that beats upon the air.  Ahead of time, as DM, I've decided not only what exists in the world, but the general trajectory the world is taking towards some other world it will become in the future.  Like the game in play.  The tiny, insignificant pieces the players encounter in the world each have their part to play in that trajectory ... and therefore each must make moves that make sense in the context surrounding the players at a given time.

This context defines what I'll let myself do as a DM and what I won't do.  Therefore it doesn't matter what I can do as "god" ... my powers as god are divided into the limited choice of movements available to that river, this cultural group, that besieging army or this goblin.  Not all the intricate, tiny moves are planned in advance, because as I've said above, that would produce a tired and stale, lethargic campaign.  But where the players are concerned, their direct influence simply isn't enough to easily unbalance the huge pillars of the world.  Try as they might, the players may bring down a kingdom, or a series of kingdoms, but they won't destroy the institution of monarchical power, or the ongoing march of scientific exploration.  The players, and the things they affect, are paltry compared with the gigantic 32 pieces on my chessboard.  They cannot even grasp the fullness those pieces represent.  I'm certain I can't.

That doesn't matter.  There are various grand forces aligned against one another, blasting the players this way and that, as they try to make their way through the world.  The particulars of what those alignments seek to achieve, and how they conflict with one another, is measured by an entirely different set of parameters, which I shall undertake to describe with the next post.  Here I take my leave, first taking the time to express once again that an approach of the kind I describe requires a constant and thorough investigation into the premises upon which our real world is founded.  Those premises are all around us, characterised with labels we scarcely understand: psychology; anthropology; politics; philosophy; relativity; religion; evolution; economics; and so on.  Subjects that even experts admit to understanding only in part ... and yet I ask the gentle reader to become as familiar with each as they can, to empower the fundamentals on how to transfer one's absolute power as DM to a dynamic-creating framework that will run one's setting almost as if by magic.