As Written

To the next step.

Speaking only of table-top RPGs now, the initial lack of control upon the player is imposed by the character's generation.  Whatever method we use to determine what a character's structure is, part of that structure is necessarily a limitation on what that character can and can't do, and in some degree the implementation of a series of odds against the character being successful in a given situation.  For example, if the character's intelligence is 14, and we want to impose the chance of him/her doing something "intelligent" by rolling that number against a d20, then the character has a 70% chance of success.  A character with a 13 intelligence has a 65% chance of success, a character with 12 intelligence a 60% chance and so on.  Which means that when deciding to take an action, the player participates in the same sort of odds evaluation that he or she might at a craps table, or a roulette wheel, or putting up a stake in a game of poker.  It doesn't say you can't do a thing, but it does change the odds against you doing it.

Likewise, the player's choice of character defines whether spells can be used, what spells and how many spells; or what weapons, armour, skills, hit points, attack tables and so on, though to differing degrees according to what games are being played.  And this in turn opens the player to limitations imposed against character agency by a host of rules that dictate how weapons can be carried or used, and in relation to other things the character wishes to do, or how often spells can be used, or the limitations on the effects of said spells and so on.  All these things are there to set forth boundary lines between three categories of character/player control: what the character can definitely do (i.e., swing a sword), what the character definitely cannot to (i.e., swing an elephant) ... and what odds are assigned to indefinite actions (i.e., can the character hit and cause damage with the thing being swung).

These character-generation boundaries will produce the initial pushback that every dungeon master experiences from a player, who — justifiably, from their position — wish to have a role in adjusting such lines in a manner the player sees as more suitable.  Here, at the beginning, we have the first crippling aspect of the role-playing game's inadequate design.  A great many players, nearly half I've encountered, approach the game's structure and rules with the clear perspective that such rules are arbitrary ... and being arbitrary, they are therefore liable to change.  IF we say that a wizard cannot use a sword, and IF that condition is arbitrary, THEN we can absolutely, arbitrarily, change that and allow wizards to use swords.

All rules of all games are arbitrary.  If your friends and my friends agree to play soccer on an existing field, with chalk lines on the grass indicating where the boundary lines are, neither your friends nor mine will begin the game by arguing that we ought to get a line field chalker and remake the lines to suit ourselves.  No, together, we acknowledge the lines must be somewhere and we accept that the established lines that are already here are good enough.  Point in fact, we won't even get a tape measure and test to see if the existing lines were correctly laid out.  They may not be.  Nonetheless, we'll just assume they are, because the soccer field exists at a school or in a city park, lending us to believe, without proof, that the lines are correct.  Because even though the soccer lines ARE arbitrary, they're arbitrary in a manner that collectively we respect.

Fundamentally, however, at it's core, role-playing games, and especially D&D, have utterly failed to impose this same collective acceptance of the rules that were originally imposed, or any rules that have been imposed since.  And as such, if I run a game with completely new players, even if they know me and this blog, at least three out of six players, and more likely four or five, will in some way seek to adjust one of the arbitrary rules that exist in their favour.  It may be because they've played in another campaign where that rule was bent, or because they've always hoped that rule would be bent, or because they believe that if they were DMing, that rule would be bent.

As a DM, when I take a stand on the given rule, saying no, I won't bend it, I've immediately made a negative judgment about that player ... specifically, that the player doesn't — and won't in the future — respect the rules, and that in running the game, I'll need to be vigilant against that.  This means my having the expectation that some of my time — and some of the game's time — will be wasted policing rules that should be absolutely respected, even when the rules are perfectly known, simply because the player feels that the arbitrariness of rules is license to resist them.

This game-time wasting is none of my doing.  No matter what the rules were, no matter how beneficial they were to the players, there are always those players who cannot see any rule in an RPG the same way we'd automatically view those lines on a soccer field.  The reason for this is not the kind of people these are; the reason is not because role-playing games are themselves at fault, though bad writing has to some degree created the problem of interpretion throughout the game's participation.  The larger reason is, rather, that the game culture that's sprouted in the last 40 years has based itself on publications that (a) take challenging the game's rules as the easiest form of content; and (b) have chosen to simply ignore the existing game rules of every RPG in order to install their own, to suit their particular need at a particular time with a particular publication.  Both of these publishing habits are based solely on individuals setting a paycheque or their self-aggrandisement over and above any perceived value of the game, and both have been strongly enabled by editors more anxious to ensure publication of material than any sense of responsibility for what's being published.

However, neither of these actions would have ANY influence over the substantiality of RPGs if not for the utter failure of those who made the game, or are making the game, to stand by anything that they themselves have published.  And especially to the degree necessary to right the ship once it's knocked over.  The original producers spent their time bickering and in-fighting over perceived slights and petty alterations in the rules from the get-go; they set the standard for every writer and every player to take sides and then to invent their own side, leaving the actual game as written to flounder stupidly with no real direction.  TSR happily gave a platform writers who directly contravened the substance of TSR's own game, systematically subverting its own credibility, not once, not twice, but repeatedly for two decades ... rather than defend it's own rules, discredit gainsayers and then BUILD upwards.  Instead, in favour of the fast buck, the company slashed and burned every part of its reputation, churning out dreck, until it's sullied reputation left it wallowing in desperation and debt at the point that the present company bought it's rights.  Whereupon the present company, whose agenda was not role-playing but a card game, continued to encourage the vivisection of D&D and every other game it laid its hands on to ensure the success of another game that required the cachet of D&D to give it's content substance.

No one was more surprised than the company, I'm sure, that D&D survived this attempted extirpation.

The game culture this left behind makes itself evident in the hearts and minds of nearly every player.  As someone who has, likewise, gutted the original game in order to make my own Frankenstein's vision of it, I understand very well that the only thing that gives my version credibility is my willingness to stand by it, steadfastly, to the point that I would rather throw you out of my game than make one concession to any given established rule in it.  There are places where my design has flaws; and there are moments when my players have caught me on those flaws and I've drastically set out to redesign my vision.  The existing sage abilities arose out of players taking a stand against me, and my backing down.  But where it comes to details like a wizard using a sword, the answer is no.  Can you use a two-handed weapon with a shield?  No.  Not now, not ever.  Can you buy another point of strength at the loss of two points of any other stat?  No.  Don't ask.  Every time you ask, you reveal your disrespect for the game, your disrespect for me and your disrespect for yourself.

And specifically this last, because such questions reveal your self-doubt about succeeding at the game according to its limitations upon you.  It says that as a person, you lack confidence.  You need cheats, because you can't "win" on your merits, your ability to innovate or your blind determination to survive.  You lack the capacity to game.  In terms of your resolve, you're weak.  And because of that, every time you ask if you can circumvent some rule, because you see it as arbitrary, you lose my respect.  You should not be in my game world.

But ... I can be generous.  I can fold those thoughts in my head under a mental blanket and encourage you to have a spine.  I can point to the other players who are ready to accept these rules and say, "See, if they can do it, you can do it."  I can't make you believe that, but I can try.  But if you won't try; if you keep chafing at the rules you're given. then I'll send you away.

Remember what I said with the last post about choosing your agenda.  A game is about achieving your agenda within the framework of the game's inherent limitations.  It's not about automatically getting your agenda because you chose it.  So many aspects of role-playing that have become normalised — more classes, more spells, more races, a background you invent but didn't earn — are about rewarding you for being willing to play.  This is stupidity, both on the game's part and on your part.  First, because the game's inception has degraded to where the makers think it needs to bribe you before you'll play, and second because you're so pathetic you'll let yourself be bribed with trinkets and bullshit you didn't earn.

Hard players of hard games don't want anything they haven't earned.  Most of my steady readers here understand explicitly that when I say "you," I don't mean them.  They know precisely who I mean.  To the hard player, this post is meant to empower them: to say, when they feel disgust and a lack of respect for a complaining, wheedling, demanding, vascillating player, they have every right to feel that disgust.  They're entitled, because they've taken it upon themselves to run a game, to JUDGE players who shouldn't be there.

And so ...

Having chosen your agenda, your second goal as a player is this:  how are you going to achieve your agenda within the game rules as they exist?

To answer that, I'll have to discuss the DM's responsibilities.