"As a scientist, we have been embedded in A.I. ever since we could possibly use it. We seek it out. Because it makes our job easier ... because I have data that I'm swimming in. I don't have the time or the energy to process it, to interpret it. So you train A.I. to reduce the data, analyse the data, to find the cool stuff. I do that while I'm sitting on a couch eating a twinkie. This is what you want. Plus, A.I. is all around us. When you talk to Siri on your iPhone, there's not a human being in that exchange. Siri tells you the fastest way to get to Grandma's house, through the traffic that just swelled up in the last few moments. That's a form of A.I.
"A.I. beat us at chess. A.I. beat us at Jeopardy. No one freaked out and ran for the hills when that happened. It only made headlines when A.I. figured out how to write your term paper. Oh, then all the liberal arts folks, they pooped their pants!"
"The desire to have mechanical systems at every tier in every subsection of play is a false god. Not every aspect of the fictional environment requires a stat, a level, a skill roll, a point-buy. For individuals who want to build the entire world based on points with a unified system mechanic, there already exists GURPS. There already exists HERO system. I do not require a system to determine the population of a town; I do not require extended mechanics to determine whether or not the neighboring barony is formulating a plot against PC ruler ...
"As for how to create geographies, ecologies, political factions, Gygax provides the most useful (if surreptitious) advice I could want: go research it. Use real world examples to model your fantastic world. I suppose some folks want a random table to generate faerie forests, goblin-infested mountains, and magical rivers. But if I am DM and God of MY world, I want a bit more control than a d20 roll on some table. I can decide the shape of my own coins, thank you very much.
— JB of B/X Blackrazor
Yesterday, I encountered these two quotes about five minutes apart ... JB's first, then Tyson's. I laughed when Tyson and Colbert laughed — and shook my head otherwise. I use extended mechanics to determine the population of towns, and a great many other things. I don't use them to determine the shape of coins, the existence of faerie forests and goblin-infested mountains, or to place magical rivers. In large part, I fully agree with JB. We use way, way too much effort to create tables about stuff in D&D that's utterly and completely meaningless to the running of the game.
But on another level, completely unrelated to the answer JB's giving on his blog to another reader, JB is wrong. And he knows it.
The key word in Tyson's rant above is "data." Data is hard information about something, and a game setting requires it. There's the obvious stuff like hit points, spells, equipment, abilities, attacks, appearance, the presence of armour, weapons, magic, treasure, the actual existence of villages and towns and the roads between them, where food is grown even if we don't know how much, who's running the place, what limits there are for existant technology, does trade even occur here, the presence of factions and organisations, what gods exist, what they do, what they want and how much attention do they need to be paid. There's the whole bestiary, the size of the map, why is this town even here, what happens if I attack an innocent baker with a sword, where can I get healed or my friend raised, what if I want to build a house, what if I want to do things regarding making magic or brewing potions that don't exist in the game world, and on and on.
JB's same comment also includes this: "And yet mechanics ARE provided for those things [in AD&D] that need systems ..." and he includes these two words: "Magical research."
Here are Gygax's words regarding "Spell Research" (p.115):
"New spells might pose a small problem, as it will require some study on your part, but most of the burden can be shifted to the player. When desire to research a new spell is stated, inform the player that his or her character must carefully draft the details of the spell, i.e., you must have a typed copy of the spell in the same format as used in the PLAYERS HANDBOOK. Only when this is in your hands should you consider the power of the spell. Meanwhile do not discuss the matter with the player — at least as DM to player; it might be necessary to take the part of a sage and discuss the spell with the player character, for example, but that is entirely different. Once you have the details of the spell, compare and contrast it with and to existing spells in order to determine its level and any modifications and additions you find necessary in order to have it conform to "known" magic principles."
This is not a "system." This is an guideline for making an ad hoc arbitrary ruling, and in fact provides zero relevant useful detail giving aid to a DM, since "compare and contrast" are totally subjective. It's plainly obvious that a new spell needs a level. And that it needs a description. But in no way does this above help with either of those two problems.
A system in game terms is a rule, mechanic or structure that governs how the game operates. 1. The player makes a choice, decision or takes an action. 2. the current state of the game, such as positions of the game pieces, character statistics, resource quantities and status of objectives proscribe the consequences of the players actions. 3. the game's rules and mechanics are applied to the player's imput and game state; these rules govern how actions are resolved, what outcomes are possible, and what consequences arise from player decisions.
The rules govern this. NOT the dungeon master.
If there were a "system" for spell research, then the DM would consult the rule written for the assignment of level and what the spell could do, and then a mechanic would be employed to determine how the player's state of game enabled the creation of that specific, potentially creatable spell. IF the mechanic is a good one, then as the adjudicator I ought to be able to hand the rules and mechanics as written to the player on my right and have him or her read them off, so that everyone at the table could plainly see the answer to every question.
That's not what Gygax is proposing. He's proposing that the DM is an entitled righteous dictator, whose final arbitration on every rule is his own, because there's no actual need to create a rule here, or a mechanic, because what the DM says is law.
Whether or not that's an appropriate attitude to have, or if the reader as DM feels this is true, is irrelevant to JB's point. AD&D does not provide a "mechanic" for spell research, or any other form of magical research anywhere in the DMG. Cost of research is arbitrarily determined because the nubmer of weeks the spell needs is arbitrary. The cost itself bears no consideration from one spell to another, or one magical item to another. No ingredient list for the materials that will be needed exists. The manufacture of the spell or device is based on a "chance of success," which is arbitrarily assigned, intended to balance the process towards a percentage that is less than 50/50, with a ceiling success chance that's arbitrarily assigned at 50%. The entire process promotes Gygax's personal biases against the players increasing their magical capacities, without any consideration at all that MAYBE the real difficulty shouldn't be time or money or the character's intelligence or the character's level, but actual game play that would take place that would give the character the RIGHT to create a new spell or the RIGHT to obtain a new magical item through research. You know, the way the mage character has the right to cast certain spells in combat.
The whole four-page section is a testament to dreck thinking and self-appropriated bile as Gygax goes right up his own ass on the whole process. And I don't really care if some other DM somewhere wants to prop up their game campaign with this entitled drivel ... it only matters to me in the context of this post that we understand that if an arbitrary decision must be made at some point along the process, it's not a GAME SYSTEM.
Going back to that list earlier on, regarding data. Whether or not we generate it with a die roll, the actual population of a town — and if not the population, then the number of buildings, or what kind of buildings exist, or what services the town offers, or how long it takes to walk across the place, are all relevant details that the setting needs in order for the players to treat the town like a real place, know what they can do here, and more importantly know what they can't do here. Someone or something has to generate this information. And as someone who ran for more than 20 years before devising a system to answer these questions for me, I speak with experience when I say that I had to pull all this data out of my ass. Because until I made a system that made it, that's the only place this data can be found.
This is what I think when I see JB write, "I can decide the shape of my own coins." Yes, and I know from which place that decision is made from.
The shape of coins IS irrelevant ... at least, until one wants to install a monetary system where coin exchange matters, where different coins have different weights, where square coins with sharp edges will destroy your silken belt pouch, and where encumbrance matters. I tried such a system. Ran it for four years. Gave it my all. It sucks. Unlike encumbrance, it's just a bloody nuisance. The real world becomes civilised when they get rid of national currency, the schmucks. So, sure, simple coin, one shape and size everywhere. Done.
Still, I did the Tysonian experiment. I didn't just assume.
It's easy enough for JB to scoff at extended mechanics. He runs a rather direct and simple setting. And it's just as rational for him to defend AD&D. He hasn't been brutally deconstructing the original three books for the last 44 years. And I'm completely on board with his beating the drum of AD&D to those who read his blog, because JB has lately become a believer in that edition whereas many others among his audience are not, and won't be, because like Gygax they've spent too many years going up their own ass.
But I have a much larger world, with much larger ambitions, and I'm not satisfied with a magic research system that asks me to "decide the shape" of it out of my ass. I'm not satisfied with nearly any paragraph of Gygax's design. And like Tyson, I am swimming in data, and demands on my time, and things I want to design and make available to the players, so they can read a gawddamned rule and throw it in my face any time I try to be arbitrary about something.
And if that means needing a damned system decide the population of a town in my game world, then praise be, fuckin' A, it's one less bloody thing I have to do before getting my teeth marks on a twinkie. Because DATA is my nemesis.
Thinking back on those first decades of D&D, there's one thing I can pick out about being a DM that I absolutely hated. It came up constantly, because I encouraged players to decide their own adventures, and because I embraced a philosophy that argued that if any person anywhere in the game world does or can do a thing, then damn it, the players ought to also be able to do it. Start a colony in West Africa? Gather labour and ship it to the new world? Start a plantation on the Barbados and cut sugar to be shipped to Portugal? Buy tools and take them to West Africa?
By my philosophy, but the standard I held myself to, I had no right to stop my players from doing these things, if that's what they wanted to do, and that is what they DID do. They were free to travel to Guinea because it existed in my very large game world. They were free to start a plantation because hundreds of other rich Portuguese persons were doing the same. They were free to buy slaves and take them to the new world, because there were hundreds of others who were also doing this, it being the 16th century in my game world at that time. They were free to claim land in Barbados, because others were doing so. They were free to work their slaves to death because that was in no way unusual or regarded as unacceptable by any authority existing at that time. They were free to pack the sugar aboard their vessel and sell it in Portugal at a fabulous profit.
It was not my right as a DM, as I perceived then, and as I perceive now, to judge my players for their actions, or take action as a DM that brings unwarranted consequences that should fall on my players while not falling on tens of thousands of other persons doing the same thing in the same time in the same places. It was my part as a DM to enable the players to enjay the game as they wanted to enjoy it, to make use of the setting as they felt it should be used, to advantage situations that they felt best suited themselves and so on. My part was to build the world, describe the events as they unfolded, invent consequences that had nothing whatsoever to do with moral judgments, and answer any question the player asked in a spirit of reasonable, rational non-interest with respect to the game settting, which I veiwed as a reflection of the real world at the time.
What I hated was that so much of the time, I was unable to answer questions the players had, because Gygax's perception of how D&D should be limited was no fucking help to me whatsoever.
It never occurred to Gygax that my players might do the things they did, or want to have things that didn't exist in the original books pages, or take part in activities, such as TRADE, that Gygax and the whole bloody crew at the Dragon Magazine turned their collective noses up in the air about. I could run the game, but if the players didn't want to spend all their time in a dungeon, and I didn't make them, then there were no fucking "systems" at all, for anything.
AD&D, as written, is a myopic, ignorant, useless piece of trash where it comes to setting building. And during those early years, when Gygax and crew could have been giving their effort towards expanding the game past the dungeon ... they spent all their fucking time masturbating and making dungeons.
It's a sore point.
Those readers here know what I did. And quite a lot of you here are grateful that I did it. I intend to go on doing it. Lately, some group of toxic assholes (really, go look up their names) invented a piece of A.I. that's probably the most useful thing that's ever been designed for my setting creation — specifically because it answers questions, in seconds, that I don't know how to answer.
And what's best about it? (a) isn't located in my ass; (b) isn't arbitrary or subjective; and (c) it doesn't care what I ask, or how many times I ask it. It's beautiful.
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