Action and Moment

Were I cast back to 1973 as the writer I am now, I would undoubtedly begin rewriting How to Run, my guide for improving as a dungeon master.  Given that D&D would not come into existence until the next year, and not become widespread until the end of the decade, it would be odd, no doubt, to write such a book.  How to Run assumed that the reader already knew what role-playing games are, and that he or she had already had some experience with being a DM.  I took no time to explain game rules or in comparing one game with another.  I ignored the popularity of games and discarded any notion that it was my goal to "sell" the concept of playing RPGs as something the reader ought to do.  Instead, I wrote exactly what it said on the tin.

I'm certain that a book like that would do well in the 1980s — especially when the D&D market was far smaller, yet large enough for DMs to feel overwhelmed by the game's expectations.  Still, that would be a decade away, and such a book would be of no use to those players I'd want to obtain in Junior High.  I'd want to write it and save it, for the day it could be sold at those game cons I attended in the '83 and '84; but even I have to admit that what the 70s needed was a good, solid introduction to the game from an experienced writer.

I've avoided such a book, sincerely because my few swings at such a manual were dissatisfying.  It's especially difficult in the present.  I've no interest at all explaining how to introduce someone to 5e, or any of the trash products that exist not as games, but as an excuse to preen and simp one's way through mock adventure-based die rolling.  I've no appreciation or consideration for 5e, nor for those who play it, defend it, write about it or claim it to be things it plainly isn't.  If that seems harsh and unfair, for those who don't already know this about me ... please understand that from my perspective, it's as though the Major League Baseball I watched in the 1980s has since been replaced by adult-played children's "T-ball" ... with a world of fans expressing vehemently that T-ball is vastly better than the old, overly difficult and impossible to play traditional baseball.  I cannot resolve in my mind the vapidity, nor the gutless spirit of present-day D&D, in any manner that doesn't leave me feeling either robbed or incomprehensive.  Stupid people have co-opted the game I love.

Thus, should it happen that I could conceive of a solid introductory tome for new participants playing D&D, there's no market for it.  I view the player's character as an extension of the player, with the player's sense and limitations, enabling the player to pit his or her skill against the game's setting and obstacles.  I don't view the character as a stand-alone figure with an invented modality that conveys emotionality and sentiment to things that have nothing to do with the setting.  The proposal that a player is supposed to invent a "back story," such that the character's father was killed and the character is now seeking revenge, strikes me as a stale, artificial attempt to create something the game's setting has been made unable to provide.  The setting motivates action; which in turn spontaneously produces behaviour, much like a transformational chemical reaction that rearranges constituent atoms explosively and well beyond the direction of both players and DM.

Once the players start taking actions of their own accord to compensate for events in the setting, the DM in turn is compelled to respond to the players' actions.  This produces a constant, immersive, spontaneous feedback loop that bangs back and forth so effectively that neither DM nor player wants to let the experience cease.  Thus it's easy to entice the players back, because they want needfully to again take up the series of actions they intended from several sessions back, which have not yet reached fruition.  Throughout every session, the players spend time talking about what they're going to do next, just as soon as the present iteration is complete.  The DM need not waste any time inventing scenarios for the players, once the gyro has begun its spin.  All of the DM's time has to be spent building the setting ahead of the players as rapidly as possible, else the players would be left standing around as if waiting for the next room to get built — a room, I might add, they're slavering to see.

I've written repeatedly how this is done:  every event from the first moment of the game is provided at least one "open door" for the players to look through, to see what's beyond — the "door" being metaphorical.  The method is repeated thousands of times in novels and films; and yet somehow I always find myself speaking to a DM wanting desperately to acquire the method, only to learn that he or she has no interest in reading books or watching movies.  How does a book capture your attention?  How does a film pull you in?  If the reader cannot understand this simple equation, and wants to, then sit and consume hundreds and hundreds of pieces of literature and cinema, even if you only read or watch only the first ten percent of each.  The characters meet a stranger; they stumble across an object or an inexplicably dead body; something already in their possession suddenly acquires some new bit of knowledge that explains it; the party's freedom of movement in infringed by a larger more powerful group; the characters arrive into a situation that's already ongoing; an accident strands the characters; someone with authority is enamoured and invites the party to dinner, for no purpose — but the party slowly realises they can ask a favour of this person; an ineffectual or troublesome member of a character's past appears; the party sees evidence of wrongdoing or persecution; someone asks the party to do something vile, which they won't do; a tremendous accident occurs to the party, or in front of the party, requiring that dozens of helpless victims have to be rescued from some very dangerous situation; the political region changes hands; there's a competition; someone becomes ill; someone becomes unexpectedly rich and publicly so; something powerful and yet benign arrives and needs guidance ...

The list is literally — as the vast number of books testifies — so large that no DM can ever possibly run out of possibilities.  Yet they sit there, on a shelf, in obscurity, while every participant faithfully reproduces the saga of batman one more time.

If I were to describe a role-playing game to those who had never encountered such a thing, I would certainly not use the term "role-playing."  It's woefully non-specific and easily misunderstood, and unquestionably the worst option for what the process ought to have been called.  Using the term, the player is easily duped into thinking a "role" is like a part played by an actor — a part that is scripted and rehearsed repeatedly, and therefore in no way like D&D.  The word "play" is acceptable when applied to a game; I can "play poker" and remain comfortably assured that everyone here understands this is an adult activity.  But as soon as "play" is associated with "imagination," we're rapidly cast into playing pretend, playing house or any number of childish activities that adults shun.  D&D isn't a serious game because it's "played."  Even the acting community has moved away from the term "players" to describe the performers, preferring the more serious-sounding, "actor."

The D&D participant more correctly "acts" within the setting.  Arguing constantly that D&D, and other RPGs, are games of "imagination" only serves to warn adults to stay away, while providing exactly no context for what the game actually provides or what the participants do when participating.  It's corporate buzz-speak, designed to cover up the ever-present difficulty of providing a meaningful setting for the DM to run, beyond the stream of shallow maze-based episodic funhouse concepts that have been the height of company ingenuity these past 50 years.  A setting requires depth and resiliency.  A funhouse is good for five minutes in exchange for the participant's voucher.

When acting upon the setting, the setting acts upon the player:

When I have seen the sea once more,

has the sea seen me, or hasn't it seen me?

Why the waves ask me

the same that I ask them?

And why do they hit the rock

with such a futile enthusiasm?

Don't they get tired of repeating

their declaration to the sand?

 — Pablo Neruda, "The Rider's Song"

The decision to go to a place, to see what's there, to reflect upon what's happened, is the central core of life's experience, and therefore the same centrality that humans experience when playing an RPG.  It makes no difference if the "sea" is imagined or real; the potential for reflection is the same.  Therefore, in fact, D&D is not a "game of imagination," but rather a game of structured moments and tactile proposals arranged to produce specific, quantifiable, predictable, beneficial and immersive responses.

I am not "imagining" an orc, nor am I "imagining" my response.  The orc is defined and I'm accepting the definition, regardless of the immateriality.  My response is defined by the game's limitations and boundaries, in the sense that I know already what I can do; the game's success relies upon choosing the best thing that I can do in this moment.

By arguing that it's a game of imagination, however, we've brainwashed the participants into believing that the solution is to spontaneously create something to replace the orc, because it's new and different, yet offers nothing but an obscure nothingness, since as a player I have no idea what this thing is.  In turn, players are encouraged to spontaneously invent responses that aren't covered in the game's rules — which must therefore be tossed, since there's no way they can apply in this imagination mandate.  This ends in a lot of irrationality and abstractness, producing no concrete feeling for what's happened, what might happen, or even why we're here doing this thing at all.

So I would not, to a group of unknowing persons, argue either that the game can be described as "role-playing" or as "of the imagination."  I'd argue that it's a game in which persons act as generated individuals in a fictional setting, with parameters that are firmly established by the game's rules.  As this is what actually happens when my "players" sit done to "play" in my game world.

This confirms the extraordinarily powerful need for the DM to have a setting, one the DM can understand thoroughly and faultlessly — within human limitations.  This provides the grounding for the participants as they gird themselves up with pre-defined pieces of equipment, their physical being established by metrics for measuring their health, capabilities and action choices.

And so we come back around to the game's map, that of Wales, and it's influence as a setting that I'm devising for the benefit of the players, once I'm ready to introduce them to D&D.  Take note, stated firmly, it's in my interest to ride the actual creation of the game as it will between 1974 and 1980.  I have no wish to create my own role-playing game, nor compete with D&D, nor pretend that's not the game I'd be playing.  All I want is to obtain benefit from all the time I've designed and played the game through the first go-round of my life, to use that experience in the thought experiment that's been proposed here.