Saturday Q&A (dec 30)

Shelby M. writes,

The recent series is thought-provoking, as always. The point about impressing the players and stirring them to excitement with a giant map is interesting, because we see echoes of this still today. Even a few years ago, bringing a hand-drawn map to a game was inspiring. People are still trying to figure that out today, with fold-out maps in mass-produced books; but these things are so devoid of soul that it's no wonder the feeling can't last.

Answer: We don’t impress people with things we don't make ourselves. You may enjoy the dinner I ordered for the both of us, but you won't equate that dinner with ME just because I paid for it. You may thrill to take a ride in my new Lambourghini, but you'll never be able to forget that it's mine and you'll never feel comfortable about borrowing it — unless you're the sort of person I'd never lend it to. It would only be "yours" if you bought one yourself. As regards mine, you'd mostly think I was putting on airs, or that I didn't "deserve" it, or that it was a sign of my decadence.

But strangely, if I show you something amazing that I've made — you instantly equate that thing with me ... and because you know me, and we're friends, you count yourself wise and benefitted through knowing me. Say you had the power to call up Mick Jagger and talk every once in a while. You'd like that he liked you, and that'd make you feel like a better person because you felt worthy of that relationship. Even if you weren't Jagger, just knowing a fellow like Jagger liked YOU would be a tremendous boost — because of what he's achieved. It's part of our anthropological behaviour; even if you're not the fellow in the tribe who brings home the most food, you admire that fellow, and you like being around him. A DM's got to be the sort of person able to bring home lots of food. and share it around.

 

Maxwell in California writes,

The movie in your latest post has got to be Lawrence of Arabia, yes?

While I’ve had some success inducing the shock and awe feeling in players with the work I’ve put into my game so far, I think I’m falling a bit short of “oh boy I hope I don’t disappoint the dm tonight” that you describe, and the game-propelling intensity of the same. But with grad school finished and my job continuing to be only part time, I’m looking forward to putting some serious labor into my D&D. Including trying to integrate more performing-arts-inspired practice into my game prep — e.g. deliberate practice at improving my ability to portray more than one NPC at once. 

Speaking of which. Given your long history with acting for the stage, I would be quite interested in your thoughts on how the training techniques of actors might be profitably translated into ways that a DM can train himself for the table. I imagine it’d follow a similar style to the chess tactics post that you wrote earlier this year.

Answer: That's correct, it's Lawrence of Arabia.

The idea of not disappointing the DM is difficult to achieve. Much of my intellectual background as a youth was deeply involved in beating people up intellectually and being a step ahead of my friends regarding my education (though I didn't pursue the education that satisfied my teachers or parents). Thus I was a hard fellow to know. This translated well to DMing, however, as the assumption of authority was something I did naturally. For example, the way I speak "authoritatively" on this blog, without feeling the need to pander to those who disagree.

I can't say that anything I learned how to do as an actor was especially beneficial to my DMing. The speaking style is much more akin to a professor than a stage actor, while what's said cannot be merely improvisational, but in the way of constructed speech, again like a professor. Actors are interested most in getting attention for themselves, while a DM must be interested in directing the players' attention towards what they see and what they can do. I would suggest that if you're looking for a theatre connection that fits with DMing, try directing a play rather than acting in one. This will help in the science of herding cats.

Griffin writes,

First thing is completely unrelated to D&D. I wonder if you've run into the online game Cine2Nerdle Battle. It's competitive movie trivia. Two people play against each other. You start with a movie and one person has to name another movie that shares an actor/director/cinematographer/etc. Then the other person has to name another movie that shares someone from that second movie, and so on until leapfrogging movies until one person can't think of one. There are nuances but that is the core of it. No clue if you'd enjoy it but I'm sure you'd be great at it. Link: https://www.cinenerdle2.app/battle

Second, just a question I've had in my head for a while that I believe I know approximately the answer but wanted to get the actual answer instead of theoretical. I know that you like fairly granular rules (see your wiki for numerous examples). My question is that what value, if any, is there in less complex rules? For example, if I didn't have any rules for temperature and I'm not ready to go full Alexis-complexity, is it better to have something simple (five basic levels of temperature) or just not bother?

Third, loosely regarding the next set of rules I plan to run. I think I've finally (again) settled on the foundation of my future games (luckily my prolonged indecision happens in a time where I'm not actually running) and I've been taking heart something that runs through a lot of what you write on the Tao blog though only directly touched on it a few times. The idea that one should be adding to rules instead of rewriting them. I think one of the strengths of your game and how good your rules are is that if something in the rules is even halfway functional you leave it alone and focus the majority of your effort on adding things the rules don't cover. Such as the sage system.

Answer: I think I would do well at such a game ... until a film was named that I hadn't seen, or even heard of before. I used to watch independent art films, but I stay away from them like the plague now; and often I pay no attention at all to excessively popular films that I know I'm not going to enjoy. For example, I don't think I could name a single actor from Oppenheimer, as I don't recognise the lead, I despise Christopher Nolan's direction and I plan never to see the film. Likewise, I only just discovered a few days ago that Jennifer Connelly, whom I love, was in Top Gun: Maverick ... a film I couldn't finish because it's dreck. But I would have tried to watch it months ago had I known. It would seem the purpose of the game would be to catch the other person with a film they didn't know; I might do well at that, as I know an enormous number of obscure films and I have a good head for actors and directors.

I would argue, don't include the rule at all. A rule too simple to inspire the player to control his or her environment isn't worth our effort nor theirs.

Remember that with regards to rules, I've had a long, long time to rewrite the old ones. I began rewriting rules nearly as soon as I began running the game, as every other DM whose world I played in also house-ruled their games. It was standard practice. I never met a DM who was satisfied with the game as written — so there was a licence to go ahead and make changes, which I always did. It's perhaps only the last 25 years that I've seriously taken up my crusade of adding new rules.

Zilifant from Minnesota writes,

Your post titled "Action and Moment" brought a question/conundrum to mind for me that I've struggled with as both a player and a DM.

You stated in your post that you "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 settings and obstacles", and in your wiki under Intelligence you state that "Players cannot use the character's intelligence as a shortcut or alternate means of solving game problems". I agree wholeheartedly and subscribe to both of these statements.

However, my question to you looks at this from the other angle. What if a character has an exceptionally LOW intelligence score? Are they still allowed to use their full faculties as a player to solve problems, or do you expect them to try and play their character in a way that better reflects that low ability score? Similarly, do you allow players to use their own knowledge about modern principles of science (medicine, chemistry, geology, etc.) to solve problems in the game, when those principles and that information would not have been discovered yet in your game world? Or what about skills that a player has that their character would not? Say for instance in the real world a player owns and breeds horses, or is a ship's captain, but their character in the game does not have either of these skills or sage abilities. Would you allow them to use this real-world player knowledge to solve problems, even though there is no plausible reason for their character to know this information?

I don't feel like I've been consistent either playing or DMing when these types of circumstances come up. I lean towards saying "there's no way that Rothgar the 2nd level fighter would know that", but it does seem to take away some agency from the player and doesn't allow them to use their full real-world faculty to solve in-game problems.

Answer: Once upon a time I would have found your question very hard to answer. The confusion between what the player knows and what the character can know has been long overlooked by the game's structure — and has in many ways been used as a justification for the separation of player and character that most systems today espouse. Your example of low intelligence score comes to the core of the matter, encouraging the player to "play dumb" in order to facilitate the character's intelligence score; unfortunately, if the character's intelligence is much, much higher than the player, the latter cannot "play smart" in quite the same way.

'Course, we're never supposed to admit that real people can possibly have an intelligence of less than 18.

We need to divide the actions that players may undertake when resolving problems or implementing a solution. There's what the player knows, as you say, about the modern principles of science (and technology), and there's what the game's rules allow the player to do within the game. My favourite recent example is that of "drownproofing," which is a technique that allows an individual to survive for longer periods if caught in a body of water far from land. The action requires no technology, merely knowledge; and yet, drownproofing wasn't taught until 1940. It may have been known to some persons before then, but we have no written sources for that. It begs the question, how many hundreds of thousands of sailors drowned throughout history who might have been saved had they known a very simple technique that in no way could not have been performed in pre-Neolithic times?

Using this as a case question then to support your point, Zilifant: can a player that knows how to drownproof declare that their character, living in a medieval time, does so in order to survive?

On the one hand, we can argue, "no." That the DM ought to intervene, point out the discrepancy, and tell the player that he or she has to think of something else or drown. This relies on the DM knowing that drownproofing wasn't a thing before the 20th century, which many would not; I only discovered this fact, to my surprise, about a year ago. If the DM were ignorant, then they might say, "sure," and allow the player to act as desired. It's a case where ignorance provides greater freedom of action. Not being so myself, I could argue that freely allowing the character to drownproof wouldn't matter ... since it relies on searchers finding the person before the latter runs out of energy and drowns. If I live in a world without drownproofing, I'm going to quit searching with the expectation that the individuals must have all drowned by now; so it wouldn't matter if the player employed the technique or not ... unless, of course, the other members of the party are the searchers.

In a larger sense, however — and this is the crux of the thing — D&D is a GAME. It's not an attempt to simulate reality. Nothing is to be gained from simulating reality in such a manner that the player's ability to solve problems is arbitrarily hamstrung by knowledge that's had, but can't be used, for "reasons" having to do with the DM's interpretation of what an extension of the player can or cannot do in game. If there is a rule that specifically states the character cannot pilot a boat or raise a mast without sufficient knowledge (such as my sage abilities dictate), then it's clearly defined by the game's rules that the player cannot employ that action. But until someone sits down and creates a crystal-clear set of boundaries specifically defined by the intelligence of the character ("with a 7 intelligence, the following actions cannot be performed), then there are no such rules and the DM should impose none arbitrarily for "reasons" that don't yet exist. If the DM won't put in the time to create boundaries ahead of time, then he or she isn't permitted to impose boundaries arbitrarily.

By extension, any DM worth his or her salt should establish plain guidelines for the setting's time period and technology. My game is set in the mid-17th century. This means that a barometer exists (invented 1643), though it isn't widespread, while a tin-can telephone (invented 1667) does not. This allows me to say, plainly to players, that while they may understand how the latter invention could be easily devised, it cannot possibly occur to their character that such a thing might exist, and therefore it cannot be seen as an option to try in this situation. And in fact, though the barometer does exist, most probably the character, without some grounding in physics, could not make one, just as most probably the player living in the present day couldn't either. Without these guidelines defining the setting, as game rules, I'd be caught in the same conundrum that's proposed in the question above. A conundrum that I, like you Zilifant, was also once caught in.

So, to recap:

1st. Define the technological limitations of your setting in the firmest manner possible.

2nd. Define the potential for the player character's educational limitations within the setting's technology.

3rd. Acknowledge that, for the most part, the player's ingenuity in using a modern-based solution in game really causes no harm to game play, so long as steps 1 and 2 above have been firmly established, since the character cannot possible be used to create some truly dangerous technology such as a gun or mustard gas.

4th. Keep in mind, always, what the social reaction would be to a technology would be at any rate.  Just because I can employ drownproofing doesn't automatically educate my searchers that I'm doing so. Or, in a more general sense, we have centuries of stories about how people react to unexpected, newly produced technologies and innovations. It's not a happy legacy. This too forms a sort of limitation on what players can do, even if they have skills that the character does not, and even if you as DM allow them to use those skills.

On the whole, yes, I allow players to use real-world player knowledge to solve problems, even though there's no plausible reason for their characters not to be, say, racist, superstitious, not overly religious or aware of the game world's global dynamic. Virtually no 17th century individual would be free of any of these concepts, yet we don't ask players to exhibit these specific traits of extreme ignorance or anti-social perspectives. Doing so would provide no additional joy in playing the game. There's nothing wrong with letting the players be themselves with regards to the game's expectations. It is, after all, why we play. To test ourselves against obstacles. D&D is not an experiment, or at least shouldn't be, to enable us to test fictional creatures against the game's expectations.

As an aside, it's a problem that many would-be fiction writers never overcome. We don't write stories about characters who don't exist. We write stories about ourselves and use characters who don't exist as puppets so that we can plausibly remove ourselves to a position of advantage, thus improving our perspective ... and that of the reader. D&D is not about the character. It's about the player.

_____

Thank you.

If readers would like to reply to the above, or wish to ask a question or submit observations like those above, please submit  to my email, alexiss1@telus.net.  If you could, please give the region where you're located (state, province, department, county, whatever) as it humanises your comment.

I'm going to start posting questions and answers as soon as they become available on my patreon page, so they can be read ahead of time by my patreon supporters.  I also need to get into the habit of posting a head's up on Patreon whenever I publish a new post.

Feel free to address material on the authentic wiki, my books or any subject related to dungeons & dragons.  I encourage you to initiate subject material of your own, and to address your comment to others writing in this space.