Camaraderie

 Before every session, there's typically a natural, unstructured conversation where players and dungeon masters chat about the game. These informal discussions include a wide range of subjects, as participants find in this an opportunity to share recent events in their lives, be social and otherwise unload stress through the support group that a game-group provides. These moments are socially important, contributing to the process of setting aside the real world prior to immersing ourselves in an imaginary endeavour. By sharing personal experiences, we bond as a game group, which connects us together so that should some form of anxiety or resistance between participants arise during the game, the camaraderie established at the beginning sustains the group's desire to maintain our social circle.

This is important in fostering the same resilience and flexibility seein in children's friendships. Just as children can fight passionately and remain friends, the pre-game socialising helps players engage deeply, sometimes even fight or disagree, without jeapardising their relationships within the party or the game itself. By creating a supportive space, the interaction is more than a filler before the game starts; it helps in their ability to view in-game disputes as affairs within the game's play, and not as personal attacks upon one another.

However, this relies upon participants who have developed conflict resolution skills as children, through proper play and trust-building experiences. A dungeon master faced with such a person as an adult is liable to encounter an unnatural amount of defensiveness, aggression or avoidance from the participant. Such adults, struggling with unresolved childhood issues, may potentially view any conflict as a personal attack rather than as an opportunity for growth; this can result in game disruptions and campaign-ending incidents where one or more participants permanently withdraw from the campaign, through what appears to be a very minor slight or misunderstanding.

Continued on The Higher Path

Workbench

 Nearly all persons who have read to this point have spent many hours either playing or running... and no doubt, their engagement with the game has encouraged them to seek out things to read and perhaps to study, for their personal edification. Most have received some guidance from other dungeon masters; through formal education, they've experienced the process of learning. Many can see, easily, how education in one field can be directly applied to role-playing games. Yet while absorbing a collection of resources, and seeking out direction from others, there's yet another strategy we haven't employed, a thing we can do on our own, apart from running a campaign.

A fitting metaphor for this could be called a workbench. This is a place where craftsfolk and hobbyists tinker with materials and tools in an unpressured, exploratory way. Unlike preparing for a game, this isn't about building something specific to a purpose, but about familiarising ourselves the tools, experimenting with elements of the game and playing with ideas. It's a place for trial and error, where the actual game rules receive application to things we make for ourselves, that might fail, or might end in adding vitality to our campaign.

There are examples that nearly every long-term DM fiddles with at some point, usually without achieving our goal. Nonetheless, what's important here isn't success, but familiarity, which contributes to our deeper engagement with the game itself. In bumping up against the game's limitations, however we might strive to put a harness on things to make them work for us, we yet create a profound connection between ourselves and the game, which filters into every other game-related action we take.

Continued on The Higher Path

Book Jacket

For those willing to give it, I'm interested in criticism regarding the text layout of the book shown, BEFORE I use it. I cannot and do not wish to change the image, it fits excellently with the content, but I would like to know anything anyone would like to tell me about spacing. Obviously, the title is fixed.

Go ahead and be harsh, I have no feelings to hurt. I won't necessarily take your advice.  Give me a good slapping around.

Instructors

The process of teaching, whether as formal as a classroom or as personable as a parent teaching a child, begins with a desire to instill confidence into the student... not only with the material at hand, but with the very idea of learning. If I teach my daughter the principles of chess, yes of course I wish her to grasp the movements of the pieces and the general idea of the game — but more importantly, I wish her to feel bold and trust in her ability to make moves without fear of losing. When we are taught our letters in school, we benefit greatly from tactile and hands-on learning, tracing the letters in sand or the air, even molding the letters out of playdough... because as we physically engage with the letters, we become more sure of ourselves when speaking the name of each letter and the sound it makes.

If we don't put the acquisition of confidence at the forefront of our teaching effort, then we risk creating students who may understand the material, but will become hesitant before repeating what they've learned. We must also take care not to cause students to second-guess themselves, or avoid taking the risk of speaking up in class — which, in my early 1970s education, was barely a concern to teachers who considered our "learning" the material as more important than our "relationship" with it. Thus we were educated "at" rather than "with"... and my fellow students, as a result, did not put up their hands nor give their opinions, for fear that they'd be humiliated in front of their peers for not "understanding" the material exactly as the teachers thought we should.

We'd like to believe that things have changed, but the very fact that we continue to test upon the cold, non-interactive nature of the taught material, and not the children's interaction with it, belies that assumption. We are concerned with absorption, not application, because no grade that appears on a report card speaks to the latter. A good teacher tries to make up for this shortcoming by writing on the report card, "Jennie responds positively in class and enjoys the material," but when these words are said to parents who have little understanding of what goes on in a classroom, this recognition of Jennie's confidence and willingness to plunge forward is lost. If "enjoys the material" is matched with an "A," all it well and good... but if it's matched with a "C," because Jennie is interested but has a less than perfect memory, the only thing anyone cares about is the grade.

Continued on The Higher Path.

2d6 Taoists

I'm pleased to share that a group of writers who contributed to the book, 2d6 Taoists... Maxwell Joslyn, editor, Danielle Osterman, Shelby Maddox and Jonathan Becker, are now putting that book up for sale on Lulu. The link is here.

While yes, my name and contributions to the game are part of the work, I think it's more important to acknowledge that these writers have worked diligently and well to create works that deserve recognition in their own right.  Becker's discussion of Dungeons and Dragons as a calling, Maddox's encouragement of a coherent order through the understanding of taxonomy, Joslyn's breakdown of the computer as a driving force behind the future game and Osterman's sociological breakdown of game advice found on youtube are well worth the read... I feel overwhelmed at the prospect of examining their work here, as I don't believe that I can do it the justice that it deserves.

I give it my full endorsement; if my work is worth reading, then so too is the work that these designers and writers have done.  Trust the effort, trust the value it offers; it is a small but meaningful tome that is worth reading more than once.

Best Guess

In building emotional depth into the game's campaign, we are fascinated by the manner in which a single action we take reverberates through the responses and actions of others... and how this escalates conflict. Our first efforts to reproduce this effect are difficult, because we don't fully grasp the layering complexity of how this believably occurs; but after studying film, literature or history, we see constructed or real narratives unfold in a way that feels interconnected, complex and inevitable.

It's an educator's role to help us elucidate narratives in this manner, teaching us what to look for in the development of layered cause-and-effect structures. Hopefully, this helps us understand complex narratives in a way that isn't obvious at first glance. A useful example for this would be the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. For many, this seemed to be a spontaneous occurrence; the protests and public gatherings escalated quickly in the weeks leading up to that November. The media were caught with their pants down, focused largely on the immediate visual spectacle and weren't ready to explain in detail why it was happening. When the first stories emerged that tried to explain it, the influence of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms received tremendous attention, such that he ended up receiving a Nobel Peace Prize... but this was hype. The Soviet Union was broke; the war in Afghanistan had been a disaster and 30 years of intense cold war spending had emptied the nation's coffers. It could no longer maintain control over its satellite states, and as a result, the power vacuum was sensed by those in East Berlin who, not spontaneously, but because they were no longer being held back, acted as they were now able. The suddenness of the fall was more about the long-suppressed pressures finally finding release rather than an unplanned outburst.

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification; hundreds of factors are at play which, if unraveled, lends insight to what happened. Through the investigation of these factors, particularly under the guidance of someone who may have been there while also deeply involved in the event's political background, can lead us to comprehending more fully what happened. Steadily, we acquire a certainty that things happen for a reason, even the most spontaneous of things. By reverse engineering these things, we gain understanding of how to set up the factors, and where they ought to lead a fictional narrative that we construct for our own purpose.

Continued on the Higher Path

Atmosphere

A common weakness in many dungeon masters is to focus on the immediate needs of their campaign, to find a module that can be quickly adapted before the next session, to produce an NPC's "backstory" in the hopes of producing a quick, short-term motivation for the party, or the ideal of a throw-it-at-them encounter that will distract the players long enough to give enough time to come up with something else. As a result, DMs often rush from instant solution to instant solution, always at the edge of feeling like if they don't come up with something in the last few hours before game time, they're sunk.

This mindset largely emerges from a failure to grasp the influence of artistic design, atmosphere and emotional depth... which in turn reflects the tendency to see these things as "non-applicable" precisely because they don't address the immediate problems of the DM. On the whole, these elements seem like luxuries when the DM's immediate concern is keeping the game running and the players engaged. They are intangible and difficult to quantify. A combat encounter or puzzle has clear, actionable components, whereas "atmosphere" is an elusive quality that defies definition.

This is largely because of the form of education we obtain; in general, our grade school teachers themselves were unable to explain exactly why we were directed to study Shakespearean plays or deconstruct poetry. Art, for most people, feels unproductive, useless and unnecessary; it expends time attempting to duplicate work that plainly others, who have spent more time at it, will always be more proficient than we are. The answer received, in turn, usually consists of a poorly-experienced teacher saying that art is a way of unwinding, relaxing, that it provides an escape and helps us forget about things, momentarily, that are actually important.

Continued on the Higher Path

Education

We come now to the most difficult part of this series, where we have to set aside what "resources" are and how to use them, and take up the unholy, unwanted subject of "education." This disaster of a field, that has induced nearly every conscious person to equate with their frustrating, provably irrelevant school experience. Where, as teenagers, we used to say to our teachers, "Why are we learning this? I'm never going to use it," only to be chastened to warned not to question the importance of school, we can look back now in our late adulthood and say with surety, "I was right. I never did use that crap I was taught."

For this reason, when most of us hear, "education," we equate it at once with the traditional system — hours of rote memorisation, irrelevant topics, boredom, long wasted hours and the absence of practical benefit. This is made worse in that most assume that if there's anything to be gained from education as a DM, it must come from a formally named subject-specific class, "How to be a Dungeon Master 201" — which, in fact, the reason why this collection of posts is called "RPG 201." The title mimics the academic naming convention because if we do not say what a thing is right on the tin, they won't trust what they're buying. This puts me the position of having to lift that boat out from the water and scraping the barnacles off it's bottom.

Education differs from research in that learning from others is part of the process, either because we undertake to teach a subject or learn one. As a student, we do not hold the teacher accountable with every statement made to prove that the knowledge being given is worth knowing. As a teacher, we don't waste the student's time, discarding conventions and assumptions about what education ought to include. The weak point in the education system was not us, the students, and it was not our teachers; it was the vast panoply of interveners who were not in the classroom with us, but yet forced us ALL to obey a ridiculous set of protocols that continue to get in the way of everything. Education can be meaningful when it's focused and practical, and free from unnecessary distractions. This has to be understood first before any good can come of what's written here next.


Continued on the Higher Path

Chemical Reactions

Continuing with the effects of resources upon things, consider the manner in which a book, film or an experience can serve to fuel creative thinking, like a chemical reaction that accelerates or enhances the mind. This sort of catalyst has no definite outcome; it rushes at us without expectation, but when it hits, our creative process feels a flash of insight, inspiration and excitement at the possibilities with which the idea fills us.

But though we want catalysts to occur on a regular basis, we don't know when they will, or even IF they will. There’s no method, no sign, no clear way to predict when a moment of insight will, or won't, come. No matter how much we’ve read, learned and experienced, we can never tell if an outcome will come, or what that outcome will be. From our perspective, it seems to just happen—it appears out of nowhere, with no pattern to follow. This is what makes it puzzling, because even with all the knowledge and tools at our disposal, we can’t predict it or force it.

This is a substantive characteristic of creativity that forces would-be painters, musicians, film-makers and writers into becoming shop clerks, insurance salespeople, resource managers and electricians. Creativity is, and will always be, something that is beyond our control; it depends upon inspiration, which is a miserable, taciturn, rotten little zeitgeist that has a tendency to stay as a guest too long when our relatives are visiting from Schenectady and is never around when we've taken two weeks off for a holiday.

Continued on the Higher Path

Barbara Stanwyck

For fun.

The Wiki is Active

The Authentic Wiki is up again, at last, two days late, but life goes like that sometimes.  Naturally, when it's down, that's when I finally feel like starting to do some kind of work on it.

AND... it isn't.

There were log in problems, so it was up for the public, but I couldn't get into it. Problem's being worked on.

AND... it is.

Only, there's something wrong with the log-in feature, so that even us administrators can't log in.  The wiki is accessible but for the present, it can't be adjusted until it's moved to a highly upgraded server... and given the recent move, that isn't happening any time soon.

Three Measly Bucks

I am continuing the series on the Higher Path, which can be obtained by anyone for just $3 a month. It's up to the reader to decide if they already know everything they want to know about D&D.

Here's a snippet of today's post:

... When the players respond to such unusual motifs and in-depth situations, stolen blatantly from real history, they nevertheless respond in reflection of the complex, believable situation we've woven. It's believable, we know, because it really happened.

The more resources we engage with, not only in one small field, but across a large spectrum of ideas, the more situations and ideas we can add to our overall arsenal. This makes us not only more complicated at grand, complex schemes, but simple, momentary situations as well. Our source material should also include small, tactile little moments, dredged up from stories, personal accounts and even letters home. This last, which is plentiful enough a resource in later time periods, expresses the exact same sentiments that existed a thousand years ago than they did in the last war. We haven't changed... so any bit or piece of knowledge...

It's no skin off my nose if you miss what I've said because you can't raise three measly bucks. 

We are Experiencing Technical Difficulties

So sorry, the wiki still isn't up.  I'm informed that "unsettling" occurred during the move; there are service people working on the issue presently.

In other news, I'm afraid I've removed 26 names from having access to my higher path blog.  To all such persons, I thank you gratefully for all that you've donated in the past; I have written on that blog since 2022, but as I'll be putting the continuing series there, the time has come to clean house.  If I have accidentally removed anyone that shouldn't have been removed, then please write me immediately at patreon, here in the comments, or on my email at alexiss1@telus.net, tell me the correct name of your account on patreon and I'll get that repaired.

A Move

The 17th post of this series that I've been writing, which is well over 16,000 words thus far, has been posted on The Higher Path.  I'm going to continue posting this series there, not here.  Access to the Higher Path can be obtained through my Patreon page.

I assume that some here have been enjoying it; and that most, not seeing it appear on some RSS feed, will just assume I'm not writing it any more.  But I assure the reader that I am.  

Game Imbalance

I am sorry to say that the Authentic Wiki still isn't active, though it should be. I have no idea why. At present, the service company is overwhelmed with their move so there's nothing to do now but wait. I'm assured it should be restored some time tomorrow, if not later today.

Yesterday I received a missive that was grateful that I was establishing a taxonomy for D&D game preparation. It might be good at this point to briefly explain that I haven't invented this — it's the basic design taxonomy that applies to everything that built or prepared for in the world.

Research, to start, involves gathering the necessary tools and understanding the mechanics, methods, and world elements available for the game. This is the foundation, like identifying the raw materials and technologies available to you. I've defined this as understanding the rules and anticipating the player's actions as a form of discovery, to determine what parts of our game we should expand and focus upon.

Estimation is about calculating what is needed in terms of resources and costs to successfully execute the creation of a given thing. This step involves weighing costs, both literal and metaphorical, such as how much detail to include or how long a session will last. I've described this as including preparing ahead of time specifically for sessions and the specification of what's really essential for our needs. This is like buying only those things we need to get the thing built.

Planning is the architectural phase, where you organize the components of what the project needs, bringing them to the site or storing them on the premises, whether we're talking about building a house or readying a kitchen for the food it needs to cook that day. I've been describing these things as laying out the setting, fixing the combat system and explaining how intrigue works. With this post, we're going to discuss the party's accumulation of resources, wealth, powerful items and overall status.

Running the actual game is, therefore, the "manufacturing process", where everything that's been researched, estimated and planned is put into practice. This is where all the design phases come to life, where the interaction between players and the dungeon master happens. Our earlier discussions of how players can be better players fits into this overall process as well, as everything we've discussed so far contributes to a smoothly running team that's capable of making a fine product that's in high demand.

To continue...

Wealth and resources serve as a key driver of the party's decisions because they represent opportunity and power. Wealth opens doors to greater influence, better equipment and the ability to overcome more significant challenges, as does the accumulation of experience and personal abilities. It is these things that compel the players to take greater risks, exploring dangerous parts of the setting or involving themselves in wide-reaching conflicts. If players don't feel pushed to acquire these things, it's because they're already so overpowered they don't feel especially threatened by the game's structure. If they deliberately avoid situations of danger, because these are always presented as a choice, then this is a clear indication that the players are content with what they have and don't feel any strong need to threaten or adjust their status quo.

"Comfort" is an undesirable quality in a player. There is an adage about the removing of limpets from rocks; limpets are incredibly tough, resilient sea creatures that, once fixed to a stone surface, are nearly impossible to remove, even with the blunt force of a hammer. However, if the rock is lifted out of the water and set in the open air, the limpet will move of its own accord, to a different rock that is submerged. In essence, we have removed its food supply; we have made the limpet uncomfortable. This is what must be done with players who are unmotivated by the accumulation of wealth and other things.

Therefore, we must do more than "award" things; we must also continuously plan to remove the players from their "food supply," making them feel that they NEED to act in order to survive or thrive, which invigorates their engagement with D&D. This requires more than merely having their stack of coins dwindle or their food supplies sour; it isn't enough to tax or gouge them at the market. We must physically, like the limpet, place the characters in situations where getting themselves out of the trouble they've landed in requires that they actively move in the direction of safety.

The premise of accumulation must be that the more we have, the safer we are — or, at least, the better chance we have of securing a foothold in some part of the setting where we control most of the ways where we might be accessed by a potential enemy. This ought to be the real reason why players are eventually driven to the construction of a castle... not for the sake of their vanity or prestige, but because this is the safest of possible places into which they might retreat.

But a castle is a long, long way off for any common group of adventurers at the start of a campaign. To possess such a place would mean hundreds of treasures that would need to be fought over and gathered. To succeed in this would undoubtedly require many precious, treasured objects of power that would break the backs of our enemies and expose their hoards to our greedy fingers. The overall process demands risk, which requires players with courage who are prepared to gamble their characters like chips on a craps table... a vast, complicated version of that game with many kinds of dice and points that need to be made at exact moments and in exact ways.

This, however, is the players' perspective. The dungeon master has a separate difficulty at hand; how to establish the pace at which this acquisition of treasure is accumulated. We know that it cannot be too much, else our limpets will settle and cease to engage. This, however, doesn't tell us anything about what the amount of "encouragement" is appropriate.

There is a common sense that players, if given too little treasure, are liable to become discouraged or disengaged from the game; this might be true, if the full experience of play is designed almost entirely upon hack, kill and take the treasure. There are other considerable angles of the game, such as the aforementioned intrigue that we can invest the players in, as well as participation in achieving their hopes and dreams, which we'll discuss in the next post. It's entirely possible to run a game of D&D where the players are so impoverished as to be hardly peasants, without this disengagement taking place. Therefore, we should not overly measure the importance of "giving the players what they want" as something that need concern us.

What we're looking for is the "sweet spot" of treasure giving. This is, unfortunately, always framed in the usual discussion of "too much" or "too little," which may properly describe some of what we've just said here. In terms of knowing the right amount to give, however, this comparison is a dead end because it fails to address the real problem, which is how to make treasure consequential in a meaningful way. The right amount cannot be measured by what it is NOT... we'll chase our tails unto eternity pursuing that solution.

Instead, we must use our good sense to calibrate the impact of treasure, whatever it's form, for this includes the conveyance of status upon the party as well, in terms of how we see it, moment to moment, affecting the party in REAL TIME. This requires that we see treasure as more than a thing that adds to the party's pile. It is a catalyst for change within the game's ongoing function, having ripple effects in numerous ways. For example, if a player's character has just acquired a specific powerful tool, their desire is to apply it like a hammer to every "nail" in sight. This can be fun for a while — but if this habit persists, we can easily see we've given the player something too BIG for his or her britches as a game participant.

This doesn't mean we can rush in and take it away; we've given the thing and within certain boundaries, we must blame ourselves and chalk it up to experience, learning not to do this again. In the meantime, we can concoct events in the game where the "hammer" is less effective, or not at all, and wait for the day when the player's character gets into some corner that they fail to get out of. Then we can, with a clear conscience, quietly remove the object from our campaign. I do not say we should engineer this corner; if the game we run is dangerous enough, and the player overly secure with their toy, that won't be necessary. Though problematic, such issues must be solved over time in a manner that is both practical and respectful of player agency. After all, we gave the item; it is on us to suffer the consequences.

It can be seen from this example that what's wanted is a positive, progressive experience for all the players at the same time. We want them to do well, and towards that end, we give them a goodly amount of treasure and nice items that simultaneously empower them, just enough that those "ripples" through the game don't excessively shape the game's structure to the players' benefit. On our side, we can always merely double the number of dangers the players meet; there are always enough enemies to place before the players, because we literally conjure them out of thin air. Therefore, in considering what is "enough treasure," we may equally consider this against the question, what is "too much monster?"

I resist the use of the term "game balance" as an ill-defined concept that is vague and overused. Instead, let's merely stress that both sides of the equation — treasure and challenges — must be something we weigh constantly in the back of our minds as we plan every part of the game. Importantly, BOTH are fluid and easily adapted to each moment during game play, so that as one increases, the other must be managed in a like fashion, though not necessarily in a "balanced" fashion. Balance describes a situation where different elements are equal or in correct proportions to one another. This is NOT what we want! At times, we definitely want power tipped in the players favour, so that occasionally they'll experience the thrill of wasting their enemies and carrying piles of treasure and other goodies away, shouting with glee as they go. At other times, we should tip that power the other way, where the monsters are so threatening and perversely dangerous that the players exist in a state of abject dispair, wondering how they shall ever emerge from this hellscape. So it is with a game that, unlike a story, has no "act structure" because it is perpetual. Sometimes, the game's litany is that of a dangerous climax; at other times, we are in the midst of a new adventure's onset or some sort of denouement. The uncertainty of the player's accumulation of goods vs. the world's danger ebbs and flows like the deck of a ship — where perfect "balance" only occurs when no wind is blowing.

Therefore, there is no such thing as a "sweet spot" where the giving of treasure is concerned... which is no great comfort to those who began this post thinking they might at last be granted the answer to this long-debated question. The right "spot" is as changeable as an empty bucket rolling about on our metaphorical deck. We must, as the DM, decide in the moment where that bucket is, and fill it precisely to where it can either cease to move or rather scatter its contents as it rolls. Like the challenges that the players face, treasure must be fluid and adaptable. At one moment, a large haul of treasure might be exactly what the players need to feel a sense of accomplishment after a grueling battle. In another moment, that same amount could tip the scales too far and make future challenges feel trivial. With too little experience, we're always going to wind up giving too much or too little. The best we can do is try to make up for our shortcomings when we've done misestimated — and comfort ourselves with knowing that sometimes, the players need to feel flush with wealth. At other times, they need to be struggling. For good or ill, if we've goofed, and made them feel either at the wrong time, we can take comfort in the knowledge that next time, if it seems the right time, we'll make up for it.

Intrigue

Embarking upon a more esoteric form of game play, one often studiously avoided because of its difficulty for both the players and dungeon master, is what we may call strategic decision-making. This means something different in D&D than it does in war-based board gaming; here, it is the problem of decoding layers of uncertainty that arise from a world where intrigue and subtle currents of power affect the setting, whether this is an untrustworthy ally, a dangerous political swamp, or some non-player character's hidden agenda. Players will, in a full, rich world, bump against any of these, and many other like situations. The difficulty has two parts: the DM must be able to conceive of such plots and mechinations, to a degree that they can be presented as both understated and believable, and the players must be capable of realising that such a game is afoot, and be capable of piecing together clues in order to understand it.

If either of these necessities does not exist, then this sort of game play is next to impossible. For players to interpret clues, there must BE clues; which requires a DM to invent clues... and these must be of a type that can be interpreted, but not so easily that they're less clue-like than obvious facts. It also requires participants for whom deviousness and ruthlessness aren't wholly alien to their personal experience. Like the film detective who has become indoctrinated through experience in the darker sides of human nature, the players too must have some taste for this sort of fare. If not, if they are upset by it, or cannot conceive that someone would seize illegitimate power by hook or by crook, regardless of the necessary means, then such babes in the wood won't enjoy the raw seriousness such doings portend.

For those wishing to dive in, however, this aspect of gaming requires every bit as much design as the making of maps or preparing a working combat system. First, we must know the setting's inhabitants, as well as we know the characters from a pantheon of films and books that have depicted those who work outside the law for the last two hundred years. Intrigue and the quest for easy power can be defined as a personal shortcut for those who aren't willing to work and wait for their reward. They want the reward now, as quickly as they can achieve it... and normally, there are so many such persons in a life-like setting that they are competing with each other to get a bite of the apple, as they are getting a hold of the apple itself.

This multi-person set up produces a multi-layered engagement, made more complex by the simple fact that there are also good people pretending to be bad people in order to stop the bad people. Thus, a villain might surprisingly turn out to be an ally; an apparent ally, a backstabbing bastard. The players themselves may choose to play either side of the field, for there are no rules except what we impose autocratically to stop players from being the "bad guys" themselves. The mess and mayhem of all this, even though we have only gotten this far, already feels like it's up to our chest and ready to overwhelm us. We might ask, how in hell is this to be sorted, if we don't already know how to do so?

To solve the problem, we must think like a detective novel. This does not mean setting up all the events that are to take place well in advance, so that the players are reduced to characters in a book. What the characters do, what they say to others who are engaged in such affairs, must matter as much as their choosing which enemies to fight on a battle field or which places they want to go. However, in our engaging with the players, our goal as a dungeon master is to both dispense information and hoard it, just as any product of film noir or pulp fiction does.

For example, the players are told to meet with an individual, Salif. In this encounter, we must decide first, what does Salif actually know? Then, what is Salif willing to say at this time... and this we divide into what he'll say if only asked, and what he'll say if threatened? Then, finally, more tricky still, what things does Salif think that he knows, but in fact knows inaccurately. This last is all important, since we must always remember that the NPCs the players interact with are themselves operating within the same framework as the players. They only know what they've been able to learn; no one knows everything; and everyone's perspective is riddled with falsehoods and mistaken beliefs.

Again, for example, let us say that someone out there in the maelstrom intends to kill Salif. How do we play this? We can have Salif killed off "camera," as it were, which the party then learns about. Or we can have Salif killed in front of them, where the party can witness it. Or we can have an attempt on Salif's life that the party can either prevent, or fail to prevent. The way we present this information, or design the scene, allows opportunities for the players to interrogate the message bearer, or pursue the murderer, or save the victim. The information, over all, is dispensed out to the party in a way that empowers them a little further, while whetting their appetite for the next piece. If they save him, then Salif has all the more reason to dump everything he knows; if they don't save them, then we decide how much Salif can say before he dies.

This natural consequence based on the character's actions permits legitimate adventuring with the players retaining their agency. They decide whom to search for; they decide what questions to ask; they decide what apparently clues matter, and which are true. They decide if they want to go into dangerous places to learn what they're informed exists there. They have to trade for their lives, giving information they know to those who threaten them. They have to know when to gamble on the humanity of someone who appears to be an enemy; and when not to trust a friend who isn't. We may design the fabric of the conspiracy, but how the players interact with it is entirely up to them.

It is so easy, since we have all the information, to disregard the necessity of an adventure like this to be legitimately player-driven. This is especially made hard by the players themselves, who often fail to see certain obvious clues that we've put right in front of them, which would lead them out of the mess... a misconception which can cause a party to give up hope, to assume that every step they can take is the wrong one. Even that they might as well just quit the adventure and even the game, merely by making themselves blind to some important detail or through they're absolute mistrust of someone who has done everything they can to indicate that they can be trusted. It is the players who are the first to argue that we've rigged the series of events, even when we haven't. This is because most players don't THINK like a detective; they think like those who have never had to face something like this before, and as such, they automatically distrust everyone, on principle.

An intrigue-designed adventure cannot be played with paranoia. It must be played with the confidence that no matter how difficult the immediate situation, there's a way out; there's an ally ready to help; there's something we know that is of value to someone, who won't kill us because we know this thing. It requires players to trust that the DM hasn't rigged the game against them; that, in fact, we HAVE NO REASON TO DO THAT. Players who cannot adopt these perspectives, who possess an automatic, almost reflexive doubt to anything they're told, have no business playing on the dark side of the waterfront. In running these adventures, we want to give the players plenty of information that helps them make thoughtful decisions; but if all the player thinks is that we're giving them rope to hang themselves with, then we might as well not run these sorts of adventures.

We can, here and there, fiddle with small ideas. A single informant where all else is plainly obvious. A pantomime-like villain whose footprints might as well be cast in the white paint he stepped in before entering in his nefarious activities. The occasional uncertain bit of detail that can be thrown into the mix of a clear, upfront adventure. Perhaps, with one player in the party who is better versed in the genre, they might help the others understand how to play it. Otherwise, and until such time as players mature into those who can handle this kind of play, it's best to treat these elements of game play as decorative rather than as the session's foundation.

Cornered

Our next step is to question whether or not combat is an inevitable part of D&D. Traditionally, it has been, as players in various circumstances carry weapons and wear armour for a reason, and not for show. However, with later badly structured combat systems in place, there are many DMs who eschew combat, preferring to focus on other aspects of gameplay, because the mechanics of combat can be sluggish, dragging down the pace of the game and making it boring for both the players and the dungeon master.

It seems obvious, given the failure of the official community to rationally address this problem, that we must address it ourselves. Some advocate that we should twist ourselves into pretzels, adopting time-saving strategies meant to compress moments in combat down to their bare minimum, strategising the way that die modifiers are added up in advance, or demanding players respond with their actions near-instantaneously, to compensate for the rules being radically diverse and complex.

A better answer, it would seem, would be to adopt a top-down approach to fixing the problem. If an automobile becomes so complex that the driver must adopt so many strategies to cope with it that it ends in back problems and a headache at the end of a three hour drive, the solution is not to find a better position in which to sit in order to drive the car. The solution is to sell the damn thing and buy one that drives more easily. In a way, this describes the choice taken by many DMs, who do feel that if the combat system doesn't perform well, get rid of it. But while I suggest getting a better system, they prefer to get rid of the system entirely and replace it by resolving conflicts through social interactions, clever solutions or careful navigation of the world's dangers... treating combat in the game like the addage, "whomsoever throws the first punch loses the argument."

D&D is not a social dispute, however; it's a game, not a moral high ground promoting the idea that violence is the last resort. Violence in D&D is an intentional aspect of the game, with an expansive rule set intended to moderate it, reward for it and frankly encourage it. Combat isn't a fallback or a failure of diplomacy, it's a key part of the adventuring experience.

The real challenge, then, isn't in avoiding combat, but in making combat work. This demands that it be interesting, fluid, easy to play and integral to the players' actions. Our first step is to accept that yes, we have the right to rethink those parts of the combat system that we don't want to be part of our game, going forward. There's a common belief, especially among some DMs, that the rules as written (RAW) are sacrosanct, that to change them is somehow betraying the integrity of the game. But it’s essential that we challenge this notion, because the rules are just tools created by ordinary designers — people who may not have anticipated every style of play, and who certainly aren't sitting next to us as we try to use the contraption they've designed.

The functionality of D&D must continually be questioned if we are to understand our control and mastery of the game, though the experience that we require. We need our game, including the combat system, to be effective and as easy to manage as possible, given that so many aspects of having to control the players, the narrative and the overall demands of the game are already very, very complex. Like anything else that needs to be designed, it's our privilege to look at a part of the game and think, "How can this be done better." In this manner, human beings have improved everything, from flint axes to rocket ships. Our privilege in this process is absolute. It is our game. No designer or official representative of the game takes precedence over our will or that of our players. We have to run this thing; it's our right to fix it, just like we would anything that we buy and which we must use every day, to meet our standard. Empowerment is key here: we are in control, our judgment about what works and what doesn't is valid, and thus we should go about slashing and burning parts of the system as we see fit. Damn those who are not at our table who think otherwise.

But where to start? We must, after all, identify those parts of the combat system that are dragging down the experience and see why. First, let's consider elements of complexity that are bogging down the game's flow. This includes issues such as the initiative system and its aggravating turn order, which must be rescheduled with every round. This process creates dead time where players lose focus and become disengaged, while the changing order creates a confusion about whose turn it is. Why not just establish a set order based upon, say, dexterity, or intelligence, and have it stay that way in perpetuity. Then Oliver knows he always follows Janine, who always follows Dave, so that the person who follows Oliver knows precisely how much time there's left before it time to declare his or her own actions.

We can minimise spellcasting complexity, and at the same time undercut how powerful the spells are by limiting their scope and effectiveness. Force players to find some other way to innovate than by allowing them to invent forty ways each spell might be made useful in some odd and unique situation, which only creates a long-lasting dialogue around, "What if I do this, or that, or this other thing, or possibly this..." and so on endlessly, as the non-spellcasters sit around and wait, wait, wait.

Excessive adjustments to die rolls create enormous problems with combat flow, with nearly every throw being modified in some odd way; deciding which way to modify a throw, additionally, creates a decision paralysis that frequently holds up the game, while the need to be accurate about the totalling of modifiers does also. This constant math in the middle of what should be a fast-paced, exciting part of the game reduces the process to an ugly mathematical problem that, in reality, adds very, very little to the emotional benefit the characters gain. By simply eliminating dozens of adjustments that applies to most players, this has the effect of reducing the number of modifiers without actually changing the power levels of the combatants in respect to one another. And without the time spent on players who make a fetish of stacking modifiers, they, too, have to apply themselves to other solutions in order to improve their combat effectiveness.

We could also consider issues having to do with hit point tracking, specifically the escalation of numbers for damage and hit points. The reason for this shift appears to have been an attempt by game designers to create a more epic and powerful feel for the combat, especially at higher levels. Imaginably, when characters deal out numbers like 40 damage, this is supposed to be significant. Similarly, having creatures with hundreds of hit points also feel more "epic" when a party is facing something massive, like a dragon. The increase in hit points also allows for longer, more drawn-out fights, which can work for some playstyles but ends up bogging down the game for many.

How is it actually a better design to do 40 damage against a creature with 200 hit points than it was to do 5 damage against something with 25 hit points? The experience of the players is the same. The higher numbers adds mental arithmetic and make combat feel longer without increasing the tactical complexity, with a psychological impact that is short-lived, and negligible in any case. Human beings quickly adapt to the change, making the higher numbers appear meaninglessly elevated, while sacrificing the immediacy of combat resolution. When the numbers were smaller, the effect of an attack could be seen at once; with the DM having to constantly adjust totals in the hundreds, it creates a drag on the game.

This said, fixing this problem is an enormous undertaking. It would require a DM to go through a dozen books, page by page, and personally scale down the numbers, which is a time-consuming and complex process. And since all official materials promote these same inflated numbers, every time a new purchase is made, it means more of the same painstaking work... followed by the necessity of teaching one's players to re-adopt numbers that make sense, but which aren't in line with their memories and habits. The problem, then, is virtually insolvable for anyone without a mad sense of righting things, which does not describe the typical dungeon master. In a fashion, then, everyone is forced to deal with this same absolutely unnecessary change to the rules, more or less with our being made into the company's bitch. We are more or less helpless in having to manage the new game's bloated numbers, even when we recognise that they're bloated for no good reason.

This is the reason why many DMs simply accept the system and try to bend themselves to it, rather than fix the system. The car in this case has been deliberately built to be undrivable... and to some degree, the car has cornered the market so that all the cars we might want to buy are undrivable. The way out of this mess and mayhem is long and tedious and without an easy end in sight... but anyone who styles themself as a dungeon master who intends to still be doing this in ten years time must recognise the necessity of addressing these issues as something that CAN'T BE FIXED EASILY. Rationally, it is better to return to an earlier game version of D&D, prior to these changes being made, and add things that we like from later editions. Then, rather than a long period spent tearing down, we are renovating and building up instead, taking a game with less troubles to start with and building it into a game with some later characteristics, but not necessarily all of them.

As stated already, the goal here is empowerment. As a DM, we shall always do better when the game is what we want it to be. This, obviously, isn't simple, and there's no getting around that. There are few drivers who decide that the best way to get the car they want is to build one themself in their garage, over the space of years... but here I am advocating exactly this mentality if what's wanted is a smooth, practical, immersive game. IF car companies the world over were dedicated to making undrivable cars, then more drivers WOULD be making their own car in their own basement — this would become, unquestionably, a world-wide phenomenon, until the car makers changed their ways and adopted a more sensible product. This author did not invent this problem; it merely exists, of it's own accord, and the solution is not one that can be gotten around in some other way.

Exploring

Putting estimation behind us, we may progress into the realm of planning, which I'll define as building the framework that enables the entire game to function during play. In ancient times, when I wrote How to Run, I tried to address this by encouraging the DM to conceive of the world in terms of entities (such as factions, powers and major entities) and geographical structure... but I've since abandoned that approach for something that I hope may be more easily grasped and therefore applied.

To begin with, the setting must have earth-like features, whether or not it is a fantasy, simply because it's going to be occupied by creatures that human beings can conceive of. We may therefore dispense with thinking in terms of geography and whatever, assuming for the present that yes, those things exist, but they're not fundamental to the way we build the setting. We need to think instead about providing those aspects of the setting that are, again, essential for supporting the game's content. This isn't about creating new idea, per se, as it is about deciding which elements are important for the game to work.

We might stipulate the following core assumptions about what the players will want to do in game play. They're going to explore their surroundings, seeking out new places. They're going to engage in combat or conflict when confronted by threats. They'll have to solve problems that arise, whether these are decisions that have to be made, social dynamics that need to be navigated or conundrums that require cogitation to solve. Another fundamental pattern is no doubt going to be the accumulation of wealth, power, objects and what not. And they'll likely pursue personal goals as they're motivated to do so.

These are the base things that we need to plan for. Let's just take the first. For the players to explore their surroundings in an ordinary D&D game, certain fundamental aspects must be invented. The players will need a civilised area, such as a town, village or city, and probably more than one. Here, they can interact with peaceful, helpful non-player characters, gather information, rest and exchange for resources. Such places provide a location in which to ground themselves, a place that can be familiar, with other services and opportunities for them to be safe and pursue both commerce and relationships.

Surrounding these areas must be a wilderness or untamed area, no matter how small, to provide the essential space for players to freely adventure. This wilderness serves as a contrast to the ordered, socially structured world. Here, the players are free to move their character pieces on the gaming board without worrying about the constraints of civil law, social etiquette or status. It is a space where their choices and abilities are tested against raw, primal forces — whether that’s the threat of monsters, harsh environmental conditions, or ancient forgotten powers. The wilderness offers the chance for players to push boundaries, explore forbidden or dangerous areas, and engage in the more violent aspects of the game.

We want places of significance... locations that hold meaning or purpose within the game, both in civilised and uncivilised places. This can be some oddly beneficial facility that the players must travel some distance to reach, that gives them some special bonus or knowledge that can't be gained anywhere else. It is more obviously a dungeon. These locations aren’t just notable because they are where players fight monsters or gather loot, but because they create lasting impressions. A place of significance should alter the players' understanding of the setting; such locations serve us best when they reframe how the players think and feel about the game itself.

When possible, there's an opportunity in such locales to get into the players' heads, creating real emotional engagement and disruption — whetting their appetites for things they don't even know they want: revelations about themselves or their allies, unexpected morale dilemmas or thrills that draw them deeper into the game on a personal level. This kind of engineering isn't easy to understand, and it needs to be addressed in greater depth... for the present, for those who haven't yet seen how to do this, it's best for the present just to comprehend that the concept is out there, waiting to be plumbed.

Within the realm of the more easily understood, we should consider the basic formulas underlying the setting's infrastructure. Roads and routes for travel is just the surface. Understanding how goods are grown and brought to market, how resources are collected and then manufactured into goods, whether or not we want to pursue an economy, are details that give purpose to the workers and managers throughout the society. From there we need to understand the political framework of the world, not in terms of diplomacy or national conflict, but how authority is divided, providing the players with insight as to how the rungs of the world's power ladder can be climbed.

These tools tell us where the players can find things, and how the various facilities of the game world, from inns to castles, need to be placed and scattered throughout the setting. Much of this can be as simple as finding some basic works describing the historical period that more or less defines where the players live and what they see. From there, comprehending the function and nature of the supernatural system that underlies the game world, if there is one, helps in providing an explanation for all sorts of weird and unexpected patterns that affect our player character's day-to-day.

Some may find such "homework" boring; others may feel obligated or encouraged to pursue deeper and deeper concepts, a path that is encouraged by asking the right questions. Begin with what the thing is, then move onto how it became that way. From there, determine why it ultimately changed before our present day arrived. If it didn't change, try to understand why it didn't. When encountering an odd world, search for what it is on wikipedia or more modern chat programs. Keep at it. Knowledge accumulates slowly. As Churchill said about the accumulation of munitions, the first year you get nothing; the second year, very little; the third, a trickle... and the fourth year, a flood. The same ideal must be applied for anyone who wishes to familiarise themselves with the function of an ENTIRE WORLD. For a long, long time, it seems like a frustrating, wasted effort, and certainly nothing that can be usefully applied to a game like dungeons and dragons. And then one day, when one least expects, the knowledge changes everything about the way we run as dungeon masters.

This, then, is the basic scaffold of the setting: safe places, dangerous places and routes between them. In most parts of the world, these should blend together. Initially, it's easy to imagine a town that sits upon the threshold of a wilderness. For personal experience, we comprehend naturally that there are streets of an urban centre that are safe to walk along, and others that should not be ventured into, especially at night. Anyone who has stayed overnight at a seedy hotel recognises there's good reason to hesitate before knocking on some stranger's door, or even speaking to persons in the halls. No place is entirely safe; likewise, there should always be places in the wilderness, even in the heart of a dungeon, that are justifiably "safe," even if magic is needed to make them so.

This blending of elements makes the world feel more organic, less compartmentalised... and therefore, more immersive. This creates an environment that keeps the players on their toes. A fusion of elements reinforces the setting as a volatile, active place, like a set of chemical reactions on the verge of occurring, perhaps set to explode when this slow moving green stream actually reaches that small blue pool. Knowing what happens increases the intensity with which we'll watch the event unfold — it is this precise design that we want to incorporate into the fabric of things going on around the players as they gawk about. This designing of tension into the setting is as important as any other element we want to incorporate... which is accomplished by understanding that things around the player are not standing still. Like the dangerous stream moving towards the safe pool, the setting is in motion.

Essentialisms

Before beginning today's post, I want to inform readers that the Authentic Wiki will go offline on September 30th, as the company handling the server is relocating. A temporary server is meant to take over during the transition, but this won't happen until October 2nd, two days later. There is a chance of complications with the carrier, but I've been told that the company is expected to be fully operational by October 4th. If the wiki is not restored on October 2nd, which is a Wednesday, rest assured it should be back up by Friday, October 4th.

I hope this doesn't disrupt anyone’s D&D game or spoil any plans. To reiterate, the server will go down on Monday and, if everything proceeds smoothly, should be up again by Wednesday, October 2nd.

Today's post is about balancing our preparatory workload against what's essential for the players and the actual session. This requires a reasonable, practical estimation on our part of how much time we have, and how important it is that the party's needs are given priority. This is not to say that we must work on the upcoming session, but rather, we will be better prepared for that session, and therefore more proactive as dungeon masters, if that session is given a sufficient amount of preparation.

The key word in the above is "essential"... the less we judge to be essential, the less preparation we have to give them, and the more time it allows for the rest of our campaign design and other preparation. Some basic framework is desirable here; "essential" is an abstract concept, one that will differ for every DM, every party and every edition or genre of role-playing game. To start, we should judge these last two, edition and genre, by what kind of time we have and how realistic these rule systems are where it comes to soaking up our time with pre-game prep. Many DM's deliberately choose simpler game models for this reason... by changing the player's expectations, by using a work like "basic" to describe the form of dungeons and dragons that we're playing, we reduce the hurdles we ourselves need to climb. Even the words said to a player, "Well this is only basic after all," is a way of deactivating a player's demands that we put more work into our campaign.

Naturally, this sort of obfuscation is undesirable. Yes, it's used, and even malevolently in some cases... but it's better if we choose, instead, to adapt ourselves and our time to the edition or genre we've chosen, as a point of honesty between ourselves and our players. We want to do right by them. We want to measure up to a standard that we set for ourselves that impresses them. We don't want to play a basic game merely to justify our laziness.

At the same time, there aren't a lot of doctors or lawyers who are building campaigns and running D&D games. For those of us who are committed to 70 hour a week jobs hundreds of miles from civilisation, hell, if there's time to run, screw the prep. I write this as a fellow with a cushy homelife, whose child has grown, who can go to bed when he pleases and only sets the alarm a few times a month; I can afford to get lost in worldbuilding and fascinating details that may see no value during an actual session for several years, if ever. There is, recognisably, a scale between these two extremes; it's up to the reader to locate where they fall upon it.

Up front, engage with the situation immediately in front of the player: threats to their existence, the actual physical halls they're going to be moving through, or detailed clues that need to be physically drawn or written out — so we don't mess up. This kind of information lets the players navigate their environment; realistically, we need to put just enough environment in front of them so they don't run out of it before the end of the session. If they run out the minute the session ends... we've done an excellent job of estimating.

Repeated sessions with the same group, and with the same game structure and style, increases the skill we have at estimating how much detail is needed. Changing the game from week to week, or restarting the campaign, makes this a challenge, as different genres changes the parameters of what's being estimated. An additional player to the campaign also does this... as does a player who fails to come to the session. In fact, this is the most trying of this preparatory difficulty: realistically, we need to prepare not just for the party we expect to show up, but for the party that DOES show up.

Are we prepared, for example, if we expected five players and only two appear? We should think about this ahead of time, giving thought to what would could do if this should happen. Consider... it may feel like three people not showing up for a session is evidence that the session is dying. On the other hand, having only two players brings a golden opportunity, if we're prepared for it. These two players get more of our time, they get a larger share of the treasure, we can go faster with two and potentially, the session can be distinctly designed for them.

This does rely on our knowing which two it's going to be. To some degree, we can probably guess; alternately, we can imagine the creation of five mini-adventures, with details for each player, and then mash up any two of them into something we can present at will should it be needed.

The golden opportunity comes from our being able to really gain the interest and trust of these two players, as a measure of what we can do for them. This helps "sell" our game, if not to the other three players, potentially to still others who are impressed by our more reliable clients and the stories about our game that we tell. What we do not want to do with the two players is say, "Well, if most of us didn't show up, what'ya say if we just call the game tonight?" We should be prepared for NOT having to do this.

For those of us who have played a lot of games on the fly, but don't see this as the end goal of DMing, there's much to learn in discovering what kind of preparation works best in adapting the session to be run upon a change in circumstances. Sessions sometimes take unexpected turns; players decide to take different actions, and this must also be prepared for.

It's supposed that when performing improvisation, the actor wholly relies on whatever phrases or limitations the audience throws out. What's not generally understood is that the audience is limited to only a few things — usually character, setting and situation. This leaves out a vast number of possibilities, such as what profession my "improved" character has, whether or not my improved character is married, how old I am, do I have a wooden leg ... and hundreds of other details that I can "improv" time and again before different audiences, who don't realise that I've pre-invented months ago what additional details these "off-story" additions can bring to the apparently amazing off-the-top-of-my-head performance.

Like an actor, a DM should have numerous pre-invented moments and "off-story" details that can be applied to unexpected player actions in a powerful, though apparently off-handed way. This kind of thing can stun a party, who can't understand how it's possible that we "roll with the punches" so easily. It is easy when we predict the punch and choreograph the roll weeks, months or years before the session. There are such scenes that I've run with my own players that are no different than something I ran in the 1990s or 80s with other players.

This illusion of seamless improvisation is nothing more than the stockpiling of enough ideas, details and scenarios to provide an "inventory" we can draw on for this particular moment. If necessary, we can slip off to the bathroom and think though half a dozen, so that one's at hand in our minds the moment we sit down again. Getting ourselves a cup of coffee is another good sort of "time wasting" that feels completely normal but gives us time to dredge up our memories.

So much for underestimating the players needs; what about overestimating them? Here I don't mean creating three sessions in advance, when the third session's presumptions may all be useless by the time the players get there. Instead, let's consider info-dumping, where a DM tries to insert more detail into the session than is really necessary. The players don't need the villages history or how the architecture has evolved over the last five centuries, or even the name of the local burgher or lord... and we don't need to know every single NPCs character, rolled out in hour after hour of wasted time, as well as our having chosen a name for each. The players don't care. "The bartender" is perfectly fine until the players specifically ask for a name, whereupon we can call him whatever name first pops into our head. I knew a DM who simply identified every bartender as "Fred," every apothecary as "Liam" and every guard as "Sam," which made it quite clear that he did not care about names and preferred we spend less time on trying to engage NPCs in dialogue and more time actually getting on with things. The humour of shouting out "Sam" at a strange guard and having him turn and say, "Yes, what do you want?" soon passed away and the game went on without that detail really mattering.

"Essential" really means exactly that. What do we need to create in order to make the game run smoothly? What details can't be made up in an instant in our heads (like the hit points of something) and really require some serious brain sweat (like, for example, would this ton of wheat bring if it were bought here and dragged fifty miles by the party to another town). Anything that can be invented in a finger snap is unlikely to get in the way of the game's smoothness. But not having anything written down about what a complex magic item does, or why the players should invest their time and effort to stop a war, is going to gum up the works pretty bad. Thus, we spend time preparing difficult things; easy things don't need preparation. In fact, it takes more time to find a number of hit points written down on a sheet of paper than to invent a number at once. Remember, the number doesn't actually matter; so long as its in and around the average number a typical monster of that type would have, we're fine.

Pacing matters more than details do... but if we can maintain both, our game is better for it. Remember, again and again, if we prepare nothing, the game still works. It still "plays" fine. Preparation isn't critical... it's merely beneficial. Cake with icing makes a nice treat. It's better if the icing is pretty, with flowers and a sweet phrase, but no one's going to turn down cake because it's not pretty. When we approach preparation, then, we should do it for what we want to ADD, not as something the game's going to fail without. This removes the pressure, reminds us to pay attention to what we want to add, and concentrate on the fact that we're improving our game, not "rescuing" it from failure.

Spoons

About four times I've tried to write this post today, unable to... hm... get up the nerve.

Yesterday's gift truly threw me for a loop.  Starting in reading it has been, well, um, humbling.  And I've struggled to identify some benchmark I could turn to as a way to grasp this unusual, rather overwhelming kindness.  It's disrupted my thinking so that both yesterday and today, I've been at a loss to produce anything creative.  I've been working around the house, applying myself to physical labour, getting things that should have been put to rights months ago, because my head is in a whirl.

This morning a worthy connection came to mind; it's from the 1955 John Ford film, Mister Roberts.  If you don't know the film, it's difficult to explain exactly how this scene comes about.  Essentially, for decency rendered as an officer, for sacrifices given and for actions taken, specifically tossing a palm tree overboard, the crew decides on their own volition to demonstrate their gratitude to Mr. Roberts.  See the film, if you can.  It's a damn sight better than any other film except for Marty, which deservedly won best picture... and the two of them are close.

This is how the book that was given makes me feel.  If you want to see my face; or hear my voice; and know how hard it's hit me... watch the link.

I'll never watch this film the same way.

So, in lieu of something else, I'm going to take a moment to talk about spoon theory.  This is a metaphor proposed by Christine Miserandino, "describing the amount of physical or mental energy a person has available for daily activities and tasks.  Miserandino applies it to chronic illness and it's logically designed for that, but after a conversation yesterday with my daughter, who brought this to my attention, I think it accurately describes the reality of creative endeavours and our capacity to invent.  In my daughter's case, where I'll begin, it relates to the time she has, as she progresses through the creation of her family unit.  She is, at present, pregnant with her second child.

As she tells it, every day is limited by the needs of her husband, the disabled cousin that lives with them, her not-quite 4 y.o. son (birthday September 28th) and certain medical difficulties arising with the pregnancy.  She has become, in the last four years, increasingly tired of those younger, childless, marriage-less, free spirited persons of her own age who, as my daughter explains, are ready to "take her spoons" in the way of time and favours given, but they don't give very many spoons back, for reasons that obviously don't have to do with the time they have.  I think many of us here can relate to this.  It's not that we don't like our friends.  It's not that we don't want to be there for our friends... is that our friends, particularly those without sincere responsibilities, don't seem to understand that we only have a set number of spoons available to us each day.  And that, when we give a spoon to someone else, because they need us to come help them move, or because they haven't got their rent this month, our sacrificing a spoon means there's something we can't have now for ourselves.

Which is perfectly fine... if now and then, someone comes and helps us clean our house, or move our junk, or clean our carpets, or look after our children, surrendering their spoons so we can use ours for those things we usually don't have time for.

This, however, affects me less than her.  I am only looking after a grandson now and then, and we're grateful that he's collected just as we're running out of the spoons we need to watch him.  Most of the time, I have plenty of spoons when I wake up each morning.  I can spend them on my responsibilities and the things that I enjoy, most of the time.  My issue is a creative scarcity, not a physical one.

Quite a lot of the time, I wake up in the morning without a single creative spoon to my name.  I want creative spoons.  I just don't happen to have any.  I cleaned my carpets last Wednesday with my daughter and when Thursday came around, the one spoon I had was used for the blog post I wrote that day.  I felt it was a good use.  I would have needed two or three spoons to do any serious writing, I didn't have them.  In fact, I haven't had them all week, because realistically, I just don't have the body I had when I was 35.  When I was 35, I didn't have the brain I had now.

Which means, more or less, when I was 35, I had no spoons because I was stupid, and today I have no spoons because I'm tired.

But, I take a rest, I accumulate spoons, and I try to use them as best I can.

Yesterday, by surprise, Osterman, Maddox, Becker and Joslyn sent me a whole freaking bucket of spoons.  I am hip deep in spoons.  I'm just trying to process it.

So, when I feel down; when I have doubts; when I'm not motivated... I know exactly where to go to get myself the spoon I need.  Fellas... thank you.  You cannot guess what it has meant to me.

Uh...

My friends, my good people.  I am touched.

These four have sent me a book in support of work and myself.  I've had only time to read the forward; and that has been enough to put me on the verge of tears.  And let me say, after much pain in my life, it hurts to cry.  That never comes without having to climb over some very big hurdles.

It'll take me some time to read this... but bless you all.  Thank you.  You've really put your fingers on my heart.

Prepping for Sessh

Setting aside the accumulation of knowledge, or research, let's discuss instead how much preparation is necessary for a session, and what sorts of preparation ought we to do? Things we want to think about include the events or conflicts that are likely to arise with the next session; what obstacles, like a dungeon or the aforementioned bandits, are they about to encounter? How "new" is the region that the players are entering? Do we have maps for it? Do we know what's living there, or anything about it's physical dangers? Are we set up to run the combats that might happen, including hit points, number of combatants and an understanding of the spells or advanced powers the enemy has at their disposal?

We need to estimate how much knowledge of the setting, it's encounters and the rules that are going to apply that we need, before actually running the session. We want to avoid giving too much attention to areas that the players might bypass; there's nothing more annoying than spending a week designing a dungeon level the players never enter. On the other hand, if we prepare too little, that's going to mean more reactive running on our part, where the goal here is to be proactive.

Let's be completely honest. We're never going to get this exactly right. Player actions are inherently unpredictable, while successfully judging their interests and habits requires considerable game experience and an upteen number of sessions spent with the same players, to get a real handle on their proclivities. Early attempts at estimation will produce predictable failed results, which we shouldn't take too much to heart. For example, a quick conversation with an NPC that we think is going to run for five minutes ends up running for 30, preventing our getting to the critical part of the dungeon with tonight's session. Or the reverse happens, where a battle we thought would take an hour is wrapped up and done in 15 minutes, through the player's innovations or plain good luck. Suddenly, we have 45 minutes we're not prepared to run, at the end of the session, when we're mentally burned out from running the game.

Another issue is that players will have notions we couldn't possibly have considered — after having carefully arranged a meeting with a merchant, who's going to fill the party in on what they need to know, they unexpectedly attack the merchant instead, seizing his wares and coin. Unfortunately, we have no details about the merchant or his guards, how much coin he has or how to handle the rest of the adventure now that the merchant is dead and the information the party needed with him. Now, we have no idea what the party is going to do, and neither do they... and while we scramble to think about how to transmit this critical information to the party in some other way, they're suddenly realising they forgot just why they'd set up the meeting in the first place. This sounds unlikely, but it's exactly the sort of thing that parties tend to do, much to the frustration of many a dungeon master.

Our best strategy is to have in mind — often no more than a thought with no realised work done — a contingency plan of just what to do if the players do something immortally stupid. Just as a photographer might bring an extra camera to a shoot, when there's no expectation of ever using it, we're always sure to have someone else in mind in the game who ALSO knows what the merchant knows. In the meantime, we might conceive of a "mini-adventure" that can pop up to fill the empty space in a running, that's been created for just such an occasion. An example could be a random ambush by some kind of local wildlife, which may not carry much significance for the players, but it will waste an hour of their time, which is fair considering they've just wasted at least an hour of ours. And while they're fighting this out, or talking about it, we can slip out for a cup of coffee to think of something to do that comes after.

Another example could be to interject some natural event, which the players wouldn't expect: a sudden flooding of a river, explained by suggesting there was a very heavy rainstorm the night before, and now this is happening; or a rockslide randomly occurs, forcing a few characters to make checks to avoid getting pulverised. Even if such things only last five minutes of a running, it can give us time to think... though the downside is that these ideas, while thought out ahead of time, are essentially reactive to the players actions. We didn't plan to do such things and now that we have, our game has been made unbalanced by them.

With time, the stronger answer to these unexpected moments is to, well, expect them. This may seem counterintuitive, but remaining constantly attuned to everything that's happening at the game table, over time, builds a repertoire of patterns that reach beyond our cerebral capacity to recognise them when they're happening. We are, in fact, humans, with human limitations. But, this does not keep us from "noticing" things unconsciously.

For example, we may not see it, but the player on our right always begins playing with his dice just before doing something outlandish. We don't consciously notice this; he most likely doesn't either. Nonetheless, as it happens consistently, the moment he starts playing with his dice, we're subconsciously triggered by it and without realising it, we feel a compulsion to turn on the player and doubly assert the importance of this moment. The player, without anyone noticing, stops playing with his dice... and the game goes on without the disruption that might have occurred... even though no one consciously tried to prevent it.

This sounds crazy; but it is, in fact, something that those in police and fire services are taught to expect, as well as those in the military. There are courses that teach these persons working in these dangerous professions now to develop this heightened sensitivity, called "situational awareness." It's the simple, instinctive feeling that something is "off"... and with additional time spent as a dungeon master, handling random, highly emotionalised game play, we too can take advantage of it.

But it takes time... and until some years pass, we have to do our best to shape the game's details, within reason, trusting that we will get better at it. Much of the resistance to this kind of preparation comes, first, from the fact that it isn't as interesting as actually running the game. Planning excitement can be, for some, very frustrating and even boring. But the more difficult hurdle to overcome is the feeling that it's just not worth doing... especially if it's boring. For a long time, it doesn't seem to do any good, and it's easy for us to be convinced that we're just wasting our time.

Many DMs embrace this belief and never adjust themselves to anything except running on the fly. They then pollute dialogues and discussions about being a dungeon master with arguments from their untrained and uncommitted point of view, urging others to be just as lazy and just as ignorant as they are, as though this is the best strategy. Once again, we've discussed at various points that yes, the game can be played with this mindset; D&D allows that. But this "advice" isn't; it's simply excuse making, along the lines of saying, "I didn't work at it, and if you do, it makes me look bad." Well, that can't be helped. It's easy to make some DMs look bad when they are bad.

Labour of Love

Moving on, let us consider "potential outcomes," which were also referenced here, when first talking about research.

When anticipating the games needs, we are actively considering the situations, challenges and mechanics that are likely to arise in an upcoming session, just as we said in the last post. These are based on the narrative arc that has been building over time, as well as tendencies we've noticed among the players. We are, in effect, while running the game, "researching" the players' behaviour and proclivities just as though we were Jane Goodall observing a tribe of apes. Most of the time, the inter-party discussions will tell us plainly what their plans are, but there are other things we may also observe from the questions players ask or those things they are plainly interested in.

For example, imagine the players are discussing how to handle the upcoming encounter with a bandit leader, debating on how they're going to sneak into his camp and dispatch him without the other bandits knowing. While focused on this immediate challenge, their conversation starts to meander. One player remarks on how glad she's going to be when the bandit is gone, and they can get back to a dungeon of some kind, which meets with approval from others. Meanwhile, another speaks about the so-called gratitude of the local lord for whom they're working, when he disappointed them the last time. This discontent is reflected in the comments of the other players, who then get back to the matter at hand.

Here, we've been given two things to play with. First, that the players would more likely prefer that this adventure right now be a dungeon, rather than having to wait for the next adventure, and the other, that the lord isn't much liked, though the party is beholden to him.

Our "anticipation" of the party's needs at this point is pretty much a question of our being able to read the writing on the wall. First, obviously, THIS adventure right now needs a dungeon... so, in the blink of an eye, we transform the bandit leader's tent into a dungeon entrance, which surprises the party and gives them what they want, without having to wait. This can be easily slid into our present arc, as the "dungeon" doesn't need to be more than a few rooms, which will nevertheless please the players until they can hie themelves off to a bigger dungeon later.

Second, let's get rid of the local lord. When the players get back, they find the lord is dead, either stabbed or he choked to death on a chicken bone. The lord's replacement turns out to be much more generous and grateful, which brings the party an unexpected boon when what they expected were scraps. Small, easy adjustments to the campaign world are easy to do, fundamentally do not change the narrative arc in play, while practically acting as wish fulfillment for the party. Of course, it works only because the players think this was our plan all along, and did not happen because of some off-handed remark that, probably, they won't remember making.

Adjustments like these are practical, subtle and effective in making the game feel more tailored to the players without breaking immersion or derailing their agency. Very often, small adjustments like these feel natural, while enhancing engagement in a world that unexpectedly "goes right" for the party from time to time. At the same time, we avoid making the mistake of artificially hand-holding the players, which makes them feel as if they're not really playing, but instead having everything handed to them.

Apart from such obvious flags, however, what about those less overt clues we may gather from the players interests, which have nothing to do with ongoing game play? This takes more effort on our part. What players casually talk about --their personal preferences, certain interests they have in game subjects, questions about the setting's background, an affection they show for a non-player character they've met, even questions about how magic actually functions in our game world or how it is that gaining experience levels "fits" with the physical, non-meta nature of the character's perspective.

Say a player expresses curiosity about how magic works in the world and we explain it. Of course, this requires we need an explanation, but let's take this as a given, for the present. It may not seem so, but this is an opportunity for us to further engage the player in the setting without that engagement being part of the narrative arc. The question demonstrates that the player cares about such things... and because this is so, we take some of our own time, away from the game session, and think, "How else might magic work in our game, outside the mechanics we expressed?" Maybe we start thinking about different schools of thought within the setting, where certain scholars or mages theorise alternative sources or methods for generating magic—something not covered in the rulebooks but which could exist in our world’s background.

This may take some skull sweat, but it improves our own thinking about such things and sets us up to infuse a different vibe into the game's world. For example, we could imagine a theory where magic isn’t the creation of forces through intellect (if this is how magic works in our setting) and that it might ALSO be tapping into a purely external force. Once we have this idea, we could think about how to introduce it naturally into the events of the narrative; suppose the player, this same player who earlier asked about magic, meets an NPC who embodies this alternative theory; perhaps, he or she is a reclusive scholar or mage from some isolated obscure school of thaumaturgy, who engages the player's character in a meaningful conversation about the nature of magic.

This NPC doesn’t challenge the game’s mechanics but offers a new perspective, discussing their research or beliefs with the curious player, maybe even proposing that magic works differently in certain parts of the world. The discussion could inspire the player to seek more knowledge or pursue a side quest to explore these ideas further. By doing this, we’ve taken the player’s curiosity, turned it into a thought-out aspect of the game... and fed it back into the narrative in a way that both enhances their experience and respects the integrity of the game’s system.

It was, in fact, the player who "invented" the idea, by asking the question, that sparked our imagination, that led to the alternative, that was then supplied to the player who may, or may not, find this engaging. The chances are good, if we judged the player correctedly when the subject was first brought up... that he or she really did care about how magic worked, and wasn't just asking flippantly.

This requires certain attitudes and perspectives from the dungeon master. We must be proactive enough to recognise that when a player asks a question, its not "just a question"... it's evidence that the mind of the player is being engaged with our campaign. Further, it demands that we don't embrace "one answer" to anything we say to a player regarding our campaign. We always assume, instead, that there are "exceptions to the rule," regarding how the world works and what things might exist in it. Finally, we must have a mindset that wants to pursue these exceptions outside the game, because we ourselves are fascinated by our own game's structure, function and behaviour. Without these factors in ourselves, there's really no way we can take advantage of these opportunities.

It's a sore spot with some DMs who suppose that preparing for the game is something we do, and that once we're "done," we move onto the next thing. In reality, the stronger approach is just to accept that no part of the world is ever really done. By adopting an open-mind towards every part of the game, especially those that interest the players, we shift and adapt and grow ourselves, so that the game we are running ten years from now bears little similarity to the one our present-day players engage with. This is a good thing. D&D is not staid or fixed; it is a living, breathing, evolving organism, which will either die if we do not feed it, or it will grab and carry us along in its clutches, while we cheerfully let it take us to wherever it wants.

Of course, this means the task is never ending... and that to some degree, we're always scrambling to ready ourselves for the next session. For this reason, and no other, a DM must fall "in love"... or else it is just work, work, work all the time.

Rules Larnin'

Just as with the setting, understanding the rules enables the DM to be proactive during gameplay. Briefly, for clarity's sake, when we talk about "the rules," we refer to the system that governs the mechanics of the game — how combat works, how spells are cast, how abilities function and how success or failure is determined through dice rolls. The rules serve as the foundation that keeps the game consistent and fair, providing structure for everything that happens within the world.

To "understand" the rules means to internalise this system to the point where the DM does not need to constantly reference rulebooks or second-guess decisions. This requires not only familiarity with the basics, but a deeper knowledge but a deeper knowledge of why each rule exists, what it attempts to accomplish within the game, how the rule binds the players' actions, and — most importantly — how players are likely to push back against that rule, and why.

Each rule affects the manner in which the player's "game piece," the character, is allowed to "move on the board." D&D being such a complicated game, there can be a hundred ways that this is possible, most of them dependent on other factors outside the player; managing these alternatives, not only for multiple players but also for NPCs, monsters and various ways in which the setting itself can infringe upon the game pieces, creates a tremendously flexible system that, at the same time, is next to impossible to manage without a solid grasp of all the mechanics in play.

As familiarity with the rules accumulates, the we become better equipped to make swift, confident decisions, without having to do so arbitrarily. Arbitrary rulings are merely evidence of not knowing the rule, or not knowing where to find it through minimal familiarity with the rules. Additionally, when a DM chooses to make an arbitrary ruling, regardless of what justifications he or she has, this is in fact a demonstration that this particular DM has little to know understanding of why the rule even exists, much less why it ought to be imposed in a particular way. As we have discussed, D&D can function as a game this way; it can even thrive, given a certain type of player... with the result that it devolves into an inconsistent mess where reliance on the DM's judgment becomes so imposed that the players are denied any real agency.

We must be careful not to equate "the system works," as arbitrary DMs will argue, and "the system is ideal," which is a whole other matter. A dependency upon arbitrary rulings passes the agency of the game from the players, who operate the game pieces, to the DM, who has no game piece, as this obstensibly facilitates the game's function. As agency moves away from the players and into the DM's sphere, the game becomes but a shadow of what it could be. It must be said, however, that once the agency has accumulated in the DM's hands, the number of "moves" the pieces can make declines drastically, making the game both less flexible and considerably easier for the DM to manage.

Let's commend the DM that has decided to embrace the rules, desiring to ensure the game is fair and consistent in the way the rules intended. Making this momentous effort is evidence of a person of substance... while failing at the effort, sometimes for literally years, is a path that every "qualified" DM had to walk at some point. This is not an easy rule set, nor should we pretend it is. No one, whomever it might be, can honestly protest that it's "easy." On the contrary, it's easy to resort to making snap, arbitrary decisions instead, to keep things moving... and in the beginning, we're going to do that. It does not matter that we're perfect in every moment, or that we don't take a desperate action now and then, for our sanity. The complexity of these rules demands that we must. What matters is that we maintain the vision of one day becoming able to run the game on the level that it's meant to be run... and to recognise, when they happen, those little moments that assure us that yes, in fact, we're getting there.

Therefore, yes, the DM should occasionally make the players wait while the game is paused, to admit that we want, in this moment, to get the rules right. We can be open about this. We can say to the players, "This is the part of this game that matters to ME; I do appreciate that we're all champing at the bit to get at the orcs, but this, just right now, is a part of my learning process as a DM, so give me three extra minutes and we can move forward."

In every situation like this, being direct and open about what we're going through is a way to build camaraderie between the players and ourselves. It reminds them that we are not just a utility for their use, we are a person, one who is trying our honest best to give them the best game we can. We should trust that our players will respect and appreciate this dedication on our part... it takes a fairly selfish person to condemn effort and capability on principle. Then, once the moment is past, and the ruling is clear, the very fact that it was highlighted increases the probability that everyone will remember that ruling going forward, not just us.

This transparency about the learning process should relieve much of the pressure on a new DM. Admitting that we need to pause for clarity or check a rule removes the unrealistic expectation we place upon ourselves that we must know everything, all the time. This allows us to run a more friendly, thoughtful and fair game, especially as the players understand that "fair" is our priority... rather than, say, efficiency or obstinacy, which is the mark of many a DM's approach. To improve as dungeon masters, we must do so without fear of being judged, by ourselves most of all. In turn, with each of these pauses, a positive, friendly game group will enjoy learning themselves about the complexities of running the game.

In practical terms, don't attempt to learn all the rules at once. We should try to familiarise ourselves with one subset at a time, potentially setting up "learning sessions" with one other player to play out mock combats or discussing the ins and outs of a particular rule. "Nitpicking" forums can be held at random in the minutes before starting a game or at it's end, reading out a random rule from the books and asking the players to express what they like or don't like about the rule. These don't just have to occur pre-game, either. Bringing up such things while driving with friends, or at a bar, or between classes, encourages a sense of everyone having a part in learning the rules... which is a rising tide that potentially raises all boats.

Importantly, all such strategies contribute to the DM's proactive approach to the game, where we already know the rule before it's invoked, where we even expect the rule to be invoked, because we know precisely what monsters the party is about the meet, or what setting they're about to enter. With time and patience, this "knowing ahead of the game" itself becomes the impetus for knowing where to crack the books on the day of, which then really does permit us to look like we "know it all," when it fact we know it took a long, long time to get here.