Finding D&D - 1

I stretch. My D&D books are laid out on the dining room table. It’s almost evening on Saturday as I slide the vacuum cleaner into its closet, the last step in making the apartment clean. The windows are open and the fans are running. Late September and yet it’s going to be a muggy night for the game. I head for the kitchen where I stretch again before pouring cold coffee into my cup. This goes in the microwave; I punch a minute-forty and wait, running my plans for tonight’s game in my head.

I sit at the table, making notes. The coffee’s good and hot. I think over an idea I have for one of the NPC children, unsure if it’s right, wrong ... or maybe going too far. The scenario might hit Susan a little hard in the gut. Dramatic, though. Believable too.

My thoughts are interrupted by the buzzer. I know it’s Rick before I touch the intercom. It’s Rick, and he’s early. I let him in.

I leave my apartment and go to the stairs, seeing his hand move along the railing down below me. I say, "Hello," and he apologises as he climbs. He's always early and he always apologises. When he's almost at the top, I ask if he wants some lemonade.

"Yes, please," he says, and I turn away and go in my apartment, which is right by the stairs; he follows me inside, taking off his shoes by the door. By the time he catches up to me, I'm pouring his glass full. "I need this," he says. "But I've got to go back downstairs. My truck isn't doing so well in this weather. I need to do some work on it. You don't mind?"

I tell him I don't. I tell him to take the lemonade with him and he declines, finishing the glass in two gulps. Then together, we head out; I pause to lock the door while he starts down. I follow him down the three flights to the street.

Rick, short for Richard, opens the hood and tells me he's inspecting his radiator hoses for leaks, explaining that there's a sweet antifreeze odour he can smell. I nod politely, knowing nothing about cars or trucks. I don’t own a car, don’t drive, don’t know one thing about engine maintenance. But I listen and let him talk, because most times I’m talking and he’s listening. He putters and I drink my coffee, and in a minute or two, predictably, he’s talking about his cleric, Einrugg.
Einrugg has recently reached 6th level and Rick is excited. Some five sessions ago I suggested that maybe Einrugg should start a church, and the idea has just now gotten into Rick's head. He wants to know how much responsibility a church would be, and what's the upside.

I tell him that once the church is built, so long as Einrugg gives a sermon there one week in four—and finds some subordinate priest to carry the congregation on other weeks—Einrugg can count on a stipend from the collection plate whenever he arrives in town. “It’s a steady income and makes you a part of the local community," I say. “You become an important person, you get some status, and if you invest your money in the area, you'll make friends. When you give a sermon, you tell the congregation about your adventuring and you make those stories into parables.”

"How do I do that?" he asks; already, I'm talking over his head.

“Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to actually make up stories. You tell me that your cleric makes a parable, and it just happens. And when the congregation hears what Einrugg has to say, you become a hero. People talk about you. They spread your fame through the kingdom. You get invited to the best events and parties, get to know the king, and everybody respects you. At least, eventually. You still have to run the character through situations before you get there ... but that’s the idea.”

Rick looks thoughtful. "I guess." His hand, feeling along the radiator hose, stops. "There you are, you little devil."

"The leak?"

"Yes. And I don't think I can do anything about it yet.” He moves his hand close to the engine. “Yeah, I’ve got to let the engine cool down completely. I think I've got a patch kit; then I'll need to depressurise the system and drain the coolant. After that, I'll disconnect the hose clamps, remove the damaged hose, and install a new one. Finally, I'll refill the coolant and bleed the system to remove any air pockets."

He's over my head. "Tonight?"
"No, tomorrow." He pauses. “Can I build my church in the center of a big city?”

“Uh, no,” I answer. “Other clerics have thought about that already. Like hundreds of years ago. You have to build your church where there isn’t one.”

"Oh."

“It’s okay. You’re upgrading some out-of-the-way village. You’re doing the local residents a favour. And it’s a smaller pond to start with. No competitors. Plus, the local lord might offer you a piece of land for free. Well, with taxes. But then, you get taxes from the residents on your land, so it works out. That’s another revenue source. And if the lord’s family likes you, they might become members of your congregation. They might ask you to baptise one of their children. Or invite you to a banquet.”

“Hm,” says Rick, cleaning his hands with a cloth. “Sounds easy.”

"Well ..." I start.

I have to be careful. It's a fine line for a dungeon master. Players like things to be easy. But no matter what the payoff ends up being, the bigger the return – the graver the risk. It’s how I’ve been running the game since the beginning – nothing is ever “easy.” I won’t hand Rick's Einrugg the keys to the kingdom without a crisis or two, not for just showing up once a week and having his character give a sermon. Sure, yeah, I’m selling him the upside. I want him to commit to something beyond hacking his way through the game world. I’m deliberately keeping the downside to myself because that’s how selling works. I’m putting a big fat hook in front of Rick’s mouth. I want him to swallow it. Then I can play him to the shore, kicking and fighting while he can’t get the hook out of his mouth, because as a DM that’s how I set up an adventure.

See, I can’t use my authority to force Rick to do anything. And if he does do something and doesn’t like it, I won't use my authority to make him keep going; some dungeon masters maybe, but not me. Still, if there’s something in the adventure that Rick wants, so bad he can’t make himself let it go, then I’ve got him. I can make his game experience a horror show, so long as in the end, if he keeps at it, he gets that thing he wants.

Take the example of his maybe-someday church. Einrugg builds the church, makes friends and gains status ... everything seems great. I let him settle in, give him every reason to believe things are fine. I won't take it away from him. But then a zealot arrives, accusing Einrugg of blasphemy for adventuring most of the time. Next, the lord's son disappears on Einrugg's land, forcing Rick to find the boy alive or face the lord's wrath. There's also a troublesome burial ground that needs clearing and a religious superior demanding answers about heresy at the worst possible time.

These aren't "gotcha" moments, but typical challenges for a cleric running a religious centre in a D&D world. Each adventure is a dilemma, a setback, a catastrophe—but each offers Rick a chance to overcome the trouble and succeed, though he has to dig in and try. Seriously, I genuinely want Einrugg to get his church and status, because it allows me to create profoundly different setups with rich, satisfying, and complex features. If I achieve that, everyone wins and the game becomes better.

My answer to Rick goes, “I wouldn’t say it’s going to be easy.”

Rick has played with me for a few years and knows what that means. His expression is that of trying to decide if I'm bluffing or holding a winning hand. I let him figure it out on his own, keeping my face relaxed, emotionless, revealing nothing. I’m a good poker player.

Susan’s car appears up at the corner. She’s unusually early, too. It’s just twenty after six. We watch as she parks her bruised, long-suffering Mazda 3. Rick turns to his truck and I walk over to greet Susan as she gets out. She gives me a hug. With the door open, she bends over, gathers her character sheets and dice bag from the passenger seat, and hands me a four-pack of two-litre pop bottles to carry for her.

We walk back to Rick's truck, and, holding her stuff, she gives Rick a hug also. We talk a bit about the weather. Susan asks Rick if his truck is okay, Rick talks about his truck and I feel the weight of the pop in my arms. “I’ll take this upstairs,” I say.

"Wait, I'll come with," she says.

Rick thinks the patch kit's in his truck, mixed in with the usual mess of pliers, wire cutters, outlets, switches, circuit breakers, cable ties, connector boxes, dirt, sawdust, and discarded packaging. He starts to look for it. Coffee cup in one hand, pop in the other, Susan alongside, we step up to the apartment’s front door. I set down the pop to fish out my keys, and together we perform a little dance to get us inside with our loads. We climb the stairs. Susan asks after my partner Tamara."

She's started a new art class," I explain, adding that she specifically chose a Friday night so she'd be out of the house for the game. Once upon a time, Tamara used to play. She decided it was too much stress, so she quit. Susan expresses her regret. We get to the top of the stairs, and while I get us into the apartment, I ask about her son Daniel.

"At his grandparents," Susan says. Within the relative cool of the apartment, we go to the large table set up for gameplay in the living room, and Susan picks her usual seat. She talks about Daniel for a while, bringing me up to date. Her son’s unhappy about his teeth coming in. I pour some of her pop into a glass full of ice and bring it to her; I want some of it, but I've promised my doctor, no more dark soft drinks. I drain my coffee cup and make myself a lemonade.

Susan is thirty-one. She runs a 5th level fighter, Galatea. She, and her character, joined our game about two years ago; mine is the first D&D campaign she’s ever been in. She has a natural talent and doesn’t have any of the quibbles that long-time savvy players possess. Susan has been to three gaming conventions since starting my game and she loves them. This is a new world for her, and unlike the other players, she has no childhood memories of gaming to draw on.

"How do you feel about a new player?" she asks from out of nowhere. "There's a fellow I work with; his name's Jason. He says he's been playing 5th edition off and on for years, but he's grown dissatisfied with it. He wants a game with an older rule book."

I'm distrustful. I don't let on, thinking to myself, if he's been playing "off and on," how committed to my game is he going to be? If he's used to 5e, how's he going to feel about my game? But I adopt an interested expression and let her continue.

Jason, I learn, has never played in any "old school" format. Susan tells me he started playing seventeen years ago, in 3rd edition, which he really enjoyed, though he told Susan there was too much die rolling. She asks me what I think that means and I try to explain it.

I explain about feats, and about modifiers, and about how the game tried to solve unclear parts of the earlier versions by assigning die rolls to them, which slows down the game and involves a lot of in-head calculations. "It's a one-size-fits-all problem with the rules," I say. "In the end, no matter what you're rolling for, the process becomes more important than the reasons behind rolling the dice in the first place. And since the consequences for failure are negligible, well, generally... after a while, you just don't care why you're rolling."

Susan doesn't really understand, and shrugs. "Jason's heard about your game and he wants to try it," she says. I learn that he's a year younger than she is. I’m very suspicious now. I'm very suspicious now. On the one hand, I relish the opportunity to show someone how my game works. On the other, nearly everything she says spells bad news. I ask if Jason’s been told that I run AD&D with more than a thousand house rules. I have so many house rules that I have to keep an online wiki just so my players can look through them in and out of gameplay. Susan says that he’s seen the wiki. She doesn’t convince me that he likes it, but she tries. I sigh and say, “So long as he gets it. Sure. Bring him around to the next running.”

She thanks me and I berate myself for causing myself trouble, again. I drink my lemonade, watch Susan unpack her character, and formulate in my mind how to explain my world to a fifth edition player. Susan uses a big folder for her character sheet because she takes lots of notes. She keeps printouts of things she's found on the web, some from my wiki. She likes to come 15 minutes before a game to manage all this, but today her parents had her drop Daniel off early so they could take him out to dinner.

The door buzzes. It's Olivia. She takes a little time to climb the stairs, then comes in the door like it's her own house. She shouts “Hello” while taking off her shoes.

"Where's John?" asks Susan.

"Downstairs, talking to Rick," Olivia answers. She comes around the corner and rolls her eyes. "About cars." She's older than everyone here, except me; she's 35. She has long blonde hair that she ties in a knot atop her head with a leather cord, which matches the leather combat jacket she made herself, as Olivia's a cosplayer. She's married to John.

"Want some pop?" I ask.

"Of course," Olivia answers. She sets a clear plastic storage case on the table, about an inch thick, and opens it. She pulls out papers and scoops out the dice rolling around in the case. I go to the kitchen and pour some pop into a glass, while Olivia asks Susan about Daniel. They talk about the boy and I set the glass next to Olivia. Since everyone's here, I get myself started by opening my laptop and plugging it in. I don't use pencils and paper.

Last month, Olivia and John announced that they’re going to have a child of their own, so there’s lots for the women to talk about, while all three of us get ready. Susan remembers before she had Daniel and they talk about prenatal care, balancing work with early motherhood, sleepless nights … they brainstorm about a future playdate. My own daughter was born 26 years ago and I have nothing whatsoever to say on any of this, as I know when to shut up.

John and Olivia have been married for ten years. John's been playing with me since long before that, but Olivia only started coming along about seven years ago. It was she who introduced Susan to my campaign, when it was agreed to retire the old game and start everyone at 1st level. That’s why no one's above 6th level. We only play every three weeks, and I run a whole other campaign with different people. I don't mind that this one happens less often.
Olivia has a 5th level mage, Lisandro. She lives and dies for spell use and is something of a classic girl-bear when it comes to her playing style. In real life, she’s a teacher, the sort I rarely got in school. Let’s just say she never insists that everyone "just get along." She respects conflict, loves Shakespeare, and at the same time thinks it's boneheaded to teach it to high school students. She breaks rules. We get on fairly well.

Slowly, the subject gets around to D&D, with Olivia asking me about spells. Both Lisandro and Galatea are close to leveling up—they might tonight—and Olivia is eager to acquire another 3rd level spell for her character. I make suggestions and she trusts that I have her best interests in mind. I do. As with Einrugg, I want Lisandro to survive and do well. The way I see DMing, my agenda only includes making this as hard and as complicated as I can, without deliberately stopping anyone from progressing and getting stronger.

The buzzer rings again. Susan sees I'm busy and gets up, goes to the intercom, pressing the door open. This time, it's both Rick and John. Rick has finished with his truck and wants to use the bathroom; I tell him there's a bar of heavy-duty soap in a pail under the sink. John waves a greeting and asks if there's coffee. "I finished it," I say, and he says he'll make more. Casually, he rifles through my kitchen as though it's his, knowing where the coffee and grinder are. My place is his place.

I’ve known John for 16 years, since he was a 17-year-old kid. He met me when I was managing a coffee shop, working fourteen hours a day. He came around two or three days a week, mostly when it was quiet, and we'd play chess over the counter. Back then, he was in his second year of university, majoring in journalism. We’d talk about writing, politics, history ... and eventually D&D. I'd already been playing nearly twenty years. I didn't have a game then. I was on hiatus. John had never played. Yet we could still talk about it.

I began running a game about a year later. John was front and centre at my table and has been ever since. He met Olivia eleven years ago and he convinced her to join, not me. I can smell the coffee brewing as he appears, taking his seat between Olivia and the last empty chair. He unfolds his character sheet and flattens it out. This is his whole character, Piotr. The rest he keeps in his head.

Piotr is just the latest in a long list of thieves. And for John, it’s all about the backstabbing. Yes, he'll go that extra bit to get a nice piece of gear if one's there. Now and then he comes up with a cunning plan, the sort that works most of the time. He's a genius as a strategic thinker, but he holds back because he doesn't want to run other people's characters. None of those are, however, what he really likes. For John, the game is that moment before dropping the die, when he's all set up to put his sword between the enemy's armour plates … and then having that die come up right. He just loves it. And he will move heaven and earth to set the moment up.

I don’t judge.

Rick comes out of the bathroom and says hello; he's carrying a familiar red backpack, which he sets on his chair for opening. John pours his dice into a pool on the table about six inches wide and starts sorting them as though he's picking out the best seeds for planting. Rick sets a folder on the table, adding a box for his dice. Every die he owns is either orange or yellow; he adds a white eraser, two pencils, and a pencil sharpener.

They're talking among themselves now but I've stopped listening. I'm getting my game face on. I look down the checklist for tonight's running, a collection of facts about a desert town on the edge of desolate mountains, called Qitai. Though isolated, an overland trade route through Qitai brings travellers from distant lands in both the east and the west. I open a map on my desktop, the screen duplicated on a second monitor everyone else can see. They fall into a discussion about the map, though they already know where they are and remember what's happening.

John kisses Olivia before fetching his coffee. Rick drops his bag on the floor and gets comfortable in his chair. Susan asks how far they are, right now, from Qitai, and I tell her, "Two days." Rick asks if anyone needs to be healed. They start counting up how much food they have. I flip through a few more files, not minding that the players can see what I'm looking at. I open a notebook next to my computer and read.

I rise to refill my lemonade and Susan says, "I'm down nine hit points. I thought you used your healing last session."

"I did," says Rick. "I've still got a potion."

I hear Olivia saying, "Don't waste it," as I'm opening the fridge. I stop listening, knowing I've got to concentrate. Pouring from the pitcher, I heave a breath and steady myself. A couple more minutes left. Nothing to do but be in the headspace. I sip my drink, not hurrying back to my chair. I feel the coolness of the glass in my hand, the hum of the refrigerator. For no reason, I take a walk up the hall to my study, just to be alone a minute or two.

I come back to the table and sit down. I listen but I don't speak. I lean back, watching the players ... and after a minute or two, they turn silent. I don't have to tell them I'm ready to start. They know.