A Christmas Diversion

Christmas Eve, and so I'll post one of the stories from my Lantern.  Not the best story in my opinion, and in fact I think the shortest, nor the most "Christmasy," but some might like it and might appreciate the effort that I took with The Lantern this year:

The Ancient Yule
by Tasmin Veale

Ah, there’s plenty of Devon folk struttin’ into Christmas as if the world began with their own grandmothers, knowing no more of old forest gods than a hen knows of harvest accounts. And as for the wisdom our Viking forebears brought down from the north—why, it’s slipped clean out of their heads, if ever it got in. Those men knew the worth of a tree that’s stood longer than a landlord’s promise, reading its rings like a parish ledger—sunshine, storms, and every bit of druid’s tending writ plain for them. And they weren’t such fools as to forget, when winter’s dark presses in hardest, how to coax the good still sleeping in the wood and send it into the world again, lest the sun itself take fright and turn tail for good.

When those layers are set alight upon a solstice night, each one sends out a burst of power strong enough to chase off every dark spirit skulking about—though between ourselves, half the spirits are likely to run merely from the gathering of villagers’ faces in the light the fire gives off. And of course the bigger the tree, the stronger the virtue stored in it; why, in the north they’ll set to with logs twenty feet long, standing a good eight feet high across the trunk, and the whole village comes tromping out, gaping at the blaze as if learning for the first time the wonder of the world.

Cutting down a tree is an act to be handled with great reverence, for though the tree will serve us well, it’s still a living creature that’s suffered its share and yet stood thriving through many a long century. The oldest and largest oak is best—you’ll find some with trunks a good six feet thick or more, though it’s always wiser to look for one that’s seven feet at the least. And if no oak comes to hand, an ash of six-foot width or a beech a shade broader will answer—only you must be prepared to hunt for either before you set axe to bark.

Don’t go thinking, like some do, that a bundle of smaller logs or a heap of earth-preserved branches will serve; that’s nothing but opening the door to calamity. You must remember it’s the oldest rings that bring the magic forth, not the mere bulk of the wood. A branch is nought but knots and bark, so we should expect no good from that. You ought to understand the bargain that’s set before us: we take one life—the tree’s—to shield many lives, our own, in the year that’s coming. And if we mean to drive back the spirits that would prey upon us, the trunk has to be well and truly seasoned by all those long years between ourselves and the time when it was no more than an acorn, a mast or a key.

I’ve seen well enough what comes of a village that tries to spare itself the trouble, only to find the children ailing by January, and the livestock lying hollowed and dead on the moor by February, brought low by spirits no one can put a name to, with seeds that won’t so much as stir in the soil come April. It’s not worth the saving—do the thing properly, and seek out one of my own kind, a good druid, who knows the right way such hard work must be gone about.

Once you’ve settled on a trunk of the right thickness, you’ll want a good fifteen or more feet of its length, taking it from just above the highest root. That’s what gives you a burn that’ll last the whole night through—aye, and long past a single night if the wood’s sound. It allows time for folk from the surrounding districts, lacking their own yule, to make the journey and share in the ritual as well. Such a gathering binds a wider community together and promises not only a strong harvest in the year ahead, but a fair footing for trade and tradesfolk besides. And mind you, the brighter and higher the blaze, the farther its call will reach to others.

Mind this as well—that the days before the burning must be handled with all the seriousness you’d give to preparing for a siege, for bringing the tree into the village is as good as announcing the coming spiritual confrontation. The moment the felled trunk is carried in, the villagers must be off at once to shutter the windows of every building. It’s a thing most don’t rightly grasp, but the scent of the wood will draw the lesser spirits from hither and yon straight into the village; and these, being drawn so early and not yet met by the fire that’s still days ahead, will nose about to slip into any structure they can and make mischief. So every portal must be closed against them.

In the same fashion, the wells must be covered, for water is a favoured passage for whispering entities. A single open surface lets enough of them linger to put the whole solstice at risk. The livestock, too, must be brought together into the central barns and not left out in the fields nor left to themselves. And for safety’s sake, the iron implements are to be set leaning round the outside of the barn in a ring, with lines of salt laid all about it as well, for evil spirits are ever inclined to harry the edges of a community by preying on the animals first.

And you must take heed of this besides: children and the elderly are to be kept indoors—not out of any hardness of heart, but because the frail are ever the quickest to be led astray by the spirits’ own contrivances, seeing what isn’t there and being coaxed where they’ve no call to wander. In Yule-tide custom, it’s held to be plain sense to keep such loved ones close to the hearth, for the long winter nights are when wandering beings, be they the Wild Hunt aloft or house-sprites abroad, cast about for those whose strength is not equal to the season.

While all these preparations are under way, the square where the burning is to be held must be cleansed. That means sweeping off every scrap of windblown litter, for any bit of decaying matter gives certain shadows a place to fasten themselves. After that, mark out the boundary with chalk or crushed bone, mixed best with the wood ash saved from the previous year’s burning. And if none of that is to be had, then gather ash from hearths that have burned wood only—not charcoal, nor anything spoiled by drippings. With a bit of foresight, you may clean out several hearths weeks before the log is due, and keep them burning on clean wood so the ash is fit to use when the time comes.

But for the years ahead, you’d best keep in mind that the old ash is the very thing that matters; it holds the leftover strength of the last great fire, and the spirits know well enough when a boundary has been carried from one season to the next. Then, once the boundary’s laid, there must be a set company that’s given the duty to sit out each evening and tend the braziers round the square. Best for this work are clerics, woodfolk and, if the village has the luck or the trouble of it, any faerie kin tied to their own. These should keep a low ring of flame upon the braziers, so the boldest of the spirits don’t come nosing at the boundary before the main fire’s lit. And there ought to be good, able talk about those braziers too, for nothing frets a wandering spirit more than joined voices and neighbourly friendship; so folk should go and visit the keepers, if only to see them through their watch.

Yet all that good company mustn’t turn itself toward ribaldry or celebration; no cries of joy, nor singing, nor feasting should be heard in any house. In some places, it’s common for the constables or the church folk to go knocking at doors where they catch an unusual savour of too good a food in the air, to make sure no one’s taking more than the plain fare they’d set on the table for any day in November or January. For jubilation calls attention just as surely as fear does. And mind you, the days between the felling and the burning are the most perilous of all—spirits unsettled on every side, some frightened of being driven out by the fire, and others prowling for any scrap of wrong-doing they can fasten upon.

For that very reason, the whole community must go about its work with discipline, sobriety and a quiet, steady purpose, knowing full well that if all is done as it ought to be, the great burning will not only keep the darkness at its distance for another year, but stand as a sign of the prosperity and plenty that’s meant for all.

It’s at this point a druid is of exceeding worth, for such folk know the old invocations and the binding ways; without them, the burning is nought but a great heap of flame and no more. I am, of course, such a one myself, and shall be overseeing the doings in Tavistock this year—but there are others in the countryside, even now, who’ll come on short notice and do their best by you. Look for them in the outlying hamlets, among the foresters or on the very edges of the settled land. A small delegation may go to such folk quickly and quietly in the days after the bough is cut, carrying gifts of salt, wool or iron should there be need of barter. But leave off taking gold, or jewels, or any bit of fine workmanship, for such things have scant worth where the weeds grow high and the deer keep their own counsel.

Once the druid has come, their work is not only to bless the tree, but to read it through and through, to see whether any ill-willed thing has trailed the bough back from the forest and hidden itself inside. It’s a common enough matter to find some malign presence curled deep in the heartwood—but with warning given, a druid can take the measure of such creatures readily, driving them out or shutting them fast within, where the fire may finish the task. And because it’s the sort of danger easily missed by folk who’ve no learning in it, the trouble taken to find a druid who knows the way of such matters well is never wasted.

The village ought to make ready a place for the druid to stay, and it must be set well apart from the daily stir and muddle of the parish. A cordoned-off corner in a hall house will answer, or even a poor little hovel that can be spared for a week or two. It needn’t be warm, nor swept to shining, for a druid judges comfort by what’s found under the arms of the woodland, not by any measure fit for gentry. What matters—what truly matters—is that the place stand separate and still, so the druid isn’t pestered from dawn to dusk by every flutter of fear that seizes the village folk. For if you let them, they’ll be knocking to ask after this omen or that shadow, begging for a physic for their coughs, wanting charms for their cows and pressing in with a dozen little ailments—aye, even down to the hope the druid’ll set aside sacred work to peer at some farmer’s swollen toe. Such bother will sap an aspirant’s strength quicker than cold or hunger, and this is a time when the work of the yule wants all the concentration they can muster.

Once the shaman has done with muttering and peering and pronouncing, then the great log is fetched out and set in the middle of the square upon its stone bed, raised proper and decent from the ground so the air may get at it underneath and the fire not sulk or choke like a damp hearth. There it lies, waiting, solid as a promise, while round about the square the torches are fixed in their places, every one of them ready to hand yet left dark as prudence itself, making a ring of watchfulness rather than light until the very hour comes that says it is time.

Food and drink are brought out at last, and the log is set alight; and if you have never seen such a thing, then you have missed a sight worth the telling, for it begins modest enough, with a smaller fire coaxed to life beneath the great timber, and only by degrees does it take heart and climb upward along the yule, licking and spreading as though it were learning its own strength before all our eyes. As it mounts, the musicians fall to their playing, not in any wild or heedless fashion, but careful and contained, just as custom has always required, keeping the sound low and steady while the work is still being done. And then, almost before one knows it, the whole temper of the village breaks at once, the strain gone clean out of it, as if the fire itself had sliced through the cord that held every man and woman drawn tight.

Then folk cannot keep themselves any longer, but cheer and laugh outright, laying hands on one another’s shoulders as if to make sure they are all truly there and safe. The children come darting forward at once, bold as sparrows, pressing in as near as they dare and calling over one another in their excitement as the heat rolls out upon them. And with that, the musicians throw off all restraint and strike into the very tunes that have been held back the whole year through—reels and stamping measures that set feet flying and send the folk whirling across the hard-packed snow, glad as if winter itself had been answered at last.

Meat is set to roasting on every side and the air grows thick with it, the rich savour of it mingling with the sweetness of ale and cider and the keen bite of wood smoke, all of it together smelling like life come back again after a long absence. Young couples make no secret of their joy, kissing one another plain in sight of all, while the elders lift their voices to call down blessings as though they might fix good fortune in place by naming it aloud. And for the first time since the winter took hold, the village has a sound to it that is not wind or silence, but the true noise of people living.

Most important of all, it feels as though the worst edge of winter draws back a little, not gone, but held at bay, so that old grudges are set aside without a word said about them, hands meet across family lines that have been stiff for years and everyone finds themselves thinking, almost in spite of themselves, that the spring will come kindly, the lambing be sound and the harvest answer to honest labour.

There’s a sort of tremble in the air then, slight and hard to name, as if the world has been freshened for a moment and shown what it might be if things went right, the fire having burned a clear road toward brighter months ahead, so that the future seems to lean in close, offering its promise quietly, but with a generosity that’s felt all the same.

Nancy Duarte: How to Tell a Story

Or, how to say exactly nothing for three minutes, and make it sound like you know what you're talking about.

Note how she starts by invoking the traditional presence of the story, as though to say that we've not listened to stories because they're interesting or enlightening, but merely because they are stories; that being a story is sufficient, not the quality of that story. Then she begins to hammer how stories are "powerful," which is a watchword for those who want power, co-opted with the word "transformation," a word she proceeds to repeat three times in the next eight seconds: at 0:21, 0:24 and 0:28. She also repeats "hard-wired" twice between 0:20 and 0:30, pressing that you have no choice but to accept what she's saying because, damn, it's true through the repetition of the words. She uses "transformation" again at 0:35. Thereafter she launches into an argument that because stories have been around so long, YOUR story can be also, that you need to find a way to give YOUR story the resilence of other stories... as though your story compares with Gilgamesh or Beowulf or any of the stories that have actually survived more than the five minutes of your telling.

She says "great story" at 1:01, then again at 1:05, because once is not enough; this is followed by her arguing that your body chemistry physically changes when you hear a story, followed by the words "power of a great story" (1:15) being how we root for a "hero" (1:25) followed by "transforming" (1:26), followed by "changed by the process" (1:29). She says change again at 1:33 and then transformed again at (1:38), by the "power" (1:39) of story. 

The third part employs the words "authentic," "transparent," "personal"... stressing how "real" a story makes you as a person. Between 1:55 and 2:01 she mocks people who aren't properly engaged, literally then a metaphor to explain how ants form connections that build loyalty, "not only to you" (2:21) but also "to the brand" (2:23). It's a bit clumsy, she loses her way a bit, but that's the message. Turn people into ants and make them obey you and your brand, because "you get so much more done"... that is, power again, translated as "emotional connections." (2:29) "and using story to make those connections make it even more powerful (2:33), strengthening you as a leader (power again). She then ends this with a statement that when she's with people who "get me" makes her "superhappy." Yeah.

It's propaganda. It's hammering specific words, specific sentiments, employing a nostalgic tool (storytelling) to seek power, control and personal gratification through the motivation of other people for your own interests.  This is precisely what the WOTC does every time it writes anything about the use of "story" in their splatbooks and on their website.

"Story"

I'd like to start with around and about the time the Internet first jumped into mass-interactive format, when it stepped beyond Dalnet, chat rooms and email, into webpages and search engines. In searching to self-educate about dungeon mastering and player management, I stumbled into a number of link-heavy pages dedicated to explaining real business management — self governance, attention management, stress techiques, task assignment and planning, information tools and systems, agile management, change, conflict, constraint... it's a massive, massive field. And while I rarely address those subjects in a post now, the process of understanding management on that level did correct and retrain my thinking process toward better explaining how to manage a game of D&D... but, I want to say, in an abstract way. Management as an academic approach, I'm afraid I have to say, is thick with magical thinking. Where what you want becomes true, not because it is true, but through the tautology of wanting it.

It was at that time, 25 years ago, that I first bumped into the word "story."  Beginning in the 1990s, motivational speakers like Stanley Finkelstein and later Barbara DeAngelis were preaching to large audiences paying hundreds of dollars each to be in the presence of such gurus that individuals, would-be business-people and others coudl change their lives by reframing their identities as "stories," which would make them more accessible to other people. Essentially, if you were at my seminar, I would tell you, "If you want to make it in business you're going to need others to get on board with you; you're going to need investors, you're going to need buyers, you're going to need people who can put their faith in you — and the way you can make that happen is by telling them a story about yourself. Not just any story, no, but a story about yourself that stresses why you want to succeed, and why they should believe in you, and why they want to get on board your train."

Understand: this wasn't "story" as a narrative craft they were preaching, no. I sat through a lot of these lectures on personal websites, before the invention of youtube, and it was perfectly clear they were not talking about meaning-making, but about story as a lever. As a way to influence the thought processes of others, to persuade them, to basically invent your "story" as a means of transforming their doubt into their belief. This is very much in line with Seth Godin's 2005 book, All Marketers are Liars, a huge bestseller, where he stresses that anyone trying to influence needs to tell authentic, compelling stories that resonate with an audience. The key is to create a narrative that feels true to the audience's beliefs, desires, and values. He argues that these stories aren't just about spinning facts; they're about creating a connection, something that captures attention and motivates action.

Why the word "story"... that's the question that needs to be asked here. Why that particular word, what did that word carry that made it effective and, essentially, created a massive wave in re-interpreting a quest for success? Well, the word story carries deep, culturally loaded associations. "Story" is a word that taps into something primal and universal. It connects to childhood, because we grow up on stories — whether through fairy tales, fables or family anecdotes. From an early age, stories shape our understanding of the world, teaching us values, norms and emotions. They're how we come to understand our own lives and the lives of others. So when people in business and leadership talk about "story," they’re not just talking about a narrative structure — they’re tapping into a deep, shared human experience.

But here's what we have to remember: the "story" itself that was told by those motivational speakers was NOT created to actually help anyone. It was employed to make people paying to see the speaker feel they were getting their money's work. The speaker didn't tell them what story to tell; the speaker did not provide details on how to get started with this story, or what the story ought to include, or the process of either finding it in oneself or inventing it. NO, none of that was part of the sell. The sell was to confound the listener and send them off with the idea that they knew what to do... only to convince hundreds of thousands that if they failed to do it, that wasn't because the "story strategy didn't work," but to convince them they merely didn't know how to invent the story they needed. Therefore, a great scam, as it sells a snake oil the user continues to believe in, even after it doesn't work.

Thus, long before "story" became a watchword in D&D, the word was already being used in hundreds of small amphitheatres all over the world every weekend to sell shit to morons. Thus the word "story" became this vague, magical solution that’s somehow both unattainable and completely within reach—if only they could figure it out. It's a kind of psychological trap that preys on the desire for personal success, without actually delivering anything of substance. And yet, because the idea is dressed in the familiar, comforting language of "story," it has a unique kind of power, allowing the scam to persist, even as it remains frustratingly out of reach.

The use of the word  as a central concept in D&D really ramped up around the time of the fourth edition, which was released in 2008. Around 2007, after numerous bestsellers were on shelves telling would-be self-styled business owners how to use "story" as a marketing tool, Wizards of the Coast began using the word as a marketing tool. Prior to this, while D&D had always been about collaborative narrative-building and improvisation, the language of "story" was never quite as prominent in the branding or system discussions. With 4e, though, storytelling was positioned as a key pillar of the experience. The company shouted that role-playing "was a great tool to tell great stories."  Thereafter, and to this day, the idea of "story" was woven throughout the promotional materials, discussions of campaign settings, even the rules themselves.

The timing is important. As self-help books and seminars were teaching people how to craft personal narratives to sell themselves or their businesses, D&D began to follow suit, placing storytelling at the forefront of its appeal. It worked... at least for the company. The "shared story" model permeates every discourse about the game in the present day, with the framing leaning heavily into "unfolding story archetypes" and "character-driven plots." Note these plots are driven specifically by the "character," not the player, who has next to no real agency in game play. Moreover, while the word story is used constantly, the process by which this story plays out, the manner in which the DM runs this story in-game, is never part of the dialogue. It "just happens," as it's "meant to," and those who ask too many questions are pretty much told just to go with the flow and let things happen.

It's even argued that this character-based (as opposed to player-based) model is "simpler." By shifting the focus away from the player's agency (while simultaneously protecting the character with effective plot-armour in the narrative), it promises the players that whatever happens, they are made more important by the narrative BEING important. Because the character's roles within the broader narrative are constructed by the DM, and because the players are free to "act out" the character's roles however the players want, it gives a sense of "agency" in the sense that they seem to be running the character, but since the character's success is pre-ordained, the agency is really just kabuki theatre.

Let's say my character is destined to be the character who steals the Jewel of Arimoor.  And now we're in the Temple of Arimoor... but I don't know what to do.  No problem. I have the "agency" to go to that room, pull my weapon, attack whom I wish... but in the end, the only thing that really matters is that, eventually, whatever dumbshow I put on until then, that I steal the Jewel. Even if I forget to do so, I'll find the Jewel in my pocket when we leave, because the DM needs only to create some premise for it being there. My agency doesn't matter, so long as the arc of the story is fulfilled.

This "simplifies" the game because, for the DM, it doesn't matter what you do. Sure, of course you can kill the Mratll!  Absolutely, you can leap from that pillar to the ground twenty feet below.  No problem, you can make that leap.  Nothing needs to have a consequence, because the only consequence that matters is settled. Q.E.D.

This approach removes the pressure from the DM to maintain a complex, dynamic world where player choices can truly influence outcomes. It reduces the need for deep world-building or careful management of player actions, since everything funnels toward the predetermined narrative. The characters, and by extension the players, are free to do whatever they want, but as long as the key plot points are hit, the story will resolve as planned. In a sense, it’s an experience more akin to a guided tour through a pre-arranged spectacle than a collaborative storytelling venture. And because the players don't know what they're characters are destined to do, until it happens, they get the JOY of finding out after the fact. Fun all around!

This makes the multitude of splatbooks comprehensible. The DM doesn't really need to know all the "rules," because in fact none of them are rules designed to dictate game play. They're really just sourcebooks for DMs to use in designing character/story arcs, where the players choose what "skin" to put on overtop their characters, like an avatar they wear that fits a particular pre-determined story model. My DM's story needs someone to do something that a dragonborne can. So someone in the party has to wear the dragonborne skin.  It's just that easy.

Thus is created the curated experience of modern D&D. It clearly works. It's very popular. Story is preserved as a warm, fuzzy word to describe the process, while all the other words like "collaborative" tend toward a group dynamic that conveys belonging, acceptance, friendliness and social engagement.  "I'm the dragonborne" describes that player's clear, comprehensible and most of all very important role, among persons whose "importance" is always in question outside the game community space.

The language itself does all the heavy lifting. By creating an atmosphere where people can feel valued for being themselves, where everyone is a part of a story unfolding with all of them having their parts in it, the social dynamic becomes a source of personal validation and connection. Who wouldn't want that? Who doesn't want to feel a part of a thing, whatever we call that thing... especially in what we might identify as a safe space, where we're recognised and made to feel significant?

Arguing against that, or fighting it, or disparaging it, is a losing effort. One might as well tell a group of Seahawk fans that they should just cut out that nonsense.

The Christmas Edition of The Lantern, 1635, has been published

December 20th and the Christmas Lantern for 1635 is finished. I would have preferred it not be 32 pages long, as it's been quite a lot of writing, but it's sorted and done and ready to be viewed for anyone buying into the $10 tier of my patreon.

I'll give a taste, though, since that's only fair:

Well, these things take a lot out of a person, so I'll rest now and apply myself to lighter work coming into the Christmas holiday. Unless I fail the effort, there will be another issue ready to go on the 21st of January, though the preview of that issue is going to have to wait until the 7th of January. I just won't have the time to get it together for the 1st of that New Year.

For those who may be finding it hard to enlarge the text in the image so it can be read, I'll provide what it says below:

My story tells of a cold night, in the third week of Advent. As I write these words, not two days have passed since I stood at the door of the Badger’s Head in North Bovey, content enough, as I could be. A mug of cider warmed my hand, its steam rising rich and fragrant, and my belly was full in that manner that makes one feel settled. I looked out at the well-repaired bell of St. John the Baptist Church, its brass gleaming in the fading light, where the workman’s hammer had been at it all day. The sound of that hammer striking its metal had filled the village from morning to night, a friendly and familiar noise, and a welcome one, with Christmas drawing near.

I could hear the sound of music drifting from within the tavern, the shuffling of feet upon the floorboards and the rising laughter spilling out into the chill of the night. William Moore gave my shoulder a clap as he came forth into the cold, on his way home, and I called after him, "And a merry Advent to you, Bill," to which he returned the greeting in kind. I heard the quiet crunch of frost under his boots as he went. All told, it was a fine night.

There then appeared a huge form, as large in my mind as a pony, padding down the middle of the street with no more care than if it were the most common of creatures. It was a wolf, black as midnight itself, its tongue hanging between teeth that glistened bright by the light of the Badger’s lamp. Had I my staff, I might have touched the beast with it, without lifting my feet. Then it was gone from my sight, vanished from the village, down the road eastward.

I knew it at once—the great black wolf, that savage creature that had been terrorising the West Counties since the summer past, and was said to have claimed three lives. It had passed me by just then, not a sound, not a growl—and I felt as if my heart might leap out of my chest, so fiercely did it beat. But when I got hold of myself again, where would you think I was? Why, I was running east along the road, the River Bovey on my right and the bridge over Dickford Water before me. And there, in the fresh snow, were the prints of the wolf, leading me onward.

Now why I should have done such a thing, after but six months being a mage of my own purpose, I cannot say. In my inward eye, I saw the wolf pass me over and over, seeming to remember the gleam in its eyes, the unnatural sheen of its black coat, its loping gait along the village lane—and I told myself, turn back, find others and tell them what you’ve seen. But deep down, I knew, if I didn’t stay on its trail now, it would slip away into the country as it had done so many times before.

I could not in good conscience let the creature roam where it pleased so long as I might yet tell whither it went—or so I persuaded myself—though I had neither my staff nor so much as a dagger about me. All I carried was the knife with which I cut meat or lopped branches from gathered firewood, and that other resource I scarcely trusted, my magic. And as I crossed Dickford Water Bridge, the brook was frozen clean across, its surface smooth and pale beneath the snow. The wolf had padded right over it, without breaking its stride, its footprints lying wet and dark upon the planks before me. I make no doubt that, at the time, I believed myself a brave fellow indeed.

East of the stream the ground rose sharply, and with it went any hope I nursed of passing near enough to a farmhouse to cry out for help. The brush thickened where the wolf had taken to the ridge, and I followed after him all the same, knowing full well that the village of Sanduck lay quiet in the valley beyond. My thoughts were crowded then with the certainty that the stories were true, and that the danger was no fancy either—yet I told myself I was no child and drew my cloak tighter about me. The snow crept over the tops of my low boots, numbing my feet as I went, but even so I would not give up the chase.

Upon the crest of the ridge the cold took on a keener edge and the night deepened about me. The moon shone bright enough to rim every drift with silver, so that the world looked cut from glass. Each footprint was as broad as my palm and driven deep into the snow, as if the wolf bore the weight of two creatures in one hide. Then presently we dropped down to a lane, the wolf but minutes before me, a track I had known since childhood, where we gathered holly at this season of the year. It was little more than a muddy run, following the line of ground where Farmer Bowes had once grazed his sheep. As I went, I felt the sharp, woody spines of gorse catching at the cloth of my loose breeches and pricking my legs, its tendrils flat beneath the snow.

(continued in magazine)

Energy Where It's Due

"Let me tell you something... getting old is a gift. I forget that sometimes... but it is. What more could a guy possibly want?"

— Jumanji: the Next Level

The strange sources in which we find things. I'm quite sure this one line was written by DeVito.

As expected, the Christmas Lantern landed with something of a thud. A few (quite literally that number) expressed interest, but the larger mass of readers shrugged, did not visit the page and did not send their regards. I've struggled with this through 2025, but not because the Lantern is a "failure." True enough, the interest hasn't been widespread, but the truth of it is that I've been much more conscious of my age of late.

This blog, Tao of D&D, is at a dead end. Not that I'm going to stop writing it, but that any real usefulness it has is played out. I'm not going to write a new post that convinces anyone at this stage to change the way they play D&D. All those posts have already been written. I'm not going to change the course of D&D. It's going down, where it's going to stay for any foreseeable future. We're just watching it circle the drain. I could write about the books until I'm blue in the face, no one's who hasn't already is going to wake up and realise they've wasted their lives shoving this junk on a pedestal. Even the next most sensible guy to me on the internet writing about D&D cannot pull the sunshine out of his ass when writing about these books.

Thus, effort given here is, from this point, merely playing for the choir. And let's face it, a lot of you good people will, soon, begin to wonder if this fantasy is sustainable for you also.

A writer needs an audience. This is something that any writer wants. If not a big audience, then certainly an eclectic one. A growing one. One that reaches beyond the same collection of folks for year after year. A congregation, if you will, that consist of more than the choir.

The Lantern, for ill or good, is sustainable. It doesn't rely on this hobby; it doesn't count on a specific kind of D&D being popular. It doesn't in fact, need D&D at all. Because the stories take place in a fictional year four centuries ago, it's timeless. When I'm gone, every issue I write gives my daughter something to sell. And, if he wants to one day, my grandson. If I can get enough issues together to make a book or two, those will still have value when I, you and all the rest of the choir are long dead. This matters to me more than the number of page views I get for an announcement this month in 2025. It has to. Because the day is going to come when I'm not here... and every day between now and that time is, yes, a gift. I can't waste that just carping about the White Box. I'll go back to carping, but realistically, that's not the priority now, and never will be the priority going forward.

I could afford to look at all this differently in 2008. D&D still looked like something that could be saved. Sure, it was looking bleak at the time, but not as bleak as it looks now. D&D, and D&D products, have no future. I'm sure of that. And the only way to make money from them in the present is to produce the most egregious, crowd grabbing shit imaginable. Thank you, no, I'm out. I won't get into that business.

I've written 20 stories and articles for the Lantern now, over five issues. I hope I can find a stride that lets me have the presence of mine to print an issue every month, not because it'll rescue me from my poverty today, but because it'll one day rescue one of my descendants from theirs. Those who have read the Lantern, who can see it for what it is, who aren't measuring it against what it isn't and that which it isn't trying to be — a D&D support product — already know how unusual and unlikely is this project.

I'm sorry that understanding hasn't taken hold. Sadly, I have no control over that. But I do control where I put my energy, and it's not going to be wholly in producing take-down posts of the White Box just because those happen to be popular just now. A year from now, no one will read them or give a shit.

I can't be sure that'll be likewise true with the Lantern. In fact, I'm pretty sure it won't be.

The Lantern Christmas Issue

This should explain where I've been and what I've been doing. The decision to put this together was sort of last minute... I started it around the 1st of the month. The principle writing is almost finished, but there's tidying up and I want to rewrite the last third of the main story once again, as I think it's a bit of a muddle. I'll try to have this ready for Friday, but just now, I can't make a promise.

It is D&D and at least two of the stories are directly about Christmas, with one a legitimate Christmas story. The adventure is not a joke, not a mock adventure, but a real one; if there's anything I find annoying about pairing D&D with Christmas, its the incessant need to make a mockery of both concepts in order to produce images that are meant to be funny and are, rather, both not funny and at the same time, pretty insulting. I don't do that here.

Some struggle was had representing Christmas in 1635. Tradition at the time was not to actually celebrate Christmas until the actual Twelve Days started, so that recent events, such as the adventure, could not actually happen during Christmas but rather, during Advent. But I do the best I can to get the honest Christmas spirit into this thing. The mace on the cover is probably, admittedly, the oddest thing ever associated with holly and mistletoe. That one, yes, is on me.

Just now, it's coming in at a whopping 32 pages. This explains the 10 c.p. ($) fee. 

Write

I've been watching content about "how to write" again. Sometimes it's pleasant to hear about how others do it; sometimes I like to hear about what others want. But I have to say, I'm well past the point where I'm learning anything about writing... and nearly all the time, what I hear is just awful.

This last year I've written a dozen or so posts, experimenting with teaching the process of how to write. I've found that it's much harder than teaching how to dungeon master, but it shouldn't be. The fundamental mechanics in writing are quite simple: begin with a sentence, then add another sentence. Use the sentences just as you'd explain how you went to the store today and couldn't find the jar of pickles you wanted. That's how a story is told.

I just told a story in the first paragraph above. Look at the subject/verbs: "I've been watching," "it's pleasant to hear," "I have to say," "I'm past the point," "What I hear." This is the story. I watch something, I give the reason I do, I give my emotional response, I provide rejoiner to that response and then write a conclusion: essays about writing are awful.

The problem begins when the would-be writer decides, "I want to write something successful, or popular, or even just good." The would-be writer doesn't want to just write any story, they want to write a story that is guaranteed to succeed with the reader... and it's assumed, of course, that writers do so because they "know the formula" or they recognise "what the reader is looking for," or whatever other tripe they've fed themselves, or heard fed to them, by some online writing pundit.  And you may take my word for it... what's being fed to would-be writers is, again, just awful.

It's a scam. These are not writers writing about how to write, they are scam artists who know that a good number of foolish, stupid young people are gullible, have money, and will hand it over for "the secret." It's snake oil. And we still sell snake oil in this world because there are ALWAYS people stupid enough to buy it. But that's all that 98% of these sites are. Snake oil.

As long as there are going to be 12-y.os. who become 13 and 14 and get stars in their eyes about being a writer, there will be someone for these hacks to prey on. And arithmetically, there are about 300,000 brand-new 13-y.os. every single day, and about 108 million more of them every year. In a way, it's like farming in a field that just came into existence.

But imagine that first you're going to build your own house, from scratch, without knowing anything about housebuilding. That's you choosing to write a book when you know nothing whatsoever about fiction writing.  Then imagine, instead, that the very first house you build with your total lack of skills is going to be sold to someone else for $5,000,000. That's the approach a lot of people take when they decide they're going to be a writer.

The absurdity comes from how intoxicating the dream is, coupled with a refusal to consider the amount of work necessary. And there's no way around this, because "writers" don't care about content, they care about "sales."

Which is why there aren't thousands of youtube channels explaining how to write a sentence, or a paragraph, or what a character actually does in a story rather than discussing the character's "traits" or "feelings" or "symbolism."  Stories are not explained in these channels in the way we'd explain how to make a chair, or how to resolve 5x+8y=13/2.  Because attention to detail or skill at language management, or gawd help me why the words "glimmer' and "glow" don't mean the same thing, even though they're right next to each other in a thesaurus, are not topics of conversation. They're not sexy, they're not a shortcut and their practicality is not immediately evident. If I to explain why "glimmer" and "glow" don't mean the same thing, I'm not going to retain the attention of my readers. I'm not going to increase my patreon support. In fact, I'm going to get exactly no benefit from demonstrating that knowledge.

Which, frankly, I just don't get. Knowing what word to write where is terribly important. Especially since, at the level of merely being a reader, you don't even know why. Hint: it has everything to do with how I manipulate you.

These distinctions are the actual lever of the craft. I use them to define the texture of every sentence, the temperature of every scene, the visual cue that pops into your head unbidden, against your will, in part because of the word I used and the organisation of that word among others in the sentence. This is what writing actually is... but, because the levers number in the tens of thousands, explaining them one at a time is not a practical methodology. It's why we make etymology dictionaries and usage guides, and why writers tuck into these like gobbling up a good thriller.

I'm not arguing some kind of pretension — "Hah, I've read Fowler and you haven't!" Fowler is right there on the shelf like the dictionary, available for anyone with the time and the will. Just as a serious musician eventually gets around to working their way through Grove, and medical students have to embrace Gray's Anatomy (not the TV show), and geologists, before tech replaced books, would always have a dog-eared copy of Dana in their backpacks when climbing, a writer embraces like texts. But tell a would-be writer to study etymology instead of character arcs? Ridiculous.

These things go beyond the development of a story's "structure," which is where this post began. The things that are told to the reader that are needed for the story, such as who "Jack" is or what his relationship to "Samantha" is, those things are structure. You can't know why Jack acts the way he does around Samantha unless you know what she is to him or what shared experiences they've had, or what's happening to them both as the story unfolds step by step. It is a bit pedantic for some readers here, so I won't beat the horse to death.

To give an example of "structure," let's say they're two young people in the beginning of a relationship, and they're about to have a car wreck that's going to leave them both alive but emotionally affected. These are the plain facts of the story, essentially what happens. Yet when I write the story, I must pick words to produce a specific visual or emotional effect, which in themselves are not specific to the structure. For example, a structural difference in language would be if I said the car was "speeding" down the road as opposed to "gliding." These are physical descriptions, the first suggesting that the car is being driven too fast, the other suggesting that the car is moving at about the right speed, but without much effort.

The tricky part is that "speeding" can also be a stylistic reference. I can say the car is "speeding" down the road, using that specific word in a colloquial way that means "going fast" and not "moving faster than the speed limit."  In the same way, "gliding" can be a stylistic reference. While cars do feel physically like they're gliding down a road, "gliding" can also be a description of the ease with which the driver is experiencing the road.

This discontinuity between a word having a structural footprint AND a stylistic one is what makes writing difficult and fascinating.

I can tell you the car is floating, that it's thrumming, that it's flying, and I haven't changed the structural fact of the car moving down the road; but what word I use, stylistically, changes your impression of the story's nature. This tells you more than just the movement of the car; it tells you about the driver too, and in interesting and profound ways.

Let's have the sentence say, "The car thrummed along the road, the passengers thrilling at the speed." This doesn't have to be the way this is written. I could have said, "The car followed the road." I haven't changed the structure of the story with either choice. We have the car, we have the road. Everything else, how I choose to write it, that's style.

Now, let's stick with the first version and then add, "Jack had one hand on the wheel and the other on Samantha's thigh."

That is a loaded sentence. People are going to read that all kinds of ways. It tells us things about both of them, and depending on the person reading the story, what it tells is going to be interpreted very differently. Some are going to read that Jack is irresponsible; others, that he's cool and calm and in control. Remember, you and I know this car is going to crash, but the reader doesn't. And I haven't said why it's going to crash. It could very well have nothing to do with Jack's driving. Nevertheless, within the sentence, people are going to read Jack's hand on Samantha's thigh as proprietary. That doesn't make it so. We know nothing about these two people. Jack might be legitimately showing that he loves her; she may want that physical contact; both may feel perfectly fine with it. But my choosing to write that particular line nevertheless opens a can of worms that I, as a writer, need to be aware of.

But let's change the line to, "Samantha had one hand on the wheel and the other on Jack's thigh." Structurally, for the story, either could be driving. But putting Samantha behind the wheel creates two totally different characters, and as such two totally different sets of readings and counter-readings. Some would argue that Samantha with one hand on the wheel is more irresponsible than Jack with one hand; some would argue — sorry, but it's true — that Jack being touched by Samantha makes his character weaker. I don't see that myself, but I know others would, and I'm also responsible as a writer for that interpretation.

My choice of who to put behind the wheel relates to my stylistic behaviourism as a writer. Because it is a choice, and it makes a big difference in how the story relates to a lot of social discussions we don't need to dredge up. When the accident happens, who is behind the wheel becomes part of the structure of the story, because that in turn creates context for how people think about men and women drivers independently. In fact, it's quite a minefield, requiring more than the ability to write to get around. One has to be aware of the assumptions people are going to make; and what arguments counter those discussions; and what structural events can be created that will mitigate those arguments also. Add to this that stylistically, choosing who's behind the wheel creates thematic issues that also need to be addressed: what am I perceived to be saying about the drivers of cars, or about who is really responsible... plus whatever else I may choose to incorporate into the story as I build plot.

So, a structural decision (have an accident happen) can influence a stylistic choice (put Samantha behind the wheel) which in turn can impose a structural reaction (she is attacked by, say, Jack's father), which is itself a stylistic choice (why the father and not someone else).

And all this... all that I've said about structure and style... goes to this simple argument:

Don't think about it. You won't be able to figure out which is which until you've done this a long time, knowing which is which won't make you a better writer, the only people who care which is which are literary critics, and you honestly have too much on your plate worrying about making the story worth reading to give a shit what this word or this story choice is doing in the big picture. Trust me, everything I've just told you? File it in the round filing cabinet until 20 years from now you can waste an evening proving you know the difference while not giving a fuck.

If you see someone doing a youtube video who has decided to highlight "style" as a means of teaching you to be a better writer, know that what they're really doing is trying to find something else to talk about, because as a youtube presenter they've already done the obvious stuff. For someone like me, it's vaguely interesting, in the way that learning that there are lighthouses in Chile and how they work would be interesting, but it won't make me or you a better writer.

And this merry-go-round is the point. You can't watch a video on making a chair and then make a decent one first time, even if you watch someone do it. Especially if it's a complicated chair. If you've spent a lot of your life making chairs and furniture, you might get an idea from a video, but you'll be using your own skill and experience when interpreting the video. This makes all such videos, and this post as well, useless to your aspirations as a writer.

There's only one way to be a writer.  Write.

Honesty

I'll talk about something personal today.

This morning I was asked to define honesty, or more to the point, how do we know when we're being honest. This is something I've thought about a lot and goes a long way to explaining who and what I am. Because I believe that, upon hearing what someone else says, or in responding to something they write, if we don't say the first thing that comes into our mind, we're lying.

And I know that no one else believes this. By and large, people believe their first thought is "unfiltered" and therefore, for that reason, not "thought out," or rather most likely irrational... which is why they'd rather take a beat or two to suss out their answer, rather than "go with their gut," which is what speaking off the cuff is judged to be.

This argument assumes that thinking is like a draft that we clean up, making it suitable for the consumption of others. But I think all of this framing, the choice of words like filter and thinking out, are a form of being disingenuous with others, to be sure they don't think ill of us... because we are more concerned with what others think of us than we are with stating what we have just now thought of their last statement.

Filtering isn't clarity, it's plainspoken an effort to make sure we curate our outward selves not to resemble our inner selves... and I believe that most people have become so habitual in their need to curate, that they lose the ability to ever be ingenuous about what they think, or what they believe... and thus spend all their lives speaking and even acting according to what others will think of them, rather than what they themselves think, period.

And moreover, I believe, those who counsel us to curate our thoughts, to not speak our sincerest opinions, are those most frightened of doing so themselves. It is as if to say, "I have taken all this effort to shut down my thoughts, I think it's unfair that you're not doing the same with yours." It is resentment.

More strangely, having been this way for many decades now, unremittingly, I've also experienced something else most people never do: that of having strangers come to me and say, "It's amazing how you're able to bravely speak your mind; I'm jealous," or words that extent.

Of course I have dabbled with the curation of my speech. I have worked, of course, and learned to frame my answers to persons in authority, especially those who have paid me money, in a filtered manner. I would have been a fool not to. Most people would term this approach a matter of "respect." Those especially likely to term it so would be those who want respect from subordinates, who appreciate the arrangement that if I pay you money for a job done, I expect a level of respect from you, that I'm not going to give in return, because I'm the one with the money.

It's always been a bit strange to me that in an arrangement or reciprocity, the person with the money deserves a respect that the person performing the task isn't owed. But we can shelve that for another day.

What such persons want is not "respect," which is earned, but "deference," which my dictionary defines as submission or yielding to the judgment, opinion, will, etcetera, of another. They may call it respect, because that's a nicer word, but deference better defines what's actually expected. Everyone with a bad boss in this world already knows this, though rarely have they thought it through.

Showing deference to a boss is a question of survival... but when I am showing deference, I know I am lying to them. Most of the time they don't seem to know it. I'm not sure why. Perhaps they don't care. But I don't pretend that when I'm suspending my first thought in preference for a curated answer, that I'm in any way speaking the truth to them. Others, I've noticed, seem not to make this distinction.

Interesting to me is how there are so many people that expect this deference from me when (a) we do not have a shared contract, (b) they don't know who I am; (c) they don't in any visible way seem to respect me, though they demand deference in return; and (d) believe, with all their hearts, that somehow an implied "social contract" exists between all persons on principle, because someone somewhere once coined that term as a means of enforcing deference from persons who were dumb enough to give it for free.

For example, nearly every other voice on the internet.

A recent case in point when I was behaving as a complete asshole on JB's Blackrazor blog, reacting to something I sincerely did not like, while voicing my honest opinion. Which, anyone who has read this blog at length, is want to do. I'm not ashamed of it — in fact, I'll link the post here, stipulating from the start that this certainly isn't about JB. The post is this:

https://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2025/11/talking-turkey.html

The post describes the presence of a network graph, or link-graph, which visualises relationships between D&D blogs. I have numerous problems with such representations, beginning with the fact that I dislike this blog being associated with other D&D blogs, which I would rather not count myself among. If someone wants to limit those blogs that actually create content from those that essentially piggyback upon the work of other persons, I would likely be more on board with that. But I deeply, deeply resent being shoved into a crowd of people I do not relate to, do not respect, do not want to have anything to do with, and then also be measured in where I stand in comparison to those people. To my mind, this is like happening to wear a red cap, then being shoved into a crowd of people wearing a MAGA red cap, and then being told I'm ranked such and such among them. The degree to which this rankles me cannot be fully expressed. For that reason, here, I've chosen to curate my opinion about it. Not out of deference, but out of the limitation of words to express my position on this.

My first response, when I gladly believed I wasn't included, was to quote Groucho Marx, which can be read on the link. JB, ever anxious to please, informed me that I was and gave me directions... which caused my second response, which was in essence a channelling of the character John Bender from The Breakfast Club. And though yes, insulting, no question about that, it also expressed my honest opinion about those blogs, and Grognardia in particular, chosen as the biggest bloated circle on the graph.

This response didn't bother JB, who moderates his blog, and willingly posted my response. But JB aims to please, and thus also okay'd this response from Jacob72:

"Tut. I believe that it's unnecessary for you to share a negative view of James' blog in that way. It is possible for me to enjoy JB's, James' and your blogs without trading them off one another in the same way that it is possible for me to enjoy different artists or musical genres. The work and effort that the three of you put into producing posts and maintaining your blogs is to be respected."

Full of all the deference that's expected of me, without the acknowledgement that my answer wouldn't be there if JB hadn't added his seal of approval. As such, I had, in JB's eyes at least, ever right to make my case.

But honesty in the minds of a great many people is not the best policy, because they treat it as a slap in the face. "Necessary?" No. Doesn't serve at all the first tier of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, true enough. My expression, however, it not limited to what's necessary, and certainly not to what other people think is necessary. "In that way..." i.e., not filtered. What Jacob does with his enjoyment is, again, not my responsibility, but bang, deference-expectation again. Grognardia, an "artist?" If at all, certainly a bad one... and remind me, in this culture of the internet, how precisely do we treat "bad artists"?  I've forgotten. Then, finally, the real kicker: we are all equal. That's right. That's why Grognardia shared his big gasbag of being the central massive circle in the circle jerk of the link-graph, to show his "equality," while the effort I put into the writing and making of a point in my posts is no different than Grognardia gushing over... oh, let's see, today... #93 of the Dragon magazine from 30 years ago, and how he enjoyed making sentences in school, adored Frank Mentzer's article, really enjoyed the article, and how he's mellowed over the years. Gosh, golly gee whiz, we're just like different musical genres!

I'm going to barf now.

Here's where we get to the point of this. Four days ago I decided to lie. In answer to Jacob72, I posted a link to Jo Dee Messina, then promptly tried to forget how really pissed off I was. And it didn't work. The lie didn't work. It went around and around in my head, until finally it became this post, because I really couldn't let it rest. My "give-a-damn" for Jacob72's feelings really is busted, but I really resent being dragged into someone else's product modelling, then being counselled that I should "shut up and like it," because it's "unnecessary" for me to express just how really, really, really angry it makes me.

So I decided to give an honest answer about it.

Dungeons & Dragons White Box 27

We are in the second book, Monsters & Treasure.

Special Ability functions are generally as indicated in CHAINMAIL where not contradictory to the information stated hereinafter, and it is generally true that any monster or man can see in total darkness as far as the dungeons are concerned except player characters.

I do mind when a book refers to another book, especially when that other book is not officially part of the set I've just bought, as Chainmail the booklet wasn't. Still, we live in a world where Chainmail is readily available now, so I don't need to go farther with that.

"Where not contradictory to the" would make more sense if written, "where consistent with"... while "hereinafter" would be clearer as "in what follows." Then we could read the sentence as, "...as indicated in Chainmail where consistent with what follows below." 

Or even easier if the entirety of everything before the comma isn't said at all, since it doesn't actually say anything. But we're not supposed to notice. The part before the comma in fact connects not at all with the point about total darkness, except that apparently everything has this phenomenal ability except the players. This handwaves the DM problem when a player asks, "How come the monsters can see us in the dark?"

Accepting this is true, why the sleight of hand with the flourish of language like a magician blowing cards in your face before forcing on you a card that isn't chosen. We're not talking about "special ability functions," we're taking about ONE special ability and we couldn't even just make the point.

Why did they feel there'd be pushback at the simple rule,

"Monsters can see in total darkness; player characters cannot."?

Attack/defense capabilities versus normal men are simply a matter of allowing one roll as a man-type for every hit die, with any bonuses being given to only one of the attacks, i.e. a Troll would attack six times, once with a +3 added to the die roll. (Combat is detailed in Vol. III.)

On page 19 we're told that "normal men" attack at 1st-level fighters. On page 26 there's that oddly phrase "...missiles projected by normal (not above normal) men..." and page 5 and 6 make two other references to "normal men," in addition to the paragraph quoted above. But while I can guess, as most of us can, that "normal" men are non-levelled characters that fight like 1st level fighters but are NOT 1st level fighters. "Zero-level" as a term does not occur in the White Box. "Non-player" occurs on page 12 of Men & Magic, but the reader should remember that this mostly refers to hirelings and does not equate this condition to "normal" men.  Later references to "non-players" relate to their loyalty and their morale, while page 27 of Monsters & Treasure discusses the limitations of non-player characters in taking up a magic sword. A non-fighter can be hired for 1 g.p. on page 23 of The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, but exactly what is hired is not clarified.

The only reference I could find of a non-player having a level is on page 27 of the third volume, with respect to "Riders" on flying creatures. Without this one reference, I would have every reason to think that all non-players must necessarily also be "normal", keeping in mind that I don't know how many hit points that so-called "normal" fighters have.

Now, like I just noted, we know what's meant here, but try to put yourself in the headspace of someone who has only these books for reference. And try to assume that you're going to run the White Box as a choice because "other D&D versions of the game are all wrong."  You're still stuck relying on those other versions of the game, because this version doesn't provide you what you need to know even about the people you're supposed to hire and fight. It's just not included in these rules. Imagine how frustrating that must have been at the time.

Your only choice would have been to physically write a letter to TSR, which must have received who knows how many such letters, asking the same questions over and over. "What does this mean? What is this thing that I can't find in the rules?" Imagine how humiliating that must have been, or should have been, for the original designers.

For example, though I searched "hit point", "hit points" and "hit dice", I could not find any direct reference that said, clearly, "a normal man rolls 1 die for hit points." I assume it, but I can't find it. For the table I quoted in the last post, the number of hit dice for men is stated merely as "all variable" along with move in inches and armour class. Yet for dwarves and elves we have 1 and 1+1 hit dice automatically. Why are there no "normal dwarves" or "normal elves"? Is this ever explained?

All this goes to show that a lot of early thinking about the game was more about filling in the gaps created by incompetent and inconsistent design, rather than any real logic. Why precisely make a distinction between just one humanoid race, men, as having a "normal" type vs. a "player" type, when we do not make that distinction for any other race? Because men are "different?" That's merely an assumption. The rules don't state that we are, or give a reason for it, or in anyway provide a rationale for human exceptionalism.

Arguably, the distinction between "normal men" and "player men" arises because humans were conceived in two separate design contexts — Chainmail’s mass-combat units on one hand, and individual characters on the other — and instead of reconciling those contexts, the authors jammed them into the same rule set and expected us to harmonise them. Elves and dwarves never got a "normal" category because Chainmail only imagined them as discrete, combat-encounter entities; they didn't imagine the lived-in world where demi-humans exist in unexceptional roles. But then they got slapped into the role-playing version without consideration for what that might mean with respect to those rules the authors cut and pasted from Chainmail unchained. And honest, this amateurishness is everywhere.

Look at this next on page 5:

MONSTER DESCRIPTIONS:

MEN: There are several categories of men:

BANDITS: Although Bandits are normal men, they will have leaders who are supernormal fighters, magical types or clerical types. For every 30 bandits there will be one 4th-level Fighting-Man; for every 50 bandits there will be in addition one 5th- or óth-level fighter (die 1-3 = 5th level, die 4-6 = 6th level); for every 100 bandits there will be in addition one 8th- or 9th-level fighter (die 1-3 = 8th, die 4-6 = 9th). If there are over 200 bandits there will be 50% chance for a Magic-User (die 1-4 = 10th level, die 5-6 = 11th level) and a 25% chance for a Cleric of the 8th level. If there are exactly 300 bandits there will absolutely be a Magic-User, and the chance for a Cleric goes up to 50%. There is also a chance that there will be magical accouterments with the super-normal types:

*if edged weapon indicated by roll go to Wand/Staff table and roll again, but if result not usable by Cleric there is no item in this category.

That looks like a table but if you look closely, it isn't one.

This doesn't use "above normal", as the aforementioned page 26 of Men & Magic, but rather, "supernormal," thus introducing a third state of being... though of course we just mean "levelled," a word that also does not appear anywhere in the White Box (I searched the American "leveled," just to be clear). We are told exactly nothing about them as a group, with regards to their motivations or reason for being, so we may assume they exist as cardboard cutouts for killing.

But here's what bothers me, and it was carried forward right into the AD&D Monster Manual in 1977, so I assume Gygax and crew didn't care. "Bandit" is not a creature type. It's not even a "type of men." It's a behaviour, a habit, and rationally, elves, dwarves, gnomes, orcs, goblins and even trolls can be "bandits." Arguably, any creature not of "good" alignment could be, since bandits on page 6 (see below) are defined as either "neutral" or "chaotic."  There's no logical reason that a vampire couldn't be a "bandit." So why exactly is there a setting rule that identifies only humans are willing to rob other creatures of their wealth?  Are we the only ones who care? Or who know how?

If there are 29 bandits, are there no levels here? Is a 1st, 2nd or 3rd level allowed to join the bandits, or are they sent packing when they apply? "No, we'll allow 'normal humans' but you 1st levels, you're not good enough!" And what happens, if an extra 4th level shows up but there are only 46 of us? Is that not permitted? If I pile enough bandits together, does an 8th or 9th level just automatically show up?  Or is it that if an 8th level becomes a bandit, poof, bandits start arriving from every direction until there are a hundred of them? Which is it, because now that my fighter is 8th level and I've decided to be a bandit, I want my owed hundred. If 40 get slaughtered in a fight, to the requisite number appear from the nearest village to make up the difference? 

Plus, if there's 199 bandits, there's zero-chance one of them will be a mage, right? Well hell, let's get another bandit in here. And why only mages of 10th or 11th level? Does the guild not permit 9th level mages to hang around bandits? These are important questions I feel need answers.

The reason I want this slapped around is because the exact same logic is applied in the Monster Manual and there too it's irrational. The problem of multi-levelled possibilities makes the number appearing calculation a lot of trouble, so instead of that we're presenting the bandits here as though they're a fully formed mob that conforms to standards that do not make world-building sense. While nearly all the encounters with bandits are bound to be with first levels, the numbers are utterly out of whack with worldbuilding.

Let's leave off the magic treasure for the levels... I've no problem with it, except that in any session I've ever run, a 9th level character is definitely going to have 1-3 magic weapons, magic armour, at least two potions of some kind, almost certainly 1-2 miscellaneous items and whatnot, because if you run long enough to gain the treasure needed to pile together hundreds of thousands of experience, this accumulation is guaranteed, not just because you get your share of that treasure, but because members of the party die and their stuff falls to you. But this isn't about the White Box, so I'll pinch off this point, except to add that when TSR starts to release modules, they completely ignore this distribution concept.

Example of Bandits: Assume 183 bandits are encountered. There will be the following super-normal types with them:

six Fighting-Men of 4th level

three Fighting-Men of 5th or 6th level

one Fighting-Man of the 8th or 9th level (the leader)

Using percentile dice a score of 20% or less would indicate that the 4th-level fighters had magical Armor, Shield, and/or Sword (check for each fighter by category); a roll of 25% or 30% (or less) would indicate the same for the 5th- or 6th-level fighters; and a score of 40% or 50% (or less) would indicate the same for the 8th- or 9th-level fighter.

Look how much book space is provided to simply repeat the rule already as written, expecting that after all the things not explained in this set of books, we're more than ready to explain this at length, just to make sure the reader understands. This suggests someone was really, really proud of this model, that they felt it really explained everything that a combat-designing DM would need in throwing bandits at the party.

Except that if my party is a high enough level to take on these bandits, they're not really a challenge. Back when I first started playing D&D, when I was a new DM and of course not very bright and playing the rules as written (as most not very-bright DMs do), this was one that I remember employing to the letter with a party. Along with the rule at the top of page 5, where a levelled person (though, since we were playing AD&D, this applied only to fighters) got one attack per level against "normal" combatants, or as we called them, zero-levels. At that time, I also played without a combat map, so I'd just say how many attackers were in front of the characters as they formed a ring around the spellcasters. Basically, at most I would write x's and o's like a football coach to show where everyone was.

When it was the players turn to attack, they just slaughtered the zero-levels like cutting wheat. 3 fighter-types of 6th level, plus a cleric and a mage would attack 20 times a round, with strength, magic weapons and THAC0 (obviously not called that then) assuring that at least three quarters of the 20 lined up targets were slaughtered. After five rounds of that, you make jokes about the ring of bodies lying like a wall between the party and the enemy, describing the enemy climbing to the top of the wall and leaping at the party, only to be slaughtered in their turn. Then the mage and the party's magic wastes the 10 levelled characters with ready scrolls and potions, and win at a flippin' walk. 'Til we're all sitting around, like the fourth time we've done this slaughter fest, pointing out, "This really is pretty dumb; it's nothing like what would really happen. They'd just dog-pile us and we'd all die."

The game is designed to presuppose that hundreds of combatants are merely ready to obediently present their necks for sequential execution, round after round, the encounter has stopped being anything but a ritualized numbers exercise. A handful of fighters getting twenty attacks per round is an absurdity, benefitting the party but NOT the bandits; they're still stuck fighting us one at a time... and without the magic support of an ordinary party of adventurers, one 9th level is NOT impressive. In reality, a party that size, regardless of their fighting ability, would smash a formation of five combatants in seconds. They'd feather us full of arrows and bolts before even coming close. And they'd tell us to put down our weapons or die, and we would, because there's no way to combat that number without the sort of magic that comes at 5th or 6th level. Even with a fireball, in a world that knows a fireball exists, the enemy isn't going to clump together so you can get 20 of them at a blow. They're just not.

But the designers didn't care about reality, or depicting it... only rationalising their rule set as they built it. And absent a better ruleset, the hoi polloi simply accepted things as written, as we did as teenagers, even though we knew while doing it how ridiculous it all was. And of course there were those of us who didn't want to change those rules, because they liked slaughtering a hundred bandits. It felt like Conan to those people... and it still feels like Conan to people now.  But if you read Conan, you'll find that he only fights a hundred when he's moving, when the enemy doesn't know where he is, when it's dark, or he's in a jungle, and there are so many bodies around they can't reach him. And Conan isn't being markes on a page with x's and o's, he's dancing through words, not a game battle system. Howard uses pacing, metaphor, rhythm, and imagery to make the impossible feel plausible. A battle scene in fiction is constructed through narrative technique, not tactical mathematics.

After a few times of doing it as a DM, it wasn't fun; not because I felt anything for the bandits, but because it became silly bookkeeping, keeping track of the dead as they fell. And the players, when they got their fill, just rolled their eyes at it. So there wasn't any point. Which is what makes "bandits" a lousy encounter. It's ridiculously overpowered when the players are below a certain line, and ridiculously boring once the players cross that line. There's no real mid-point, or not one wide enough to be useful. So you just don't bother throwing bandits against the players, EVER... unless you rethink what bandits are, or why they'd approach the party. And then the number and how many levels they have doesn't matter.

They have to become people, first, not notes on a ledger. Once they're desperate, opportunistic, frightened, cautioned, disorganised, negotiating or interested in ransom, not killing, its a different kind of play. But in the White Box set, we're still setting up for a Chainmail wargame. And it's boring.

There's more on bandits, on page 6, but I'll leave off for now.

Dungeons & Dragons White Box 26

Moving on from spells, finishing the Men & Magic book with this post.

MAGICAL RESEARCH:

Both Magic-Users and Clerics may attempt to expand on the spells listed (as applicable by class). This is a matter of time and investment. The level of the magic required to operate the spell (determination by referee) dictates the initial investment. Investment for 1st level is 2,000 Gold Pieces, 2nd level is 4,000 Gold Pieces, 3rd level is 8,000 Gold Pieces, 4th level is 16,000 Gold Pieces, 5th level is 32,000 Gold Pieces, and 6th level is 64,000 Gold Pieces. The time required is one week per spell level. For every amount equal to the basic investment spent there is a 2076 chance of success, cumulative. An investment of 10,000 Gold Pieces in order to develop a new 1st level spell, for example, has a 100% chance of success after one game week.

The level of the spell researched must be consistent with the level of the Magic-User or Cleric involved, i.e. the character must be able to use spells equal to or above the level of the one he desires to create.

Once a new spell is created the researcher may include it in the list appropriate to its level. He may inform others of it, thus enabling them to utilize it, or he may keep it to himself.

As writing, it's a comprehensible rule, which is saying a great deal at this point. And the structure offers a reasonable benefit to the imaginative player: if you can think of a spell that you feel ought to be in the list, here is a bit of agency permitting you to add that spell. I'm completely in support of this idea. As I've said, spells must come from somewhere within the game setting... and it's therefore reasonable that players, too, have every opportunity to place themselves right there along with personages that would later become part of the game's lexicon: Leomund, Mordenkainen, Tenser, Bigby, Otiluke and so on.

As game design, the rule fails. It is perhaps not the time to say so. I've focused on the system's shortcomings, what it's failed to explain, what it's failed to include, where the flaws in design occur... and arguably, there's no flaw in design here. I see no reason why this rule shouldn't work as written.

My issue is that it fails to provide a meaningful obstacle between the designer and the newly acquired spell. True enough, the first imposed limit is, "can the player think of a spell?" There's nothing in these rules to explain parameters on spell design, focus, level, or what the spell ought to include, or — gawd help us — maybe something about what "duration" or "range" means in the context that they're used. But if the game writers can think of spells, it stands to reason that some players also can. Some are liable to be good at it, if they wish to be. Most, I suspect, wouldn't know where to start. I've had only two spells designed by players in my game setting, and after the fact, after they had the spells, they discovered there wasn't much occasion to use them. And after 50 years of published spell design, most of what's out there now is splitting hairs with regards to benefit. However, let's push all that upon a shelf, as it's not what I want to address.

Two hurdles are proposed: cost and time. Time isn't a hurdle at all. "Game time" passes instantaneously if so desired. Players don't have to physically work to invent the spell, there's no skull sweat or careful pouring of bowls into vials that needs doing; the players snap their fingers and say, "we let six weeks go by." That's the same as letting one week go by, so increasing the number of weeks is meaningless. And since the players don't run their characters long enough to effectively age, there's no upper limit that's approached in spending six weeks. Now, if we said the spell would require six years, that might be something. The player might look at their 33 y.o. character and wonder how many years, really, they can expend in this kind of research. 

Consider a real time cost: Pasteur worked on germ theory from the 1850s to the mid-1880s. Lister needed 15 to 20 years to refine and overcome scepticism regarding his antiseptic surgery. Herschel spent 50 years of disciplined observation to develop stellar photometry, create a catalog of double-stars and revisions to instrumentation. Wallace spent 8 continuous years collecting specimens and 7 years refining his ideas; Darwin needed 22 years to reach the point Wallace had, when he received Wallace's letter in 1858 and realised they'd come to the same conclusions. Cuvier needed 5 years of relentless examination of living and fossil animals, then another 12 years of lectures, work and dissections to achieve his 1812 work, Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe. Lyell's work in geology starts in 1818 as a student under Buckland; he needed 12 years to achieve Principles of Geology, then he spend another 38 fixing the errors in it; a process that still goes on.

Yet a mage proposes to invent a spell that produces an unprecedented manipulation of reality, neatly packaged for instant use — along the lines of a death spell or control weather — in six weeks. Most people can't even learn to drive from scratch in that amount of time. Six weeks isn't "research." It's a long vacation.

That leaves the other obstacle: gold. But this isn't a scarce resource, either. From 1975's Blackmoor, the high priestess Toska Rusa is described as controlling wealth equal to ""17,000 gold and hundreds of gems and pieces of jewelry worth an additional 70,000 gold pieces." The Temple of the Frog includes a jewellery adorned pulpit valued at 100,000 gold, a chest in the company office containing 3,000 platinum, thirteen gems valued at 1,000 gold each and a personal treasure of 16,000. This just begins to show that five-figure hauls of treasure were part of the time-period's design culture.

Sorry, I can't actually say I know this; I couldn't give two hoots about what Blackmoor has in it, I just need an early example of adventuring logic (this one from 1975) to give a sense of how the designers of the White Box viewed treasure. So the above was lifted from the internet. If it's wrong, I wouldn't know that. I do know that later modules, like KotB, offered masses of treasure even in adventures designed for 1st to 3rd level parties. The point being is that the 64,000 g.p. for a 6th level spell research could be acquired several times over just from one adventure.

As a DM, I don't give this kind of treasure and still my players, over a year of play, casually accumulate several hundred thousand gold pieces, which they basically bury until they have something to spend it on. This is because if a combined party of five character all need around 250,000 each to reach name level, by the time they do so that's going to accumulate half or more of that amount times five at the end. The players are required to do so. That's what the rules ask.

Even if you charge players 100 g.p. per level per month, as the AD&D handbook demands, in two months of game time players can justifiably collect a dozen times that much... easily enough to account for six whole weeks of time spent sitting around waiting for the mage to invent a new spell.

All this makes the spell invention rule meaningless. Money is hay, time is air, the players are thus rewarded once in experience gained, again in the wealth itself, and a third time with increasing their power over and above the levels they advance. It's just not an effective obstacle as written.

BOOKS OF SPELLS:

Characters who employ spells are assumed to acquire books containing the spells they can use, one book for each level. If a duplicate set of such books is desired, the cost will be the same as the initial investment for research as listed above, i.e. 2,000, 4,000, 8,000, etc. Loss of these books will require replacement at the above expense.

Apparently, the term "spellbook" hasn't been invented yet.

As before, this is more or less fair as a written rule. A little more clarity could be added as regards to what physical purpose the books serve — does the mage physically read from the book to cast the spell? We haven't proposed the concept of "memorisation" here, though I understand that Vance, of whom I've not read so much as a sentence, even quoted by someone else to my knowledge, incorporated this into his literature. But since Vance doesn't exist in the White Box at all, and his name and his works isn't quoted here, there's no reason to assume he has anything to do with it.

Many games, particularly boardgames, include features that exist solely to remove money or power tokens from the player's possession. Having to pay to get out of jail, or $75 for luxury tax, or 10% of cash on hand to a maximum of $200 in Monopoly all exist to ensure that with a run of bad luck, a player who seems to be winning can be overcome and made to fall further back in the player ranks. These setbacks aren't very effective in Monopoly, or most boardgames, because if they are, they create disenchantment with the game. My mother used to bitch because every time the family played the Game of Life in the 1970s, she always landed on the space that made her pay $150,000. She probably didn't actually land on it more than twice or three times, but she had a fluid memory for such things so that it always seemed to be something that befel only her and no one else. A lot of people view board games this way, as I learned later playing such games with adults in non-chain coffee houses in the 1990s. When those still existed.

It's called a "sink" mechanic. It's there to bleed off accumulated advantage... in this case of the mage, who gets the most powerful spells and later becomes the most powerful character class. So, naturally, mages have to pay a fee to be mages that no other class has to pay... "because." But here, it doesn't even work for that purpose.

The resource has to be scarce to matter, and we've already established the gold isn't, and the whole thing can be sabotaged by a decent-minded jointly supportive party merely deciding, "Okay, let's everyone kick in a fifth of the mage's spellbook." There, fuck you Gygax, the mage pays the same everyone else does, it's a cheap "pay the game tax" feature and it doesn't mean anything. The mage isn't punished, everyone is. And to no real purpose.

The presence of the sink exposes the deeper flaw in early D&D design: the rules assume adversarial scarcity in a cooperative game. Sinks have meaning when the players compete against each other, as in board games. The don't mean anything where the players work conjointly toward a shared goal. Gygax writes gold costs as though every player exists in a vacuum — a single character footing single-character burdens. But the moment the rules give players the ability to act collaboratively, the economics dissolve. An economic sink that can be trivially collectivised is not an economic sink. It’s just a tax on the solitary player in a system designed for groups.

Since the books are accounted for in the silly weight table scheme on page 15, they aren't even an encumbrance problem. Essentially, pay to play, then forget, because the DM will so long as the silly things are still on your character sheet.

That's the end of Men & Magic. We pick up with Monsters & Treasure on page 3.

Most of this is self-explanatory for the readers, so we can skip it. I'm going to get a complaint out of my system, however, so we can just move on.

In professional journalism, and this applies as much to the United States as Canada, it's not appropriate to capitalise game terms as though they were proper nouns, which are names used for an individual person, place or organisation. Animals, for example, are words, not titles. We would write "spotted owl" or "prairie rattlesnake." There is no precedent in any style guide that would dictate that it was proper to capitalise both words in "Heavy Horse" for example, or "Large Insects," both of which are real world examples. Thus, "gray ooze" shouldn't be capitalised, nor should "Dwarves" or "Elves," since we wouldn't in publishing terms write "Human" with a capital H. It doesn't matter, except that once again, it's evidence of how truly ignorant and lacking in the sense of finding someone who knew how words work when deciding to publish this work.

Just had to get that out of my system.

As near as I can tell, "number appearing" does not appear anywhere else in the three books, while the sole note to it, explaining it's presence here, merely says, "Referee's option: Increase or decrease according to party concerned (used primarily only for outdoor encounters)." Which means, essentially, make up any number you want. Back with with the 15th post, this comment gave to suggest that these numbers have some meaning, but it's plainly clear that they don't. What's more, from later game examples of these monsters appearing in modules and such, the numbers given here are never used, nor are the commensurate ones that appear in the 1977 AD&D Monster Manual, either, which reflect these but do not ever seem to apply in game.

The numbers plainly do not exist for a party of 5 characters entering the first level of a dungeon to encounter, quote, "30-300" orcs, which would be a ridiculous over match for the party. From 1981, the Keep on the Borderlands (again, with the 1977 Manual stating 30-300), the "Orc Lair" (B) has a "watcher" by himself, then 4 orc guards, then a common room with 12 male orcs, 18 females and 9 children, then a single leader in the orc leader's room. That's 18 one-hit dice orcs and 27 others whom the rules state, "do not fight." We have to include the orcs form the other orc lair (C) to get all the way up to 30.

On a sand-table at 1:20 scale, "30–300 orcs" might represent a company or battalion in the wilderness. In a 10-foot corridor that five PCs are meant to explore, it's nonsense.

The second note, to the "move in inches" column, reads, "Number after slash is flying speed. Creature may "charge" also and get bonus to normal move." We've discussed flying before. Here, it's time to discuss the speed that's actually needed to get a creature, as opposed to a mage with a spell, airborne.

The table states that a hippogriff's normal movement speed is 18"... double that speed would not provide enough lift of air over and above the wings to allow that creature to obtain or sustain flight. That is, if we don't want to just say that it has "magical wings," in which case, jeebus, couldn't the magic be a little more fucking magical?  The attack speed of a cheetah is 31 meters (34 yards) per second, if you'd like something to compare with. That's over land.

If we take something considerably lighter than a horse mass for a hippogriff, and handwave the square-cube problem and just approximate it (there's no way I'm doing the math with you slavering bastards around, since you'll rip me a new one if I try), then the cruising speed in flight of a hippogriff has to be in the realm of 25 to 45 mph. That's way slower than a cheetah, about 70 mph. In game terms, this is, at the bottom end, about 240" per turn. That's basing its speed on a condor, as a real world example.

You'd think that magic would accomplish at least what real wings would.

And why, pray, are flying creatures the only ones who can charge?

The third note reads, "See separate paragraphs regarding each monster for various possibilities." This note applies to two monsters: dragons and lycanthropes. The former because there are white, black, green, blue, red and golden dragons (why "golden" if not "reddish" "bluish" or "greenish"?), and the latter because there are werewolves, wereboars, weretigers and werebears. These are copied here in the order they appear in the lists on pages 12 and 14, where the writers have never heard of "alphabetical order," something a grade four student making a list would automatically do.

But the more annoying problem this highlights is that if, in a game, you're tossing a bunch of gnomes at the party, you have the description of the monster on page 16, but all the stats on page 4. This was a deliberate design choice, and is employed with every monster, including with dragons and lycanthropes, because we still have to jump back to the above chart if we want to know the creatures AC, move, hit dice, % in lair (if we even use it) and type or amount of treasure. As a dungeon master (note, small letters, NOT a proper noun to me, even if the company does choose to trademark it with capitals), this is extremely annoying and aggravating, on levels that are hard to describe. I don't have enough to do when running a game without having to flip back and forth through a paper-bound book because the writers can't put the damn stats together with the creature description.

Efficiency is and has always been a disaster where D&D is concerned. Even when collections of tables were slammed together at the backs of books, the separation of these tables from a brief explanation of these tables in such gatherings just repeats the problem. There never was any logic to the AD&D DMG or Players Handbook, we just got to know where things were through a lot of repetition over a long period of time. While at least the 1977 Monster Manual was alphabetical, there are large sections in that book where sub-alphabetical lists are placed under other monsters, which breaks up the clean logic of the work. One reason that DMs have said it's impossible to know all the rules is because "the rules" never occur as a straight, rational list, as they might with any other game, but are always folded into"bricolage," a pile of notes, half-rules, digressions, war-gaming leftovers, marginalia, folksy commentary, play examples and obstructing artworks. Procedures are never easily at hand, they have to be excavated; the mechanics are forever a jumble of tables that occur scattered throughout three or more books, without any sense it seems (for example, combat rules appear in the Player's Handbook that aren't addressed at all in the combat section of the DMG), under headings they have nothing to do with; the indexing is atrocious; words like "evil" aren't defined at all, and wow, does that problem EVER apply to later AD&D, which constantly uses terms (role-playing, personae, milieu, healing, hit points, experience) frequently without ever addressing how these terms actually fit into the game's setting or design. There just there, to be assumed, to be reused, and never to be defined.

This is far enough today.