I went to see the dentist yesterday for a cleaning. I've been going to the same office for a decade now, and have never been restrained about what I do or what I'm interested in. My dentist even bought a copy of my menu. So yesterday when the new hygienist began our conversation with, "You're the D&D expert, aren't you?", it wasn't much of a surprise.
Being in her 40s, she was interested in talking about her son's interest in the game and in her own attempts to play it... with the latter concentrating on how hard she found it to make decisions. "I didn't know what to do," she told me, slipping the napkin around my neck. "I had to ask others to tell me, so I found it all very confusing." I thought it might end there, but she really dug into the game, asking me if I thought much of it ought to be based on die rolling or decision-making, if there was a right way to play, what it was like being a dungeon master (she had to be reminded what the term was) and so on. She was plainly trying to figure out her son's interest, but of course I was more interested in hers.
I pointed out that most of the time we're not put in a position where we have to make life-critical decisions in real life. Each day we get up and know more or less what we're going to do. Decision-making is limited to whether or not it's a good idea to get a second donut with our coffee today, or should we wear the white shirt rather than the blue one (though we nearly always wear the one we most like that's clean today), or if we should phone our mother today or put it off until tomorrow.
Nearly all of the time, that's as far as we go. Any deeper decisions, such as should we move to a better neighbourhood, should we start changing our diet, should we go to Gimli this year like every year or spend a lot more and see Belize, we kick daily down the road until we're "ready" to address that more difficult thing. We know we will, we know we can, but really, it's still February and that's not going to happen until late July (though, really, go to Belize in Jan-Feb), so we don't
have to face that problem right now. We'll manage in it April. Or later.
D&D, however, played in the traditional way, demands a decision every couple of minutes. What we store in our packs, what weapon we pick as our character's mainstay, what spell we choose, what order we freaking walk in when we enter the dungeon... these decisions are
crucial — and ever more so as we become familiar with the game and recognise, down the line, that we have picked the wrong weapon because it doesn't work in this small space or its too heavy, or it doesn't hit with enough game resonance to count.
This decision-making process isn't just
paralysing, it's
alien to the experience that most people have day to day. It's something a child manages better, because school (still, though not as much) puts them in situations where they have to answer for themselves, explain why they said something, accept the adjudication of elders and figure out how to improve their lives by getting around these three impositions. They are forced to make decisions because so much of their lives are not in their own hands; but once they become adults, and make the really big choices (what am I going to do for money), that daily decision effort fades away, year by year. By the time they're in their 30s, they're mostly free of it. And they especially don't like being pushed by others into making decisions they don't care to make.
That's why a lot of closely knit friendships tend to evaporate in their 30s. The process of getting up in the morning, getting the kids off to school, doing the two or three things to maintain the house in order, going to work, getting food ready, finding a moment's peace and so on becomes routine and decision-free — and tiring — and it begins to feel like we don't want to
decide which bar we're going to drink at tonight or what special thing we're going to do. It's easier to go to the same bar. It's easier if no new people show up, who have to be spoken with in a special way. It's easier if no decision, after our long day, needs making.
And single people? Well, they have time to make decisions, don't they?
So, when people stay with D&D into their 20s and 30s, their approach to the game starts to shift too. Having figured out the basic details, those already discussed, and knowing who ought to lead when entering the dungeon — well, they pretty must just want to run in a dungeon, right? I mean, we know basically what happens, and what's expected of us, and what the right decision is, so it feels like our... well, like our daily grind, but less boring. D&D has the viscerality of slaughtering something, collecting something new, solving some small puzzle (within reason) and the camaraderie of others who "get" the game as we do. We don't want to make a lot of deep, complex decisions... a mystery is fine, but we're not really looking for a gut-wrenching dilemma to solve, one that's going to prey on us after the game is over, making us wonder, "Did we do the right thing?" We don't want that. We just want a good, gently immersive game, that allows us to put all that other stuff aside and narrow the walls of stress and difficulty down to manageable proportions.
I didn't explain all this to the hygienist, but I did point out the way she must have felt when she didn't know what decision to make. She admitted, she didn't want to do anything "wrong." That is a big thing in the minds of a lot of players. They don't want to screw up, they don't want to look foolish... and they really don't want to let down others by failing to do what they should have done.
There are always those who solve this problem by doing stupid things, all the time — because if they do this
deliberately, it's not a mistake, its a character choice. It is far, far easier to look at a situation and solve the puzzle, "What is the dumbest possible thing I could do right now?", than it is to solve the more difficult conundrum, "What would be the smartest thing?" By doing the former, it discards the necessity of doing the latter. Problem solved.
Get these people out of your game as soon as you can. If you examine their real lives any, you'll find that they're systematically ruining their futures in all kinds of ways you don't want to be near, when it happens.
This is also the reason why players drift towards
performative D&D. It is the game done for show, rather than out of any genuine conviction or commitment. Such persons are seeking social approval or signal virtue, evident by the way they disparage those who find such things unimportant or even tacitly repulsive (like I do). Unable to be politicians, such players still want their opportunities to make grand speeches, to preen, to cock the walk, to feel important when in fact they know they're not. They may not be capable of getting attention in the real world, but they've discovered that D&D offers them a small enough audience to enable them to effectively impress, where no real competition exists. They can't act their way out of a paper bag; they'd look moronic and gauche on a real stage; in a public venue as small as a coffee shop they'd induce everyone to roll their eyes and want them to just go... but at a D&D table, these people are
Stars! It's their one real chance to have the life they fantasise about living.
It's easy to see how the present evolved game has carefully scrubbed out the decision-making element. There are no real consequences for bad play, retconning is considered an imperative for every "responsible" DM and the goal is "fun" not risk and consequence. Oh, the word "risk" is still employed... but again, in a
performative, superficial sort of way. Like a dumbshow, a pantomime we play through, knowing nothing can go wrong. But then, playing the game this way, we don't want things to go wrong. When the ball rolls around and bounces on the roulette table and ends up in "00", we still win.
It really is a kind of hell. It's literally a Twilight Zone episode,
A Nice Place to Visit, where the gangster gets excited at first about his afterlife because he consistently wins at the roulette wheel and the slot machine. Inevitably, though, this gets boring, forcing him to examine what's really going on.
As a DM, I don't do any of this. I like making decisions, and I like being pushed into things where I have to make one. I like situations that are difficult to solve, which I can puzzle out for hour after hour. It is one of the reasons I write or read fiction, so that I can decide how the thing that motivates the main character drives this behaviour and that consequence, which ends in a resounding, satisfying ending. It's why I read books that don't follow a hero's journey, that often end in tragedy or remorse, because it's unexpected and revealing as regards human nature and character.
S o when I run a game, no, I don't want to create a dungeon and run people through it. If it isn't a dungeon, it isn't constructed like a dungeon ought to be. When I propose a problem, I don't create the solution also; I don't bother. I want to impose something consequential, that might really happen — some sort of cruelty is taking place, perpetrated by one people onto another — where no solution exists because through the human experiment, no solution ever has existed. Yet the player's hands are unbound; they're not expected to solve it, they're expected to manage themselves within it. This fascinates me endlessly, and it fascinates the players who try my game and like it.
I don't need to make everybody happy, just a small collection of people. Those people can be picked and chosen to be just like I am. Those who want to engage on a weightier, meatier level will find the peculiar sort of enjoyment at my table they can't get anywhere else. Because it's not wanted.
That's the thing. I ruin D&D because I keep pointing out, with arguments that explain how frivolous, shallow and unengaged most players are, and want to be, that whatever they're doing isn't remotely the sort of game that D&D could be. I don't see the game as a diversion or just a thing to do Saturday when we're not playing poker or watching a film together. It's an art form for me, an intellectual pursuit, a thing that requires expertise and effort to do well. Exactly what most people do not want the game to be, primarily because that's not what they want their lives to be. They're not interested in being "better" as people. They're doing all they can just to keep from being bored when they cook enough food to fill their bellies.
Moreover, I won't just shut up. I won't let people just throw out a few words to defend their performative style of play and accept in on a principle I don't agree with. I won't live and let live. They're wrong, and everything decent thing that exists in this world, that comes about because of EXPERTISE and EFFORT, those things those people don't want to be part of, proves it. Hold up a mirror to these people and they know they're being shallow and selfish. The only argument they have it so tell me to put my mirror away, so they don't have to look at it.
Anyway, no, I did not say all of this to the hygeinist. I pointed out that she usually didn't make decisions about things where the consequences mattered, and that's why the game made her uncomfortable. She agreed. She's just an everyday person, with no skin in the game, so it's easier for her — bereft of emotional props and rationalisations — to just see that, hm, yes, it was hard to decide what the right thing to do was. There was no sense of being judged, no reason not to just see that... as her subsequent conversation showed. I wanted to suggest that she might just try again, being a little more aware that the decisions she needed to make weren't that consequential... but if she wants to try the game again, if her son will let her, then she will without my urging it.
I wish that when I talk to D&D players, I didn't have to spend so much time getting around all the bullshit they've been told and which they've embraced... because it really creates a divide between D&D as a game and D&D as a culture. The latter has utterly ruined the former... not just for noobs, but for themselves, because really, there's nowhere to take the performative game. It just lurches on until it becomes undead, like a television show entering it's 8th season. Everyone quits and for the rest of their lives they say things to me like, "Oh, D&D? It's all right I guess. I played it a bit in university... but after awhile, I just didn't see the point."
Mm hm. That's mostly it. What's the point. It's not like it matters. Sort of like those ten books most people can remember having read in high school or college; To Kill a Mockingbird and what not. The ten pieces of literature upon which all their decision-making wisdom is based upon — that bleak, hard to comprehend lexicon that makes Star Wars, the Marvel Universe, Transformers and the Game of Thrones look like such gems of emotive, signalling genius.
Ah.
I ask for too much.
