Is There a Yet?

This is the last of these.

By pursuing self-education, we can fill ourselves with a lot of knowledge and a skill-set that will serve us very well as a dungeon master, unquestionably.  And if we adopt a ideal of service towards our players, not only will we benefit from the sense of value that installs in ourselves and others, but our efforts will lend an appreciation for the game and the dynamic that weren't there before.  And if we commit to improvement, both by these two previous strategies but also as a matter of wanting to be competent, the motives for being so will gather and accumulate, urging us onwards.  For what hasn't been said to this point is the trajectory these three approaches provide, turning "working on the campaign" from something we do for others into something we do for ourselves.  One of the weaknesses of DMing as a pursuit is that too often we frame the work in terms of, "I have to prepare for the upcoming game, so I don't fail the players."  That sounds like service, and it sounds like something we should be doing... but in fact, it's a tether around our throats until we gain sufficient competence to be able to say, "I'm running on the weekend and it's no issue.  I already have tons of stuff I can use, because I haven't stopped working."

Unquestionably, these things together will make a fine DM.  Any sustained effort, where we lift ourselves above a place where we're moving from episode to episode, trying to keep up, allows us to feel an internal shift, from acting out of duty to acting out of love. Few comprehend this psychological transition — but when it happens, the feeling dwarfs every other sentiment we once had.  We realise, in a rush, that D&D isn't a game we play, or enact, or build so that it's functional... but rather, a calling, a thing that we do because of the creative vitality it grants.  We cease to be insecure. We cease to search endlessly for "advice" on how to play, because we know and because the advice is so obviously being given by those without competency.  They don't understand where we are, because they've never been here.

Detached from the endless quest for guidance and approval, or even for the recognition that we've done something "amazing" that we must rush to the internet to describe, which in itself is a kind of validation, the process becomes more "what can I do?" than "what do others think of it?" This redirection can be seen as arrogance — I've been accused of that enough, both justifiably and not — but in reality it is something higher.  It is a lack of dependency.  We don't "need" players, because we know that when we want them, they won't be hard to find.

I was not surprised to find myself on the list of "100 Best D&D Blogs"... after all, I can read as well as anyone, and given the shit that exists on blogs the length and the breadth of the internet, I hardly need to be told my worth.  Especially by an entity whose merely striving to obtain self-promotion by giving "awards" that are wholly performative and basically useless, which itself has zero credibility and zero recognition anywhere, even on the internet.  I did not report it here when it happened. I'm not proud of it. I view it as as spam, a con, a joke. Because I do not define myself according to what powerless strangers think, but by what I provide.

If I'm there, given my volatility and refusal to engage with the empty economy of mutual status signalling, it's because I shoved my relevance down their throats. I'm sure they resented having to include me.  But if they hadn't, their credibility would have suffered.  And this is where real achievement rests.  Not built through consensus or marketing, but through the accumulation of substance, consistency and challenge over time.

Now, my apologies for making this personal, but to move past these points so far to the next point, I must speak of my own experiences.  I have long been a point of contention.  I have, many times, had others attempt to use inclusion as a weapon against me, in the sense of declaring, to hurt me, "No one likes you. No one cares about you. You could die tomorrow and no one would care." It's a scathing attack — and one that a certain kind of person employs, because it's effective. Most of us are alone in the world, we are unfortunately subject to the condemnation of the tribe, and there are many who will assume the authority of the tribe, putting on its coat as it were, in order to avail themselves of that power.  Anyone whose found themselves at odds with even a small community, half-a-dozen persons in a workplace, for example, has experienced this weapon employed against them.

This expresses a fear that many dungeon masters have. Not that one player will rise against them, but that every player will. That we'll criticise one, only to have an insurrection on our hands, with everyone walking out together. In fact, this happened to me this last year, about eight months ago. Not that it meant much of anything. Nothing has changed about my game world, except that I'm not running it presently... and as it happened, there were extenuating circumstances that were in place before the event occurred. But putting that aside, as its not relevant.

The fear of it happening ties the hands of many a DM, especially those who have begun to question the specifics of the surface-game... which we must do, once we begin to understand that vast swaths of the game either don't make sense or are just poorly designed.  Taking a stand on this, though, relates to the fear that a DM will be ostracised... and that alone is sufficient to tie many a DM's hands, even when they know they're right.

For myself, the "exclusion weapon" ceased to have power over me following two events, one that took place in November of 1986 and one in September of 1988.  The first was the day of my marriage to my first wife, and the second was the birth of my daughter.  And it was sometime after that some fool pointed a finger at me, shouting, "No one cares about you!"  Which enabled me to answer, "My wife does.  My daughter does."

And the look on that accusing person's face, as they realised, suddenly, that not only did they have no power over me... but realised, knowing already that I was a husband and a father... that they had named their own fear out loud, not mine.

To be able to say, without bravado but with quiet certainty, "my wife does, my daughter does," is not an act of defiance... it's the declaration of unshakable placement in the world, which the world in turn must respect, because of what those relationships genuinely mean.  It says that because I am not divorced, because my marriage is working, because I have spent those thousands of hours changing diapers, cooking, cleaning, walking nights patiently with a crying baby on my shoulder out of love, not performance, I'm due a respect that comes from what I've done, not from how I act or the entity whose criteria of approval I need have. Standing up and getting married is just a tiny part of the whole — the rest is staying married, until the bitter end if need be.  If we never quit on our partners and our children, and if we feel certain they love us, then the rest of the world's opinion matters such a tiny amount that it can't be measured.  And this, unquestionably, is something the popular internet, largely made up of single young man-boys, cannot comprehend.

I'm not an individual because of what I say here, or what I believe about D&D, or how I run a game.  But because, as I sit here, I'm conscious of the wife of 23 years that I'm with now, whose just 40 feet away at the other end of the house, whom I can go to right now and say, "I love you," without self-consciousness, because I do.  This is an experience that the internet has chosen to discard, because it doesn't fit the minimalist, dependency-driven criteria by which it seeks to score others.  It's why I can say what I like here, boldly, fearlessly, because I don't need to be loved.  I am loved.

In an online culture — not the authentic culture, made of those who are at work today, striving to do more than earn money to support their internet presence, but to support their actual families — that is increasingly shaped by immediacy, self-curation and a hunger for external affirmation, what I say here isn't just a rejection of those values, but an indictment of them.  It exposes how fragile and performative so much of that online life has become, especially in the realm of creativity, criticism or personal expression, where the unspoken rule is: say what will be received, or risk erasure.

The parents who are waking early today to parent children, shoulder long shifts, build and repair and nurture, aren't optimising for engagement.  They're living.  They're not curating their brands.  They're not posturing or editing for applause.  They aren't crafting narratives to be consumed.  They're too busy showing up, working, addressing real problems and defending the things they believe in to worry what someone else thinks about it.  And when they run D&D for their children, they are concerned about their children's responses as parents do, recognising when bad behaviour shouldn't be promoted, for reasons that any responsible person understands intuitively.  Because, in the end, it's less important that my son Billy gets his +5 sword than that my son Billy understands that the real world does not reward temper tantrums.

The missing factor in the previous three posts is responsibility.  Not only to ourselves, and not only to our players, but to the sacrifice, effort, building and loving that others before us tried to instill in our persons... only to so often fail with those who have drifted into online culture.  This is why, when I was able to go to game cons, and meet people who played D&D and talk to them, I found a completely different class of participants than the squalling children I found generally online.  Because these adults were using their weekends to engage with D&D as an activity they found the time to involve themselves with between their other responsibilities. Whereas those online are either bored because they have no responsibilities, or they're businesspeople trying to cheat their way into a business model with a game they didn't write, don't play well and barely understand, even in surface terms.

Am I saying, get married and have children?

Yes. Yes I am saying that.

Because D&D, and online, and streaming services, and serving yourself, aren't enough.  I said that we should be a part of something larger than ourselves. This is the ultimate form of that. It is the ultimate form of self-education, and the point where the rubber of competency meets the road.  Because we're not just talking about doing well, or being responsible, but the gut instinct that reminds you that your partner and your children are fragile, and rely on you, and that half of what you've taught yourself at this point needs to be thrown out with the trash as you address this.

It's admirable that you want to make something of yourself and be better.  But it's not respectable. Not to those who have a right to define that term, because of what we've done, and you haven't.  You have to decide if there's a "yet" that belongs on the end of that sentence.