The Lantern, however, does not do this. Since the framing of the writing is a broadsheet that talks not to the reader, but to other residents of the game world, it would be ridiculous for the editor to include such a line as the one above. Everyone reading, within the setting, would already know about Septivus Canyon, and how long the dragons had been there. Such details wouldn't be explained, they'd be referenced "off hand," said without preparation, thought or ceremony. Thus Fleetmarsh the editor talks about the magic missile casually, as something everyone knows, presented in the same register as lost goats, the weather or complaints about bill collectors.
Yet, even after consuming the magazine, the modern reader still assumes that Theral's Red or Snellcrake's draught is hokum, a snake oil, not real, not effective in the way the advertiser proclaims it. And this permits me to play a very clever mindgame with the reader, where their habitual superstition — and their habit of viewing D&D in meta terms — let's me pull the rug out time and again, probably as long as I wish.
It goes to the critical lack-of-connect that comes from the books and the modules and the cookie-cutter approach to running D&D. Even as we "pretend" to fight a dragon or an orc, or "pretend" that this ability gives +2 to our ability to leap this gorge, we lose sense of what the player would really think as they move through the world: that they're good a gorge jumping, and that dragons and orcs are no stranger to them than snakes and people from Maine.
This, as anyone who reads it, is far more immersive than most DMs achieve. And it enables those who want to become better DMs to see at once, easily, that we make the game world more real when we don't explain things. Where we simply say, without building some huge justification for why a particular dungeon exists, or the purpose of some high mucky-muck, that the thing just IS. After all, why would the characters know? When we invent such backstories, it's to inform the PLAYER, not the character... and is that really the goal here?
When the setting just is, without justification or lecture, the players must inhabit it directly rather than hovering above it, sifting through the DM's long, boring descriptions of the thing they haven't yet seen... in the same way we do our taxes.
For those who have read the content, consider the Priory for example. We learn nothing about how it was built or for whom; why it hasn't been knocked down, or why it declined. We learn a few rumours about others who may or may not have come to a bad end on account of it, but these rumours are neither confirmed nor supported by what the adventurers find. That leaves a huge open-end to the whole concept, since we're left with, "Is that really how such-and-such died?" Which as DM we don't have to answer, because sometimes... and say it with me now: nobody knows. Seriously, nobody, not in the game setting.
Thus the players are denied the comfort of omniscience. If we won't tell them, because arguably no one in the character's sphere actually knows, then the players also do not gain the comfort of being reassured. Is the wolf in Hennock just a wolf? Fleetmarsh doesn't know. His readers don't know. Perhaps the only ones who knew were able to hold that knowledge for just a few seconds, before... well, you can guess. That puts doubt in the player's minds, even as it suggests that surely, a wolf in a typical English countryside can't be that dangerous. Can it?
It builds tension because with it, stripped of the assumption that the DM's going to make sure the wolf in their path is manageable at their level, the players must have courage. That's what's been lost in modern D&D. Yes, the gallimaufry has gotten ridiculous, roleplaying has obliterated game-playing, incompetency is all that a new player can expect from a DM, who learned as much from the DM before... but the most sabotaging concept that has truly made the game boring is the total lack of courage.
Now, JB at Blackrazor likes to say, and accurately, that D&D is about adventuring. But adventuring is about courage, which is sorely lacking in people who lose nothing except their pride if a character is killed. But in this day and age, pride comes in dribs and drabs, it seems, and none have pride to spare. So courage, it's believed, must be set aside for surety, if the game's to be fun.
It is a sad state for the game to come to.
The Lantern, then, provides what's missing. These persons, even Geoffrey Fleetmarsh, vain and self-righteous as he is, who strive to learn spells or have lost two of their fingers, having gone to actual war, or urging themselves to go outside the church to discover what's scratching there, are brave. Some are a bit smug and self-important, but they're yet ready to do what we, in this world, would not: actually risk their lives to learn how to do something, and go somewhere, most of us would avoid just as hard as we can. But they're doing it because they believe it's the right thing. Bad stuff has happened... someone really ought to do something. As Fleetmarsh writes, "Will no one undertake to deal with this menace?"
It is the words of a soul living in the 17th century, when much of the ordinary world was more dangerous than it is now... when going out to the privy on a bad night could have consequences none could guess at. What thoughts must that walk, which must be taken, dredge up in one's mind when the world is full of spiders as big as dogs?
Yet, even after consuming the magazine, the modern reader still assumes that Theral's Red or Snellcrake's draught is hokum, a snake oil, not real, not effective in the way the advertiser proclaims it. And this permits me to play a very clever mindgame with the reader, where their habitual superstition — and their habit of viewing D&D in meta terms — let's me pull the rug out time and again, probably as long as I wish.
It goes to the critical lack-of-connect that comes from the books and the modules and the cookie-cutter approach to running D&D. Even as we "pretend" to fight a dragon or an orc, or "pretend" that this ability gives +2 to our ability to leap this gorge, we lose sense of what the player would really think as they move through the world: that they're good a gorge jumping, and that dragons and orcs are no stranger to them than snakes and people from Maine.
This, as anyone who reads it, is far more immersive than most DMs achieve. And it enables those who want to become better DMs to see at once, easily, that we make the game world more real when we don't explain things. Where we simply say, without building some huge justification for why a particular dungeon exists, or the purpose of some high mucky-muck, that the thing just IS. After all, why would the characters know? When we invent such backstories, it's to inform the PLAYER, not the character... and is that really the goal here?
When the setting just is, without justification or lecture, the players must inhabit it directly rather than hovering above it, sifting through the DM's long, boring descriptions of the thing they haven't yet seen... in the same way we do our taxes.
For those who have read the content, consider the Priory for example. We learn nothing about how it was built or for whom; why it hasn't been knocked down, or why it declined. We learn a few rumours about others who may or may not have come to a bad end on account of it, but these rumours are neither confirmed nor supported by what the adventurers find. That leaves a huge open-end to the whole concept, since we're left with, "Is that really how such-and-such died?" Which as DM we don't have to answer, because sometimes... and say it with me now: nobody knows. Seriously, nobody, not in the game setting.
Thus the players are denied the comfort of omniscience. If we won't tell them, because arguably no one in the character's sphere actually knows, then the players also do not gain the comfort of being reassured. Is the wolf in Hennock just a wolf? Fleetmarsh doesn't know. His readers don't know. Perhaps the only ones who knew were able to hold that knowledge for just a few seconds, before... well, you can guess. That puts doubt in the player's minds, even as it suggests that surely, a wolf in a typical English countryside can't be that dangerous. Can it?
It builds tension because with it, stripped of the assumption that the DM's going to make sure the wolf in their path is manageable at their level, the players must have courage. That's what's been lost in modern D&D. Yes, the gallimaufry has gotten ridiculous, roleplaying has obliterated game-playing, incompetency is all that a new player can expect from a DM, who learned as much from the DM before... but the most sabotaging concept that has truly made the game boring is the total lack of courage.
Now, JB at Blackrazor likes to say, and accurately, that D&D is about adventuring. But adventuring is about courage, which is sorely lacking in people who lose nothing except their pride if a character is killed. But in this day and age, pride comes in dribs and drabs, it seems, and none have pride to spare. So courage, it's believed, must be set aside for surety, if the game's to be fun.
It is a sad state for the game to come to.
The Lantern, then, provides what's missing. These persons, even Geoffrey Fleetmarsh, vain and self-righteous as he is, who strive to learn spells or have lost two of their fingers, having gone to actual war, or urging themselves to go outside the church to discover what's scratching there, are brave. Some are a bit smug and self-important, but they're yet ready to do what we, in this world, would not: actually risk their lives to learn how to do something, and go somewhere, most of us would avoid just as hard as we can. But they're doing it because they believe it's the right thing. Bad stuff has happened... someone really ought to do something. As Fleetmarsh writes, "Will no one undertake to deal with this menace?"
It is the words of a soul living in the 17th century, when much of the ordinary world was more dangerous than it is now... when going out to the privy on a bad night could have consequences none could guess at. What thoughts must that walk, which must be taken, dredge up in one's mind when the world is full of spiders as big as dogs?
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