Game Store Culture

There was no session on Friday.

Nothing untoward, the campaign is sound, it just allows some flexibility. We agreed to push things off until this upcoming Friday, the 3rd, so there will be a session. Sometimes this is for the best, even though, naturally, there's always a feeling that something is missed.

That's because D&D is a good game, and of course a good time. Those who commit to it always do so wishing they could play every week, that they had the energy and the available time to do so, but of course there are other things in the world also. I only wish, for myself, that a suspension wasn't automatically seen as evidence that there's something wrong... which is why I had to start this post by assuring the reader that the campaign is fine.

Now, why do I have to do that?

Because, simply, in this day, "commitment" has come to mean something totally different from what it once did when I began playing in the 80s. Then, our participation seemed awfully loose, a comfortable sort of, "Well, you're not here today, but I know you miss this and you'll be here next week."  I could count on that as a DM, while my players had faith that if I began a campaign session with, "You know guys, I'm just beat from the week I've had... how 'bout we just play poker and pick up the game next week?"

Can't do that now. People are so ready to quit, they assume everyone is. Cancel a session and the worry immediately is, "You're not dropping the campaign, are you? We're still playing, right?"  And this is made worse in that a player won't actually call up and say, "Oh, hey, I'm not feeling well, I won't be there Friday." No, they just don't show. And they don't ever show again. And they don't say why.

Trust is in short supply. I don't expect someone's word to be their bond all the time; that's just silly. Past the age of 20, there are too many things that come up, too many accidents, too much chance that something of unexpected bad health will crop up and say, "I'm here!" So yeah, for the last forty years, I've made it clear that all I want is notice. It's not a job, no one has to pretend to be sick to get out of a "shift," but hell, we'll all supposed to be civilised. You don't want to play, call and say so. It's simply decent.

Now, the reader here is trying to figure out which player is dropping out and my answer is, NONE of them, not presently. I have no reason to doubt these folk; I've known them for years, they've known me; it's been an internet knowledge, a "knowing" of each other through character names and avatars and user-monikers and in a large part not faces — though Discord has fixed that, I'm glad to say. But it is knowing, in the sense that none of these fellows picked up the game yesterday and none are going to stop playing it tomorrow. This is not a game-store sample. These are true believers and therefore I know for a FACT that if one of them wanted to stop playing, they'd definitely say so. For one simple reason: they want to be well-thought of by me, just as I want to be well-thought of by them.

That is the core of where the lack of trust lies.

The 80s carried a sting that the present does not, which is rarely accounted for. I started playing with people I went to school with, as most do. I then moved onto people I was in university with. And then I played with people who I worked with, who knew my wife, my daughter, my home, my job and so on... which meant, if they didn't show up ever again, they gave up a lot more than a D&D game. They gave up playing with a smart little girl, they gave up my Wife's cooking... and they had to face me at work, or in class, or when I continued to invite their sisters and their cousins to my house for parties. Walk out of my game and that made a pretty big hole, because I didn't play in faceless gamestores. It makes a difference when you can't call me up and ask me to help you with your resume, or move your shit the next time you change apartments, or any of the things we used to do for each other because we weren't just D&D players together, we shared our lives together.

An unexplained absence carried weight. This made the "We'll play next week" culture stable, because we were, in fact, friends. The same way we played baseball together, and went to the beach together, and stood up at each other's weddings and so on. This is all gone because, for reasons that surpass understanding, game store culture obliterated it. Because, I suppose, it's so easy to just not give a fuck if you don't show up on Friday. You owe nothing to nobody.

This, I think, is one of the reasons I didn't jive very well with the 2010 perspective of how players approach the game: the assumption that I was out to screw them, or cheat them, or make stuff up designed to humiliate them, or whatever. And why, in some cases, the anger at my insistence that they "suck it up and just play" was so unexpected and absolute. Because they could, in fact, just flip off my game like a switch. I never played like that. With those kind of people. It wasn't the game culture I learned to run my game in.

It's a sort of pre-emptive way of protecting themselves... of sparing themselves an investment in something they know, from the outset, they can't actually control. Knowing they can't, or having that demonstrated for them — and heck, my last post was about the kind of prick I can be — creates this assumption that if they can't get around me today, that's it, there's no point. D&D, they think, is a give and take... and honestly, they couldn't be more wrong.

Something like a thousand years ago, I wrote that I wasn't a cruise director. I'm not here to make sure everything runs smoothly and that all the passengers have a good time, are entertained and are pleased with their stay. I'm not charged with my players welfare and comfort. I'm not here to provide social activities. I'm not an event planner, a master of ceremonies, I don't do customer service and I'm not a cheerleader.

Since, I've revisited the "cruise director" concept, here and there. I think it comes down to the idea that I'm willing to plan events, I'm willing to do customer service... I'm willing to be a cheerleader, even.

It's just not my JOB.

In fact, everyone exists to do all the parts listed here. If the campaign is sound, everyone has opportunities to help everyone have a good time, to think about others enjoying their game, to give ground regarding cheerleading and such.  D&D is absolutely about giving.

What it's not about is taking. And this is where the "give and take" model collapses, because those who go into this game with the expectation that the two things are going to even out in the end, that they'll get their opportunity to "take" as much as they give, in their minds of course, the program falls apart. Anyone, ever, who approaches a social activity with the headspace, "What am I going to get?" is a null signal. It's the player no one wants at their table.

But again, this is the game store culture fucking everything up. Because these aren't friends and they're not people you give to — because you don't know them. Hell, you don't even know if they're good people. You sure as hell don't know that you'll ever see them again. So it's natural to head off to the game store with the same ideals that you use when heading off to the theatre, the eatery, the hockey game or the bar:

"I am here to be served. Serve me."

What a terrible, terrible culture.

No wonder it invented concepts like D&D as a sport, where groups compete against each other to win fucking prizes and prove that they're better players than others. No wonder it invented player-vs.-player, then called it a virtue. No wonder. Because this isn't about four people helping each other survive, this is the "virtue" that screams, "He got his, where the fuck is mine?"... with the other side of that flag reading, "I got mine, so fuck you."

I'm too Canadian for this nonsense. Though, of course, we have game stores here and yes, it thrives there.

Funny, I don't have an inkling from any of my present players that this nonsense is present at the table. Perhaps it's playing by Discord. Perhaps its their familiarity with this blog. Or with my previous game, since three of them have played with me online before. But I also like to think its because they've got the right mindset about why we want to play. Not just that it's fun, it obviously is... but because its fun in a way that doesn't actually expect anything specific. We're just going to play, and see how it turns out. Investment as play and not as success.

Gives me hope.