5e: Ability Stats & Modifiers

Appears the version of the 5th Edition Player's Handbook I was referencing on line is no longer a thing.  Ah, well, it had an .ru address.  No worries, here's another version.  I suggest for those who wish to ensure being able to keep reading these posts that you rip a copy from the sight.  I did from the Russian site in December, so I have a copy.

Let's get past choosing a class and race and look at the generation of abilities.  We're told,

"You generate your character's six ability scores randomly. Roll four 6-sided dice and record the total of the highest three dice on a piece of scratch paper. Do this five more times, so that you have six numbers. If you want to save time or don’t like the idea of randomly determining ability scores, you can use the following scores instead: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8.

"Now take your six numbers and write each number beside one of your character’s six abilities to assign scores to Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Afterward, make any changes to your ability scores as a result of your race choice.

"After assigning your ability scores, determine your ability modifiers using the Ability Scores and Modifiers table. To determine an ability modifier without consulting the table, subtract 10 from the ability score and then divide the result by 2 (round down). Write the modifier next to each of your scores."

Most of this is exactly what I have done for almost 40 years now; it is the method that was explained to me the first night I played, when I rolled dice to make a fighter.  But 5th Edition doesn't remotely leave it there ... they shove this universal system for determining modifiers on us that screams 3rd Edition.  Beyond this starting roll of four dice, I can't see ANY of the supposed "traditional" game.  Frankly, from what I've been reading so far, I'm convinced the company believes that no one alive can possibly have memories reaching back to the 1970s, so it's safe to call the crap spewed out by the company in the mid-nineties as "traditional" and "old school."

Back on page 7, in talking about the d20, we were told, "The abilities ... typically range from 3 to 18 for most adventurers," and that "Monsters may have scores as low as 1 or as high as 30."  Why this isn't under the abilities heading, I can't guess.  On page 13 we are duly given a table that describes all the modifiers for each ability score, thus preventing the players from actually having to do math, as was proposed in the paragraph above.  Thank the stars, they made it possible for the mathites to get their kicks and to save 9 y.o.'s the need to think.

Of course, we don't describe the abilities and their use in the game here.  Those have been bounced to chapter 7.  We're also told that skills and tools can be found in the mysterious chapter 7.  Earlier (also on p.7) we were told that advantage and disadvantage were presented in Chapter 7.  I'm sorry, I just can't wait any more.  I've got to go there and see what all the fuss is about.

Chapter 7 consists of six and a half glorious pages beginning on p.173.  Here is what it has to say directly about Ability Scores and Modifiers:

"Each of a creature’s abilities has a score, a number that defines the magnitude of that ability. An ability score is not just a measure of innate capabilities, but also encompasses a creature’s training and competence in activities related to that ability.

"A score of 10 or 11 is the normal human average, but adventurers and many monsters are a cut above average in most abilities. A score of 18 is the highest that a person usually reaches. Adventurers can have scores as high as 20, and monsters and divine beings can have scores as high as 30.

"Each ability also has a modifier, derived from the score and ranging from 5 (for an ability score of 1) to +10 (for a score of 30). The Ability Scores and Modifiers table notes the ability modifiers for the range of possible ability scores, from 1 to 30.

"To determine an ability modifier without consulting the table, subtract 10 from the ability score and then divide the total by 2 (round down).

"Because ability modifiers affect almost every attack roll, ability check, and saving throw, ability modifiers come up in play more often than their associated scores."

Yep.  Not only are we again treated to the math explanation, but we also find on p.173 a duplicate table to the one on p.13.  Just in case.  We get no explanations for why 30 replaces 25 as the upper end of ability scores (presumedly so the system can end with a +10 modifier) or precisely why the modifier is designed this way.  I point you to this discussion of why this sort of design creates problems.

In fact, we don't learn anything at all.  We're merely told stuff we already know, and specifically not told things that were a mystery before and are now still a mystery.  The Actual information we need is further up the page, and NOT located under "Ability Scores and Modifiers."  So someone flipping through the book looking for explanations is liable not to see it:

"The three main rolls of the game—the ability check, the saving throw, and the attack roll—rely on the six ability scores. The book’s introduction describes the basic rule behind these rolls: roll a d20, add an ability modifier derived from one of the six ability scores, and compare the total to a target number."

Why was this paragraph not included on page 13?  Wouldn't it have made sense to immediately explain the purpose of these modifiers at the moment the modifiers were introduced, or at least underneath the actual headings in the book that purportedly existed to explain the modifiers?  And hell, this was only 53 words.  We would have had plenty of space for them if we had gotten rid of all the useless filler clogging up p.12.

This is part of the reason why new players must be frustrated as they make an attempt to teach themselves how to play.  Not because the language is difficult or because the concepts are absurd (they only seem that way to old grognards like me, who have known better concepts), but because this book appears to have been organized by a pride of cats fleeing a vacuum cleaner.  No one takes the time to pedantically explain one concept from beginning to end without needing to resort to poetry, the concepts themselves are scattered throughout the book and actual content is repeated (!) so that you're not sure if something is written at the beginning or end of the book.  We have derailing crap like Bruenor thrown in to distract the reader from the key points and every section has yet one more pointless game-aggrandizing paragraph thrown in for good measure.  The book constantly assumes you know what it's talking about, so it throws around references like a prude wagging her finger at a porn convention, but nothing is actually defined.

For example, we're told about the dwarves, "... what they lack in humor, sophistication and manners, they make up for in valor."  How?  In what way? And in what way different from another race in the game?  Are there bonuses for this valor?  Or is this just a meaningless, throwaway phrase intended to make me like dwarves without an actual reason?  We're told about the halflings that they are, "... people of simple pleasures ... they care for each other and tend their gardens ..."  That's it?  How does that help me establish my halfling character?  There isn't a lot of gardening in this game, you know.  What other simple pleasures?  Again, are there meaningful features attached to the race that will enable me to be, you know, interesting?  I can't go around every adventure moaning about how I'd rather be home tending my garden.  We're told about the humans, "All that haste ... human endeavors seem so futile sometimes."  What do you mean?  Do you mean endeavors like "valor" and "gardening"? - the only actual reason why these things appear at all on your list, because you're a human ascribing singular human virtues to non-human creatures from a conspicuously HUGE number of possible human endeavors?  What in the fuck are you talking about, and what fucking drugs have you taken?

We're told about the elves, "Elves don't need sleep.  Instead, they meditate deeply, remaining semi-conscious, for four hours a day."  Are there rules for this?  No.  Is there any explanation about the elf's awareness in this state?  The time it takes to come out of this meditation?  No.  We're told it's possible to dream, "after a fashion."   Is there any definition given for the effects on awareness around the elf if you're dreaming or not dreaming?  No.  Is this trance ever mentioned again, throughout the entire book?

No.

So, basically, you have created a bullshit situation that every DM everywhere has to deal with at some point with their players, without any backup from the book, so that each DM is forced to rule upon the condition and effect of the trance in some way that personally applies specifically to that game and no other ... so that if a player used to playing elves ever plays with another DM, the rules are always going to be different, from game to game, from tournament to tournament, forever, for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Why is it here???

Seriously, it is like the people in charge of writing the handbook thought they were writing some sort of poetry book, or perhaps an equivalent to A Teenage Guide to Popularity, the sort of nonsensical but extremely cheesy fluff that appears in Airport kiosks, to be bought by grandmothers on their way across the country, and the backpacks of nine-year-old girls who are young enough not to realize yet that every piece of advice has already been exploded by anyone who's reached the age of 13.  Where nothing is actually expected to be accountable, so it doesn't matter what sort of shit the writer (or writers) make up about popularity ... the goal here is to dupe kids, NOT create something that might be a viable handbook for surviving high school in the next decade.

That's what I think we have here.  This is not a RULE-book.  It's a book.  It has words in it.  Some of it is fun and inspiring, and might eventually find some relevance to a gaming campaign ... but most of it is forgettable nonsense, firmly kicking the ball of what the hell do we do next in the campaign into the independent DM's hands.  There's no wonder that a DM is going to fiat his way through every decision, every die roll, every bit of non-detail drivel the book provides.  What the hell else is the DM going to do?  Look for guidance from the rules???

Okay.  Breathe Alexis.  Just breathe.

We'll do another of these when I'm ready.

5e: Round Holes

I'm writing another of these because readers are asking and because, just now, this is fairly straightforward deconstruction.  Unlike writing a class just now, or putting up content from my wiki (which hasn't been worked on), these posts sort of write themselves.

Let's continue with character creation in the 5th Edition Players Handbook.

The old Players Handbook in AD&D starts with a direct definition of the six main character stats, explaining what each are, how they affect your character and the specific adjustments they add.  Each stat works like its own piece; and those descriptions were valuable for investigating again and again the substance underlying the character's structure.  The designers understood that those six stats were fundamental in creating the character concept.

Right after the old P.H. dives into the races, again writing a passage about each, defining their relationships to each other and to the classes, without any effort at this time to pay attention to those classes.  We are discussing one thing at a time, rationally.  The language lacks any attempt at drama or building excitement. 

Then we are given a definition for each of the character classes, one by one, separated so the reader can chew over each with a clear understanding of what they do.  How the characters are created is not described at all; that is left to the DM's Guide, with the understanding the players would not be creating characters without being told how to do so by the DM. 

No effort is made to "interest" you in the material ~ but it is straightforward, direct and runs 23 pages.

The 5e Handbook gives one vague table to defining the stats, though how to use them comes up a lot of time later.  It spends 31 pages describing the races and 70 pages describing the classes.  Most of this is filler, campaign detail that may or may not work for your campaign (and will most likely be discarded).  Everything is overdramatized.  Nothing is straightforward and absolutely clear.  Much of the content boils down to, "well, you be you."  The content is wholly geared towards giving the players a vast hodge-podge of different powers in the hopes this will allow individuals to form of themselves.

If the common complaint about AD&D is that it was too detailed or too hard to understand, or that it's classes were too rigorous and unimaginative to be liked, I don't understand 5e's answer at all.  Being a fighter in AD&D meant you had weapons and could wear armor, and make yourself into whatever sort of unique person you wanted to be.  5e hammers the character into round holes, with the supposed benefit that, "You can pick the round peg you want."  Want to be a half-elf?

"Walking in two worlds but truly belonging to neither, half-elves combine what some say are the best qualities of their elf and human parents: human curiosity, inventiveness, and ambition tempered by the refined senses, love of nature, and artistic tastes of the elves. Some half-elves live among humans, set apart by their emotional and physical differences, watching friends and loved ones age while time barely touches them."

That was easy.

I can't help seeing this as anything but racist ... and illogical.  Do humans combine the best qualities for their two human parents?  Then why should half elves?  Perhaps neither of my human parents were curious, inventive or ambitious ~ must we assume that all elves are refined, loving of nature and possessing artistic tastes?  Perhaps I want to play an elf with none of those things.  If so, wouldn't that mean I was "set apart" by my emotional differences from other elves?  And why should half-elves in particular be described as set apart?  Are dwarves, dragonborn, tieflings and what have you also "set apart" by their emotional and physical differences?  Logically, in a world mixing all these races together, I would half expect the passage above to read, "Since you're pretty close to two other races, you can pretty much vanish into their numbers more easily than you could if you were, say, a half-orc.

These racial and class descriptions ALWAYS try to tell us what to think, what to believe, what our tastes are, who we get along with (something I really did not like about the original P.H.) and so on because the real differences between the races is harder to establish.  We ought to be discussing internal organs, diseases, brain function, soft and vulnerable spots ... do elves have a solar plexus?  If you whip a dwarf on his feet, does it hurt?  Do we all have just one heart, one liver, two kidneys and so on?  Do we require the same calorie intake for a 20-mile hike?  Do we need to sleep as long?  Does sex work the same way?

Admittedly, I've never wanted to touch any of those; and likewise, I have no interest in telling players how other elves think.  Presumedly, if they liked the way other elves think, they wouldn't be here adventuring with these dwarves, humans and half-orcs.

In the larger picture, none of the quote above matters.  Players aren't going to read it again, they're not going to follow it, the DM isn't going to follow it ... the pitch is just a bunch of bullshit filler where the writer thought, "I have to say something."  This is the typical spew that comes out.  It was probably lifted from someone else's description, that was lifted from someone else and so on going back into the mid-80s.  It's dreck and meaningless.  It doesn't belong here.

Yet it's always here.  Picking up on page 11, under "Choose a Race," we get the preliminary for it:

"The race you choose contributes to your character’s identity in an important way, by establishing a general appearance and the natural talents gained from culture and ancestry ..."

I understand why we might want to give the races a cultural ancestry, but why does MY character need one?  How is this "important" to me?  Apart from the monstrous plethora of special abilities that are going to be poured on my character like honey, what does my "identity" have to do with it?  Clearly, I'm expected to fit myself into this neat, round hole ... though as the book tells me, "Sometimes playing against type can be fun, too."

Is that it?  Have I only the two options?  I can be a conformist or I can be a non-conformist conformist.  Wonderful.  But what's actually fun and is not racist?  Ignoring the type completely and playing whatever character I like.  I don't have to be a half-orc paladin or a mountain dwarf wizard to be a memorable character ...

I suppose that's as far as most imaginations reach, however; assuming, of course, that we don't incorporate anything into the actual book to inspire imagination.

Both the races and the classes are little more than power lists; which presumedly is an answer to 3e's build system.  Every system going back to the original was a grouping of power lists.  My mage in AD&D, by the book, received 1 spell a day, the privilege of using the lowest-scale weapons and a few higher saving throws.  That's all you got if you were human.  As we were playing at 15, we could see the cleric nearly always got 3 spells to start because of their wisdom, so we agreed the mage should start with 3 also.  I still play it that way, though that's not how the rule was written.  Cantrips were added by the Unearthed Arcana and those seemed fair.  We did see there was a reason to beef up the characters in small ways; that's why I began with adding actual secondary skills like fishing or hunting, making armor or being able to sail.  That steadily morphed into sage abilities ... which I carefully manage so that at low levels they're useful without being powerful.

As I venture forward into this book, however, I gaze with suspicion on what's on offer here.  There's always a way to make the enemy more powerful than the player, no matter how many special abilities they get.  A part of me wants to argue that it shouldn't matter if the players are powerful or not.

Still ...

5e: The Company Sponsors Conceit

We begin this session of the 5th Edition Players Handbook with the top of page 11.  Chapter 1: Step-by-Step Characters.

This is the start of the book proper, with the Introduction finished at last.  With so much non-information and misinformation in the Introduction, we shouldn't be surprised to find ourselves starting with an introduction to the first chapter ~ which again, says little of consequence.  Even with headers on the page that say, "Choose a Race" and "Choose a Class," the four paragraph introduction on the same page says in the first paragraph,

"You choose a race (such as human or halfling) and a class (such as fighter or wizard)"

And then in the second paragraph,

"Before you dive into step 1 below, think about the kind of adventurer you want to play. You might be a courageous fighter, a skulking rogue, a fervent cleric, or a flamboyant wizard. Or you might be m ore interested in an unconventional character, such as a brawny rogue who likes hand-to-hand combat, or a sharpshooter who picks off enemies from afar. Do you like fantasy fiction featuring dwarves or elves? Try building a character of one of those races."

It would make more sense to save these waxing poetics for the actual subject, but then we have a LOT of pages to fill and obviously not enough material to fill them, so ...

And what is it with always having to put a cliched adjective in front of each class?  I grant the list is not meant to be exhaustive, but must we insert a bias here at all?  If we want to help define the choice of these classes, wouldn't a descriptive be better?  A fighter trained in weapons and combat, a rogue trained in deception and finesse, a cleric with passion for others and the unearthly, a wizard concerned with alchemy and spells ... is that not more helpful if the reader has no idea whatsoever what these classes are?

That is the pattern throughout these next pages.  We say the word "elf" with utter expectation that of course you, the reader, know what that is.  But do you know what it means in this context?  Particularly if you're nine and you haven't read Lord of the Rings or even seen the films?  Once again, the writers here are being lazy, simultaneously writing a child-like primer while ignoring the actual intention.  Moments later, we're told,

"Once you have a character in mind, follow these steps in order, making decisions that reflect the character you want."

How am I to do that, if I have no idea what any of these things are, particularly from the terrifically scant detail you've provided?  Oh, right.  I need to read on ... whereupon this "introduction" is null and void and might just as well be ripped out of the book.

I guess I better take a moment and discuss the word, "rogue."  I am to understand that "thief" had a negative connotation for soft-hearted players in the late 80's, particularly when having to sell the game with public scrutiny bearing down, so the company had a nice long discussion with a thesaurus present and decided that "rogue" is a more lovable, gosh-golly-gee word with its toe dug into the sand than that nasty old word the game settled upon in the 1970s.

My dictionary defines a rogue as a "dishonest and unprincipled man," equating it with a villain, reprobate, good-for-nothing, wretch, rotter, miscreant and wastrel.  I suppose we should be glad the company didn't pick "mountebank" or "picaroon."

The change depends on the mainstream being ignorant of what words mean, since "rogue" is used more often in Hollywood to describe the kind of thief that a girl could conceivably fall in love with, a pattern that started with Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn.  Unfortunately, the rogue in the game still plays like a thief, or basically a jackanapes with ne're-do-well tendencies and a habit of believing that the only skill in not being seen in order to attack with perfect surprise (and thus a total lack of ethics or scruples) is to roll dice.  Every time I see a rogue represented online, it is die roll after die roll to check everything ... a subject I will leave until getting to that part of the book.

Very well, this brings us to "Building Bruenor."

For those who don't know, Bruenor is the example character the book's writers decided to include at various stages, to show the would-be player how a character comes together.  The result is, well, awful.

Here are all the passages that describe Bruenor's creation ~ which will be clearer to those of you who play 5e, but you can come back later and look at this again after we slog our way through the character creation process.

Each step of character creation includes an example of that step, with a player named Bob building his dwarf character, Bruenor.

STEP 1

Bob is sitting down to create his character. He decides that a gruff mountain dwarf fits the character he wants to play. He notes all the racial traits of dwarves on his character sheet, including his speed of 25 feet and the languages he knows: Common and Dwarvish. 

STEP 2

Bob imagines Bruenor charging into battle with an axe, one horn on his helmet broken off. He makes Bruenor a fighter and notes the fighter’s proficiencies and 1st-level class features on his character sheet. 

As a 1st-level fighter, Bruenor has 1 Hit Die—a d10— and starts with hit points equal to 10 + his Constitution modifier. Bob notes this, and will record the final number after he determines Bruenor’s Constitution score (see step 3). Bob also notes the proficiency bonus for a 1st-level character, which is +2.

STEP 3

Bob decides to use the standard set of scores (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) for Bruenor’s abilities. Since he’s a fighter, he puts his highest score, 15, in Strength. His next highest, 14, goes in Constitution. Bruenor might be a brash fighter, but Bob decides he wants the dwarf to be older, wiser, and a good leader, so he puts decent scores in Wisdom and Charisma. After applying his racial benefits (increasing Bruenor’s Constitution by 2 and his Strength by 2), Bruenor’s ability scores and modifiers look like this: Strength 17 (+3), Dexterity 10 (+0), Constitution 16 (+3), Intelligence 8 (-1), W isdom 13 (+1), Charisma 12 (+1). 

Bob fills in Bruenor's final hit points: 10 + his Constitution modifier of +3, for a total of 13 hit points.

STEP 4

Bob fills in some of Bruenor’s basic details: his name, his sex (male), his height and weight, and his alignment (lawful good). His high Strength and Constitution suggest a healthy, athletic body, and his low Intelligence suggests a degree of forgetfulness. 

Bob decides that Bruenor comes from a noble line, but his clan was expelled from its homeland when Bruenor was very young. He grew up working as a smith in the remote villages of Icewind Dale. But Bruenor has a heroic destiny ~ to reclaim his homeland ~ so Bob chooses the folk hero background for his dwarf. He notes the proficiencies and special feature this background gives him. 

Bob has a pretty clear picture of Bruenor’s personality in mind, so he skips the personality traits suggested in the folk hero background, noting instead that Bruenor is a caring, sensitive dwarf who genuinely loves his friends and allies, but he hides this soft heart behind a gruff, snarling demeanor. He chooses the ideal of fairness from the list in his background, noting that Bruenor believes that no one is above the law. 

Given his history, Bruenor’s bond is obvious: he aspires to someday reclaim Mithral Hall, his homeland, from the shadow dragon that drove the dwarves out. His flaw is tied to his caring, sensitive nature ~ he has a soft spot for orphans and wayward souls, leading him to show mercy even when it might not be warranted.

STEP 5

Bob writes down the starting equipment from the fighter class and the folk hero background. His starting equipment includes chain mail and a shield, which combine to give Bruenor an Armor Class of 18. 

For Bruenor’s weapons, Bob chooses a battleaxe and two handaxes. His battleaxe is a melee weapon, so Bruenor uses his Strength modifier for his attacks and damage. His attack bonus is his Strength modifier (+3) plus his proficiency bonus (+2), for a total of +5. The battleaxe deals 1d8 slashing damage, and Bruenor adds his Strength modifier to the damage when he hits, for a total of 1d8 + 3 slashing damage. When throwing a handaxe, Bruenor has the same attack bonus (handaxes, as thrown weapons, use Strength for attacks and damage), and the weapon deals 1d6 + 3 slashing damage when it hits.

Reading through this is hard for an old grognard like me. Rather than the familiar experience of players rolling dice to see what results they get, then deciding what to do with those results, here everything is supposedly decided straight out of the player’s head. The mini-game of character creation, long the best part of introducing new players to the game, has been eliminated. Rather than rolling, he chooses from a stat array; a collection of numbers that any player in an old school campaign would have stared at crestfallen, thinking “Jeez, these rolls are crappy.”

Bruenor, however, suffers not at all from these numbers. The adjustments for choosing to be a dwarf adds +4 to his choice stats (!), without a balancing penalty. Such adjustments make the stat array necessary; any one of my players could easily roll three scores above 14, most probably ending up with a 19 strength and an 18 constitution. With these excessive modifiers … hell, I have no certainty what it means in relation to 5th edition, but I automatically translate it into my old AD&D framework and think, shit, that’s a THACO of 15. For a first level fighter with a so-so 17 strength. Pretty damn easy-peasy right out of the gate.

But then, while characters in my world would be figuring out proficiencies, Bruenor only seems to have one. Of course, with such a hit to fail ratio, he can afford to use non-proficient weapons (which explains some of what I’ve witnessed in my online campaign about weapon proficiencies). In this system, “proficiency” doesn’t mean “able to use.” It means, “wildly effective with.”

While the characters in my campaign would be feeling concerned about being spongy meat-pies for some monster, and setting out to equip themselves in a manner that will compensate for that dread prospect, Bruenor is casually electing himself to noble status, supplying himself with a noble destiny and compelling an entire culture to identify him as a “folk hero.” It’s a good thing he’s decided to be caring and not whatever the “folk hero background” allows. And no, his soft heart hidden behind a gruff, Dwarven demeanor is in no way a cringeworthy cliché. It sure is heartening that the self-aggrandizing, co-optive, presumptive player behind this dwarf is able to contain his claiming of past accomplishments and spectacular attributes that he hasn’t yet done one thing to earn inside a soft spot for orphans and a willingness to show mercy; so long as you haven’t broken the law.

And so much the better that the makers of the game openly condone this bragging, boasting exaggeration of instant just-add-water deeds and heroic exploits!  Is it any wonder that Reddit is full of backstories where players presuppose themselves to be the siblings of gods and the Mary Sues of every kind of gadget imaginable?  Hey, the game designers want it that way!  If you haven't defined your character as The Chosen One, complete with Birthmark of Destiny and the last surviving member of your race, you're not playing the game the way it was MEANT to be played.

I have to admit, looking over these initial systems that transform "characters" into stupidly overpowered snowflakes with disproportional benefits to produce a plug-and-play system of enablement, I hesitate to go farther.  Still, it helps explain the ridiculous inclusion of things like dragonborn, something that grates my sensibilities.  But what difference could it possibly make against this backdrop of excessive make-believe?

Clearly, where the game once saw itself as characters moving through a fantasy background, the game has become the embodiment of fanciful wish fulfillment, with the background becoming whatever you, the player, want it to be.  What an awful, compromising misery this must be for a DM.  I can't imagine what sort of self-flaggelating slobs would consign themselves to running a game where the participants in it are liable to whine and pout if you won't allow them the use of their father the King's army on loan ...

"Since I am, after all, my father's favorite son, always have been, and daddy never denies Me anything.  Says so right here on my character sheet."

Can't wait to get started on his wizard character's background

5e: Achilles Heel

I'd like to revisit why I am writing these posts about the 5th Edition Player Handbook.  I don't know the book or the system; yet it has clearly taken over the rhetoric of D&D in these last four years, so that huge swaths of the conversation now invoke dozens of terms and ideas directly connected only to this edition.  And it is clear that the framework of D&D has changed, and is changing, moving away from a group narrative rooted in boundaries to one where boundaries have ceased to matter.  Where formerly we could tell a joke about a player wanting to make a perception check to learn the weak point in an enemy's armor in order to gain a bonus to his attack role, that sort of thing is becoming the norm.  The "game" is becoming a crusade in how to bend the definitions of existing skills so that any skill may be used to create any success than strategizing how to succeed at a situation despite skills.  We're pretty much at the point where players don't want to participate in adventures unless they have a skill set that ensures they'll succeed.

I recall hearing the first rumblings against player death in the 80s and dismissing the complaints and resistance as something we could dismiss.  We can't dismiss it now; take a strange player into your traditional game and there's a good chance that if you kill their character there will be a scene.  One of the key points of a "session zero" at present is to explain how you feel about player death: is it allowed?  Is it common?  Under what circumstances is it allowed to happen?  Obviously, not when a wandering monster is encountered!  And certainly not from disease or some freak happenstance.

The game community has never been reconciled on this game element. A player doesn't want their beloved character to die, the DM feels awful about it and who's to say that the dice can't be picked up and rolled again.  Why is death even important?  Don't characters in television shows or book/film series have plot armor?  Of course they do.  Those things sell, those things are riddled with excitement; what is the difference between those things and my character in this D&D world?  It seems insane to create a character, fill it out, enrich it, spend hours and hours running it, only to then throw it away when it dies.  Insane!

D&D's Achilles Heel is that as a system it's not friendly to human beings.  Human beings gravitate towards comfort, reassurance, reliability or custom.  In my RPG 201 course I wrote about how we seek rupture because from reconstruction we grow as people; but in most cases we seek a particular kind of rupture.  One that doesn't require too great a risk; or that might amount to a real loss.  Most don't want to be upset too much; and for D&D, player death is just too far.

Worse, it feels a bit too much like real death.  If we're in a campaign that allows death; where rolls against death are a regular feature; then every adventure our character survives feels like we're pushing our luck.  Each adventure adds to our resource of memories, our increase in power ... and in the amount of loss we're going to experience when that character dies.  And we know, if we keep playing that character, if we keep pushing it, the character will die.  Sooner or later, the dice just aren't going to fall our way.  And then ... then ... everything we've fought for and suffered for will be gone.  Just gone.

And our only option ~ in the death-is-possible framework ~ is to retire the character.  Which feels like death.  If only death weren't hanging over our heads. If only our beloved characters didn't have to die.  Then we could enjoy playing them forever.

Except, of course, we can't.  Because we, my friends, are going to die.  For real.  And that's really the subject here, isn't it?  That is really the thing we can't reconcile; the flat out recognition that the longer we're here, the harder we've fought to get here, the less fair death feels.

Commonly, young people will look at the very old and think, "Why don't they just let themselves die?  They've lived a good life.  They should want to go now."  But as young people get older, they turn away from those thoughts.  They think they're going to hate being old, but as they roll into their 50s, 60s and 70s, it seems like a good idea not to quit.  Slowly, it looks like the young people who don't appreciate what they have.

Every day, there's that underlying memory that, yes, this might be the day.  We're stepping off a curb; we choke on something we've eaten; there's a strange pain in a place we've never felt pain before.  Some stupid, silly, unlucky, irrational thing ... and just like that, we're gone.  And if we need a reminder, we hear about Jack who was cleaning his rain gutters or Jenny who skipped getting her car tuned up last Spring, or poor Jim ... died of cancer.  Yeah.  Came up on him suddenly and he was gone.

And to make it worse, the older you get, the more reminders there are.  Partly because everyone around you is getting old too but also because as you live and drift around on the planet you accumulate people whose funerals you might attend.  Unless you're one of the unlucky ones, you don't have a memory of attending the funeral of Brenda or Britt or Brad in the sixth grade ... but you'll notice a string of funerals when you're 62, watching all three buried in their turn.  It makes you think.

D&D asking you to court that, to deliberately insert that sort of shit into your life, isn't reasonable.  Especially when no one should die because they went out to clean their rain gutters.  That shit just ain't kosher.

So don't tell ME, they say, that my character was killed because some one-hit-die kobald got lucky with a thrown dagger.  MY precious character isn't going to die because you, Mr. DM, thinks that a breath weapon deserves a shot at instant kill.  That ain't MY game.  That's not the game for ME.

Whether or not 5e is deliberately courting this attitude, the tone of the book clearly encourages it.  While twice in the introduction there is an acknowledgement that the players "might" die, there's no paragraph that addresses it up front; no solid, framed argument in the introduction that the game is about survival; nothing that states in boldface that your agenda is to live and not die.  It's all subtly hinted at, in language that we've come to connect with movie trailers and ad campaigns:  Batman is fighting his toughest foe yet; this summer Katniss is entering into the most dangerous of games; this is really, truly, seriously going to be the scariest rollercoaster you've ever experienced.  Yeah.  We're sure.

The company knows where its bread is buttered.  By far, the vast number of fresh young, dumb and full of cum players don't want a potential zero-sum game.  The character is too cool to die and rolling new characters is dull ... something I've heard said a thousand times but which I have NEVER actually experienced with any person ever rolling a character in my world.  Must be the people I play with.

Writing these posts about 5th Edition is an opportunity to explore these sentiments, and others, in this era of a new philosophy.  If I'm vicious, or bitter, or niggling in my deconstruction, it is because I think the new game as written is failing the community.  I think it would have been possible to write a good argument for player death; and to stand by it as a company.  I think the position would have ensured vitality and a sense of deeper drama and risk than mere schlock characters that couldn't die.  I think that the company is playing the short game ~ and that they can afford to play it because there is no competition.

It's easiest to design a game that kids will play for a few years ... or that will be interesting enough for a particular kind of player that they can keep going through the same motions for decades.  Most of the staff behind the book aren't very creative, if the book is any indication.  They're not good writers or thinkers, either.  It is hard for them to sustain a single thought for more than three paragraphs.  The language of the book paints the page like a shotgun: rarely does the second sentence expand meaningfully on the first one.  Each sentence tries to introduce a brand new idea, grouped into a paragraph where each idea is about magic, adventure, dice, etcetera.  There's no position; no theory; no argument; no effort to convince or elaborate.  A paragraph begins with a sentence (p.8):

"Magic is also a favored tool of villains."

And then nothing explaining the sentence or why villains particularly and not others.  Just a list of villain synonyms and their actions, like a list alone is all that's needed to convey an idea.  Then we finish by saying the good guys ought to use magic too.  Duh.  It is all empty.

Without guidance, all we have is an awful mess.

5e: The Two and a Half Stumps of List Teases

“The adventure is the heart of the game, a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. An adventure might be created by the Dungeon Master or purchased off the shelf, tweaked and modified to suit the DM ’s needs and desires. In either case, an adventure features a fantastic setting, whether it’s an underground dungeon, a crumbling castle, a stretch of wilderness, or a bustling city.”

The reader will find this quote on the top left of page 8 of the 5th Edition Players Handbook, beginning the fifth page of explaining what the game is without factually explaining anything about actual game play. The writers have found it very difficult not to launch into lists of game fluff, and they don’t hesitate to do it here in this passage which is part of the heading (beginning on page 7) called “Adventures.”

Whatever D&D may have been once, or however it might have been played, the goal here is to bake the “adventure” right into the meat and potatoes of the game. Though above it says the adventure is the heart of the game, we’re also told that consists of characters embarking on an adventure and that a campaign IS a string of adventures joined together. There is no mention at all of characters “doing their own thing.” The setting is not free-form, it is not three dimensional, it is not flexible. It is THIS. You, dear reader, are expected to understand this completely.

The reason why every character is different is so that they will complement each other. And they must cooperate. That is the only way the adventure can be completed. It is all here on the page, in black and white.

Moreover, NPCs exist as characters in the play, described as “patrons, allies, hirelings or just background extras.” Make no mistake. This entire system is designed, like a Hollywood movie, to move the actors into the celebrity frame so that they can be the heroes of this picture. The only other entity mentioned who might have an actual agenda is the villain! And why is there a villain? Why, to drive the adventurers (players) action, of course.

None of this is new. The company has been hammering this point for ages now and we’re all familiar with it. If there is anything to say here, it is only this: before the release of 5e, the company opened the game to player input ~ and the players popularly asked the designers to untangle D&D’s famously convoluted ruleset. I remember very well the many blog posts written on the subject, and flame wars besides, about this very decision on the company’s part.

Given the company’s choices, we must assume A) that so few people expressed any interest in open gaming that the company felt it wasn’t worth mentioning it at all; B) the company carefully skewed the inquiries so it was impossible to give any answer that wasn’t about adventure-based gaming; C) the company, having games to sell, doesn’t actually give a shit.

I’m going to go with C. After all, we’ve been very sure to include a line about purchasing adventures … and since every list describing adventures (it may be this, or this, or this, or this, or this) that’s appeared in the introduction so far sounds like a sales pitch for something the company is selling, I think my guess is likely.

Moving on. Still on page 8, we’re next introduced to “The Three Pillars of Adventure.” I’m beginning to love this sort of passage in this book, because … well, that’s not important.

Our three pillars are Exploration, Social interaction and Combat. The description under “exploration” is essentially a rehash of a description two pages back:

“Exploration is the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result. On a large scale, that might involve the characters spending a day crossing a rolling plain or an hour making their way through caverns underground. On the smallest scale, it could mean one character pulling a lever in a dungeon room to see what happens.”

Not only have we covered this, we’ve been told that the play of D&D essentially IS this, in the “how to play” section. But now we’re going to be told something else, that play also includes social interaction and combat.

I have heard of writing a book by committee; I think this is the first example I’ve come across that reveals book editing by committee.

Social interaction is obviously role-play; but for whatever reason, confusion in using role-play to describe talking as your character and as the adjective to describe the game, we’ve decided to go with “social interaction” instead. Let’s have a read:

“Social interaction features the adventurers talking to someone (or something) else. It might mean demanding that a captured scout reveal the secret entrance to the goblin lair, getting information from a rescued prisoner, pleading for mercy from an orc chieftain, or persuading a talkative magic mirror to show a distant location to the adventurers.”

Another list of possible adventures ~ it is the only kind of description we know. Please notice, however, that there is something strange in this list of four examples: all three describe talking to creatures in order to GET something.

Is there no other reason to talk to creatures? Does it mean breaking bread with the scout and talking about friends and family back home? How about helping the rescued prisoner get over their shock and trauma by asking what we can do? Does it include spitting in the face of the orc chieftain while we tell him to shove his mercy? Though, okay; I’ll concede that last. There’s only one way to talk to magic mirrors.



If it's going to be adventure all the time, however; and if that adventure puts you in the star chamber and everyone else is basically a servant of the plot, then NPCs only exist to provide you with that crucial exposition you desperately need. So why not smack around a scout or hang a wretched prisoner from his ankles over a dungeon chasm? Why not grovel for your pathetic life in front of an orc chieftain, knowing he’s going to let you live (you are, after all, the star of this film – and the orc chieftain is supposed to die on page 41 anyway). Why not go Captain Kirk with a magic mirror until you convince it to give you the info you need and then kill itself in an apoplectic philosophical fit. Why in hell would you ever just talk to anyone? They can’t even remember that you said cappuccino and not latte.

“Combat … involves characters and other creatures swinging weapons, casting spells, maneuvering for position, and so on ~ all in an effort to defeat their opponents, whether that means killing every enemy, taking captives or forcing a rout.”

Lists, lists, lists. So, basically combat is the ultimate in social interaction: getting what you want without having to talk. Good. Plain, simple, straight to the point … whether you’re doing this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this …

Combat, however, ends with this:

“Combat is the most structured element of a D&D session, with creatures taking turns to make sure that everyone gets a chance to act. Even in the context of a pitched battle, there’s still plenty of opportunity for adventurers to attempt wacky stunts like surfing down a flight of stairs on a shield, to examine the environment (perhaps by pulling a mysterious lever), and to interact with other creatures, including allies, enemies, and neutral parties.”

Um.

Uh, yeah.

I so can’t wait to see the “structured” rule that explains how surfing down a flight of stairs on a shield works. Or other wacky stuff.

It is bits and pieces like this that seriously challenge my willingness to take much of what I’m being told at face value. I appreciate that it is turn-based system; but was it really necessary to describe the system as “everyone gets to take their turn”? How is that visually helpful? Could we not have rather said, “To effect an ordered, practical system of resolving battles, the game employs a turn-based system similar to chess. While a mechanical departure from realism, the method enables many complex elements to be controlled by the participants of the game, while adding features that give the feel of immediate, simultaneous interaction.”

Nope. We “take turns,” ensuring “Everyone gets to play,” because what really matters with combat is that no one feels left out. Oh, and we get to swing weapons and kill every enemy.

This is what we call a “tone problem.” It’s a situation where your writing pisses on your own writing in a way that makes the emotional moment you’re trying to create sound very silly and squicky. Like letting your 73-year-old grandmother read excerpts from porn sites aloud in church.

That’s why my heart doesn’t race when the writer mentions “a mysterious lever” 17 words after using the phrase “wacky stunts.” It just makes me think, wow … you need a paper towel?

Sorry for writing another of these posts. I have to admit, I really wanted to know what the next part of the book was going to talk about and I’ve promised myself not to read anything of the book unless I’m going to write on it immediately upon reading. I want all my blog reactions be “in the moment.” So if I want to know what fucked thing the book is going to say next, I have to write the blog post as I read.

It’s a motivation technique.

5e: Game Dice

"The game uses polyhedral dice with different numbers of sides. You can find dice like these in game stores and in many bookstores.

"In these rules, the different dice are referred to by the letter 'd' by the number of sides: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20. For instance, a d6 is a six-sided die (the typical cube that many games use).

"Percentile dice, or d100,  work a little differently. You generate a number between 1 and 100 by rolling two different ten-sided dice numbered from 0 to 9. One die (designated before you roll) gives the tens digit, and the other gives the ones digit. If you roll a 7 and a 1, for example, the number rolled is 71. Two Os represent 100. Some ten-sided dice are numbered in tens (00, 10, 20 and so on), making it easier to distinguish the tens digit from the ones digit. In this case, a roll of 70 and 1 is 71, and 00 and 0 is 100."

These are popular posts, and as I don't have anything else ~ except monsters ~ that's ready to go just now, I'll venture into the world of dice from the 5th Edition Players Handbook.  If at all possible, I'll try to resist the nitpicking of the last post ~ but I have to say, it is very, very hard not to point out when people who are supposedly professionals have so little idea how to express their subject material.  Anyway, we're still on page 6, bottom right.

I just had to use this phenomenal, super-quality high-
resolution image from this book published by a
subsidiary of Hasbro four years ago.  We don't see
this kind of quality work from a former Fortune-500
company every day.

Two quick points on the above, and forgive me if I'm already breaking my promise to not nitpick.  Throughout the introduction, there are seveal points where the makers have clearly relied on the reader to know something about RPGs, since what they've said would make so little sense to a newcomer.  In the above, however, suddenly the reader needs to be treated as a pre-schooler.  Let's be honest.  Most people who have bought this book will be unable to see the wall of dice that surrounds every cash till in every game store, everywhere.  What gamestore clerk won't ask, "Do you want dice with that?" like a MacDonald's employee asking if you want fries?  I grant that some children will have this book bought for them ~ presumably by parents who already know their kids are into this ~ but still, I'm sure the dice will be in the Christmas stocking with the book.  The passage above, therefore, is written solely for the few people who are buying this book completely blind ~ who have no one to tell them what a d20 is.  I understand how that is a thing in 1979.  But today?  With the internet?

But I pity the makers of the book having to explain 10-sided dice "numbered in tens."  It takes a whole long paragraph to explain the d100 and it is agony.  From the moment I first saw them, I hated those fucking two-digit d10s.  I put up with them because they're everywhere ... but they absolutely fucking suck.  I am content to use two ordinary ten-sided and identify one as the 10s.  But we know ... we fucking know ... how these two-digit dice came to be.  Assholes.  That fucking guy who would dig in tooth and nail that on this one occasion, the green die was the 10s and the blue die was the 1s ~ though we knew as a DM that every other fucking time it was the reverse.  This two-digit tens thing was to subvert that bullshit.  Everyone knows it.

The book spends an entire page discussing dice here and says not one word about etiquette.  Now, I've deliberately not read ahead in the book.  I don't want to know what's next.  This is part of the fun for me, writing these posts.  So if we talk about dice cheating later, that's great, but it really ought to be here in this section.

After we learn how the dice work, we begin with the heading, The D20:

"Does an adventurer’s sword swing hurt a dragon or just bounce off its iron-hard scales? Will the ogre believe an outrageous bluff? Can a character swim across a raging river? Can a character avoid the main blast of a fireball, or does he or she take full damage from the blaze? In cases w here the outcome of an action is uncertain, the Dungeons & Dragons game relies on rolls of a 20-sided die, a d20, to determine success or failure."

I suppose it would be quibbling to say that we use the other dice to determine uncertain outcomes; I do think they're trying to say that where a physical/mental attempt is being made of some kind, we'll use the d20.  2nd Edition laid the groundwork for this and 3rd Edition went nuts with it.  Since what I remember from people playing 3rd Edition was how dependent the game was on this singular feature ~ and how annoying it was to calculate it ~ I'm surprised to find it remains part of the game.  This is part of what makes me think of 5e as the child of 3e, and not a return to the old game ... but admittedly, I haven't read the book yet so let's reserve that opinion.

I think in game terms, it's a mistake.  I see the "common sense" in thinking, let's make a random check to see if the ogre believes this ~ but in practice as a DM I've always taken the position, "Would anyone in this position, with their agenda and responsibilities, at this time, looking at these player characters, believe this mound of shite?  To which the answer ~ particularly if a bluff is "outrageous" ~ is NO.  Absolutely not.  But players, I know, adore the success of really ridiculous lies, and consider this one of the great triumphs of the game ... and so I know that when I say I'd slam that door, many readers would cry foul, DM fiat, etcetera.  But here's the thing.  If you reward a particular kind of behaviour with a die roll that has a reasonable chance of success, you encourage that behaviour.  And soon, every interaction with every NPC becomes a challenge in how outrageous can we make the lie.  That, for me, isn't the game.  For me, the challenge shouldn't be, can you pull your shit out of the fire with a poorly inspired yet die-dependent fabrication?  The game should be, can you avoid getting your shit in the fire.  If you need a brobdingnagian lie to get out, you've already fucked up ... and you deserve the consequences.

Yes, that is my word for the week.

However, for 5e, circumstantial bonuses and penalties are the order of the day ... because every action deserves a pass/fail die roll.  And that is based on some time-honored features of the game.  Combat was built so that there was always the chance that Bard the Bowman could hit the target he needed at that moment in time.  The fireball was built to do half damage to the lucky ones, because it was reasonable to argue that fire, and the way it behaves, would rush into existence as tongues of flames and not as a perfectly distributed gaseous cloud of eradication.  Fireball was built that way because it was a 3rd level spell and, while the inventor wanted effectiveness, it needed to be tempered in a way that would annoy the player's mage when the fireball didn't kill the adversary, and please the player when the player's character didn't actually die.

3e took that to the point where "chance" got, well, silly.  If my character can swim, the player argues, then surely there's a chance of swimming across this raging river.  The problem with that logic is that, *if you knew anything about swimming, you'd know better than to try.  You'd know that a raging river is full of kinetic energy and rocks, and if you plunge into that, you're gonna die.  It takes an idiot to think they can swim a river like that.

The player, however, will argue, "But lots of expert swimmers and skiiers drown!  That proves they thought there was a chance."  Actually, no.  We have a little thing in human behaviour called "hubris."  It is a disease very common among a particular kind of expert, who does get themselves into a place where, as a swimmer or a skiier, they think they can do anything.  If we're going to invoke it, we should understand how it works.  If your character looks at a raging river that is going to kill them, and thinks, "I can swim that," then go on, plunge in.  You will die.  Because there's no way that river isn't going to kill you.  But if your character thinks, "I think I can swim it," then you're not suffering from hubris.  As a DM, that's when I step up and so, you can't, because that river is going to kill you.

It is very, very rare for a swimmer to misjudge their abilities ~ because that's what being an expert means.  Knowing your abilities.  In reality, if it is possible for you to swim that river, and you look at it and ask, "Is it possible to swim that river," then the chance of swimming that river is 99.9% or better.  It isn't 50/50.

But these are fine points.  Too fine for most players, who want to handwave actions, thoughts, patters of behaviour, abilities, skills, limitations and what else, usually under the rubric of "fantasy" and sometimes under the heading, "fun."  The bonus/penalty pass/fail model was voted by the fans of 5e's launch because it is insanely popular with that kind of player that wants to play craps with a character's life and win.  For all the people who claim "role-playing" and not "roll-playing," this one overarching feature gets a pass.  Don't tell me MY character can't swim that river.  I have this strength, this dexterity and +5 of that!  Give me a die!

Nor can we solve the problem by making the rivers placid and slow, or the animal's skin marshmallowy and paper-thin, or the bluff plain and iron-clad in its logic.  We still have to roll.  That's the humour of it.

Those examples, however, are not nearly as much fun to quote when discussing how the dice work.

Bringing us to Advantage and Disadvantage.  I can't say much.  I've never played by this rule; I've heard it expressed hundreds of times in online game play.  The sheer proliferation of the skill makes me suspicious.  I will have to wait until chapter 7.  But ... in case I forget to mention this later ... why isn't there a chance to have a super-advantage, where you roll 3 dice?  What about a hyper-advantage, where you roll 4?  Or a mondo-excessive-adjectival-califragilistic advantage where my character gets to roll twenty 20-sided dice.  That would be cool.

I'm winding this down now.  There's this passage that follows ... it has nothing whatsoever to do with dice, but the heading indicates it is included in the dice section of the introduction.  So, editorial faux pas there.  Anyway, it has the quote, "If a specific rule contradicts a general rule, the specific rule wins."  There's no attempt to define the difference between a "general" rule or a "specific" rule; just a reference to each.  The example given: "... many adventurers don't have proficiency with longbows, but every wood elf does because of a racial trait," isn't actually a conflict of any kind.

I can write a grammatically similar sentence: "Many people don't know how to cook, but every qualified cook does because of education," and it can be seen immediately that what many people don't know how to do is irrelevant.  No rule has been broken.

The next example is the same: "... an adventurer can't normally pass through walls, but some spells make that possible."  Yeah.  They're spells.  That's how technology works.  People can't normally fly, but airplanes make that possible.  Magic isn't an exception.  It's a feature.

I know I haven't read this book.  Did the writers?

5e: How [sic] to Play

So here we are on page 6 of the 5th Edition Player's Handbook.  The heading reads, "Using This Book" ~ but in fact, the words below don't say anyting about actually using the book, but rather provides a fast overview on the contents.  I'm not a fan of overviews at the start of a book; they feel like filler to me.  But sometimes a publisher has a third of a page that has to be filled with something, so ...

We're told "Part 1" is about creating a character, and it lists off various races, classes, backgrounds, equipment, etc.  It's clear from the way the passage is worded that the publishers are well aware you already know how this stuff works.  It's sad to me that at the same time the introduction (which we're still reading) can at the same time go into spastic flourishes about the amazing game we're going to learn about, while simultaneously, patently, recognizing that you've already played it.  Meh.  About what I expect.

"Part 3" tells me we're going to use the last third of the book for spells again.  Spells take a lot of space.  Easily half the pages on my wiki are spells ~ though that's because I have the list ready made and I'm just trying to hammer out the rules surrounding those spells to make them clear, and to help the players use the text to keep me honest.  There are so many spells, I can't possibly remember every one ~ that is why we make law books, so that lawyers can go to the book and not to fallible human beings to find out what the law actually IS.  And still, when I read that part three will be about spells, I think, "Ugh. Spells."

"Part 2" is the most interesting; I'm guessing I will be coming back around again to this paragraph.  Let's quote it:

"Part 2 details the rules of how to play the game, beyond the basics described in this introduction. That part covers the kinds of die rolls you make to determine success or failure at the tasks your character attempts, and describes the three broad categories of activity in the game: exploration, interaction and combat."

Apparently, the introduction has been providing "the basics" for game play.  I surely hope the book is going to provide the rules for how to play.  I surely hope the die rolls are going to be covered.  I surely hope that the book will describe the three broad categories of exploration, interaction and combat.

[Damn.  I feel the need to point out that the quote above is not exactly the same as the words in the book.  I have taken out the Oxford comma, just as I always do when I quote stuff.  I hate the damn thing, just as I hate all mechanical additions to content to supposedly make writing clearer, when in fact the best way is to write better.  The thing eats shoots and leaves is a perfectly clear sentence, if you don't put a comma after "eats."  Why would you?  It if bothers you that much, why don't you say the thing eats sprouts and leaves, or leaves and buds, or it has a diet of shoots and leaves?  Unless, of course, your actual goal is to write a pedantic dumbfuck book with a catchy title that works on people who don't know how to fucking write.  Okay, okay, sorry.  This is about the tenth Oxford comma I've removed from this text and it gets to me]

I don't know if this book IS going to live up to these promises.  We'll just have to see.

That brings us to another wide-ranging promise, where we are told, "How to Play."  I am keen to learn.  Let me start by saying, I agree: the process does start with the DM describing the environment, though I prefer the word "setting."  The environment is a massive biophysical construct that actually describes more than what's immediately visible, but rather everything that exists, as an interdependent gross system that perpetually exists in a state of flux.  A setting is a specific location and place with a specific identity attached to that point on the map.  I get the feeling that this distinction isn't known to the editor, who probably treats these words interchangably.  Many people do.  In any case, setting is the more common word used with establishing a narrative, so we'll use it instead of environment.

And yes, the players do describe what they want to do.  Having obtained the setting in their minds, they act decisively according to how they feel they can best manipulate the setting, and the circumstances surrounding it.  I find the language a little goofy where point 2 includes the phrase [p.6, top right], "the DM listens to every play and decides how to resolve those actions."  I don't see how the DM is resolving anything.  The player searches the chest and the DM describes the setting inside the chest.  The player examines the esoteric symbol engraved on the wall and the DM describes the wall as the player sees it.  A third player keeps watch for monsters and the DM describes if anything appears.  What resolution?

[yes, I see what point 3 says below about narrating results; we'll get there]

The next paragraph tries to explain what's meant by "resolution":

"If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task."

I'm sorry, but this makes no sense.  It seems to have jumped the perspective to the player, as from the players' perspective the DM might say anything.  But it is clear we're talking about the DM's part, so ...

If the door IS locked, there's no "might" about what the DM will say.  The DM will say the door is open if, and only if, the door is open.  If the door isn't open, the DM will never, ever say the door is open.  The DM is supposed to know if it is or isn't.  We assume that when we put the DM in the position of describing the setting.  So what the fuck goes here?

On top of that, no one in this example is completing a task.  A task is a form of work that needs doing ~ as in, something that has to be done, usually for someone else, as tasks are often assigned.  No one here is doing anything like a task.  They are opening a door.  They are examining a chest.  They are looking down a hallway.  These are not tasks.  They are hardly work, unless we want to define the word according to physics.  Okay, their hearts are working.  But it would be stupid if I were to turn to you in a hallway as you looked at a wall motif and said, "Hey Bob, getting that task done?"

Look, I'm not trying to nit-pick ... but this is the English language.  And it is implying stuff that isn't there. Which makes it pretty damn hard to identify just what the hell it is trying to say.  Look at this sentence immediately following, finishing off the 2nd paragraph:

"In those cases [resolving the task], the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action."

Yes, that's true.  Except here ... are we really going to say that the DM doesn't know if the door is locked until the player tries to open it?  Or if there is a trap in the room until after the players walk across the floor?  Me, when I describe an environment, I'm clear about what's there before the players get there.  I would think we'd want to encourage DMs to know.  This seems to imply that the DM has no clue at all, not until the players actually show up, and then the DM thinks fast while the players are looking at chests and hallways and wall symbols, thinking, hey, "I wonder if there's a trap here?  I better throw a die."

So, does the DM resolve the players' actions ... or does the die resolve the players' actions.  Because the way this paragraph is written, it sounds like the die.

We can't be clearer than this?

Okay.  Let's pick up point 3.  But first, I'm going to rant about something else.

[remember earlier in this series I talked about the publishers' decision to call the players "adventurers" and not "characters"?  I said it was pretty dumb at the time, since we're already used to calling them players.  Well, if you look at page 3, it is fairly clear that the publishers couldn't make up their minds whether or not to embrace the "adventurers" rebrand. Point 1 says, "The DM tells the players;" and point 2 says, "The players describe;" and then point 3 uses the phrase: "The DM narrates the results of the adventurer's actions."  Now, apparently, "adventurers" also means "players."]

At point 3, the wheels really come off this cart. The so-called resolution that the DM has made about the players' actions now mysteriously inserts the phrase "decision point" without any explanation. I don't know what this is supposed to mean in this context. The paragraph that follows returns to the old pattern, discussed before, of dangling adventure ideas in front of the reader without details or purpose.
The paragraph after that ... well, I'll have to quote it:

"Often the action of an adventure takes place in the imagination of the players and DM, relying on the DM’s verbal descriptions to set the scene. Some DMs like to use music, art or recorded sound effects to help set the mood, and many players and DMs alike adopt different voices for the various adventurers, monsters, and other characters they play in the game. Sometimes, a DM might lay out a map and use tokens or miniature figures to represent each creature involved in a scene to help the players keep track of where everyone is."

What in the motherfuck is this?  Sorry, some of you in bloomers coughed a bit there, didn't mean to startle you.  But what in the moth--

Step one: the DM describes the setting.  Step two, the Players take actions ... and the DM resolves them.  Sort of.  Step three, stuff to do, voices, miniatures, creatures in a scene.  There you go, clear as can be.

What the fuck is a decision point?  Oh well, no time for that.  Time to talk about dice.  Well, that's fine for the book but I'm still stuck on the above.

Very well, I take a crack at explaining this myself.

Create a setting.  Describe the setting.  Explain to the players that the setting works just like the real world; you can walk up to things and examine them, you can walk up to intelligent beings and talk to them.  When you're bored with what you can see, pick a direction and start to travel.  Watch the world unfold in front of you.  I will describe each place as you come to it.  If there's something that interests you about that place, interact with it.  With those who can answer, ask questions.  If you want to intimidate people, threaten them.  Show them your weapons and beat your shield.  If you want people to like you, put your shield and weapon down and speak nicely.

You can interact with anything.  And pretty much however you want.  If you ask me, your DM, a question, I'll answer if you've taken the steps to deserve that answer.  Turn a stone over and I'll tell you what's underneath.  Ask a being a question and I'll give their answer.  Crawl into a hole and I'll describe what's inside.

This is a die. But don't worry
about that now.

If you try to do something where there's a doubt of success, we'll roll a die.  Say you try to throw a rock at a tree.  Well, you might either hit or miss.  We'll roll a die and see.  You might try to kill someone. They'll try to stop you ~ so we'll roll a die and see who goes first.  If you get a chance to use your weapon, we'll roll to see if you're successful with it.  If you're not, and the other guy is, you could die.  We'll roll a die for that too.

Of course, all this dice stuff is tricky.  So we'll leave that for our next post.  Toodle-oos.

5e: An Introduction to Nothing

"In the Dungeons & Dragons game, each player creates an adventurer (also called a character) and teams up with other adventurers (played by friends). Working together, the group might explore a dark dungeon, a ruined city, a haunted castle, a lost temple deep in a jungle, or a lava-filled cavern beneath a mysterious mountain. The adventurers can solve puzzles, talk with other characters, battle fantastic monsters, and discover fabulous magic items and other treasure."

Some might think that with this single quote, to of page 5, second actual page of the 5th Edition Players Handbook, I'm moving through the material too slowly.  I'm in no rush.  I have plenty of time to investigate one paragraph at a time.  My goal here is not to give a review of the book or the game, but to identify the intent of the publishers, to examine their choices and see what they want participants to understand or believe.  That's why I think paragraphs like the one above deserve a close look.

Between 1974 and 2014, there have been established certain terms and phrases that have become universal to the role-playing game.  Players make characters.  Not adventurers.  And the publishers understood this perfectly, because while they made the bold move to newly define what players make, they also knew those same players wouldn't quite accept that ... so they added, in brackets, "(also ...)"

I want to be in the room when this sentence, or position, was discussed.  I imagine that certain marketing types, eager to sell "adventures" like the idea that the player characters could be rebranded as "adventurers."  I can imagine one of them saying, "See?  It just works together."  And it does.  Yet I can't recall anyone in the last four years talking about 5th edition and referring to their fighters and wizards as "player adventurers."

The book seems full of this sort of presumption.  It appears again with the next phrase: you don't "play" with other adventurers, you "team up" with them.  And oh, those adventures are your friends.  Yes, we run plenty of tournaments throughout the world where you'll sit at a table and play this game with total strangers, but we're not talking about that now.  These adventures are played by friends, because darn it, we want to make sure that as we're describing this game, we want you to have a very positive attitude about it.

With the next sentence, we want to make sure that your "team" "works together."  I don't have any problem with that in principle.  I don't want to be a part of games where the players work against each other or where they don't see the importance of acting together.  But why does this language ring of corporate lingo?  Why are the five things listed that the group can explore essentially the same thing said in five different ways?  Why is the sentence structure so that, taken literally, you can only do these five things?

Tell me if you know, because I don't follow modules and I'd have no idea ... but did the company, by any chance, release modules or parts of adventures between 2014 and 2016 that depicted a dungeon, a ruined city, a castle, a lost temple and a cavern?  Oh, and I'm sorry to quibble, but lava-filled caverns occur under volcanoes, not mountains, and because of the pressure that lava under the ground creates, the cavern would be molten and without room for adventurers.  Here's a small reminder of how pressure under volcanoes works, from October 17, two months ago:



But yes, that is quibbling.  My apologies.

A big one for me is why "solve puzzles" is the first on that list.  "Talk with other characters" I can understand.  The name of the game is "role-playing."  The initials are not SPG.  Nor do I understand why battling fantastic monsters is deliberately framed as separate from the acquisition of fabulous magic items and other treasure.

Someone specifically chose this language.  Someone took the time to separate these concepts: we don't kill monsters for their treasure.  We don't kill monsters and get treasure.  We kill monsters ... and we stumble across treasure in an unconnected way, as a fourth thing on this list after puzzles and talking and killing.

Perhaps I am overthinking it.  It would be easy to believe that this is a stumbling, cluttered, amateur hack-job of a paragraph, written by a low-paid writer cramming corporate terms into an player-friendly attempt at poetic license.  After all, this is the third attempt to name what D&D is, in less than two pages:

• "They were tired of merely reading tales about worlds of magic, monsters and adventure.  They wanted to play in those worlds, rather than observe them."
• "It's about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky ..."
• "The group might explore a dark dungeon, a ruined city ..."

Nor is that all.  Further down the same page, we have three more examples:

• "Sometimes an adventurer might come to a grisly end, torn apart by ferocious monsters or done in by a nefarious villain."
• "The many worlds of the Dungeons & Dragons game are places of magic and monsters, of brave warriors and spectacular adventures."
• "The worlds of the Dungeons & Dragons game exist within a vast cosmos called the multiverse, connected in strange and mysterious ways to one another and to other planes of existence, such as the Elemental Plane of Fire and the Infinite Depths of the Abyss.  Within this multiverse are an endless variety of worlds."

And it happens one more time on the very next page, where a long paragraph hammers this list style example-giving right into the ground.

It doesn't ring like a clumsy writer.  It rings like a list was provided of things and the writer was compelled to compress the list into the smallest number of words possible.  Moreover, it is a style of writing that has been used to describe D&D all the way back to the first edition.

We all know that D&D is a hard game to describe well.  Words don't seem enough to grasp all the things these lists try to present, nor is it easy to find phrases that explain quickly what it means to create a character and act as a Dungeon Master.  These concepts don't present themselves as self-evident to the uninitiated.  I have never, since beginning this blog, tried to explain in a single short post what D&D is to someone who has never heard of it, seen it or played it.

The first time it was explained to me, the explanation came about 90 minutes before I sat down to play ~ and that experience instantly eliminated any need for explanation.  Since, whenever I have needed to explain the game, I have simply said, "Come around and watch; then you can decide if you want to play."  This has always worked.

I suppose you've got to write an introduction to a book like this.  But does this book include plans for  Castle Ravenloft, the dark dungeon, the ruined city, the Infinite Depths of the Abyss or any of the worlds full of magic and monsters?  Then why are we talking about them?  Shouldn't the introduction to this book address itself first and at once to what is in this book, the one we're reading?  I think so.  All this other falderal is unnecessary fluff, like the ads jammed at the front of magazines and old school comic books ~ stuff we have to turn past to get to the material we wanted.

It does get there: halfway through page 6, with the heading, "Using this Book."  When I write another of these posts, I'll start there.

5e: The Challenges That Scene Presents

This is the third consecutive post I've written about 5th edition; do not worry, the bloom will fall from the rose.  It is only that I first wrote my 3rd lab for the RPG 201 course, only to feel that it needs another try.  I'm going to get some distance on it first, probably post it tomorrow ~ and instead plow into another of these posts instead.

Let's begin with the balance of the 5th Edition Player's Handbook Preface,

“The first characters and adventures you create will probably be a collection of clichés. That’s true of everyone, from the greatest Dungeon Masters in history on down. Accept this reality and move on to create the second character or adventure, which will be better, and then the third, which will be better still. Repeat that over the course of time, and soon you be able to create anything, from a character’s background story to an epic world of fantasy adventure.

“Once you have that skill, it’s yours forever. Countless writers, artists and other creators can trace their beginnings to a few pages of D&D notes, a handful of dice and a kitchen table.”

With very moderate reservations, I agree strongly with the above. These two paragraphs express their intent plainly and with purpose. I would prefer to quote them, praise them and move on ... only when I turn to the next page, page 5, titled "Introduction," I find that everything in the above text is sliced clean into the hazard.

I'll explain, but first I want to say again that it is not my intent to nit-pick, to look for small or unimportant errors and faults, especially in order to criticize unnecessarily. At times throughout this post, I will stop and explain exactly why I'm making a particular point, so that the reader will see that my issues are neither small nor unimportant, but rather damning evidence of the amateurish work herein.

First, let us quote the opening paragraph of the Introduction:

"The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination. It’s about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents."

The emphasis is my own.  We have just had it explained to us the page before that when we start to make adventures, we will probably create a collection of cliches.  It is clear that we are to be forgiven for this, because we are just starting out, yet presumably a collection of cliches is something to laugh about and think on later, "Oh, what a bunch of amateurs we were."

Yet here we are, talking about a game driven by imagination, and we are slapped with the cliche, "A dark and story night ..."

Mon dieu!

Do we not know that the notion of starting any idea with the conception of a storm at night is a cliche so famously gauche that it initiated a writing contest specifically to mock cliches, still going strong since its founding in 1982?  Yet here we are, in 2014, setting the stage with this as an example of how "imaginative" D&D is.

Okay.  Okay, okay, okay.  Let's move on.  What follows is a passage that will be familiar to most of you, as it is quoted from the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, written by Bruce R. Cordell and James Wyatt.  It was released in 2006 for the D&D 3.5 ruleset.  Here is the passage the 5th Ed. P.H. quotes:

“Dungeon Master (DM): After passing through the craggy peaks, the road takes a sudden turn to the east and Castle Ravenloft towers before you. Crumbling towers of stone keep a silent watch over the approach. They look like abandoned guardhouses. Beyond these, a wide chasm gapes, disappearing into the deep fog below. A lower drawbridge spans the chasm, leading to an arched entrance to the castle courtyard. The chains of the drawbridge creak in the wind, their rust-eaten iron straining with the weight. From atop the high strong walls, stone gargoyles stare at you from hollow sockets and grin hideously. A rotting wooden portcullis, green with growth, hangs in the entry tunnel. Beyond this, the main doors of the Castle Ravenloft stand open, a rich warm light spilling into the courtyard.”

For my part, I do not care if there are cliches in this or not.  Apart from pedants, it is recognized that most of the English language is made up of one form of cliche or another, repeated so often that these become patterns of speech and hardly noticed in everyday life.  "How are you?" is a cliche, yet it is said twenty times a day between strangers who do business or seek answers, because it is convenient and comes direct to the point.  A cliche offers clarity and directness, better than more flowery language that can confuse and unnecessarily obfuscate the purpose of writing.  That the above contains cliches is a matter of complete indifference to me.

Yet, the writers of the book felt compelled to disparage cliches directly, connecting them with inexperience and, hah hah, what a bunch of crappy adventure writing we did when we first started off, eh?  The writers cannot disparage the use of cliches and then present THIS nest of cliches after telling us that "the Greatest Dungeon Masters in History" transcended cliches and produced "an epic world of fantasy adventure."

It demands a belly laugh.

Here are the cliches I see in the above: “craggy peaks,” “sudden turn,” “crumbling towers,” “keep a silent watch,” “disappearing into the deep,” “spans the chasm,” “creak in the wind,” “atop the walls,” “hollow sockets,” “grin hideously,” “spilling into the courtyard.” These are ancient clichés, everyone, with one appearing in nearly every sentence of the introduction.  I do not point these out with relish, but with baffled confusion.  What group of publishers, having the whole repertoire of the company's lexicon to draw from, decided that this was work of the highest merit?

Moreover, throughout the passage there are inconsistencies that cry for a literary appraisal.  Once again, let me stress, I have no concerns whatsoever about the content here ~ only the language that was chosen as evidence of great imagination.  It matters not to me where the Castle Ravenloft is related to the craggy peaks or the road ... but the language tells me that we do not see the castle after passing through the craggy peaks, but only after the road takes a sudden turn.  It is clear from the passage that Ravenloft is huge - yet we do not see it between the trees, we do not see it from the pass between the craggy peaks ... we only see it after the road turns?

Forgive me.  That would seem to be small and unimportant, but this was the passage chosen from thousands of potential paragraphs in hundreds of potential modules ... and in the first sentence the scale of the castle vs. the road is at odds with the presentation.

Then we are told that the towers of stone keep a silent watch ... but lest we confuse the issue, we are told they look abandoned. Why present this first as a poetic anthropormorphism, only to shatter it at once with a stark admittance?  What service does this do ... and what logic is it to tell us the "towers" look like guard "houses?"  Granted, it is true that guard houses can be tall, but then a resident of the period would have described them as guard houses from the start, and not as towers at all.  Is the writer even sure what a tower or a guard house is?

The examples compound.  We are told the chasm is wide, so we must assume that if we're on this side of it, and we haven't crossed, the actual gate, portcullis and doors are a fair distance away.  Yet the gargoyles that are "atop the high strong walls" are described to us as though we were but twenty feet away.  We are able to see that they stare at us and that their eye sockets are hollow.  We are able to see what sort of grins they possess.  Would they not, from our vantage point beyond the wide chasm and beneath the high walls, seem but vague smudges?  Particularly as we have also had this scene set by the Introduction paragraph as happening under a "stormy night sky;" would we even be able to tell they were gargoyles?

What of these drawbridge chains, straining from weight.  The drawbridge is lowered. The chains exist to pull the drawbridge up, to a place where it does not weigh heavily upon the chains.  When the drawbridge is down, it is made to rest upon stone braces built into the sides of the gap. That is because very heavy things are dragged into castles, like massive blocks of stone, that would break a level platform hung on chains alone no matter how thick or new they were. How come these imaginaries of epic fantasy don’t know how drawbridges work?

And what of the portcullis that is "green with growth."  Given that it is night, and green is remarkably hard to distinguish at night, how do we know this is growth?  I have learned from a moment's investigation, though it is not included in the text above, that this green growth is slime.  How is it that we are able to recognize this slime at this distance?  Or that the portcullis is rotting, or even that is it made of wood (though we might guess it)?

Take note: we've already been told that there is a courtyard beyond the entrance ... and four sentences later we are told that the castle doors are open.  Should we not have assumed that, else how would we know there was a courtyard?  Yet we know why the open door was not mentioned before; it is there to set up the rich, warm light that spills into the courtyard.  From whence is this light coming?  From the stormy night?  Or from within?  If from within, should not the light spill out from the courtyard?  And how much light is this, that will light a courtyard of a castle as large as Ravenloft?  And how, under this stormy night sky, is the light "warm"?  Welcome, surely, but ...

And while the reader grits teeth and clenches fists, hearing me disparage the sanctity of the Ravenloft introduction, I point out that these 128 words of description would drive an editor to cover the page red with pen.  At least it is spelled correctly.

To say again: I am fine with the content.  I am fine with Ravenloft as an adventure, with all the vampires.  Yet with that said, this is a poor example, on its own, to show how we rise to the challenge of describing this scene.  If this is what the publishers believe is the epitome of giving structure to stories, does this not give cause to reconsider the publishers' expertise in designing a book of this stature?

Why, I want to ask, did the publishers not write something new?