Escapism

The logo above denotes a film production company of the 1940s and 50s, which was really a partnership between two filmmakers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.  This particular version of their logo comes from one of my Top 10 films, the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.  It may very well be in the top 5.  Another version of the logo can be found on this wikipedia page, which also includes a manifesto of the Archers, which I only chanced to read for the first time yesterday evening.  Allow me to reproduce the manifesto, which describes Powell and Pressburger's sense of responsibility to a studio or other producers ... that is, none at all.  Quote,

"We owe allegiance to nobody except the financial interests which provide our money; and, to them, the sole responsibility of ensuring them a profit, not a loss."

"Every single foot in our films is our own responsibility and nobody else's. We refuse to be guided or coerced by any influence but our own judgement."

"When we start work on a new idea, we must be a year ahead, not only of our competitors, but also of the times. A real film, from idea to universal release, takes a year. Or more."

"No artist believes in escapism. And we secretly believe that no audience does. We have proved, at any rate, that they will pay to see the truth, for other reasons than her nakedness."

"At any time, and particularly at the present, the self-respect of all collaborators, from star to propman, is sustained, or diminished, by the theme and purpose of the film they are working on."

Let me start by saying, I agree.  That is, with respect to my own work, and how I view it.

I am beholden to no one, except those with whom I agree to be responsible towards.   If the work I do is inadequate or of high quality, I am to blame.  When I have an idea, I want to strike at it immediately.  And I believe that what I do, and what I stand for, embraces the idea that theme, or the reason for doing something, is more important than any other part of what I create.

But let's talk about escapism.

What does it mean, the "no artist believes in escapism"?  Is it true?  Does it define the word "artist"?  What is escapism, and why take the stand, among these other things, to say that as artists, Powell and Pressburger are saying that they're interested in truth, instead.

Which, of course, begs that question as well.

Last week, unable to get access to the show in any other way, I signed onto Apple's streaming service so I could watch the show, Ted Lasso.  I had seen several scenes on youtube and was impressed by the writing and the characters, and so I threw some money at the worst technology company in the known universe and watched the show, three seasons in three days.  If you've never heard of the show, I recommend this scene and this one, neither of which will meaningfully spoil the show's storyline, but will introduce most of the characters in their best light.

The show is obstensibly about an American coaching English football, but that is not what the show is about.  The show is about, as one of the clips says, "Grow up, and get over it" ... and every decent person on the series does, which separates the overall work from all the whining, whinging, never-get-over-anything that has polluted television and film these last 15 years.  There are other themes as well, that gets me back in short order to that subject.  A work is not about what the work appears to be about:

This image is not a pipe, and it is not about a pipe.  But until the viewer can grasp this structural relativity, one cannot grasp what theme is apart from moral or message, which is what grade school clumsily fails to correct in the minds of most students.

Escapism is an attempt to emotionally or mentally flee any deeper understanding of the thing we're watching, apart from its most superficial appearance.  It is the argument that this is a pipe, or the representation of one, regardless of the artist's words.  Escapism is the insistence that things be what they appear to be, lest we become mired in a discomforting moment of reflecting on why we've chosen to do something, or see something, which might place us face-to-face with some profound or troubling aspect of life.

No artist wants this.  While the observer of the painting, or the series, or the film being made, has merely to invest a few hours in it, three days say, this is not at all the artist's experience.  There is no escapism in the creation of art, which is the principle reason that most persons do not do it.  Art requires the creator to lock his or her self in a crypt with the work being made and sink into the worst, most repulsive muck imaginable, and to stay there, day after day, month after month, sometimes year after year, and simply endure the horrid, repulsive, uncomfortable truth of it — that the work is very badly done, or insurmountable, or insipid, or any number of other soul-wrenching suppositions that an artist cannot help feeling, while wallowing around trying to make the point have merit or relevance.  This is what the archers are saying: that the naked truth, apart from her lost clothes, is worth doing it for — and is, in fact, the only reason why an artist strives to make anything.

Creating art requires the artist to immerse themselves in the depths of their work, confronting its flaws, difficulties and the relentless self-doubt that accompanies the creative process. This process is not merely about producing something aesthetically pleasing but about grappling with the uncomfortable truths and raw emotions that the work embodies.

But here, we must make a clarification between an artist and a writer, a musician, a painter or any other craftsperson able to use the instruments that an artist also happens to use.  The writers of Emily in Paris manage to cough out various shitty collections of words and characters that appears, to the unfamiliar, to be works of art, though they are nothing but frames in which to place advertising, which in turn justifies the next season of this abomination of a television series.  And should those writers win some award that's paid for by a studio, they will preen themselves and call themselves artists, and those demented souls who like the show for it's escapist qualities will likewise call them artists, which muddies all of this water somewhat for the non-creator.  It's so very, very easy in this culture to confuse "art" with "programming," and to declare that there is no difference, because it's oh so easy.  And thus is my thesis likewise easily exploded, by all those who will point at Emily in Paris or the Sabrina the Teenage Witch or any other show that provides such a comfortable, lovely experience in its lovely, lovely escapist qualities.

Nonetheless, that thesis is sustained if it's understood.  The Archers do not say that artists are not interested in producing escapism, but rather, that escapism cannot be produced by an artist.  The distinction is fine, but clear.

An artist may understand or even work within the realm of popular media, but the core of their creative process is rooted in confronting and expressing deeper truths.  Escapism, in contrast, is an evasion of these truths, providing a comfortable retreat rather than a challenging engagement.

And thus, we arrive at everything that has gone wrong with dungeons and dragons.

In its early iterations, D&D required players to immerse themselves deeply in the game's world, navigating intricate plots, moral dilemmas, and richly detailed settings. The game's creators intended for it to provoke thought, challenge players, and offer a meaningful experience beyond simple entertainment.

However, as D&D evolved and sought a broader audience, there has been a shift towards more escapist content. This trend is marked by an emphasis on spectacle, straightforward quests, and simplified mechanics that prioritize immediate gratification over deep engagement. The result is a version of D&D that offers an enjoyable, but ultimately superficial, experience, catering to those seeking a quick escape rather than a profound adventure.

And just like shitty television, the apparent popularity of present-day D&D has been conflated into a belief in its "artistry," as though the demonstration of a larger audience, and the awareness of more media outlets, and the occasional DM who now speaks of being a "professional" because he or she is paid, receives daily accolades.  Because someone has made a movie of it, which in no way reflects the actual game as it's actually played, or any of the characters therein, or any of the game's structure or nuance, the simple logo is enough to offer a cred it doesn't deserve.

If, upon occasion, I lose the sense of why the pursuit of a specific kind of game that I'm creating isn't me slipping off my cracker, it's only because the misery of creation is so very, very miserable.  But now and then a wake-up call, a manifesto by some filmmakers written 85 something years ago, I'm able to snap back to myself and remember, oh right, I'm not making shitty D&D.  I have no interest in escapism.  Trapped in all this muck, I forgot that a moment.  I got some muck in my eye.  I'm all right now.

The path that I'm on diverges so starkly from the mainstream that its easy to be overwhelmed.  My goal is not to churn out another formulaic product, though I've been encouraged to do that for the money.  But that's not what I'm interested in doing.  If the producers of Emily in Paris showed up with a truck full of money, I'd say no.

I recognise that most people wouldn't or couldn't believe me when I say that ... but most people, as I said, are not artists.

P.S.,

As the truck drove away, my partner would be really, really angry with me.

Dark Souls

Some family and friends of mine have put together a Let's Play of Dark Souls 1. Have a look, be kind, pass it around:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqqgP4ru62E

The beginning is a bit dark, a bit predictable, but with great funny moments. They're new, exploring the concept of editing and commentary. They could use a few comments, a few page views, as much encouragement as you can give them.

Mindfulness

Let me ask something: does the reader feel overwhelmed?  I've talked about a wide range of subjects regarding gamer experience: the importance of difficulty, the responsibility inherent in taking up the mantle of DM, rule-making, game structure and function, narratology, modelling, despair at venturing into new game design, reverse engineering as we play games, operational logic and the concept of game flow.

Are you lost?  This is all interesting stuff but how in hell does it set an agenda for what you're going with your world or your game?  Have you already forgotten most of it?  Has it fallen right out of your head?

Don't be surprised.  I'm finding it hard to keep it straight.  My only saving grace is that most of it has been floating around in my head for decades, without my knowing that the academic work I've been posting and deconstructing existed.  Clearly, it's hard to find; and I think that most of this content falls on deaf ears, given that it sets out to correct misunderstandings about concepts such as "fun," "reward," "rules" and "worldbuilding."  These are not concepts that common game makers or users want corrected: they have already fixed in their minds what these words mean and any effort to create a measurement thereto will be bound to encounter resistance.

Yesterday, prior to writing my post about setting, I spent a couple of hours looking for a definitive university-level book on developing a dramatic setting or a game setting, to compare with the examples that I had found online and among juvenile how-to articles.  There wasn't one, at least not that I could find.  I found plenty of books with a high complexity describing setting in Greek tragedy or in Shakespeare, or related to the Bible or other general categories of literature and drama.  Yet I could not find an authoritative, meaningful book on "choosing a setting" as more crude sources would approach the subject.  From my own academic experience with creative writing, I have to admit the matter was never approached in that manner.  I don't approach setting myself in that way.  I would never think before starting a book, "I want to create a story that takes place in such and such a setting; I will make the setting first and then decide what sort of story I want to tell there."

[I know, this seems like I'm going to go back into setting again, but I'm just going around the barn; I'll come back, I promise]

Any story I've wanted to tell has always been about something I believe or something I want to believe; substantially, the most certain sorts of thoughts that it is possible for me to have.  For example, Pete's Garage is about how a fellow approaches not being able to work and live as a musician, but only knows a life lived among musicians.  Pete still knows what he knows about music; he's wise in his manner and he's forgiving of the musician's lifestyle and the musician's quest.

I didn't want to write a story about a music agent or a music promoter, and I had minimal experience with those things.  But I knew a place, Connections, when I was 19 and 20 that rented rooms by the hour to musicians who wanted to practice, where they didn't have to worry about how loud they were.  It was a shit little building downtown that has since been ripped down and made into a parking lot (coincidentally, connected to a place where I worked on the 5th floor for five years in video-on-demand, but that's not important).  To reduce the noise between rooms, the management hung nets on the walls full of ripped up foam rubber, like one of those nets you probably fell into when doing the high jump in high school.  The carpet was old and rotten, with the wooden floors showing through, the place stank, the floors weren't level, the management were assholes and the vibe was equivalent to a meth lab.  Yet I spent hundreds of hours there, moving from room to room, talking to musicians, writing stories in the corner while they played, blasting my ears since I was about four feet from the bass and drums, and loving it.

In writing Pete's Garage, I wanted to recreate that: so in a way, it could be argued that I "invented" the setting first and then came up with a story.  But no.  In fact, I invented the story and then remembered a setting that would work with that story.  If I'd never known a place called Connections, I'd have used something else from my memory.  That's how writing works.  We begin with the idea, then we cast around for concepts that will fit that idea and make it believable and interesting.

If the idea is bad to start with, nothing we do in the way of story, characters or setting will save it.  That's important.  Most ideas are bad.  In fact, statistically speaking, all ideas are bad.  Good ideas are a non-statistical anomaly.  That is why most of the time, creators just steal good ideas.  The chances that you, as a creator, will have an honest to gawd original good idea is a statistical impossibility.

Thankfully, I'm wise enough to know that only means it's highly improbable.  People get confused about that, however.

All this comes back around to the problem of how do to set an agenda.  See, no one taught me to do this thing of reaching back into my memory for things that would fit with a recently acquired idea. It came with time.  And with the understanding that the method will serve bad ideas as well as good ones.  That's important too.  There's no real way of knowing if you have a good idea or not; this is largely what has me paralyzed with regards to The Fifth Man right now.  I go through periods where my complete lack of confidence makes me question the logic of spending any time on the book, like Marty McFly asking, "What they say, Get out of here kid. You've got no future. I mean, I just don't think I can take that kind of rejection."

When my struggle is difficult, I'm weak that way.

But you're fine, right, gentle reader?  You don't experience misgivings like that.  You don't have doubts about your campaign or your players, or about what you're doing with your game or your life.  Everything about your world's design is going exactly as you want it to and you're one hundred percent certain that when you bring in a new idea or a new adventure for your players, they will love it.  One hundred percent.

We want good ideas . . . but at best, we're working with what we have.  No one can teach you how to do that; you've got to experiment and play.  On top of that, you've got to be open to the possibility that the idea you have is bad, even if that possibility is uncomfortable and keeps you awake at night.  Even if that possibility paralyzes you for a time.  It is better that you be aware of your potential failures, of your moving down the wrong path, than blindly stumbling along, happy go lucky, until you've destroyed any and every opportunity you may have had to find your way back.

All this game stuff ~ if you're not self-aware and mindful of your game in this manner, none of this will do you any good at all.  If you're not mindful, chances are you'll never be.  Chances are you're not mindful because you're terrified of what you'll find if you look at yourself, your choices and your game too closely.  Looking at it too closely could result in your discovering that it is all shit.

Chances are, you're not ready for that.  And that you'll never be ready for it.

I envy you, a little.  But then I remember, if I were making my world or writing my book with the sort of cheerful confidence that disallowed me any misgivings that either might be shit, they would almost certainly be shit.  With statistical certainty.

Wow

Reading through some Buddhist content about happiness (sukha), joy (piti), equanimity (upekkha) and Brahmavihara (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmavihara) I found myself having some strange thoughts on bard performance and the "better life."  When in doubt, always go east young man.  Always go east.

I ended up with a series of platitudes which today I cannot find, but are fundamentally tied into benevolence and charity.  The content person does not quest for wealth or power, but for well-being, well-being for self and well-being for others.  This is what the bard does ~ transmits a sense of well-being.  We have been describing this as happiness . . . but we have lacked any meaningful game benefit that this can offer.  And as I've said, I don't want to fall back on hit points, morale, saving throws or any of the usual things that get modified in the game.

On wikipedia, under piti, there's an excellent distinction made between "happiness" and "bliss" that is attributed to the 5th century treatise, the Visuddhimagga:

"If a man exhausted in a desert saw or heard about a pond on the edge of a wood, he would have happiness.  If he went into the wood's shade and used the water, he would have bliss."

This is what we want the bard to produce in game terms.  Something that the players will identify only with the bard: some effect that only the bard can cause.

With our last post, we were discussing the varying qualities of Aristotle: that happiness makes us flourish, that happiness causes us to behave virtuously, that we embrace temperance, justice, the desire to better ourselves, the encouragement of efficiency, proficiency, friendship, worthiness and respect.

We were describing experience.  We just didn't think of that.

But this is what the bard gives: experience.  Having an evening with the bard creates that sense of bliss as we immerse ourselves into the performance.  It focuses us, it reminds us of why we persevere, the experience provides us with resolve, bravery, a sense of duty, a sense of strength and possibility . . . in short, ALL the characteristics that we associate with being better in battle, with standing up to the enemy and taking a hit for the crew that we work with, with potentially sacrificing ourselves to save a fallen comrade.

I have often argued that we can't give experience for things that don't contribute to being a better combatant . . . and yet I would argue that attending a show does make one a better combatant.  It gives us something to fight for.

I can see it quite clearly.  The benefit of the bard character is that it gives other characters experience.  And the bard, in turn, gets experience from other bards.

Ah, but how?

I see two paths.  We can call them Upekkha (or Upeksa, in sanskrit), the sense of peace and well-being (equinimity, composure, the state of being sublime) and Sukha (happiness, bliss).  For certain, those terms are not going to be confused with any other term used in D&D.

In terms of bardic performance, Upeksa is the feeling we get from encountering something familiar and immensely satisfying, or what we have already defined as "product" where it comes to bardic creation. Sukha is, therefore, the feeling we get from encountering "art" ~ something wholly new that astounds our senses and overwhelms our thoughts.  Take note that I am using the word "encounter" deliberately. Visiting a theatre or attending a concert is, in D&D terms, an encounter.

Now, that is going to mess some people up.  And some people will feel that I am going a long way to completely break the game.  But rest assured, I'm being very careful in what the effects will be of either Sukha or Upeksa.

Upeksa

Very well, our bard gets up in front of an audience at a local roadhouse or inn and gives a recitation of a familiar poem, or perhaps a poem that has made its impression on audiences before but is not overly known to this audience.  There are perhaps twenty, perhaps fifty persons in the common room, warming themselves by the fire, ending their conversation because poets are rare and poetry is appreciated in that culture like it will never be in ours.  What happens?

Nothing, right away.  The bard has co-opted someone else's art as product and, while having produced a warm and fuzzy feeling among the crowd, we are speaking of contentment and well-being.  We are not speaking of epiphany or the scattering of formerly possessed ideals.  We're not talking Archimedes running down a street naked.

But . . . the audience goes away from the performance affected.  They are warmer in their hearts, they are a bit more interested in the world around them, they are more attentive.  Our bard isn't the greatest of bards and the venue isn't the greatest of venues, but there has been a change.

We could stipulate that for the period of a week after the encounter, each person in attendance (the party included!) will gain +1% experience above anything they would normally gain.  That's not profound, that's not game breaking, but it is significant and the party will certainly not turn it down.  It is, of course, not cumulative.  Still, having a bard on tap, knowing that small bonus will be there as long as the bard is with the party, casting poems around the campfire before we turn in, will have its impact.  If the bard dies, the party will certainly notice a little bit more than they would losing a thief or a druid.

Of course, as the bard progresses in level, that percentage will increase also.  We already give a 10% bonus for having a better strength for a fighter or a better wisdom for a cleric; why not a 2-5% bonus for having a better bard?  It may only be an additional 20-50 points on every thousand, but it will be 20-50 points for every person in the party.  When thinking about the online Juvenis party right now, with four characters and five followers, that's 180-450 additional experience for every thousand gained.  That's not peanuts.

But let's take the next step.  What about improving the venue?

We were talking about the bard performing at a bar.  What about an open-air stage?  What about an enclosed theatre, an opera house?  And what if we are not just talking about any poem, discussed for a few minutes or half an hour, but an epic poem that takes an hour to tell.  What about an National Epic, memorized in its entirety, tailor-made for an audience that gets weepy every time it is heard (and being the 17th century, it isn't heard often).  What is the benefit from that?

I can see going as high as 15-20%, for the space of a week afterwards.  Such events would be spectacularly expensive, they might last only one performance or perhaps for a run of a week, like the Bayreuth festival (but in my world it is too early for Wagner).  It would be hard to seriously to keep attending something like this and still get any proper adventuring done . . . but imagining travelling seven hundred miles just to attend the festival.

And perhaps it might have a diminishing effect.  The most profound concert in Europe, given perhaps in Vienna, gives a 20% for the first week . . . and a drop of 1 or 2% for each week thereafter.  The players could space out on the bonus for months, making their plans to visit the same concert next year, every year.  THAT is granting something to the players that they really want.

Really, the potential is masterful.  Players are suddenly asking if there's a theatre in the city; they want to go to the city instead of the town because there might be something more.  The bigger the city, the more profound the encounter they might have.  And it is something else for them to spend their money on (at prodigious prices ~ it cost more than $350 to see Springsteen in concert in 2016).

Moreover, it gives something concrete for a bard to shoot at.

Sukha

Now, this is different.  The benefits of Sukha can be obtained only once per artwork ~ and only from the artist actually responsible for that artwork.  So before Sukha can occur, the bard has to produce something personal and unique . . . and before that can happen, the bard has to get an inspiration and then work to make that inspiration happen.

That is a lot suddenly resting on top of the bard's being successful.  Now it isn't just getting the work finished.  Now it isn't the work bringing happiness or causing the locals to be more productive (though it might do that too).  Now it is the players waiting for the work to be done, because they are going to get experience from it.

Now the bard is hearing, "Is it done yet?  Is it done?"  And when the DM asks for the bard to roll the die to see if it is, every neck at the table is outstretched to see what the result is.

That's combat.  That's what happens with combat.

And because the bard's work isn't going to be accomplished with just one roll, there are going to be stages to the success of this thing.  And with each stage, the players get a little closer.

To make that work, the benefit for hearing the work has to be meaningful.  That is, if it works, right?  We talked about art not working.  If it doesn't, the bard won't be the only failure.  The whole party should be banging their heads on the table.

Want to know what it means to be an artist?  It means when we fail, everyone fails.  Just look at the favorite sport on the internet.

So what is that benefit?  Well, that depends on the amount of work done.  And that depends on how hard core the bard wants to be before risking total failure (and possibly an in-party lynching).  Working for a quick result might require two success rolls and then the final check against the stat indicated . . . and it might give 4% of the bard's total experience on hand to listeners (with some sort of adjustment for the level of the listener or lack thereof).  If the bard is first level and has a thousand experience, that's no big deal.  Oh, too bad, we lost 40 x.p.   Big whoop.

But let's say we have a poet that is more ambitious, deciding that this is going to be a serious poem, an epic.  There are going to be a series of 10 needed successful rolls that will extend the making of the poem to perhaps a year, until such time as the bard reaches 5th level and has a total of 20,000 x.p.  Suppose that the fallout from this poem will be 20% percent of the bard's total experience; that's 4,000 experience, bang, all in one swoop.  Wow, what a poem!

As I say, that would have to be reduced for characters of less than 5th level.  It could be argued they just don't "get it" ~ it is above their experience level.  Still, we could have an adjustment like two to the power of whatever the difference in levels was: so divided by 2 for 4th level, by 4 for 3rd level, by 8 for 2nd level, by 16 for 1st level and by 32 for the non-leveled persons.  This would still mean 125 x.p. for the common listeners.

The limitation is that each person hearing the poem can get this benefit only once (after which it becomes just another Upeksa), but there are virtually an unlimited number of persons the poem can be given to.

"Oh, just joined the party?  Oh, you must take some time and get the bard to recite his Clown's Panurge . . . it's fab!  You'll be changed, I promise you."

Conclusions

The potential changes here are enormous.  I was talking it over with my daughter just now and making jokes about the party rallying around the "culture stick" and screw the mage.  In my daughter's words,

"There are two characters hanging off a cliff and you can only save one.  Do you save the mage or the bard?"

I know that I am crazy half the time and that I am constantly raising the bar on the game to the point where most would find it impossible to run ~ but I'm just going to say that this is the most profound idea I think I've ever had.  It is nowhere near the "thread" I talked about yesterday.  Five hours ago I had not one iota of a wisp of a dream of this idea.

But now I think I'm the most brilliant person who ever wrote anything about D&D.  Feel free to just write "OMG" or "Wow" in the comments.

Like an Artist

There are two key structures that I want to design into the bard character, and both were discussed in the comments section of the last post.  In this, I want to be clear: these rules are based upon what I see as the necessary elaboration of the bard character.  I've been pulled once (it is so hard to resist being an emotional being) into what is a bard and who is a bard, and I don't want to discuss that again.  I want to talk about the mechanics of making a bard work.  Esoteric discussions that do not involve metrics are actually of very little help.

I know that is bound to choke discussion, as I have found whenever I get into the metrics of something.  I am hoping, however, to obtain some understanding for my end goal with the bard.  Very well, down to the meat of it.

Art vs. Product

I'm taking the point of view that a bard, once reaching the status of being a 1st level, is a competent craftsperson.  They can play songs, write with efficiency and clarity, cook well, throw a pot, fashion leather, sculpt and so on.  It isn't a question of whether or not they can do these things well.  They can.  This is a fixed ability, not something that needs a roll to check.

Use this as a guideline: if a 1st level bard draws a lute out at a tavern and begins singing, people all around will enjoy the singing.  Again, it isn't a roll the bard needs to make to find out if people tell him to put the lute away.  They don't.  At first level, the bard is as competent as an average modern day artist who people read and go, "Hey, that fellow can write," or, "Wow, that picture looks just like me."

However, most of what the bard produces is "Product."  The songs sung at the tavern are familiar songs, the meter used to make the poem is a familiar meter, the story told by the puppeteer is well-known, the food is commonplace and recognizable.  And 99% of the time, this is what a bard does.  Bards take the stock forms of their individual skills and abilities and make proficient, workaday, conventional products therefrom.

As well, the bard never really moves away from this.  Bards have a small repertoire of things they know at 1st level and as they grow in level, that repertoire grows as well.  But it never stops being about producing product.  Shakespeare rewrote Marlow and used earlier works as his fundamental guidelines for churning out play after play, the Impressionistic crowd copied from each other, filmmakers borrow techniques, potters watch other potters, jewellers steal, everyone does it.  Over time, it only looks unique and artistic because most of the hoi polloi aren't sophisticated or engaged enough in the field to recognize the difference between something new and different and something regurgitated.

This can be a tremendous frustration for an artist, when something is celebrated as Brilliant and Unique, when in fact is it derivative of some style or particular work that has simply dropped sufficiently out of fashion that the 25-year-old reviewer has failed to acquaint themselves with it.  Those inside the profession, however, know; and so, too, do the creators themselves, who are perfectly aware of the stealing they've done and are also perfectly willing to keep quiet about it.  If the masses want to be duped, and want to give me money for duping them, then all the power to me.

All this, then, is product.  Art is what product steals from.

Art is what a bard does 1% of the time.  That up front needs to be understood clearly.  This is not a case of a bard deciding between A and B.  This is a case of a bard having to do A because B just isn't there.  The bard will absolutely rush to do B, the moment B presents itself, but so long as B is a fickle bitch, then A will have to do.

So when does "art" present itself?  Here we are looking for a specific word, that being "inspiration."  Art happens when the bard encounters inspiration, which isn't a case of just wanting it.  Inspiration has to be gotten ~ and regarding inspiration and the game of D&D, it needs to be gotten out there.

We can make a few guesses at what in D&D would be inspiration.  A legitimate near-death experience.  A magnificent undertaking that ends well.  Something horrific on the Lovecraftian level.  The death of a friend.  A love affair of note.  Something truly memorable.

But, no, the obtaining of an inspiration is not experience, it is not another level, it is in fact absolutely nothing but air.  Having an inspiration means almost nothing in terms of creating an art work.  Remember, 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.  All we are saying is that once the inspiration has been sought for and obtained, thereafter the bard has to figure out ~ in their capacity as the representative of a particular art form ~ how to make the inspiration real.

Success vs. Failure

Before we can talk about this, we have to define the difference between these two terms.  This, fundamentally, is what the last post was about, though I think that was missed by some.

It is almost habitual to think that "failure" means bad.  But remember, we are defining the bard as an able, competent artist, not a wannabe who someday is going to be able to make art.  That is nonsense.  J.D. Salinger was only in his late 20s when he wrote Catcher in the Rye ~ which, for all its faults, is without a doubt a distinct, different voice in literature.  We only fail to see that because is in not 1951, when the book was published.  But Salinger was certainly not a 9th level writer.  However much we want to believe the equation that Level = Art, we need to get away from that concept.  The real equation is that Work = Art. Characters with level only have more resources, and therefore the capacity to create larger pieces of art, more expensive pieces of art, pieces of art that require dozens or hundreds, even thousands of participants.

Moreover, resources mean distribution and notoriety.  Quality is not, in itself, a guarantee of notice.  Very often, "art" as I've defined it is often so different, so obscure, so uncomfortable, that it is only understood by other artists . . . who in turn make product out of it that is less different, less obscure, less uncomfortable, and therefore more easily consumed.  This formula is so completely misunderstood by non-artists, despite the endless works that try to describe it, that it is strangely "natural" to think that good artists will automatically be recognized as such.

To use an example from a different field, it has been said that Newton's Principia Mathematica was incomprehensible to nearly everyone who read it, even other mathematicians.  But because it is math, even ignorant people are by and large willing to accept that the book is highly valuable.  Yet at the same time, we encounter no hesitation whatsoever to call great artworks "worthless" and "shit" when they prove too hard to read.  "Yeah, War and Peace. Why would anyone ever read that?"

From this, I postulate that "failure" does not mean bad.  We could rather argue that failure implies a disconnect between the artist and the audience, even with other artists.  An artwork that inspires no one to produce product certainly falls short of affecting anyone.

There is another "failure" that is worth noting, that I did touch upon with the last post.  That is, the failure to get the result wanted.  Let us say that I produce a song about the solitude of individuals facing a terrible oppressive nation, to offer solace to the few intelligent men who, like me, feel helpless in the face of a mighty exploitive entity.  And much to my unhappiness, I discover that this book is embraced, nay, publicly celebrated by the united forces of the KKK, who claim it as the modern bible of their cause.

What am I to do?  My name is now certainly being exploited by an entity over which I have no control, while at the same time every stranger I meet presumes immediately that I must be part of the KKK because I wrote the book for them.  Talk of the solitude in the face of an oppressor.  My career is over, my name is over . . . the most I can do is change my name and hope I can disappear into obscurity.  That is, if I haven't put my picture on the cover of my book.

"Success," then, is the opposite of all this.  Success is communicating, success is inspiring others to make product, success is not having one's name spoiled or being misunderstood, not being vilified and not being burned in effigy.  And, potentially, getting a little money out of it too.  Perhaps a little fame, but this is the 17th century and without the benefit of mass media, fame is in small packets.  We all know the name of Cyrano de Bergerac, technically alive at the time my world takes place, but it is probable that most of the people living in Paris had never heard of him, certainly most of the people in the countryside of France hadn't and only a tiny percentage of people outside of France would have ever read him.  About the same number of people who have read him today.  Yes, we know who he was, but have you read his Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon? ~ had you even heard of it?  Can you confirm without a doubt that I'm not inventing that title without looking him up?

Creating Art

We want a metric that will let the bard character, once having obtained the inspiration, to create an artwork without having to actually create the artwork.  But we also want that character to have some influence over what the artwork will be, how big it is, what it's general tone and subject will be and what general direction of effect it will have.

I propose that we use the universal condition of all D&D characters, the character stats.  A bard looks over the options presented and decides what to take a chance on ~ because, yes, while the quality of the art is not in dispute, the reputation and comprehension of the art is.  But before we get to that, let's define the stats in terms of artwork.

Charisma is obviously beauty, the awe-inspiring pleasure of form and appeal that causes the viewer to drop jaw and stare.  Of course, the opposite is there as well, the desire to horrify, to force others to turn away, like Hieronymus Bosch, to use a relatively contemporary example.  Opposites apply to all the art forms that can be made - and success does not depict necessarily beauty or ugliness, but which the bard desires.

Constitution is health, the patriotic, the celebratory depiction of the present culture, religion or state.  It is also the demise of the state, anarchy, subversion, treason and rebellion.

Dexterity is difficulty, intricacy, the making of something that seems so absurd in its construction that it cannot possible stand, or something that the human body cannot possibly do; or making a tool do something that no one could have imagined was possible.  It is also the pure naturalness of form, of movement, of perfect ease and embrace.

Wisdom is educational, it is making the viewer, listener or subject aware of what has happened, how things work, how the universe functions, what is truth.  And it is also what is not truth, it is fantasy, it is strangeness, it is using the preconceptions of the mind to subvert the mind.

Intelligence is the call to think, to see, to obtain realization, to seek paths of greater understanding, to investigate, to ask questions, to insist that there is more than what we understand.  And it is tradition, ignorance, hate, resistance against reason, the insistence that investigation is evil and that things should be taken on faith.

Strength is strength; it is military might, it is a call to arms, it is compelling, bombastic, it is marching music, it is beating feet and booming drums, it is sinew and force of will and personal success.  It is also weakness, pandering, the denial of personal responsibility . . . and it is porn, it is debauchery, it is hedonism and lust, it is all the crutches that people lean upon because they are too weak to endure.


Some can take that list as moralistic.  I'm not too worried about that, I'm only interested in a metric for defining.  That is because, once we hammer out rules for what makes an inspiration into an artwork, we need rules for what effects an artwork has.

And we can begin those rules by saying that AFTER the artwork is made, after it is released, the character makes a check on the ability they have chosen.

Most characters will play it safe.  Bards have a high wisdom and a high charisma, it will be safest to make artworks that play to those abilities.  But whatever they case, they'll have to do the work before they can know if the work was in vain or not, or what the outcome will be.

THAT is the player understanding what it means to be a bard.  That we are inspired, we pick our chosen message, we pick our form, we start the work, we keep at the work, we finish the work . . . and all the while, we're not sure.  Will it work?  Will it?

It is easy for a player to say, "I write a song," then throw a die and know.

What if we make the player wait to roll.  What if the player has to sacrifice time for session after session, until at some point in the future, the time comes for the die to be cast.  What will that feel like?

It will feel like an artist.

The Hair Shirt

"Fuck, I dunno.  The fuckin' speech is always about having the courage to break free from conformity and be yourself or whatever.  I got no problem being myself - the real issue is how do you break free of hating existence once it's become clear that who you've courageously become is unlikely to pay the rent."

Winston Rowntree, Make a Sound

Hah.  I could have written that.

Somewhere out there (where I can find him on twitter, but I don't) is a great artist and writer who is thinking over and resolving in his mind the same issues I have. This is a good thing.  This sorts out the universe for me.

It's been four months and a collection of days since I released How to Run.  I find myself thinking about my head space six months ago, my thoughts at the time containing the usual nightmare of "Is this any good, how much is the internet going to dump on this, maybe I should force myself to do another draft, etc."  It feels good to lay those fears to rest.  It feels good to know that the reviews on Amazon give me five stars three times.  We all know how cruel and heartless the internet can be, thus the necessity of courage.  Not to be myself, but to put on the hair shirt and make the thing happen.

Hair shirt?  I'm speaking of the Latin cilicium, the garment made of goat hair that has been seen traditionally as a religious self-flagellation.  Tradition has it that, like wikipedia says, a devout would wear the hair shirt to prove their repentance and willingness to atone.

Reading Dante's Purgatorio a few days ago, I found myself rethinking that tradition.  There's no question that working on my role-playing book this last spring was an experience I would equate with discomfort and mental pain.  Those who had to put up with me those few months could bear witness to this - not only had I become intolerable to others, it had grown quite impossible to live with myself.

I remember saying in March that I was trapped.  I had to finish the book.  If I had withdrawn, if I had quit, if I had put the book off endlessly, then the reputation I've built up on this blog would have been cast away.  At the same time, producing a bad book would have had similar consequences.  You readers who have bought the book and found it worthy, you know what I mean.  Some out there must have wanted me to fall on my face.  Certainly in March I couldn't be sure I wouldn't.  But I was trapped.

So I wore the hair shirt and finished the book - and these four months have worked out fine.  It's a shame there are no atheistic phrases to indicate how profoundly relieved I am about that.  Imagine, if you will, that I have been able to take the hair shirt off.

But there it is, still hanging in the closet.  Pretty soon I'm going to have to put it on again.  Soon, I will have to really dig in with the next book, the next risk, the next opportunity to fail to pay the rent.  This is how it goes.  This is how art gets made.

I am convinced that the hair shirt isn't a punishment, but a means to an end.  The key is in understanding that shirt isn't forced upon us, but rather it is something we choose to adopt - to compel us towards an achievement.

I find myself realizing that Thomas Aquinas did not wear the thing to prove his devotion, but to acquire his devotion.  Subtle perhaps for some.  It seems as wide as the universe to me.

Perhaps I do beat the drum for hard work loudly.  When I stood to pitch my book at the fundraiser last July, I stood on the stage and said, "This book will challenge you to work; it will drive you, it will get under your skin, it will push you to look deep inside yourself to find the labour it demands of you."

When I stepped down and found my friends and family, my daughter leaned over to me and told me that I talked about 'work' way too much.  "People won't like to work," she said.

Then I find myself looking at the 5-star reviews on Amazon, where the readers talk about the inspiration the book gives them to work.

Work is a hair shirt.  It is a willingness to suffer in order to produce value.  It is a suffering we pursue, not for the sake of the suffering, but because humans are built in such a way that comfort - while pleasant - leaves nothing to show when it's done.

As per yesterday's post, I don't say this because I want it this way.  I haven't chosen - wouldn't choose - to have fruitful creativity depend upon the wearing of hair shirts or any other similarly unpleasant process.  It's only that this is the way the process works.  You've got to consciously accept that you're not going to enjoy the next few months.  You've got the consciously accept that if you try to enjoy any part of those months - if you take the shirt off - it is only going to be a bitch and a half to get that thing on again.

Once it's on, you've got to leave it on.  Even if it makes you scream.

Let's Talk About Semantics & Other Things

Many, many times I have slammed modules on this blog, and the people that use them.  Yet, of course, I understand that most people do not 'use' them ... they steal rooms, notions, maps, monsters, etc.  What's more, I'll confess right here and now that I did the same thing for many years.

I do not believe that I ever ran any party I've had through a module start to finish.  The closest would have been the Keep on the Borderlands, which I bought along with everyone else back in the very beginning of my playing days.  Even then, running the party through as far as they got (long time ago, I don't know when that was, but they never made it past the lower monsters, goblins, orcs and so on, before we got bored and moved onto other things), I had to adjust treasure.  Treasure was ridiculous on that thing.  You'd kill seven orcs and there'd be a +1 sword, as well as 1,000 g.p. worth of jewelry and gems ... and then the next room would have twice as much.  And this was a module associated with the same guy who in the DM's Guide wrote against 'Monty Haul' games.

For those gentle readers who do not remember the 70's, Monty Hall was a sleazy looking game show host for a long running show called "Let's Make a Deal" - also famous for the Monty Hall problem (which, I admit, I still can't make sense of in my head - someday I'll kidnap a mathematician and keep him locked in a cell until he explains it in a way I can understand).  The game show was very big for its time, and famous for giving a lot of stuff to people that were, basically, extraordinarily dumb folks who didn't deserve shit.  At the time Gygax coined the term, Monty Haul, it would have also incorporated the idea that the party getting all that treasure loot had not earned it.

But I digress.

Suppose we try to break down the module into that which is stolen, and that which can be ignored.  Images are always compelling, both for showing the party and also for inspiring the imagination.  A particular magic item, or something ornate, as well as a wide host of things that fall under the heading of 'toys' can be used in any personally-created adventure.  Traps are good.  Puzzles too.  The arrangement of rooms, as well as any kind of floorplan, can be used more than once.  The motivations behind an NPC's action is good, that can be translated elsewhere.  In fact, virtually any element of the module can be stripped and reused, like tearing a building empty of its guts in wire and other metal pieces until all that's left is broken concrete, plasterboard and old wood.

The real wasted part of the module comes down to two things: the railroad, where A must be done before B is found that makes C work, opening the door to D and monster E with treasure F; and the 'mood.'  The mood, of course, would be the module's author trying their own distinctive emotional perspective of the tone or attitude that the module is supposed to be run with.  The mastubatory part, if the reader will, that the writer really likes, and virtually everyone else ignores.

Now, defined, the word "adventure" is a bold, usually risky undertaking, a hazardous action of uncertain success and outcome.  This is something I see being totally and absolutely under the control of the DM.  The DM ought to know the world being run, ought to know precisely what sort of adventure that world needs, and ought to be able to invent the adventure that is needed.  To keep with the building analogy, the materials that are stolen from the module serve to create a space in which business can be performed - but the actual business itself is not created by the builder, but by the business owner.  The builder can take instructions and shape the space for the owner, but the builder shouldn't tell the owner the owner's business.

Trying to incorporate a railroad or mood into a host of source material that is going to be demolished and reworked to suit the owner operator - the DM - is a waste of time.  Or more to the point, it is a self-indulgent waste of time, for the module builder that wants you, the buyer, to get really excited about the builder's building, rather than in the actual business that is being run there.  Builders have always wanted this.  Most of the time, people just don't care.  The only reason they ever go to that building is because the place they want to buy from happens to be there.  The owner relates to the building, but if the builder was more concern with being showy and impressive than in actually just providing a well-designed, organized space, what the owner thinks of the building is, "I goddamn hate this place, and I look forward to the day when moving is practical."

I have been both building my own buildings and running my own businesses inside them for a long time now, and getting my source material not from other fantasy module creators but from deeper, more compelling sources, like religious studies, fiction of every stripe, modern events, human nature and my own twisted take on virtually everything.  If I really need source material, there's always time to investigate into some core works like Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae, Spenser's the Fairy Queen, anything by Shakespeare, Coleridge or Alexander Pope, some great source books I have for general trends in world history, Herodotus, Thucydides, Suetonius and Plutarch, Barbara Walker's great fictional sourcebook, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, any encyclopedia, Google Books, the internet and an ordinary newspaper.  The idea that ideas are scarce and hard to find is really just evidence of an imagination that needs a kick in the ass.  Appendix N?  More like, Appendix Life.

I don't want to co-opt the word 'adventure' and use it to describe organized source material.  The 'adventure' is the business part, and should be left in the hands of the DM running their own business.  I'd prefer to keep my nose out of that.  However, there is an issue with all the source material in the world, in that it's really cluttered and scattered, and therefore not particularly cohesive.  Cohesion is a process, and one that is worth being paid for.  So where I think of creating some kind of source material for a campaign, what I am thinking of is the cohesion of a lot of source material so that it is juxtaposed conveniently for the business' use.  The building of the building, with a lot of empty space, good hookups, terrific lighting and convenience to local services, transport and suppliers.

Personally, I'd love to do that sans imagery.  I'm not an artist, and that means the choke point for any book containing fantasy/fictional source material is going to be finding an artist that a) has my work ethic; b) has my perspective on how work is first created and THEN sold; and c) is able to produce in any style that's needed.  That's not always easy.  Artists typically want money up front for work they haven't done yet (often all the money), which only makes them the most annoying unregulated contractors in the universe.  At least if I give money up front to the cabinet maker who's going to rebuild my kitchen, I know that someone is looking over the contractor's shoulder, and that licences have been obtained and fees paid.  But an artist ... artists don't answer to anyone, they don't respect anyone (unless they're a better artist, in which case they are silently hateful, also), and most really don't believe that there's another knowledge in the world that matches their own special snowflake derived mind-sets.

I can work with musicians, sound techs, printers, designers, actors, costumers, writers, editors, poets and dancers ... but artists are a whole different mind-set.

If the reader tells me that I can produce a book of source material without the need to suck up to an artist, I will be deliriously happy.  Unfortunately, that's probably not the case.  I have engaged an artist recently to do the front cover, and we get along great ... and I pitched the idea of working on a series of sourcebooks together, but ... I don't have an answer on that.  I can't afford to pay up front for 10 or 11 pieces per source books, so I need an artist that is willing to work for the possibility of profit - like every other craftsworker, including myself.  We'll just have to see.