The Monkey Declines to Dance

It's been six days since my surgery and I'm more or less recovered. There's bruising all over my stomach, I'm a bit stiff, the bandage comes off soon; I'm finding it frustratingly difficult to concentrate or achieve flow as I normally would, so the week's been something of a write-off. A holiday, as it were.

I'm certain that readers have noticed the distinct lack of my traditional D&D content on this blog.  It's been about writing, comics, occasional ventures into other things (recorded my third essay video today), and the wiki, but not D&D, not the books I'm supposed to be writing, not a lot of advice telling how to run this or design that.

Easily, I could churn out an essay like that.  Talk to your players thusly, concentrate on this part of your worldbuilding, consider this when initiating an adventure, organise your NPCs so that they provide such-and-such... whatever.  Those who might have gotten a burst from the recent post I wrote about dungeon mapping, worksheets and setting the standards of a sandbox should note that I was not the initiating factor there.  A reader, and as it happens one who doesn't — so far as I know — support my patreon, took the time to write and ask me a few questions. Which I then graciously answered, spending my precious time not map-making or writing wiki pages to invest in performing that service.

For 17 years of this blog's existence (the anniversary is the 28th of this month), I have never hesitated to do that.  I have always been open to being asked things and the answers I've given consistently have always been more than the reader expected to receive.  There's always been a positive fall-out for other readers when I've done this.

The only thing going on with my ceasing to invest of my own accord is that I'm sick and tired of speaking to a wall.  My audience here equates to a group of about a hundred people who pay their money to the ticket window, sit down in the seats, in the darkness where I can't see them, while I do my little performance on the stage... to pretty much no acknowledgement, no response, no notice, no attention given and definitely without support beyond that ticket window.  Apparently, despite my every effort to reach out, to explain, to discuss, to appeal, to resolve and to bend, I'm expected to do my little performance and shut up.

So, I've decided not to.

Please feel free to continue buying your tickets.  I can make as much money and a helluva lot more if I shutter this online presence, get a straight job and use that capital to go on building my wiki and game world, which matters to ME, for my reasons.  But providing advice here without the expectation of either notice or communication?  Thank you much, but I'm done.

Someone wants to ask me something, I'll answer.  Feel that I have something to say, that you'd like to name, fine, I'll say it.  But I'm done with this bullshit dead-air stage time for it's own sake.

I'd rather have surgery done and be forced to rest than go on with what's been happening these last five years.

Comments On

It has been a year since my decision to turn off the availability of comments to my blog posts.  After a year of experimenting with a Saturday Q&A, I've decided to abandon the model and restore comments here.  This remains an opportunity for those who feel confident enough to engage, though I myself do not wish to do so.

In the days when I worked for a newspaper, a favourite professor of mine, who was British from the midlands, counselled me severely on never answering any letter that was addressed to me, on principle.  He argued, quite without patience I might add, that if I had not said all that was worthy to be said in the original editorial I was writing, then that was my failing... and I could not make up for that failing by attempting to fill in holes after the fact.

I wish now that I had taken his advice.

The Well Is Dry

Well, let's get off the pot and write something.

Briefly, because I don't want to waste a lot of time with this, but look at the splatterfest that D&D has become: a lot of fervent baity material based on "solving problems" while, in fact, just vying for as many clicks as possible.  Click this to learn about myconids, click this to learn that difficult terrain exists, click this for "news," for "lore," for audio D&D tools.  Come one, come all, step right up, don't be shy!  Gather 'round folks, gather 'round, for today, right here in the heart of our great role-play selection, we've got spectacles that'll dazzle your senses and leave you begging for more!  Yes, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen of all ages, brace yourself for a journey into adventure, into amazing great weapon combats, into charm spells and worlds brought to life!  Do you want to know about paralysation?  About blindsight and truesight?  About mystery goblin dice?  Do you have the nerve to challenge the greatest monsters in the universe?  Well, folks, today's your lucky day because D&D is filled with wonders of every kind!

Okay, I'm an old man.  Which is one reason I know when smoke is being blown up my ass.  I might be impressed if any of this shit had real merit, but it's just the same crap repackaged from 1988.  When I read that Matt Colville, the great Matt Colville, has written a module that encapsulates the ESSENCE of D&D: exploration, combat and puzzle-solving, I'm pretty much fucking done.  Look, it's a movie.  It captures the essence of movie making: actors, settings and dialogue!  How can it not be amazing?!

This is why I haven't written of late.  Not because this shit is just recently out here, but because I've reached a point where the thing that I love, the thing that I have a passion for, has become the only thing for which the internet is a complete waste of my time.  I don't know, maybe there are home renovators in the world who can no longer watch home renovation videos, or read home renovation books.  Maybe there are knitting fanatics who would rather cut their throats before reading one more "Knitworld" magazine or watch one more amateur drop a stitch.  Maybe that's how it is for other people.  I don't know.  I've done an awful lot of cooking.  I'm not the greatest cook in the world; I don't think I'm the greatest DM either.  Then again, I can watch a cooking video.  I can still enjoy watching someone skillfully cut a watermelon into odd shapes.

But I cannot watch another fucking video about D&D.  Of any kind.  I can't listen to anybody for more than about 20 seconds.  I just want to scream.  I guess there are idiots in the world who must have random encounters explained, or told the need to make puzzles or why combat matters, but after 25 fucking years of this shit on the internet, it's really enough.  D&D is obviously too small a field to sustain more than a few dozen separate discussions.  Clearly, it takes no more than three weeks to say everything that a person needs to know ... and then, because that's all, the only thing to do is to just keep saying the same things, since the blind, ignorant, myopic morons who play this game won't get it on a 45th telling anyway.

My blood is up.

Breathe ... breathe ...

Most of what I've said in the last 16 years of this blog has fallen on deaf ears.  I've done my best to be clear, to include charts and pictures, to be creative with my descriptions and metaphors.  I've broken things down into smaller, digestible chunks and I've used relatable analogies and real life examples to help convey ideas.  I've ranted and I've spoken pedantically, I've lectured and written humour, I've answered questions and asked more than a few of my own, to elicit a meaningful response.  I've explained technical jargon from other fields and studies and showed how they related to the plain language of D&D and role-playing.  I've put up polls to understand the reader's point of view, I've endlessly called for comments to ascertain what else I might describe or how else I might address the problems people have.  I've repeated points, rephrased arguments, done all I could towards the goal of empowering the reader to be a better dungeon master, to be a better player, to recognise what makes either a good thing and even how to support and provide guidance to good players and DMs the reader might encounter.  I've dissected, deconstructed, used a pointer to describe structural and functional features of the game and taken unconventional routes to convey my ideas.

I'm not done.  I'll never be done.

But I am at a point where if I want to write something, or say something, there isn't a crutch left for me anywhere.  There are no readers piping up to suggest directions for me.  There's no one in the audience raising a hand and saying, "But Mr. Smolensk, when are you going to explain about this?"  There's no resource anywhere on the internet I can turn to, no treatise I can read, having anything to do with this subject.  All that's left to say can now only be those things I realise on my own, without help.

And let me say a few things about that.

I'm not Isaac Newton.  I don't pretend to be.  The man mastered physics and I master a stupid game called Dungeons and Dragons.  I don't need to be reminded of my place in the whole of human accomplishment.  But as an example of being on the fringe of a particular specialty, Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687.  And the next book he published, Reports as Master of the Mint, which was not about physics, came out in 1701.  He wrote that report every year for the next 24 years.  His next book about math did not come out until 1707, twenty-one years after the Principia.

In the intervening time, he wrote letters to friends, people who understood him, and apart from that, according to reports, he spent a lot of time as a rich person in a rich house, in a firm effort to be unpestered.  He didn't publish anything about math for all those years because he didn't think he had anything worthwhile to say.

As I said, I'm not Newton.  I've had a lot to say, though of course it's all dreck compared to Newton. His words have survived four centuries and will go on that way.  My words are in danger of evaporating before Tuesday.  Let's not pretend there's a comparison here.

But when I have nothing to say, there's a tacit understanding that I really should write a blog post anyway, or else by Tuesday, my existence would be in danger of being forgotten.  So I come up with something.  As I said, however, this isn't like it used to be.  Once in awhile, somewhere on the net, I could read something by someone that sparked some part of my intuition, making a post possible.  Lately, not so much.  Not at all.  In fact, there's really fuck all out there.

And I haven't got anything new.  I underwent a helluva a lot of stress last month; we lived packed together like sardines, with a 3-year old boy to boot (and let me tell you, there's no question my grandson is a boy, in spades, complete with hurling and death defiance possibilities), without an argument taking place.  Which, given the intense volatility of both myself and my daughter, who matches me in every way and has the benefit of being 24 years younger than me, is something of a miracle.  We're both very glad about that.

It's done now, though, and for the present, I'm just not that into teaching.  I haven't anything new to say.  I have no fruitful new way to explain the art of DMing.  I haven't conceived of some profound new way to calculate encumbrance.  The well is dry.  I need rain.  A little rain and maybe I can go back to filling buckets, but for the present I'd be happy if I'd write one gawddamned paragraph for the Guide, which I can't even look at presently.  I'm sick to death of playing video games but, alas, it's about all I have the mind for.

Earlier this year, I filled the void by posting my Ternketh Keep.  Would anybody be interested in my giving an account of the whole of the offline campaign I've been running (with a seven-year break near the end) since 2005?  I could do that.  It would just be war stories, but it would fill blog posts.

I'm going to post this on my patreon, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3015466, where the public can comment if they want.  If I get a few non-regular readers there say yes (the regulars, I know what you feel), then I'll get started.  Otherwise, I'm perfectly happy to let this blog stand dead until 2045, if need be.  If Newton could do it, I can too.

Le Tao du JdR

Could someone who speaks French please have a look at this.

I have no way of knowing for certain that the translation is accurate, though I believe that it probably is.  Confirmation would be nice.

Comments

I've made up my mind what to do with this blog.

As a strategy to produce a better conversation between myself and my readers, come the 31st of August, I'm turning off the post comments.

Instead, I'm asking readers to submit comments to my email, alexiss1@telus.net.  Likewise for any questions the readers may wish to ask.  Meaningful comments and questions will be compiled and then posted as a group on Saturdays, starting one week today ... that is, before the comments are actually turned off.

You may comment on any post in the blog, or upon any page in the Authentic wiki.  If you ask me a question, I'll answer it.  If, at a later time, you wish to comment on someone else's comment, you may do that, through me.

I've seen other forums succeed at that format.  After much consideration, more than a month, I've come to the conclusion that given the comments section's decline these many years, it's probably best that it's removed.  If I don't expect answers, it will change the way I write posts, probably for the better.  Either way, I don't see any reason for the comments to remain in place as they are.  If people care enough about anything I've said, or their need to express themselves, they can do so as well in an email as they can do beneath a post.

I believe that the convenience of posting an instant comment, as opposed to something thoughtful, knowing it'll be printed days later, should encourage a better quality of comment.  And if it produces no comments at all, so be it.  Each Saturday that I receive no comments, I'll be posting a shortened version of this post on what to do if a reader wants to comment.  It may take years to begin to produce a dialogue, but I believe this is the right course of action.

For these 12 days, the comments shall remain active, for anyone who wishes to discuss this decision, and anything else in that time, in the usual way.

Climbing from the Cellar

Playing a little catch-up.  Haven't heard from Discord on the Michigan map, but maybe he's been sick like me.  Granted, the development of two 20-mile hexes isn't that impressive.  It's only a start.  It has to be expanded, bit by bit, like the original stub that was Kronstadt once upon a time.

The offer is still open to any of my $10 patrons, though I'm resisting putting the offer on patreon itself for the time being.  I believe I'll limit those patrons to one "start" per person.  I just can't keep up with having a single patron hopping around the globe, having me do tiny parts of Africa, India, South America and so on.  After creating a stub somewhere, I have no problem building on it; the work's been done for the next section over just as it has for the starting parts.  Once I've investigated into Michigan, Maine or someplace else, it's easy to keep going from there.

I may try to work a bit on the Crimean map today, but writing three paragraphs has me bursting into a sweat ... which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Trust me when I say that the time I've spent on my back the last three days has been used to design the bailey and fishing hamlets, and various facilities, in my head, though I haven't had the strength to write down anything.  I've even had to ask for time off work.  Happy to say I turned the corner last night, though I'm weak as a kitten today.

Until tomorrow.

Thanks All Around

I'd like to thank those people who have recently bumped up their contribution to my patreon, post-Christmas, and even those who have thought of doing so, but cannot due to circumstances we're all feeling.  To those who wish to help, but cannot, please understand that crowdfunding is not won through individual achievement, but through numbers.  If you have three or four friends, especially among your players, whom you can induce to give a dollar each (with 2 cents going to patreon), then try that path.  It's just as successful for me and you can pat yourself on the back for organising such effort.  You can even put it on your resume.

I understand the reason for this interest in recent work on the wiki.  I've clearly hit on the right subject material, which I'll continue to expand as I'm able.  One immediate problem, as I expand upon the communal hamlet with the bailey hamlet, is the distinct growing complexity arising from more people and facilities, and therefore a more complex environment that needs describing.  The trick, I've learned, is to keep stepping back and building up resources that better outline and define each element, so that instead of trying to cover all the information on a single page, more of the gritty detail is shifted onto some other page specifically designed to handle that detail.

I find myself with a little more time today, though I still have honest work to do, so it's my intention to build a table on a new facilities page that should expand as the day continues.  The table will explain the facilities by giving a name; how many persons the facility contributes to a community; and what conditions need to exist for the facility to exist.  Mediawiki tells me there's a way to build a filterable table (I haven't made one yet), so hopefully I can then build it so the table can be filtered for each kind of community.  This should help in calculating a single thorp, hamlet or village's population based on its facilities, without the mix of individual population tables and descriptions for each individual page, as I did for thorp and communal hamlet.  That should help organise that particular aspect of each place.  Personally, I believe a logical explanation for where a population comes from is vastly superior than being given a flat number without explanation of who does what.

As regards the map blog, I do encourage some of you to use your $10 to name a place on earth that you'd like to see mapped with my system.  If you're holding back because I've expressed some resistance to building a map of Minnesota or some other place not designed in 20 mile hexes as yet, don't.  It's natural for me to question taking on any additional work ... but it's also just as natural for me to figure out something that works when faced with a problem.  It's why I love D&D.

It's up to you to define exactly which county and place in England, Minnesota or Timbuktu that you'd like me to swing at, the fences be damned.  If it goes awry, I'm going to learn something from the experience at any rate and I won't quit until it's done.  Remember, the first time doing anything sucks ... it always takes too long and there are always errors made.  But ... practice improves the process.  Once I've practiced a little, I shouldn't find any part of the world beyond my ken.

So think about it.  Throw in.  I'm curious to know which parts of the world you'd like to see done.  It may be just dribs and drabs at first, but who knows where that might go in the end.

An Unhealthy Dependency

Now the reader can see why I wanted to put these maps on another blog.  And it's evident that I'm not dead, since I've posted there every day since November 9th.  But yes, I understand, I'm not posting here.  I'm not saying how to build a world or be a DM, or what rules to make or why rules are important.  I'm not counselling the reader on how to manage their players, or how to prep, or what's wrong with the game company.  I'm not bellyaching about someone else's blog, module or perspective.  It's all terribly dull because instead, I'm making maps.

But, if I must have some thoughts ...

This, said very earnestly, by a young woman leaning repeatedly into the camera to hammer home just how gawddamned earnest she is about what's she's saying:

"We want to continue to reach out to folks who are interested in fantasy, who love storytelling, who enjoy spending time with their friends and creating these collective stories that they can remember for years to come."

Not what appealed to me from the beginning, no.   Myself, I liked the depth and complexity of the game; the widening of possibility for action, the requirement to express one's actions in words, accurately, regardless what the actions were.  When I think of D&D play, I see it in very thin slices:

Me: "You see this, and this, and this ... what do you do."

You: "Fuck.  Do I have time to do, um, this?"

Me: "You can try.  Roll.  High."

You: "Omfg ... a 20.  Shit."

Me: "They shield their eyes and fall back."

You: "We fucking run!"

Clickety-click.  There's little time to think.  The back and forth relies on the space described; the limits are what's possible based on believability, rules, precedent.  Jump in, fight, defend, back out, escape.  So much happens, with so many people speaking, that there's no time to remember anything except in sweeping generalities.  We might remember that Tamara threw the critical when it was really needed, but after the fact, the details get muddled in the other hundred things that happen.  From the beginning, I've never been interested in one "amazing" narrative.  I'm interested in fifty narratives.  When my sessions really work, they're like those stage farces with people popping in and out of doors, each with their own agenda, where the audience gets lost remembering which of the four identical suitcases had the diamonds and which had a bomb.  The players jump from frying pan to fire to shark-infested tank and so long as they survive, we keep going.

As near as I can tell, I'm the only person in the history of the game to see it this way.  I'm the only person who doesn't give a flying fuck if the players want to hear a story or not.  I do not care if the game is memorable after ... "after," I'm not running the game.  As far as I know, no one has time for a collective anything, except to figure out in the immediate what's going on, what they need to do and whether or not it worked.

I'm definitely not interested in creating D&D as a "legacy."  My daughter has become a DM, but that's because she heard me doing it a hundred times, she had an opportunity to play it with her friends and she likes to run.  She plays in my game, likes the patter and duplicates it as best she can.  She's nowhere near as obsessed with it as I am (obsession = "unhealthy dependency").

In truth, no, I don't think of D&D as an "edition."  I don't play "AD&D", or "old" D&D, or "original" D&D, or any other manifestation of the game that someone else has invented or labeled.  I certainly won't play "One" D&D.  I don't play the game I played ten years ago, when I didn't play the game I played ten years before that.  I won't be playing this game ten years from now.  The game is too far-reaching, too full of possibility, too rich, for me to restrain myself or my practices when designing or running it.  It's always just been "D&D."  But in truth, it's "my" D&D.  It's better, deeper, more flexible, more advantageous to both me and my players than any set of rules in a book ever will be ... even my own book, since to publish something, I have to stupid-simplify its structure.  It takes someone obsessed to play my D&D.

Like anyone whose self-reliant, it's a joke when I hear someone talk like this:

"The sort of change you're going to see isn't about taking anything away from you, it isn't about changing any of that stuff you love.  It's much more about giving you more.  Giving you more options, giving you more choices you can make, more character types you can play, more magic spells you can cast ... basically, you know we're very happy with the game the way it is today."

More "choices" and more "options" are the same thing.  As is listing the example of what the choices are.  With acknowledgement that this is the same "more stuff" the company's been providing since 1977.

As an obsessive, self-made, self-sufficient, self-supporting, self-sustaining, independent, self-contained, autarkic DM living on his own hump (all the words, straight out of the thesaurus, that mean the same thing), I've chosen to create my own options.  When I want more, I'll make more.  Myself.  Using my brain.  I'd like to see the company come into my game and tell me how to run it.  That'd be a hoot.

But you see, none of this is new.  I've been saying this sort of thing for years.  The maps are new.  The maps are a steady, comprehensive investigation into the game world on a ground level.  They're not just opinions spouted for the sake of opinions.  The world being examined, taken apart, rebuilt, is the real world.  It's places where you or I could fly to, and look around, and see how the goblins would look rushing out from the trees ... those trees, right there.

I appreciate that the mapping seems somewhat repetitive.  Or that it lacks verve.  In reality, every section has a distinctive character; every tiny corner of the world has some element that's worth examining with a magnifying glass.  None of these corners are a "story."  They're framed pieces of setting in which events have or might take place.  Where history has already left its mark over millennia.  The very place where I mapped today was once visited by Huns, who slaughtered the residents there, who looked at those same mountains, who fought with the ancestors of the people living on the map in my game time.  It's all a fathomless tapestry ... but to use it, to gain from it, to discover what sort of DM it can make a person, it has to be seen and puzzled over.  The daily constructions of map that I've been doing are far more valuable than the boilerplate deconstruction I've just written above.

This is why, at present, I'm not driven to write here.  I have the splat book to design.  I have the maps to draw.  I have the ongoing game responsibilities I've lately assumed again.  I just don't care to write another chapter on how the reader should dungeon master.  You want to worldbuild?  Get down on your hands and knees and look at the dirt on which you stand, and grok it's fullness.  Action, not words.  Comprehension, not counselling.  Get out your shovel and dig.

Say, Say, Say

There are two kinds of blog posts.

The first are easier to write.  I've written thousands of them.  One simply takes a position on something and discusses it.  Doesn't matter if its a prescription for play, a deconstruction of some element of life, a review, a commentary on someone else's opinion or whatnot.  Basically, just as I'm writing now about blogging, the idea is to sound very intelligent about a thing.  To be accurate, or insightful, or just entertaining.

The other kind is harder to write.  Hardly anyone does it.  Whole blogs do not contain the second kind.  These are posts where the writer explains, "I've done something ... this is what it is and how it works."  What's different with these posts is that they rely upon doing, not saying.  The saying is irrelevant, really.  If the thing itself has any merit, then very little, or nothing, needs to be said.

I've felt lately that I'm not writing nearly enough of this second sort.  Spiritually, I'm far more gratified when writing doing posts.  See, it's rather easy to tease oneself into thinking that a stream of commentary posts are pushing forward the envelope of knowledge, but that's just hash.  All one needs to see that is to do something.  Once we've done, its painfully clear how long we've gone without doing.

This is where I am.  I can see the map-making blog isn't nearly as popular as this one.  That's fine.  But just now, between working on the maps and working on the splatbook, and my job, it seems like such a waste of effort to wallow around here writing posts about ... well, empty air.  With nothing in it that I've done.

I'll be back when I have something to show. 

Honest. I Don't Know Why I Have to Write these Posts from Time to Time, but Feel Free to Skip this One if You'd Rather Wait until I Get Back to Writing about Teaching DMing

Undertaking the task of teaching someone how to play D&D, who never has, requires the courage of one's convictions.  To write anything important, one must experience the matter at hand, one must gather evidence and then come to a conclusion, even if others may not agree or approve.  It's not possible to teach something from any other position.

I have many definite opinions about how to play D&D.  I've been doing this a long time and during that time, I haven't "dabbled."  From my introduction, I fell so hard in love with the game that I threw myself into hours of play every week.  When I was given the books for Christmas in 1979, I read them cover to cover.  And then I read them again ... and went on reading them regularly, over and over, examining every line, for the next twenty years.  In and around that time, I began rewriting them, which I continue to do until this day.

I disagree strongly with many commonly-held beliefs that people embrace, which have in turn become standard within the D&D community.  Many of the things I despise are absolutely cherished far and wide.  Modules.  DM screens.  Pregenerated characters and pro-forma character sheets.  D&D as a tournament.  Background stories.  Official adventuring.  It's a long, and in my mind, a sordid list.

Were I to write a book teaching someone how to DM, I wouldn't pay lip service to these things.  I wouldn't recommend that the reader of the book try running a one-off campaign.  I wouldn't suggest they should run dungeons for awhile until they have enough experience to run the outdoors, or a town.  I don't accept the argument that a new DM needs to walk before he or she runs.  I believe in making big mistakes and learning from them, not in taking tiny nibbles for fear of making a big mistake.

That said, crash courses are, in my opinion, failing to teach well.  I think most would imagine that teaching a new person how to DM would amount to a simple pamphlet, a mere 64 pages.  After all, what's there to know?  It's not like DMing is a difficult thing to do, is it?  It's not like there's a lot of nuance, or creativity involved, right?  No, oh no.  Let's slap 32 pages together, hit the high points and get on with playing!  After all, that's what this is all about, isn't it?  Playing.  Mustn't waste our time with details and actually learning how to do something.

JB and I went back and forth yesterday fairly hard.  No big deal.  We've done that two dozen times or more since our association.  He sells the popular model, I kick hell out of him, he compromises, I compromise ... he thinks clearer, I think clearer.  It's not the conflict that matters; it's the value that comes from the conflict.  People who fear conflict; who worry that conflict might create hard feelings; who hesitate before pulling the trigger, or who back away when voices rise and disagreement takes hold ... these are not people who have the courage of their convictions.  They're more concerned with how everyone feels than they are with FIXING the problem.

JB got me started on this project with the acknowledgement that (a) there are a great many people who have been left to flouder, unaided, with regards to DMing this game; and (b) that "there's a lot of bad D&D being played right now."  JB jumped back after saying that, taking out the word "bad," but I won't.  There is a lot of bad.  It's bad that was taught, it's bad that was perpetuated, it's bad that's been overlooked and excused and even defended under the banner of "fun." 

But what you think is bad and what I think is very different.  Most think "bad" D&D is that which isn't fun, or isn't played well, or doesn't work.  I think that all D&D that isn't "incredible" and "great" is, by definition, less than what it could be.  And that which is less, is bad.

As a teacher, I'm not interested in teaching people how to play "okay" D&D.  Or hobby-form D&D.  I want to teach people how to play fucking amazing D&D.  Not that people reading the book will.  They won't, because they won't listen to what I tell them.  They won't accept what I say as true.  They'll find excuses to cut down the amount of work or make concessions or otherwise act abusively towards their players or like simpering panderers.

I can't help that.  What I can do is make sure that the person reading my book who has the potential to be great won't be let down by my half-assing the work.  Out there, there are thousands of young souls who find reading and self-discovery a breeze, who can't get enough learning ... and can't find a single gawddamned book that'll tell them the hard details they must know to do this thing well.

The reason I write posts offering pedantic details on why certain phrases and word choices led to the demise of D&D through internal dissatisfaction and selfish author entitlement is because I know people are going to disagree with me.  This is the point in my writing it.  It's not a tremendous shock when someone doesn't "get it."  Or thinks I'm "going overboard."  I'm arguing things on this blog that no one argues.  That take a position that no one takes.  And because of that I have to dredge up every ounce of evidence and proof that I can muster, pointing at the failure of this thinking, or that belief, or this other practice.  Because apart from what I experience personally at my gaming table, I rarely find good, solid evidence of someone playing well.

Recently, JB has described his running of Castle Ravenspire ... explained in his first post, here.  The story follows here and here.  An epilogue has been promised, not available on writing this line.  For the traditionalist, it's as good an account as you're ever likely to find.  It hits all the right buttons, rings all the bells, catches all the brass rings.  And I'd be as impressed as hell, if it wasn't that I encountered play of this quality forty years ago.

And that's a problem for me.  If you told me that hey, you'd just made and released the film Escape From New York with a young Kurt Russell, I'd agree that it was a pretty fun movie and that I'd enjoyed it.  But I think I'd notice it was made forty years ago.  And that in film, there's a lot that's been released since, and the bar is a damn bit higher for a good movie than when I was 18 and cheap set pieces were good enough.  Understand.  I'm not saying that because I'm old and jaded, I'm not that impressed.  I'm saying that because I'm still conscious and aware of what's going on RIGHT NOW, I'm not nearly as blown away by a 1982 film, or a 1983 module, as I used to be.  For you readers out there old enough to have been 18 in 1982, can you imagine what it would have been like to see John Wick Parabellum then, the exact movie recently released?  Or even something more benign like Nobody?  omg.  What would it have been like to watch Infinity War, all 5+ hours, in a theatre in 1982, exactly as it appears today.

Fuck Star Wars.  I mean, seriously.  Release Mad Max Fury Road, as is, head to head with The Empire Strikes Back and the latter's theatres are empty.  Tumbleweeds.  I get that because I'm not old.  I see the world through new eyes, not old ones.

Where are the D&D equivalents?  Fucking critical role?  Seriously?  JB's Ravenspire looks stunning and amazing next to the dreck that's new.  Because for D&D, this is where the bar is.  On the ground.  Under it.

If we're going to discuss writing a book teaching new entrants how to DM, we've got to start by ditching the old garbage arguments from 40 years ago and raising that bar more than a little.  We can't have our nose in the dirt forever.

RSS

Things are not always as they appear.  Back in January of 2019, my blog page visits mysteriously dropped off ... and continued to fall month after month through the time of Covid.  I assumed this marked the death of blogs, and was probably affected by the disease ... though of course, one might expect numbers to improve when people are stuck at home all day.

Then recently, I began getting reports from people that they could no longer access my blog through their RSS feed.  I tried to fix the problem, could not, and to date that problem continues.

However, a curious result has come out of that:

Apparently, my blog numbers never did fall off.  Rather, they were stolen.

Blogs are not dead.

Exorcising My Thoughts

Today I'd like to start by clarifying this post from May 5.  When I say I'm so tired of D&D, I mean content such as a channel like "Master the Dungeon."  The proliferation of gimmicky shortcuts masquerading as "real advice," similar to the way that relationship gurus give short cut advice like dumping rose petals on a bed.  A fellow can spend a lifetime explaining why this stuff doesn't work and why it's poison for the community, but it's an enormous waste of time.  I don't want to do it any more.

This does not mean I want to stop talking about my campaign, my game structures, my wiki or other material associated with the game I play.  It should be evident I'm still writing about D&D.  Only, I'm interested in rebuilding my approach to appeal to those specific readers who connect with the expression of D&D that I embrace.  That's all.

Yesterday, Sterling brought up some points I'd like to address first.  I'd like to start with the middle suggestion: a new voice that might be more attractive to new readers.

A "new voice" is a tricky affair.  As a professional business writer, I adopt a structured, passion-free voice that carefully provides data without saying anything firmly.  Such-and-such company "expects" to do well in the upcoming quarter, as we are "committed" to our "goal" of "world-class process safety performance."  We "recognise" the "importance" of blah blah blah "performance," etcetera, etcetera.  It's an effort to sound like we're saying something we mean, while absolutely choosing words that say nothing and which commit us to nothing.  I can find the same language applied to D&D all over the internet, where advice is given without definitely stating that this advice will achieve anything.

But "the speak" is very appealing.  It sounds encouraging, it sounds like investors have good reason to trust the company, it sounds like viewers have good reason to think these presenters really know their stuff about D&D.  The trick of writing this way has been around a long, long time.  The way it works with my job is that we each make a first stab, then share the writing around to help each other "clean it," which is the phrase we use.  "Cleaning" means getting rid of anything that might conceivably say something concrete.

What doesn't appeal to investors is anything that might cause them to lay awake at night.  You consider: you've got five million invested in a company that makes safety equipment and you read on line twenty seven on the fourteenth page one moderately negative word related to government-mandated evaluation curtailments in the lower commodity price environment.  Wait a moment.  What was that?  Why is that there?  You can already feel your palms sweat.  People read about things they consider important because they want to be reassured.  They want someone to tell them it's going to be fine.  This is the fundamental reality of writing for anything "official" — quarterly reports, a business magazine, a foody channel, a website that sells clothing.  We are here to make the reader feel better about something the reader already believes.   It's Grognardia's approach, it's Tim Brannan's approach, it's Justin Alexander's approach.  These guys know what they're writing.

At the moment, science is undergoing a decades-long "replication crisis."  Essentially, many findings in the fields of social science and medicine aren't holding up when others attempt to repeat the experiment.  What's especially interesting is that many inside the science publishing industry say that they can recognise which published findings are likely to be supported and which aren't — but that "non-replicable" papers are published anyway because the results are more "interesting."  In short, the problem with what was once a reliable scientific process — "publish a paper, encourage others to repeat the experiment, move science forward" — is being subverted by the business of publishing.  Publishing, and the interest it provides to eyeballs, is more important to the science magazines than the science.  Thousands of hours of research time are being wasted trying to replicate experiments that have no chance of being replicated.  That wastes time, it wastes money that could be put towards more fruitful ventures ... while the hired business manager of the science magazine, who is not a scientist, is more concerned with ad sales than with human advancement.  This is a problem.

When looking at the words, "more attractive to readers," these are the pitfalls that roll through my head.

I can be much more attractive to "readers" if I begin to rant all the time.  The more fire I spit, the more readers I'll accumulate.  It's a fact.  Any time I let myself off the chain, even a little bit, my readership jumps 50 to 100 percent within a few hours.  I'm rewarded for being a raving lunatic.  But I'm rewarded with the wrong kind of readers.  I'm rewarded with cranks and deplorables, voyeurs and people who really don't give a rat fuck about D&D or any legitimate role-playing.  Specifically, bored people who like their blood being stirred.  I don't want to chase these readers any more.

So if we're talking about my being more attractive to readers, what's wanted is more attractive to a specific, I-want-to-do-hard-things kind of reader ... which, in point of fact, dislike it when I rant.  So, as I've known for more than two years, stop ranting, Alexis.

Difficult.  I am a fervent, zealous advocate of intelligensia, productivity and respect for quality.  I'm easily infuriated by misinformation for the sake of self-aggrandisement, appeals to emotionality, pandering language and flat out lies.  For example, just now, mention "abortion" in my presence and get ready for a violent, angry, impassioned tirade about man's inhumanity to women.  This is what I'm like when I'm free to express myself ... which I'm not free to do on the internet, though gawd knows I've tried.  I'm not the sort of protestor who allows the cop to quietly lead him away.  I'm the one at the front, screaming at the top of my lungs into the cops face, ready to take his baton away and have a go.  I don't publicly protest any more because I know I'm going to get killed doing it.

When I write material for money, I have to hold my nose.  I've lots of experience.  I know how.  But here, on this blog, I don't want to type on a desk full of shit.  I want to say what I think needs to be said.

My goal is to say it patiently and respectfully.  But not attractively.  I've been working on that.  I think I'm doing better year by year.

So ...

Dropping the moniker.  Stop calling this blog Tao of "D&D."  It is true, the specific system — except that it's mine — has ceased to be relevant and I no longer wish to talk about one system vs. another, or any system except mine.

Why not change the blog to "Authentic Role-playing" or "The Other Role-playing Game."  I could make The Higher Path public and write there.  Leave this blog up as a reference and go elsewhere.  Because I would have to do that.  Blogger has it set up that you can't change the blog name, at least not on the url.  The banner at the top might reader TORG, but the blog will always be "tao-dnd."  Plus, there are scores and scores of other blogs who still have me listed as Tao of D&D, whether I change this blog or not.  Changing to a new blog means pushing a lot of supporters to work on my behalf ... and quite a few links to blogs that are no longer being updated would forever send readers to here, and never to the new place.  The same can be said for people who connect to my Patreon page, which is also titled The Tao of D&D.  It's not that easy to pull stakes and move.  There are consequences.

Plus, I get readers who arrive here because they're looking for "D&D."  My two most popular posts, and ones I still get weekly readers for, though they are 11 and 9 years old, are "How to Dungeon Master" and "How to Play a Character."  While readers fall away from me for various reasons, including that they quit playing D&D and therefore quit reading about it, these two posts continue to drive new readers into my orbit.  They read the big long post, wonder about what else I've written ... and some of them begin reading the entire blog from the beginning, all 3,400+ posts of it.  And I don't write short posts.  The words "Dungeons and Dragons" and "D&D" most likely appear more than 10-15 thousand times on this blog; I doubt I go more than two posts without using the moniker.

I think, realistically, it's too late to "drop it."  Like a franchisee who runs a string of successful MacDonalds, who has to facepalm every time the Mac commits some horrible evil in the world, I'm none the less locked in with my devil.

At the same time, not to appeal to anyone's emotions, I like "dungeons and dragons" as a brand.  Maybe it's not my brand, but I can say with assurance to someone in the real world that "I play D&D" without getting a load of judgement and edition diction on the subject.  The only responses I ever get back are, "Really?  I used to play," or "Really?  I always wanted to play."  Oh, and occasionally someone doesn't know what it is.  Very, very occasionally.  That's something that's changed.

Finally,

I have no faith at all in a discussion platform.  A "discussion" requires more than one voice.  I'm so intimidating, apparently, that the only possible discussion that would ever take place in an environment like that is one I wasn't a part of.

People want to be right when they say things.  I have no problem with that, I want to be right also.  But I want to be right because I AM, because I've done the research and I'm channelling the words of other people talking about things those people are experts in.  When my rightness is challenged, I go full Greek and begin defending myself with arguments, which come fast and furiously and loaded with lots of words, written by someone trained to write words.  As Oliver Platt put it in the movie Chef, I buy ink by the barrel.

Other people want to be right because "they have an opinion too," or "Why can't you consider my point of view; it is because it's not yours?"  If they would only back up what they say with Shakespeare or Mills or Sartre ... or somebody ... but they don't.  They can't.  They only know how to assert their humanity, which puts their argument on a par with a farmer in the Stone Age, who was also human and also had not read the works of Shakespeare, Mills or Sartre.  It's the kind of thing that makes an intransigent, inflexible elder, me, willing to hit the impertinent little poster remarking on the subject at hand.

It is unfair and unrealistic of me to expect other people to educate themselves and acquire personal experience about the subject matter based on WORK DONE rather than CONJECTURE before commenting on my blog post about mapping, worldbuilding or whatever.  It's anti-democratic.  Keeping in mind that "democracy" is based on the Socratic method, which we can define simply as beat the living tar out of your opponent by employing rhetoric, mocking jokes and as many arguments as can be drawn while the dupe stands there and tries to reply.  In this case, "anti-democratic" means that expertise is irrelevant, knowledge is irrelevant and experience is irrelevant.  All that matters is that I have an asshole, you have an asshole ... we can agree to disagree.

Damn.  Caught myself ranting again.

Sorry.

So, yes, I have this fantasy of twenty people sitting around talking about cool stuff and building an awesome collaborative, functional roleplay structure through hypothesis, experimentation, observation and conclusion, followed by replicating the experiment between us ... but I live in the real world.  And after the failure of several attempted collaborative adventures I've tried to launch these last 14 years, I'm not falling for that football again, Lucy.

This has been a good thought experiment, Sterling.  I think my writing is fairly sustained and motivated.  I just want to do it in a way where I don't experience exhaustive self-reflection when setting myself the task of writing something that I know will bore most readers who chase other expressions of D&D.  I want to feel secure enough to be boring.  To write as long about maps, worldbuilding or any other subject, without feeling the need to simplify it for the yokels, while ceasing to worry that I've been at this awful, boring subject too long.  Something that seems to be evidently true because it's been five, six posts and fifteen days since getting a comment.

The comment section is brutal.  On the one hand, I want to strengthen myself to believe that a lack of comments DOES NOT MEAN no one is interested in what I'm writing.  I mean, at my job, I get regular comments from other writers, I get feedback from my boss, there's definitely a back and forth that goes on with predictable regularity.  If the answer I get when I submit something is, "Yes, I read it," and that's all, I know my boss has no problem with it.  I did a good job.  But there is no personal contact through the comment section, not for me.  Which relates to the intimidation problem.

There's another angle, too.  By grade 12 in High School, I'd left the football team, where I wasn't that popular, and I'd bailed out on most things ... and I was always something of a misanthrope, except for my D&D friends.  And then I met this girl.  This remarkable girl.  This girl whose father was a diplomat in Singapore, where this girl had been living for five years, in an intense urban culture that was very much not the hideous suburban culture in which I lived.  She loved my nature.  When we connected, it was fiery, violent, hot-blooded.  It was a consuming, frenzied relationship that lasted for more than two years.

And when her new girlfriends at school — people she met at the same time she met me — demanded to know why she had any interest in dating that geeky psychopath Alexis, this girl didn't give a damn what my reputation was.  That's what made our relationship work.  It was based on what we felt.  Not what other people felt.

There are definitely people out there who don't want to admit to their respect for me, or engage with a post I write, but who do READ me, because they are worried what other people will think of them.  They are worried what they'll think of themselves.  Because they will never forgive me for some things I wrote ten or more years ago.  Never.

Which is why I've considered burning the comments section.  If people can't comment, then I can't expect them to comment ... and perhaps I can write as much boring stuff as I please without worrying what anyone thinks.  In reality, comments aren't important.  The only important number that exists in my world is my Patreon support.  It really is the only comment that matters.

But, personal forces in my orbit, especially my daughter, believe that removing the comments would be the death knell for this blog.  They're probably right.  I'm probably thinking about this thing too emotionally.  I should just suck it up and be boring.  And stop fucking worrying about it.

My Readers

If I'm to consider why I'm writing, it follows that I should give thought on whom I'm writing to.  What is it that makes a reader of mine?  And, consequently, the sort of person who seeks a rigid exploration of self through a process of aggravation, difficulty and the accumulation of pride ... as these are the games I strive to run.  I ask my players to track their movement in combat, to track how much they're eating and their encumbrance down to a tenth of a pound.  I ask them to accept stark limitations on what they can do, I expect them to maintain a standard of interparty decency and a firm grammatical presentation when explaining their character's actions.  I do this in the spirit of behavioural rules surrounding games like golf, chess, bridge ... and even professional baseball, which dictates exactly where and how a pitcher can stand on a mound before delivering the ball to a batter, whose play is based on an exact imaginary square in the air that the pitch must be "inside" or else counted as a "ball."

Why do my players tolerate this?  And why do I have readers who acknowledge that this is important ... especially when we know quite obviously that many D&D players would find this absurdly anal and very definitely "un-fun."  Having to play according to these ordinances, why is it my players nevertheless laugh quite a lot, and clearly have a very good time, and return to play the instant I ask them?

I think it's relevant to examine why some people drive themselves to do hard things in the first place.  For example, with no expectation of ever winning a competition of any sort, an individual decides they're going to run an official marathon race, 26 miles and 385 yards, in 3 hours and 30 minutes.  This is no where near the record for a marathon, which is currently 2 hours, 1 minute and 39 seconds.  Yet to accomplish the feat of running the distance in 210 minutes, the runner will begin to train for at least a year ... on top of many years of training prior to that in order to run a marathon at all.  This "advanced" training will demand running distances of 35 miles a week, and even more in the weeks before the event takes place.  He or she will need to achieve a "comfortable" rate of 8 minutes per mile, for mile after mile, to meet the task ... and then, during the race, he or she will have to push harder than that.  Harder than ever before.

What for?  What's being gained?  The training is hard.  The race is hard.  And potentially, the goal may not be reached.  The runner may only manage the marathon in 3 hours 40, or 3 hours 35.  Why does he or she not feel devastated?  Why does it make them want to train more, strive harder, achieve that goal the next time?  And why, after reaching 3 hours 30, the runner wants to try for 3 hours 20?  What's going on here?

When we listen to people who "love D&D" talk about how onerous it is to have to account for their equipment and calculate their encumbrance, why is it so many people nod their heads and agree, asserting firmly that calculating encumbrance is a "waste of time" because it's "so time consuming."  We can suppose they don't see the benefit in keeping a record; but my personal experience with players unused to managing encumbrance usually chafe at the lack of material items or how actual calculations slow their characters down in a fight ... much more so than the actual trouble it takes to add and subtract numbers.  Yes, it is a fact that making records of this kind does require a few minutes and often a calculator ... though my players often employ a computer and a spreadsheet, so that the instant they record an item, the total weight is instantly calculated also.  The difficulty is not really the accounting, though this is often the excuse.  The difficulty is the rigid control this places on the character's things and movements.  The limitations.  The making of a part of the game hard that used to be very easy, since we weren't accounting for how fast we moved or how much we had.

Take away these easements, however, and the player quickly feels bound by every choice they have to make in purchasing items, in a way that has nothing to do with how much money they have.  Many, many cool, awesome things they'd like to have along are suddenly too heavy to get.  And since they usually have those things when they play in campaigns that don't record encumbrance, it feels "unnecessary" and "unfair" that they can't automatically have those things now.  It doesn't fit their worldview, such as they've developed it over time.

Think of any activity we don't ordinarily do — say, marathon running.  Imagine that someone else with the power to make us pulls us out of our comfort zone and forces us to head out and do 300, 400, even 500 minutes of running every week.  They start us out by enabling us to walk, but they keep pushing us to run for as much of the time as we're out there moving.  We'd resent that.  We'd resent the time it was stealing from the rest of our lives.  After all, if we wanted to go marathon running, we'd do that.

But if our minds were open, and we were kept at it for a few weeks, we'd notice some changes.  Health, for one thing; we'd feel tired, but more limber getting up in the morning.  We'd notice some of that fat being winnowed away.  Partners and friends would remark on our "looking better" and we'd like that.  Oh, we might say something bitter like, "I ought to look better, given how fucking hard I'm working," but we'd like the comment all the same.

We'd notice other things too.  Three or four weeks in, we'd notice that it's actually easier to spend 90 minutes running.  It isn't actually easier, of course; what's happening is that we're stronger ... but it seems easier from our perspective.  Six to eight weeks in, as we're huddled out to do our forced run, we'd have stopped griping and worrying about it.  What the fuck, we'll do our ninety minutes and then we'll be done.  We're going to spend the time thinking about something else, anyway.  And we are feeling better.  And looking better.  And it's kind of a nice day today.  And we're enjoying the company of the people we run with, who are also looking better and seeming more cheerful.  Twelve weeks in, we're actually looking forward to the run.  We start thinking about how much further we can run in 90 minutes.  We think about how strong we feel, and how much easier it is to run faster.  You know, we really feel changed.  For the better.  Why didn't we do this before?

Most of my readers, I think, are people who ordinarily like hard things having nothing to do with D&D.  They choose occupations and past-times that tax their spirit and require lots of time.  Things that present lots of insurmountable obstacles that can't be gotten around with a short cut.  In fact, I think many of my readers — and I can immediately think of several — have chosen careers and activities that recognise that "short cuts" lead to both injuries and fatalities.  So when someone writes, "Here are three simple ways to get your game world started," they immediately think about co-workers and activists who decided they could "simplify" the way they arranged their gear or launched off into whatever.

I have an ex-military friend who received his ticket to work as an electrician and for 20 years worked in a train yard fixing electrical locomotives.  From his experience, I can say without doubt that train yards are ridiculously dangerous places, especially at night.  I'll give an example, because I can.

An empty flat-car weighs about 80 tons.  In a train yard, it's necessary to store empty cars along lines of track, where they'll wait until they're needed for loading.  An engine is used to push the car so that it rolls to the end of track — but the engine isn't used to push the car the whole distance.  That would be a waste of energy.  So the engine gives the flat car a bump, setting it to move about 8-10 miles an hour, then lets it go.  The car will roll until it encounters an obstacle ... a line of cars or the end of a track.

At night, slow rolling freight cars are a nightly thing.  There's noise all around, from trains moving, machines running, the railroad shop working and so on producing a steady drone in the distance.  A rolling flat car in the dark of night makes no sound, comparatively.  And because it's flat, it can't be seen against the sky.  In fact, it's invisible.  80 tons, 8 miles an hour, invisible, potentially anywhere in the yard at any time.  People die.  Especially new people.  The old hands learn to recognise the very slight sound, the almost imperceptible movement ... and they know never to walk across a track that as if it's empty of cars.  EVER.

I think people who work in these kind of environments, or who occupy their free time with similarly dangerous activities, "get" me.  They get me perfectly.  They understand I'm not trying to simulate real life.  They understand I'm trying to present a game structure that requires patience, forethought, internal examination and an inescapable element of risk that must be accepted as unavoidable.  They like it.  They purposefully move towards activities of that type ... even ones where actual death isn't involved.  Ersatz death is enough.  And if there is a fail, if something does go wrong, they know enough to admit their fault, confess their fault ... but never to dwell on their fault, because dwelling isn't necessary.

We will make mistakes.  We will forget to buy boots, or fail to buy enough food, or overload ourselves to a degree that becomes untenable.  But when that happens, we don't blame the rules, we don't look to change the game ... we appreciate that the game has repercussions that produce unexpected effects.  Like having to jury rig boots until we can buy them.  Or squeezing out another day from the food we have, and searching for alternative sources.  Or being unproudly willing to dump expensive crap on the road and leave it behind in order to FIX THE PROBLEM.

Too often, other readers from other expressions of the game rely on fixes that demand changes to the game, rather than changes to themselves.  They can't get out and run, and change themselves, because from a young age, they never learned how.  They didn't have a father who made them walk miles into the bush in order to fish an obscure river.  They didn't have a mother who made them sit through hundreds of hours of old movies until they learned to see the genius in old movies.  They never joined a scout troop, or helped build a cabin, or put together a science fair project that took months to plan and build.  They didn't learn to build furniture, or use a drill press or a lathe, or set type for printing, or weld metal.  They didn't perform their own written work on stage in a city-wide drama competition.  They never played on a league sports team, not football or baseball or soccer or hockey.  They didn't run track for junior high school.  They didn't compete in a chess tournament or a junior high school trivia contest aired on local television.   They didn't spend seven days canoeing down a river and sleeping in tents on the shore at night.  They didn't learn first how to play cribbage, bridge or poker, and do it often with intransigent, inflexible elders willing to hit impertinent little boys who remarked on "the rules."

I did all these things before I'd ever heard of D&D ... and a lot of other things besides, most of the time because I was forced to.  Sometimes because the opportunity was there and it sounded exciting.  I think my readers have similar childhoods, which they've brought similarly to D&D.

And I think that many of my D&D playing non-readers haven't.

Jon

Now is a good time to talk about Lent, as it comes to an end in three days.  Many of us in the D&D community are a little more conscious of Lent this year, as we lost one of our esteemed colleagues to it on March 6th: Jonathan Becker of B/X Blackrazor.  I write this knowing that he won't be able to answer until Thursday, which is Passover ... but I'm sure that having gone 37 days so far, he'll make it to the end.  I'm very sure his typing fingers itch awfully.

I haven't thought about Lent in some 39 years, what with being a fallen Lutheran and all.  Still, I remember the rules of Lent, and back in March I compared my memory with the dogma of the Catholic Church, pleased to find myself vindicated.  Still, I've held back on this research until now, as I'm somewhat sympathetic with poor Jon's quest; but like a good agent of Satan, I want to try and sabotage his plans to do the same next year.  Here's a relevant text from thecatholictelegraph.com, the monthly magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, published continuously since 1831; and I quote (stress added by me):

"Many know of the tradition of abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent, but we are also called to practice self-discipline and fast in other ways throughout the season. Contemplate the meaning and origins of the Lenten fasting tradition in this reflection. In addition, the giving of alms is one way to share God’s gifts—not only through the distribution of money, but through the sharing of our time and talents. As St. John Chrysostom reminds us: “Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2446)."

Sorry, Jon, but in choosing to sacrifice what you view as a habit, you deprived us of your talents.   You deprived us of a treasured zest of life.  Some of the talents you possess are not yours, but ours.  So says St. John, your own namesake.

No condemnation, no resentment.  But your choice in this season of Lent was a sin, by definition.

I ask only that you add it to your confessions when the next opportunity arrives.  Be well, may the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you; may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

We look forward to your return.

 

A Purposeless Essay to Pad the Hatred of My Detractors

Earlier today I got a comment from Calstaff, a new reader I believe.  And I jumped down his throat, because he reiterated the same old tiresome trope from Gygax that I've heard too many times.  Calstaff, of course, has no idea that I've written fifty or sixty posts blasting the argument being made.

This isn't going to be one of those.

Impatience is a natural part of me.  I've struggled with it in various ways, and occasionally it's made things difficult for me with former employers and sometimes friends.  My partner Tamara tolerates it, my daughter tolerates it ... and so do most of my friends.  A lot of my readers here have come to expect it from me, and no longer worry about it.  They write it off as passion, which it is.  Some probably also write it off as the typical tempestuous fury that creative types tend to have.  And some of my most reliable readers, no doubt, act exactly like me.

For a long time with this blog, I worried about burning potential new readers like Calstaff.  I'm worrying about that less and less these days.  Perhaps because I'm getting old.  Perhaps because I've never felt this overall creative.  Pretty much, from when I first get up in the morning, I'm working on the creation of something new ... usually for five or more hours a day.  Because of that, I'm feeling a tremendous indifference towards rehashing old ideas, and especially hearing someone post them as if those ideas are new and profound.

Poor Calstaff.  The post's argument was that immersion begins with staying alive.  And from Calstaff I got the answer that what matters is "acting out your character."  Approaching the game this way plainly has the player put his or her character BETWEEN his or her self and the DM.  But I'm not running the character.  I'm running the player.  The character is incidental.

This should be obvious.  Somehow, it isn't.  I don't know why it isn't.  And that is the source of my impatience.  Like a mad professor trying to give a class, to educate those students who will go on with the material and do important things, I'm infuriated by the dolts in the class with their impertinent, idiotic questions — who are, after all, just there for the credit.  And, like a mad professor, I shout at them to shut up and learn, or get the hell out.

After all, it's plain from Calstaff's bio that, having played D&D since the 70s, and still believing the DMG is one of his favourite books, that he hasn't a chance in hell of getting better than a "D" in this course.  I really haven't got the time to waste on him.

Exchange

A recent exchange on JB's Blackrazor blog:

sevenbastard: I should have been more clear. I think running a mafia style campaign is great fun. But the rules and adventures presented in AD&D are for dungeon crawling and some high level domain management.

Alexis: They're for whatever we want, seven.

sevenbastard: For sure the rules are for whatever I want, but the rules on treasure as xp are there to get people in the dungeon. The players are not greedy for money, they are greedy for xp. Because money could be earned a lot safer outside the dungeon.

The AD&D DMG and PHB section on gold for xp explicitly states that if thier [sic] was minimal risk the gold doesn't equal xp but some portion of it.

If you are going to use AD&D to run a campaign that's about con men, shady merchant's, and protection rackets you are going to need to modify how xp is granted.

Sure you could go with 1 gp equals 1 xp no matter how it is gained but the you get "How did Bob hit third level in the first session? he placed all his starting gold on red 5."

So many things to deconstruct.

Let's concede that seven's writing this off the top of his (or her) head, most likely in a passion.  I don't believe that a dualistic perspective — D&D is either about dungeons or its about confidence games and gambling — was intended.

I don't believe that treasure as x.p. are there specifically to get players to the dungeon.  Remove treasure for x.p. and players will still run for the dungeon, so it's not the if-then causality that seven argues for.  But again, let's shrug that off.

Yes, Gygax does write in the DMG that the DM should ad hoc, by fiat, decide how much experience per treasure the players should get, according to what the DM feels is appropriate.  This is one of the shittier things Gygax argues for in the DMG; the fellows I played in my early days, both my friends and the adults I hooked up with, would have screamed bloody murder at a DM who made that argument and stormed out ... just as you would today if you were charged more money for a cone of ice cream because you're fat, or if your food costs were higher because you were retired and "didn't work as hard" for the money.  It's descrimination, it's bullshit, it's not how games are played and whether it's in the book or not, its a stupidly bad argument.  But let's hang that scarecrow on the noose and move past it.

Should character's get experience for gold if they gamble for it, as opposed to fight for it?  The question comes up.  Was there a risk?  Arguably, yes.  It's a die roll made to win money ... which is fundamentally NOT different from a die roll in a combat which wins money.  Emotionally, we can pretend it's different, because the player character's life is at stake, rather than the loss of a road stake ... but so long as the odds for one are the same as odds for the other, a game is being played, a character stands to win or lose, and the die roll might come up either way.  If someone wants to make an argument that characters gain treasure, and thus x.p., through some factor involving RISK other than rolling odds on dice, I'll listen.  Please don't waste my time with arguments that the player has to convince the monster to give over the treasure, which might or might not work out, as this involves suckering the DM ... which implies the DM can be suckered.  I can't be, not that way, so no: I don't consider "role-playing" an argument to be a "risky" venture.

I feel I need to point out that for "Bob" to succeed in becoming 3rd level on his first session by placing his starting gold on red 5 (if he's playing the number, the colour doesn't matter; and in any case, the "5" is an odd number and is therefore black; research, people!) he'd need 72 g.p. starting coin if he's a thief, 143 g.p. starting coin if he's a mage and 158 g.p. starting coin if he's a paladin.  In my game, before he could get into a casino (and with my game world taking place in 1650, there's only one in the whole world, The Ridotto casino that was opened in Venice in 1638, the very first casino that ever existed), he'd have to (a) have some kind of status before he could get in the door; and (b) would probably have to had to purchased at least 5,000 g.p. in clothes and jewelry before entering.  In fact, it would cost him at least 200 g.p. just to tip the concierge and other casino staff just to get seated in a chair anywhere near the roulette wheel ... which doesn't matter anyway, as the roulette wheel we're familiar with wasn't invented in 18th century France.

But, yeah, except for these few minor considerations and impracticalities, effected by some form of Biribi perhaps (though that game was so crooked that it was outlawed in Italy, and a tall tale involving Casanova is associated with it because the famous lover would tell people he'd actually won at it), maybe in a very badly-constructed game world, Bob could become 3rd level by slapping down somewhere between 72 and 158 gold.

All this is to highlight the truly ridiculous argument that seven makes ... that might have popped out front for the reader anyway, though it was fun for me getting here around this large barn.  There is no "safer" way to earn a lot of money than to adventure in a dungeon.

The odds of your character living are a damn-sight better than 1 in 35, assuming we're not talking about some abattoir-based dungeon concept as were popular once upon a time.  Maybe it's just me.  I've run scores of dungeons over the years, and so long as the party act together, watch each others' backs, refrain from pvp and other stupid choices, they're quite able to slip in, kill some monsters, locate a small up front treasure worthy of kicking them up to 2nd — and at worst lose one or two characters on the way.  With a good chance these dead characters can be hoisted out and raised.

A DM would have to be some kind of H.H. Holmesian nightmare of a game master to slaughter whole parties with such spectacular regularity that the chances of winning a 1 in 37 roll on a roulette table (the actual odds) were consistently better than entering and surviving a dungeon.  Whoa.  Hold me back.  I want to play in that fucking game.

Seeing such comments made from the larger perspective, I think passionate people slapping out an argument on the internet fail to recognize how poorly thought out our statements can be.  And let me be clear: I really do mean "OUR."  I've caught myself spouting some truly bonehead shit this last 15 years ... most of it by rushing to spew out some passionate rebuttal as fast as I can make my fingers fly over the keys.  It's an extraordinarily bad habit — and one that's extraordinarily hard to break.  I personally would do remarkably better in the world if I wrote every comment separately on a word file, waited a week, and then decided if it ought to be posted or not.  I'm quite sure that if I did this, I'd realize there's never a good comment that can be made on any site, ever.

Just look at the one I added to this exchange: "They're for whatever we want."  Man.  Captain Obvious to the rescue.  Why in fuck did I even write that?  I just gotta let stupid people be stupid.  There just isn't a reason to weigh in, ever, on anything that anyone ever says ... unless, perhaps, it's a private conversation between the creator and me.

Explaining, once and for all, why my getting comments is an insipid thing to worry about.

Eureka.

Stoneless

Yesterday's post was written out of hurt.

Words were said about me elsewhere, days ago, that left me disturbed; in pain; feeling misused.  It happens.  I understand why it happens.  I say things here that lead it on, so of course there's no mystery.  But still, I'm human, I'm vulnerable to a cutting remark and occasionally, they will haunt me for several days while I puzzle my way out of it.

If I were the sort that cowered from a fight, I'd be afraid to punch back.  Unfortunately, I know I can punch back, I have a forum from which to punch back ... and I have a long history where the privilege of punching back was denied me through early abuse as a young man.  And so, there is a compulsion to punch back.

I was often told, "They're just saying those things to get a rise out of you; don't give them the satisfaction."  This is common advice.  Unfortunately, with some people, if they don't get a reaction, it doesn't mean they stop.  No, they see it as a challenge ... and they don't stop, ever, until they get what they want.  I learned early, if in fact you want bullies to stop ... scare them.

Outbully the bully.

This has a price.  So let me say clearly, anyone on the net has every right and justification for going after me as hard and as viciously as they please.  I've given them that right.  Exercising it would not put them in the wrong.

Imagine a horizontal scale.  Towards the left we become more and more destructive, to ourselves and to others.  On the right, we become constructive.  Imagine that everything we say and do fits somewhere on this scale, in terms of that act's consequences.  I push someone's car out of a snowbank; they get to work on time; that's constructive.  I fail to shovel my sidewalk after a snowfall; someone slips, twist their ankle; that's destructive.

Measuring yesterday's post, where does it fall.  I gave in to the hurt, so I wrote a post that many of my supporters would prefer I did not write.  Like this one, it's full of personality and is not about worldbuilding.  Additionally, the anti-establishmentarianism of the post contributes to the general feeling that my blog continues to be, without change, toxic.  Hate-deserving.  From that perspective, the post harms me and my reputation, displeases my avid readers, changes no one's mind and, in fact, wastes the 90 minutes I took to write it.

That said, yesterday's post also addressed a subject rarely examined.  It informed.  Among new readers, it helps establish my reputation as a well-read, multi-disciplined man of letters, that I'm clearly not interested in the white racist agenda, though I'm a very white male; that I'm clearly liberal; and that I'm not fundamentally dependent in my thinking upon pleasing other persons.  Yesterday's post was punching back ... but I didn't lie, I didn't make up falsehoods to support my position and I stand by every word.  It was written from a position of integrity.  From that perspective, was it really hate-deserving ... or does it only look like it is, as it was punching back?

Is punching back always wrong?  Or is punching back a means of correcting someone else's destructive behaviour?

If someone sets out to insult me, or my writing, or my belief system, or the effort I take towards D&D, are they doing so with an intention of constructive improvement ... or are they, like me, surrendering to a destructive impulse?

I thought long and hard about yesterday's response to the hurt I felt.  I didn't write, "Ya, look at this dolt, what a hack, yada yada ..."  I didn't link the source of my hurt.  I didn't address the actual comment at all.  I tried to address, rather, the reason why the comment hurt; and from what society-driven impulse it originated.  I believe I am not liked by most readers because (a) I write with an "authoritative voice," which implies that I'm right and you're wrong; (b) I hold opinions that virtually no one else holds; and (c) I'm inflexible.

Welcome to a large number of the criticisms I receive ... exactly the three words used here.  The fact that the website needs to say authoritative writing is NOT these things only goes to show how often it's accused of being these things.

My opinions derive from the many books I've read, the many people I've heard, met, and heard give lectures, the highly diverse array of materials from which I take my learning and my refusal to accept anything "on faith," ever.  Once I did take things on faith: the bible, the government, authority, love, the golden rule ... oh, many things.  I have scars all over me caused by the faith I had in those things.  Remove faith and wish fulfilment from your opinions and without a doubt, the new opinions you have will not sound like anyone you know.

I'm inflexible because I've done the research.  Because I've walked the walk.  Because I've defended my positions hundreds of times to hundreds of different people.  When those defenses have failed, I corrected my opinion, accepting that I was wrong and thus strengthened my position.  If I build a fortification, and someone comes along and destroys the west tower ... and I learn how and why the west tower fell, then the new west tower is going to be better built, better thought out, stronger and more able to withstand a siege.

Most people I know, when their west tower is destroyed, they pretend it wasn't.  They don't fix anything.  They just go on pretending everything is exactly the same, no matter how often they get punched in the face by others plainly demonstrating that tower isn't doing its job.  I've spent a lifetime placing every brick and firming up every juncture.  Yet some rube shows up and makes a big deal out of picking up and throwing a tiny stone, made of the first and last thought they've ever had about the subject.  And when this stone fails to penetrate my lifetime of evidence, consideration and argument on the subject, they become shaken and flurried that my wall didn't fall down.  "You never admit that you're wrong!" I'm told; though, in fact, it's because I've admitted I'm wrong thousands of times ... and corrected for those wrongs.

This is why I'm inflexible.

Still, my best readers would like me to return to great posts about worldbuilding.  And I would ... except that I don't have an unending storehouse of these great posts ready to go at any given moment.  I have to think of one; and that takes time.  And meanwhile, life is happening.  As a writer, I want to write ... and not always for the purpose of having something wonderful and new to say about worldbuilding, or because I've invented some spectacular new game functionality.  These things are not invented easily or often.  I just don't have them on tap.

I do wish I wouldn't get hurt.  It's not that I'd wish others would stop attacking me; I don't want to tell anyone else what they should do.  But I do wish it didn't hurt; that I was inured, or unfeeling, or like Quasimodo, made of stone.

May 28 Again

Late at night and technically I missed May 28 ... which was the 13th anniversary of this blog.  I'd like to have written something pithy and dense, but I'm caught up moving my things from a small home to a bigger home.  My thoughts are scattered; all I can think to say is how marvellous it is that I've been writing here for all this time and I only want to go on doing it.  I don't feel I've run out of subject material and from the comments I am still changing minds.  So there's that.

The projects still undone are driving me batty.  New responsibilities, making this recent shift, Covid, the fights between Mrs. Porcupine and me (oh, sorry, I mean the names my partner Tamara and I have been using to remind ourselves that through all the fighting we're still in love with each other.  Days generally begin with "Good morning Mr. Porcupine."  "Good morning Mrs. Porcupine."  These things help.

Come Monday, when we move, I'm going to lose my internet for awhile.  I'll still have it on my phone, but I hate checking my phone and writing on my phone, so I'll probably ignore anything that isn't actually work for next week.  I'm supposed to get reconnected on the 4th of June, so looking forward to that.

So, here's to another 13 years, blah blah, all the stuff you're supposed to say on anniversaries.  If you'd like to send something nice, write me a question.

Wallowing

So.  Getting bloodwook done last week, I tested positive for cancer.  A couple things about that: the test isn't conclusive, I have to see a specialist, and I'm told there's a 1 in 100 chance that it's the real thing.  Still, I'm a D&D player, and I've seen many cases where players blew off a percentile check only to have a double-zero turn up and kill them.

It has to be understood that on some level, we all "have" cancer.  Something that emerged from improving mammogram technology in the 2000s was our ability to find cancer in virtually every subject; because most of the time, the cancer is there, but it's benign.  I'm not saying this to reassure myself, but because it's fact.  Unfortunately for me, my doctor is a hypochondriac, who likes to wax on about 1% chances when he feels his patients aren't panicking enough about results.  Literally, he told me the chance, and then spoke for five minutes about why I needed to be really concerned.  He's a happy fucking fun guy.

I'm 56 and I'm a white man living in Alberta, which is parallel to Texas if your perception of that state is red meat, eggs and potatoes for breakfast, with a chaser of fatty milk and heavily sugared coffee.  Coming out of that culture, you keep testing me and testing me, something is going to come up positive.  My LDL is high, too; I could go any time.  I thought long and hard about that during my five-mile walk home yesterday.

My father ate bacon every day, plus steak three times a week, up until Alzheimer's gripped him in 2016.  He died at 84.   He must have heard the same pronouncement from his doctor when he was around 56 — and judging by his habits, he must have ignored it.   I don't intend to ignore my doctor.  Still, I'm feeling mortal today.

Way too late last night, not sleeping, struggling for distraction, I stupidly went slumming on JB's blog roll, which is a very bad habit since it drags me through the mud of D&D bloggers — and JB has the elitist D&D blog roll in existence, judging by blog rolls further down the evolutionary scale.  And for reasons that passeth all understanding, I clicked moronically on the blog run by noisms, who is a pretentious fuck and yet lingers on as a writer I know not why.  Clearly, I was feeling masochistic and self-destructive.  There I found these statements coupled together with a bunch of masturbation surrounding football commentary:

" I've remarked before that regular play somehow correlates with a diminished need to think obsessively and write about gaming. This seems to be the pattern ... One thing you begin to notice after a while is the really absurd level of detail that is read into the tiniest and most trivial of events ..."

Naturally, this is followed by the obsessive qualifiers of someone who can't hold a firm opinion for more than five minutes; still, I take umbrage.

These two things seem to have taken hold in my mind, since I am a D&D writer who absolutely does examine D&D gameplay to a really absurd level, reading that into tiny and trivial events — like, for example, an affected prat writing a blog post.  This causes me to sit back and think, "Hm, maybe it is true, as noisms says in his post, that 'ultimately the game is the thing,' and not writing about it."  And maybe what he says about getting off your rump and running an online game is a good idea for the scads of D&D pundits drenching blog rolls of other blogs.  But then I think, oh wait, I started doing that in, what, 2009, 12 years ago, putting it up for everyone to see, and I don't think, one time, noisms has ever praised me for doing that.  Hm.

In any case, in my present state of mind, it's easy to explain my preoccupation with ephemera related to D&D, to an absurd level.  I like writing it and people like reading it.  In fact, people like reading it so much that they support me on Patreon, to an absurd degree, almost religiously, which suggests (just a guess here) that they like ephemera and absurd detail.  Could be that football commentors also do that on National TV to millions and millions of fans because they also like it.  Come to think of it, there just might be an argument to be made that liking something makes us want to examine it in positively excessive, dare I say fanciful, detail.  When I think of the many, many hours I've spent closely examining my wife's breasts, I must admit I cherish those moments as golden.

This doesn't make her breasts better, or more "breast like."  I'm quite sure her breasts remain unimproved from all the attention I've laved upon them.  And yet, for the record, I don't count this time as "wasted."

[I read this part out to my wife after writing it and she laughed and laughed ... I'm sure she gets something out of my impractical fact-finding missions]

More to the point — and I can't get around this — I'm going to be dead someday.  And when I am, there definitely won't be any more setting up games and playing.  When I'm dead, all that time spent selfishly in my gaming gratification will be only a memory in the thoughts of my players, and somewhat confused memories at that, since we were all flushed with those kinds of endorphins that makes time pass very quickly and in a very unexamined manner, at least in the moment.  In any case, those memories will, with the inevitable deaths of my players, pass into the Land of the Forgotten ... and what will be left of me personally will be left in the things I write; things that can be read by my grandson, for instance, when he reaches an age old enough to understand it and I've gone the way of too much really, really good pig meat.

As such, I think I'll continue to absurdly write about these tiny and trivial things I find so fascinating about D&D.  I'm quite certain — from experience, as it turns out — that "playing the game" and "talking about the game" are not mutually exclusive activities, and that it is entirely possible to do both in the time we have.  I'm just guessing here, because I don't watch football commentary, but I'll bet that the "pseudo-intellectual journalists who think about the sport [football] far too much," are actually reading copy that dozens of other persons have written, who do it because they're paid a better than living wage, because they know more about football than noisms could ever hope to know; and that these football pundits are actually only speaking for minutes out of their day, and that they probably don't go on thinking about football when the camera turns off.  Just as when I finish writing this post, I'll probably do one of a hundred things with the rest of my day that aren't actually about D&D — the day having so many minutes and hours in it, with so many chores to do, friends and family to talk to, the cry for needful planning, things to buy and love to make, etcetera, etcetera.

I understand that noisms thinks we all just "switch off" the moment we stop writing our blogs, but we don't.  We do lots of stuff.  And then we take a break from that stuff to goof around talking about D&D.  It's a multi-tasking thing.