A Normal Part of Development

My grandson visited today.  He turned three in September and has discovered the raw, joyful thrill of endorphins for himself ... which is to say that he's learning he can run full-on into things face first without actually hurting himself.  This has built up slowly where it comes to cushy furniture and the 30-inch rubber workout ball that drifts into different parts of the apartment, but today it was my thigh — which I had to turn in his direction lest he, um, "unmanned" me.

Smashing face first into my thigh and bouncing back, then stumbling and falling to the floor, was instantly the best game in the world.  So he jumped up and did it again, with the same spinning, tumbling result.  Laughing, giggling, he rose and ran straight at it time after time, while I stood there, not hurt, letting him slam his whole strength at me over and over, about two dozen times.  I saw no reason to stop him.  He was having so much fun.

Then he backed off way across the room to get a really good run, 20 feet or so, stumbled on the way but absolutely ready to hit me as hard as he could — but I scooped him up and spun him around and let him go, to trip over his feet and fall on the floor, laughing and laughing and laughing ...

As I said, he's three.  It's not the same with every child, but as children's understanding of the world increases, and especially the limitations of their bodies, their sense of self and capability changes.  They want to test their physical limits; and if that's managed and not discouraged, so that actually hurting themselves too soon can be prevented, it potentially leads to a growth in confidence and curiosity.

He climbed up on the ottoman by the sofa today and I watched him tense himself like a cat to make the two foot jump from one to the other.  It was obvious he knew what he was doing and that he grasped the meaning of it.  A year ago, napping on that couch, he rolled over and fell headlong onto the floor, scaring the bejeezus out of himself (though he wasn't really hurt).  Today he leaped, easily made the distance, crashed into the sofa cushions and went wild with laughter.

Then, before I could stop him, he leaped back to the ottoman.  Not good; just beyond the ottoman is the coffee table, and if he'd crashed into that ... well, let us say it's not made of cushions.  Still, he gripped the ottoman like a cat when he landed and saved himself.  He has two cats at home.  He's plainly been watching them.

Now, today's subject is "fear."  Couple days ago I posted a cruel and angry rant about saving throws for death, which perhaps was unkind ... not that I really care.  The metric is essentially designed to assauge a weak sort of person against the severity of having to lose a fictional character in a game, so much that even knowledge of spells that bring back the dead aren't sufficient to ease the terrible suffering of such fragile sops.  These are not people willing to make a leap to a light piece of furniture that might tip over and smash them into something hard enough to give a few bruises.  I explained this consequence to my grandson (who knows if he understood me) and asked that he only leap from the ottoman to the sofa.  This was in no way dangerous, as I was right there, the sofa is deep and has lots of cushions, and anyway, endorphins.

He didn't do it the wrong way a second time; but he might when I'm not there.  When I think of the things I did when my parents weren't there ...

I don't want to applaud him, or even encourage him.  But I definitely don't want to punish him, because part of growing up is learning to judge oneself against one's fear.  He was evidently proud of himself; he shone a look at me that said, "Wow, did you just see that?"  I probably smiled.  What kind of monster would a person have to be not to smile at that moment?  But I didn't say "good boy" or "do it again."

I'll encourage a player to be brave.  They're not three, are they?  And somewhere along the line, they've talked themselves out of daring a consequence, even a very mild one, so that they'll stand back in my game and fear getting in and mixing it up.  I had a case of that happen a month ago, where I encouraged a player who lacked the magic weapon he needed to hit the gargoyle, to run in anyway.  "If nothing else, you'll take damage that someone in the fight with a magic weapon won't have to take."

The reader may doubt this, but the player reasoned this out and took me up on this.  He's new to the game, and although he'd already been in two fights, his character Torvik wasn't getting anywhere because my system is based on taking damage to get experience.  Holding back, not fighting up front, trying to hurl his club or fist-sized rocks and missing (a fist-sized rock does as much as a dagger, but it flies badly), Torvik wasn't getting anywhere.  So he waded in with the gargoyle that he couldn't hit.  Whereupon the gargoyle 20ed him and he took 16 damage.  Which, thanks to negative hit point rules, he survived.

And at the end of this fight, he went up a level.

We might say, he jumped for the ottoman and didn't fall over.

Friday's running, four days ago, Torvik hurried up to get straight into the fight (he rolled maximum for his 2nd level hit points) ... only to get blasted by a 7 damage burning hands spell seconds after he'd arrived.  So he got bruised a bit.  Still, he's got the equation in his head now, so that he's excited about taking damage and getting a chance to actually fight.

Somewhere, that little boy inside Torvik's player is slamming into God's thigh and laughing.

I know it may sound silly to many to make a metaphor out of this, but it's tremendously human for a small boy to act this way ... just as it sets up so many opportunities for scared, fearful parents to stop the boy from running into their thigh, or daring to make that two foot leap, or doing anything really, because something might happen.  I don't need to go down the road of explaining where this "something" leads to.  Certainly not to good D&D players.

Anyone who may happen to enter my D&D world certainly won't be held to some standard of toxic masculine risk-taking.  They'd die pretty quickly that way.  But if the game can provide a basis upon which an adult can engage in an activity involves some level of risk or emotional damage, which might make them a little more daring, and thus able and willing to test their intellectual and psychological limits, then I'd hope they'd acquire an increased confidence3, curiosity and desire for novelty and excitement.

This could only be a good thing.

_____

If you wish to comment, please write questions, ideas or opinions to alexiss1@telus.net and they will be posted on Saturdays.  Feel free to introduce new subjects or present your own work. 

If you wish to make a donation to Patreon, it will be greatly appreciated and help with costs for illustrating the Streetvendor's Guide. 

Bolstering the Party

As dungeon masters, there's reason to appear unbiased.  We're pressed not to consider the party's advantage in things, and to appear as an unprejudiced judge when making game rulings.  However, it's easy for this visage to drift into an apparent lack of concern for the players' well-being ... even a couldn't-care-less attitude.  There's a danger here.  Detachment can encourage a party to fear what comes next, should they take an action ... but it can also persuade the party that the DM is "out to get them," and not in a good way.  While it's fun as a DM to chuckle while checking what's behind the door, as players reach for the handle, this sort of posturing has a down side.

When running games online, there was a considerable lack of trust on the players part for my DMing; and this despite all the things I'd written encouraging legitimacy and the responsibility a DM has towards producing a fair, proper game.  Where the rubber met the road, however, without my actual body language to indicate otherwise, with nothing but the words I wrote to convey feeling, the players couldn't rightly judge my intentions.  And since, as well, I happen to be a volatile snapping turtle besides, this produced a constant friction.  This was my fault.  Truth be told, I didn't compliment players often enough.  I still don't.  I have a tendency to be so fixed on the game, and making it run smoothly, while concentrating on the numerous details that must remain consistent, that once a moment is resolved, I'm rapidly moving to the next.

Allow an example; I'm told I don't tell enough war stories on this blog, so here goes.

Sorry about the quality of the image. Left click to isolate the image, then right-click to open the isolated image in a new window, then expand it by touching the plus-sign that appears.

This is the underground fortification my players have been fighting for two runnings.  The box on the upper left is the order of movement the players use, based on their dexterity (with ties broken by wisdom).  The dark tan indicates unexplored areas, assumed generally to be solid rock, except the space behind the double door on the upper right.  The detritus symbols on the tan areas are symbols I use during combats, to indicate whether a weapon is loaded (3 green circles for a heavy crossbow), if someone's stunned (red circle) or wounded (red star).  The goblin on the middle left is just there in case I needed another goblin ... as the map was revealed step by step, so goblin images were repurposed over and over throughout the battle.

The party entered through the chamber on the bottom right, were attacked by goblin bowmen at points A. (15 ft. above the chamber), then they had to go downslope through the middle, where minor goblins at points B. threw one-pound stones at them.  At point C., the goblins also threw molotov cocktails.  C. is located between two 10 ft. deep pits, which the mage (in blue, next to point C) created a tenser's floating disk (purple-yellow circle) to ship the players across the pits after the far side of each was secured.  Points D. are dead ends with spear traps, which one player took damage from.  The party then had to climb the stairs up from points D., fighting goblins as they went, clearing out the stone throwers.  Approaching point E., upon climbing the stair up (where all the players are jammed together) and opening the door, they were soaked with boiling oil.  E. was then used as a murder hole, so that while the party tried to climb the fixed ladder, they were shot full of holes and forced to retreat back to the stairs.  One player did reach the top of the ladder and nearly gained the ground before losing initiative and being knocked off.  That's where we ended it Friday night, with the two sides in a stalemate, while the party has chosen to regroup.

Much of this was made possible by a druid effectively using an obscurement spell, which followed her along as they worked their way down, then up.  Every player employed some clever technique or took a serious risk to survive the 35 goblins in their way.  Yet when the session ended, it didn't occur to me until after they were gone that I should have praised their work with more than the experience given (which was considerable and much appreciated, though no treasure has yet be secured).

And this brings me to the last post and this comment from Lance:

"I'm interested in your scary tunnel post. My players keep leaving dungeons/lairs half explored because of scary tunnels I didn't even try to make scary ha!"

I'm not saying this is the answer to Lance's troubles, but it's a beginning overall towards building a party's confidence and courage.  Not because we'll assure them that they'll succeed in every battle, but because we have to give them reason to try.  In essence, praise them.

We must choose our moment.  We know what's coming along as the session progresses and the players do not, plus we have time to make statements when the players arrive and are finding their places at the table.  We put it as lightheartedly as we can:  "Say, you guys have been doing pretty well lately.  That goblin lair was a tough nut to crack."

Of course, this praise must be sincere.  They must actually have been doing well.  Otherwise, it's hollow, and we risk being viewed as pandering and inauthentic.  It's not so much that we need to invent praise to give to the party, it's that we need to evaluate their play from time to time and recognise when individuals have excelled ... and then give them the praise they've earned.

We can also, respectfully, embolden them in situations where something appears much worse than it is.  Let's take the party moving through our dungeon.  They've fought off the mooks and moved into those areas affected by the thermal biome ... and here, they're attacked by a huge spider, which surprises them, takes a bit of meat out of the cleric's leg (3 damage), only to be effectively stomped by, of all people, the mage (who was the nearest person, rolled a critical with her quarterstaff and did 12 pts. of damage).  Unfortunately, the cleric fails the poison save—

—which in my game, causes 8 h.p. of damage per hit die of the venomous creature, at a rate of 1 h.p. per round, per hit die.  In other words, the cleric starts taking 2 damage each round, as the poison courses through his body.  As he's in pain, he can't concentrate on a spell; but the players have acquired four healing salves through their past efforts and rapidly apply them to counteract the poison.  As a result, the cleric is hurt, the players lose some capacity to heal, plus maybe the cleric's cure light wounds spell, but everyone is alive. 

Investigating, they find the spider has come through a small hole, from which warmth is exuding, about ten degrees more than the corridor.  Sending the thief through the hole, he discovers a winding vertical tunnel that's easily climbable, with surfaces covered with damp moss, about 4 to 6 ft in diameter.  The air within has tiny insects, and drifting pollen; and as the thief twists to work back to the party, he sees another huge spider squatting about twenty feet below, using its pincers to clean its forelegs.  The thief reports this.

We can't tell the party that the shaft is critical if they want to catch the lake hag below by surprise.  First of all, they don't even know there is a lake hag; and they're not blessed with knowledge of the future. They only know what they can see.  From their perspective, the strange shaft looks like a good way to be killed by spiders ... and that's the only thing it appears to be good for.  Now, the cleric in my game received 60 experience from the spider bite, and 320 experience from the poison damage ... and every player recieved 76 x.p. (before 10% bonus, if it applies) for just being there.  I treat "experience" as "practical contact with, and observation of, facts and events."  You know, like the actual definition of the word.  And it's awfully practical to know what it's like to almost die from poison, or to watch someone else nearly do so.

Oh, and the mage got another 110 x.p. for killing the thing.

Not every spider is worth 870 x.p.  If the spider hadn't hit the cleric at all, and the mage had then killed it, the total would only have been 110.  If the cleric had made his saving throw, it would only have been 230.  It's only high because the cleric would have been seriously depleted.  As a 2nd level, assuming no constitution bonus (and let's say that), suppose he had 15 hit points to start.  Minus 3, then minus 16, puts him at -4.  That'll kill him in a lot of people's games (and thus, less experience gained), but not mine, as I use negative hit points.  Still, those rules force the cleric to make a check to see if he's made unconscious at -4 h.p.; and if he is, that's quite the encumbrance burden if the party doesn't spend even more healing to make him conscious again.  This is how I justify one spider being worth a whole lot, and another spider being worth very little.

So, with lots of healing lost, does the party really want to tangle with another spider?

Okay, let me back up.  Remember when I said we could embolden the party, and I said we could take advantage of the session's initiation, since we know what's going to happen.  We're the DM.  We know all about the spider that's going to jump out ... and we're capable of guessing that someone's going to get bit (we rolled randomly to choose the cleric), and that they might blow their save (though the cleric has the best advantage there).  We know about the shaft and we can be pretty sure the players will wonder where the spider came from, and that someone will scout ahead.  We know they'll see the second spider.  None of this is a mystery to us.

We use this information to prime the party in their favour, and ours.  How?  They just fought a bunch of unknown minions and they all survived.  "Good job on those soggy humanoids," we say, as it's now the next running and they've all had time to get over that unexpected event.  We add, "I'd hoped it might cause you to think maybe you're in over your heads, here.  But you're good to go on, right?  Nobody here is afraid, right?"

If we can urge them, gently, to take a stance on how brave they are, then for a few hours you can fairly count on that declaration affecting their subconscious choices.  As the linked wikipedia suggests, the effect is rarely noticed by the players; they've consciously forgotten that they stated their bravery in the midst of the game ... but when the time comes to make a brave decision or not, most times they'll edge towards what they felt when they thought they were safe.

Priming works both ways.  If, as DMs, we're overcritical, or we demonstrate too much doubt in the players' abilities, that can also prime the players to lose confidence, doubting themselves and feeling a strong resistance against taking risks.  While priming is a powerful tool, it can also subvert the game if we're not careful what we choose to say, when making the game ready and spouting off.

As DM, our opinions carry enormous weight at the table ... much more weight than those opinions would carry if we were at a bar and talking over drinks.  This is because the players habitually strive to ascertain some clue about their success in every word we speak, and in the nuance of our voice tone and body language.  Our voice — strange as it may seem — has the potential to be both a positive and a negative influence on the player's willingness to take risks.

Myself, I think this factor had much less effect when we were playing as teenagers back in the day ... but only because we were less socially skilled at parsing out the words of other people, and ascribing to those words clues that would tell us whether or not we were succeeding within the relationship or with tasks in the work place.  As we grow older, and virtually nothing is said straightforwardly, we adapt to a social climate where everything a person says might contain a hidden meaning.  This is definitely true as a DM.  I notice the effect I have when I make an off-handed comment, or when I deliberately prime the players behaviour.  By merely mentioning something obscure about D&D at the beginning of a session — say, secret doors, which occur so rarely in my game that players don't search for them — I've caused a player to do something exactly at the time when I need them to do it, hours later.  It's a bit spooky sometimes.  And if I ask later, they'll claim they don't remember my ever mentioning secret doors.  They just "felt" like this was the time to search for one.  Even though they practically never do.

My answer to Lance, and anyone feeling their party is hesitant, is to suggest going over our own behaviour as DM.  What are we saying, or what are we not saying, that's adjusting their bravery in the face of a scary-looking tunnel.  Surely, we're not whetting their appetite enough with prospective experience or treasure; or we're giving them cause to feel they haven't the stuff to handle this tunnel; or we're making it too easy, socially, to turn hide and flee.

I don't know what that might be; I'm at my own table, and not that of others.  But I feel that if I sat in and listened, I might guess pretty quickly what's happening, based on the table's set-up, the distance between the DM and the players, the voice the DM uses, where focus is being placed, and how the dialogue is being handled.  Small things make big differences.

We must be careful about how remote we are ... because we're not on the hook, as the party is.  And if they sense that we're taunting them, or dismissing them, or feeling above them, they'll respond with distrust.  And that is something we cannot have when we run.  We need the players to believe that we're every bit as fair and honest as we appear ... else they'll think, consciously or unconsciously, that it's all an act.

The Dungeon's Front Door

Yes, I have a book with this title.  Yet it seems appropos for this post.

Our party has come to the entrance of the dungeon they were seeking in the last post.  This is a critical juncture in the player's experience.  The moment of committing, as it were.  We would do well to examine what happens within the game at this point, and how best to exploit it as a dungeon master.

Let's review first.

1) It's the players' agenda.

2) The player's agency is constrained by what the players have control over, and what they do not.

3) Everyone is bound by the rules, players and DM alike.

The player's are here at the dungeon's door — whatever it looks like, we'll come to that — because they wanted to be.  They asked to be here.  They deliberately sought out the entrance ... and because we've identified this as something that's within their control, they have a right to be here.  Let's give some thought to point 3.

There is a trust issue here.  The players don't know what's behind the door, yet the game dictates they must commit.  The DM ought to know what's behind the door ... and knowing it, properly should respect that content just as rules are respected.  If I imagine the entrance way leads into a forward guardroom of some kind, with three goblins whose role it is to warn the rest of the community if something bad comes in the door, then I'm resolved to put three goblins there and not seven or nine or fourteen.  The only reason to change the number of goblins would be if the players killed them "too easily" — which shouldn't matter a damn to me because I'm impartial.  It shouldn't matter any how, because the other goblins in the lair are also there, anyway, no matter how easily the front three die.  Frankly, I don't understand a lot of what motivates a DM to mess around with dungeon contents, but the principle should be that whatever's there is there.  The party can always find something else to kill later, if they still have an appetite.

To be clear, I'm not saying this dungeon starts with a three-goblin guard room.  That's just an example.

In any case, as long as the party is outside the door, there's another bit of duality at play.  There's a distinction at this point between what the party believes and what's true.

Moving back in time a moment, the party ought to have been given some information about the dungeon before starting out for it.  We tell them there are goblins in these mountains, or that the dungeon was originally sought 25 years ago because a princess was kidnapped and taken there, and though there was a rescue planned, no one of the rescuing party ever came back.  We don't know what became of the princess, or the rescuers.  We know there have been other parties who set out for the dungeon, but the party doesn't know if any of those groups even found the entrance — as none of them came back.  These bits of information are floating in the party's consciousness, and we can be sure some of them are going to be hashed out by the party before they commit themselves to first finding the dungeon, then entering it.

Physically, the dungeon entrance takes space.  This space is exception in the game setting.  It's the doorway between two worlds: civilisation and, as I said in my book The Dungeon's Front Door, a dystopian unreality that exists below ground.  How we depict the crossover matters.  It's best if we don't make it look like a traditional Gygaxian front door, which might just as well have a neon sign out front stating, "Dungeon, -- Vacancy," for all the ambience most modules offer.  And note, giving the entranceway "ambience" matters to the player's mood when they arrive at this point, before crossing the threshold.  We can do better than a plain little hole in the mountain fastness, or a benign little concealed door.  Early D&D subscribed to the "less is more" motif, which may have worked when the game was new and the players unjaded, but we've got to do better.

We can provide ambience by fixing the players' imaginations with intense flavour text, as James Raggi perceived and had a great deal of success with.  Of course, that's become a trope also, and in reality there's only so much that text can accomplish.  It's been over-used since the mid-00s and is apt to leave any experienced party cold ... though it probably will still enjoy effect if the players have only 2 to 3 years of gaming experience.

A better approach is to mix said text in moderate doses with the visual qualities and aesthetics of film.  The strongest benefit of film is that it shows movement ... and so, when introducing the entrance, try to think of some element of the scene that's shifting, stirring or flowing.  Drift snow into the scene, which greater distinguishes the outside, where the players are, from the inside, where it's dry and perceivably warm.  Roll steam or cold air out of the entranceway, with an explanation the players can't know without investigation.  Allow voices, or noise of some kind, to drift out; perhaps unseen creatures are having an argument, or there's an inexplicable rattling or booming sound.  Have a creature actually step out of the entrance, then go back inside before the characters have time to fully react.  Tease, tempt, taunt the players with such.

It's fully in the rules to make the entrance seem more dangerous than it is.  Although the party wanted to be here, it's in our interest to make them question that intention as much as possible ... to force them to push past a legitimate reason to fear and actually BE brave.  In all the various make-believe elements of the game, one thing that is not made up is the real emotion possessed by the players.  It's this real emotion that makes the game so satisfying.

The emotions offered by a video game are frustration, exhaustion, sometimes boredom, occasionally relief and, after a long time, a sense of accomplishment, self-esteem and even triumph.  But rarely can a canned experience, like a pre-programmed game or a movie, or a book, offer an emotion like bravery.  It doesn't make you "brave" to willingly sit through a movie, or buy a game, or finish a book.  Deliberately choosing to enter a dungeon run by another human being who is under no obligation to make that dungeon "popular" to a vast audience IS a legitimately courageous act.  For myself, I carefully cultivate the attributes of a demented, somewhat unwholesome sociopath who could conceivably put something in his dungeon that would be, well, very wrong.  My players sense that about me.  They know that whatever's lurking in there, it doesn't need to sustain itself against a focus group, it doesn't need to answer to a market's whims and it definitely doesn't have to fit a politically correct model.  I might very well include something so upsetting that it takes a few sessions to get over it.  It's one of the reasons why my partner Tamara has decided to stop playing.  She prefers to hear about it, before I unleash such a scene upon the players.

And so, as the players stand outside the entrance, remembering the stories of other parties, remembering how long this dungeon has been "known" without anyone properly cleaning it out ... and knowing that once they commit, getting out might not be so easy — it stands to reason that they'll hesitate.  I want that.  The more time it takes to screw up their courage, the more satisfying it'll be, for them, when they marvel at their boldness to take this chance.

For that's what this part of the game is.  Commitment and chance.  They've invented stories, letting their beliefs get the better of time ... but it's the truth they'll find, that they can't know without first finding it, that really discomforts them.

It's ridiculous when some director like J.J. Abrams makes an argument that what we don't see is the more frightening thing.  What a soft, pampered life Abrams has obviously had.  Numerous film directors have shown us things plainly on camera that shake us to our core ... because we're SHOWN these in their full horror.  Abrams makes scary films for children.  Scary films made for adults are terrifying.

I run adults in my game.  For adults, the yawning maw of a waiting entrance is a passage to hell.  Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Anxiety & Excitement

Picking up where I left off, the sort of fear experienced when we're worried our D&D character's about the die is more rightly called "anxiety."  I pulled a fast one, there.  Anxiety is a state of inner turmoil, often seen as an overreaction to a situation that's only subjectively menacing.  This last is the reason why numerous people reading my last post thought, "I don't feel fear when I play D&D."

These people have a cynical view of game.  That is, they don't get immersed in it.

Some who get very deep into the game are able to convince themselves very easily to become "over"-emotional about it ... in a good way.  It's similar to those who see scary movies in order to prove that nothing bothers them, and those who go because they want to experience every jump scare as if for the very first time.  Approaching the game earnestly, as though death in it really means something important, is an aesthetic choice for some.  It's not surprising that snobby people make such a show of being above such things.

Yep.  If you see that as a personal insult, that's because it was meant for you.

Let's look a bit at the connections between anxiety and excitement.  From Excitement vs. anxiety: Same chemicals, different vibe:

"These two arousal emotions are separated by the associations we make with them, says Sal Raichbach, Psy.D., LCSW, a psychologist with Ambrosia Treatment Center.

"When you experience anxiety, the first thing that happens is that your senses observe your environment and you feel that rush of cortisol in your brain as the fight-or-flight response begins to set in.  This is an instinct humans have evolved to sense danger and respond quickly, which is why it all happens in a matter of seconds, Raichbach says.

"But another part of this response is your ability to recall your previous experience, and that’s where the anxiety or excitement will start to differentiate.  For example, if you’ve been anxious in the past while public speaking, chances are you’re going to be anxious when you’re walking up to that podium again.

"The difference between healthy anxiety and unhealthy anxiety is your relationship with this stimulus and whether it’s making you feel fear."

Sometimes, when I claim things like anxiety and excitement being chemically related, I feel my readers think I'm making shit up ... so, I felt it was best to include the whole quote.  To get a firm handle on this DMing thing, we've got to grasp the mass of chemically-induced emotion taking place as the die bounces across the table and we feel the tension of whether or not our character's about to die ... even in tenths of a second.  Our senses observe the die; the cortisol hits like a bullet in a heart beat; it has to set in fast enough to keep you alive on the savanna two million years ago — or else your ancestors don't make it and you're not here.

From Raichbach's observation about public speaking, we have the same connection with characters you've see die in the past.  Good old Luxtar got eaten back in good ol' High School and now Tablik's one pip from the same fate.  The more death-as-part-of-the-game you play, the more that feature preys on your mind ... and on your hormones more to the point.  And you can't think your hormones away ... not without conciously deciding to repeat to yourself like a mantra, "This is a game, this is a game."  Which, of course, ruins any possibility of the game equalling it's measure.

Turning our anxiety into excitement is possible because we know, intrinsically, we're not actually going to die.  We can let go, let ourselves feel anxious, enjoying the anxiousness ... especially when we're playing with the sort of friends who won't use our mistakes as an opportunity to shame us.  Playing with strangers or near-strangers, there's never the feeling that we can roast our emotions on the game's spit ... and there again is the explanation behind players who can't fully immerse themselves in the game.  Their experience playing is so affected by the strangers they've played with, they don't know how to be vulnerable.

Take public speaking.  Have you done it?  Would you do it?  For decades, research has named it one of our greatest fears; many people would rather have a near death experience than get on a stage and speak in public.  In fact, that's often the example used when pointing out an overreaction to something that's seen as menacing, but in fact isn't.  People very rarely get spontaneously lynched for tripping over their words when speaking in public.  It's even more unlikely that they'll be catcalled for the clothes they're wearing.  To date, I haven't yet seen an audience member insult someone who chances to freeze up on stage.

If you see public speakers, you know that what you feel for them is concern and empathy.  It takes a real asshole to condemn someone showing nervousness while giving a speech; if anything, the applause is louder when nervous people step down.  We want them to feel encouraged.

The people we really hate are those who step up and act all, "Hey, I've got this; I'm so prepared, you're in awe of my perfection."  These people are awful gawddamned speakers.  They're dry, they're boring, they have the audience playing with their silverware, restlessly tapping their feet, looking mournfully at the exits and wondering if perhaps they couldn't pretend they really, really have to go pee so they can pass the time outside the auditorium doing nothing — which is sure to be more fun than listening to this speaker.  When the speech is over, the speaker is pleased that nothing went wrong; except there's only a smattering of applause and it doesn't last long.

Why is it the speaker who does everything "right" gets so little love?

Because we don't like perfection.  We like imperfection.  We like self-effacing.  And those of us who like caring about our characters so much that we scream in pleasure when they live, or scream in pain when they die, do it because our friends ... don't mind.

Which is why I can argue that the best way to DM is to make the world frightening enough that the players don't want to compete with each other.  They're too busy supporting each other so they can survive 'til tomorrow.

Now, I have noticed ... I get a kind of player online who responds to my inculcation of anxiety with a kind of neuroses: that every rock and tree is a death sentence waiting to happen.  Online, I have to keep reassuring my players that I'm not going to kill them in an unreasonable, no-win situation.  I've thought about this.  I don't have it with off-line players.  But online, playing as I do ... there are certain players who get rigid about this.  To the point where they feel they can't act.

I think it must be my expression.  Players who can't see me can't read the signs my off-line players recognize.  My face, when I'm pushing fear, is a message all it's own; and likewise, when there's nothing to be afraid of, it's my face telling that to the players moreso than my words.  Online, the player is stuck with his or her imagination ... and only their imagination.

This dichotomy is more than enough to convince some that I'm a scary nightmare of a DM without sympathy for the vulnerable, perhaps happily wringing my hands as I anticipate the next character's death.  I certainly talk about death a lot.  This is only because the audience here, online, has taken the position that death in the game is bad, that it's always bad, and that forestalling death by ANY means, including lying to the players, is plainly better than the alternative.

Players aren't stupid.  Well, mostly.  We can pretend that we're keeping them alive for the sake of "everyone's fun," but pretty soon every risk related to the game is an empty superficial gesture.  We know that whatever happens — losing all our money, getting stripped naked and thrown in a dungeon, being humiliated in front of the king, having the big cheese teleport in to threaten us — is just our going through the motions.  We know none of this matters because, with this or that coming next, we'll roll around and get on top again.

Faced with a DM who won't pull the switch, the players have to make up their own game, if only to pass the intermidable time between the DM's plot rhythms.  It's the guy on stage whose droning carefully crafted sentences puts us to sleep ... in uncomfortable chairs.  If we didn't have to be here because it's a professional conference or it's the only way we can see the next speaker, who's got to be better, we'd leave in groups.  We've got to play with this DM.  It's the only DM we have.  Not to mention the same as all the others.  Obviously, this must be the game, because this is the way that everyone plays it.

Except us few on the periphery, chatting on about death.  Obviously, any sane player wants to stay far from us.

All this weaving around, I hope I'm making a point.  I'd like to address things I said in the last post about how to set up fear and destabilize a party.  Surely, that's got to be a better post than this one.  Only this, this one is way, way easier to write.  Thing is, knowing what to throw and how much, and when to throw it, not to mention when to stop, or when to filter aid to the party so they don't give up, while giving them what they need and making all of this matter, in the sense that it "matters" what happens when the party succeeds ... there's no road map here.  160 years of psychology and we have no idea where ideas come from, or how to form them together to create things.  All we know is the brain lights up and it fuckin' happens.  That's it.  That's where we are.  So my telling you, do this, do that, do the other thing, make it count ... makes as much sense as my saying there's no D&D without a monkey, seven ballerinas and the exhumed corpse of Modest Mussorgsky.

Still, I'll take a swing at it.  What else have I got to do?  Cure cancer?