D&D: The Adventure!! Boardgame

Not to put too fine a point on an individual's process, it might be postulated that a serious obstacle that stands in the way of an individual's creation of their campaign begins with having a "board game mindset," which assumes that in some manner the game must already exist as a complete object before the group is asked to sit and play. We're told again and again that individuals want to start their campaign, but "first I have to make my game world," which suggests the first step to D&D is creating the game board:

And this makes sense. We want the dungeon, the murky swamp, the joke tavern, the village, mysterious tower and ultimately the battle with the big bad, as we progress from the beginning of the adventure to its end... thus its natural to think of the progression in linear, boardgame terms. The dungeon is really nothing other than a battle map, which makes sense, since that's the source of D&D gestation. So when we sit to "create the world," we naturally fall into these sensibilities, those being the ones most familiar to those of us who were taught board games as children.

This is not much altered by the progressive D&D game, either. The side scroller is just the game path above depicted as a continuous revealing platform, while the running forward progress of the Witcher is just the side scroller turned 90-degrees. By an large, we're still talking about the path-driven board game, like that described above. The mind-set remains the same: the players need somewhere to go, something to encounter, information for them to uncover, obstacles for them to address, rewards for them to acquire. Whatever the sequence may be, it is a sequence, all the more so because the board game is the structure employed. That sequence may branch, but it can only do so into other sequences, before looping back to the main sequence: specifically, some destination that the boardgame-D&D world structure provides.

There are several presumptions built into this sequential model. First, that there's little reason to go back, unless it is to find the fork to another branch that we might have missed. This sequence is already known: we have discovered everything as players that the DM has placed, so that with the exception of places like Breezyvale Square on the map above, where we want to "trade or rest" as need be, other places like Darkhall Dungeon have served their purpose. To be clear, this isn't an issue with the process itself, this is merely to make the point that the value in the sequence is forward movement, not to create a world that itself provides a continously yielding space. Sequential spaces are "used up" and the players then move onto the next.

Additionally, forward movement presumes a destination that is, in some manner, predetermined. That destination might be hard, as shown on the map above (defeat the dragon, claim your glory) or it may be something soft that the DM hasn't yet determined, but can be invoked or made when the moment actually demands it. The destination itself then competes for the game's purpose moreso against the progress itself — and some players do prefer to invest themselves into the "moment" rather than the "point," as they personally view the world. Neither are wrong to do so; our intent is therefore merely to establish that a diamorphic structure is in play... one that is created by the sequential arrangement. We are moving forward, therefore we are either experiencing the movement for its own sake or for the thing it is bringing us toward.

We must understand, however, that however immediate the individual might be prone to view the game, eventually the destination is reached. That destination might be the fork that leads to other sequences, but that in itself is a destination. More commonly, however, the way that D&D is usually structured, the "glory" is out there, waiting... and that builds a third presumption about the boardgame's sequential progress: that success or failure at that specific point is expected, and far more likely success, since game modules and most DM-built adventures are created or selected to provide destinations the players can manage. The game's rush is therefore expected to coincide with this moment: the end of the perceived hero's journey, where the players overcome the last of the obstacles, kill the monster, gather the treasure and return to town flushed with success and an opportunity to buy a whole new set of toys... or, of course, to treat the boardgame as "finished," so the next board can be brought out and the sequence played again from the beginning.

It's therefore possible to see that the board depicted above is not just a joke, but a fairly reasonable simplistic descriptive of the game's pattern. Organised and played well, the paths can be fashioned in a squidgy enough manner that the board seems indistinct and uncertain; that the players don't feel as though they're on a board at all; that the board has a sufficient number of sequences that they can't really investigate them all and thus they don't tire of what's available. The lesser DM, of course, fails to offer the measure of variety that's necessary to make the game appear rich with variety; that DM sits down with the module and says, "Tonight, we're playing Jorgeblath's Tomb, because I've just bought the manual." But then, a great many people do view this game as fundamentally in the same category as pretty much any board game, so... heck, why shouldn't they approach it this way?

None of this says D&D has to be a railroad. The number of potential sequences, and the DM's power to adjust the sequences in a sort of "butterfly effect" pattern as the players make decisions permits the sequence to shift and adjust in accordance with player choices. It isn't a board game, after all, but a theoretical, non-corporeal construct that can be re-invented on the fly, so that characters that were expected to live can die, while other characters that are perceived as impractical somehow manage to survive. The die-roll structure permits this, so that instead of the fixed structure of game board paths, we can have something closer to that which was proposed by Zelazny's Roadmarks and thus taken up by any number of later science fiction universes where "time lines" proliferate or are closed off as the players do or do not take sequence paths.

But to advantage this kind of procedural flexibility, the DM really does have to get out of the "I'm making a board for my game world" mindset. The benefit of the "time line" approach is that perceived destinations can simply be thrown away by the DM at will as no longer necessary. The issue arises when the DM, having devised the game board and having in turn fallen in love with that "great scene where the party arrives at the Murky Swamp and meets the King of the Slimes," can't let go of the concept. They must, therefore, to justify all the work done, or maintain their relationship with the moment they imagine this being, hammer the Murky Swamp into the adventure between this point and that, forcing the players to enter it and play out the scene. That's where the DM's need to control the board becomes the deciding factor on what's happening or what's available to the players.

The example expresses why DMs should not attach themselves to moments or things that have gathered weight in the imagination. Most of the time, the scene only ends up disappointing the players, who aren't in love with it because they can't see point or the whole structure, or the DM is disappointed because the players haven't acting like they "should." Attachment is what creates the railroad. But that is another post (which I've probably already written).

I take exception with the "game board as initial model" structure because the inception tends to create too much board for the players to use, too soon. The DM who therefore begins the game with the mindset of, "I must create an adventure right off for the players before we can start" only invokes the latter attachment problem. D&D is not a complex piece of machinery that must be designed and built in toto so it can be checked for digression errors before it runs. D&D is a proposal that can be written by sketching out the first chapter and just seeing where it goes... not in the sense of a collaborative project, but rather, "Okay, there are goblins west of town... an owlbear to the south... such-and-such to the north... let's see where the party wants to go and then we'll just play it by ear; when something more complex is needed, we'll build it.

Sort of like loading up with all your gear in a Louis & Clark expedition (the DM too!), not knowing what's out there or what we'll need, but we're provisioned, skilled, capable, unafraid and we'll just adjust to whatever we uncover as we go.

Alone with My Principles

Sometimes a comment is written that sincerely wants to help me see the world in a light that will give me strength and hope to change my perspective, and possibly cease to be less bitter and therefore make the kind of money others are making doing what I'm doing. That, I think, is the sentiment with Icosa's comment here. It references my biathlon post of last January as if to say, "See, you could live some of this dream." It encourages me to open my mind and learn something from a successful designer. It argues that there's a "good game" in me, arguing that it could plausibly be of the size and scope of AD&D. It even states that the commentor would buy this game from me.

When I was in high school, I had a good friend Rob who wavered between becoming a performing electronic musician in the vein of Throbbing Gristle, or possibly an electrical engineer. Alas, his brilliant musical career ended and he became the latter. But during those younger, heady days, whenever the subject of selling out came up, he would raise his hand and say, "Me. I'm ready to sell out. Tell me what line to get into."

He didn't mean it, because he didn't sell out. But he did recognise that was the only chance of his music (see above) having any commercial success. Which it did not.

Selling out describes the act of compromising one's personal values, artistic integrity or principles in order to achieve financial gain, popularity and mainstream success. Not everyone who has these things achieved them by "selling out." Sometimes, if I were to pick a band I once personally knew, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they don't have any of those things to sell. Rather, they had a willingness to get on stage a lot, to keep practicing together and, as chance would have it, a sound that worked well in the 90s (once an engineer worked on it, that is. If you had ever heard the Chilis at the National here in Calgary in the late 80s, there's no way in hell you'd have ever believed they'd get a record contract.

Artistic integrity describes an individual's commitment that the art they are producing — which I'll widen to include any creative work — remains true to the vision, value or creative principle by which they make that art. Integrity reflects an individual's genuine ideas, the emotion they connect with those ideas and the style in which those ideals are rendered, in my case in text, in the case of others, in visual or audial measure. Essentially, it's about maintaining authenticicy in one's art, prioritising personal expression over external approval or material gain.

When I created yet another wiki, I considered a number of names to call it, finally landing on "Authentic" as the best possible expression for what I was trying to accomplish. The wiki doesn't represent "a" set of rules about role-playing, it represents what I think are best possible game tested rules that can be made... that are subject to change when, like science or design, something is better understood, or might be more effectively constructed.

As such, I don't run "a" role-playing game, I run the one that best expresses everything I've learned about role-playing games these last almost 47 years... in which I've watched many, many, many role-playing games rise, become popular for a while and then fade away, to be played by a small dedicated following until they cease to be mentioned even on the internet. Once upon a time, in the 1980s, when a new game would emerge, I'd anxious rush to look at it, to see how the designer constructed their metrics, to see if there was something I could steal and import into my own game... but by the time Steve Jackson churned out GURPS, I was constantly disappointed. It was all rehashes from there... endless, awful, even sometimes painful rehashes of old rules in some way made worse and repackaged as a game that would "supersede D&D at last!" Only to, of course, not happen. The last game mechanic that I lifted from a designed game originated with 3rd edition; I can't even remember what the original mechanic was called, and it needed a lot of work to make it function. I used it to construct my action point rules.

After 18 years of writing this blog, and 47 years of playing D&D, the most inauthentic thing I could possibly do would be to suddenly declare D&D secondary in my opinion to my own game system, and then take the much more rational constrution of presenting game rules on a 21st century wiki and compiling them into a 15th century technology that would, obviously, be less valuable to the user. Further, the construction of said book would involve my giving money to a third party, so I could charge people I've authentically and freely provided a system for, as a means of literally betraying my own choices in order to, yes, sell out. 

Without much chance of succeeding, mind, because I have allowed myself to be an honest, outspoken, resilient, vicious pitbull about the game I love these last 18 years on this blog. To succeed in business, one must have business friends. Those willing to talk up one's kickstarter, or talk up one's business. I don't have those things. I have never priortised those things.

Further, for my own soul, I would find it grossly inauthentic to copy the game construction of ANOTHER GAME produced 50 years before my own, and sell it as something I "created," when clearly I did not. That is something that apparently people in the OSR can do, without much compunction, flat out ignoring that the mechanics, referencing, concepts and dimensions of their games are cheap "Gocci" knockoffs of legitimately designed originals. I may hate Gygax and his logic, but he didn't rip off a game exactly like his own that was published in 1925, and played for nearly fifty years, then pretending he hadn't done that.

So yeah. I have a few issues with that life choice.

Until just a few weeks ago this blog had the tag line, "I Love the Game of D&D."  Some have expressed their surprise and approval that I was willing to come right out and say that, without reservation. Some have recently expressed their dissatisfaction that it's gone, in favour of something that "sells" my story as a means of getting to know me better, thus enabling some to get up to speed with my approach to the game without having to read through 4,000 posts. I am not making money from this change and yet the disapproval is there. Others also love D&D. I like that. And I like that I'm enabling them to find better ways to play the game.

And I would rather have this experience than the money that Kelsey Dionne has made doing what she's doing.

That can be confusing for some people. In fact, on occasion, I had those, off-line, in real life, before the existence of the internet, call me a "loser" for having these principles. So this is hardly new.

Perhaps I can explain it this way. My father was an engineer. He was a good engineer. He graduated with honours from the Colorado School of Mines and he worked for Gulf Canada as a practicing engineer, never opting for management, until 1995. He used to talk about the difficulties of keeping up with technology changes in a heavily technological field, when the half-life of his engineering degree ceased to be, as he would have described it, relevant by 1965. That means he spent 30 years keeping up with technology changes on his own. At any time, he could have done what his peers did. He could have accepted a promotion as a manager and gotten more money. But he didn't want to be a manager. He wanted to be an engineer, because he loved being an engineer. It's what he'd wanted to be when he was 14 and for him, being one all his adult life, was living the dream.

In 1978, he was picked as one of two people to investigate the practical value of a concept called "enhanced recovery."  Now, I've talked about this on the blog before, but what the hell, let's just do it again. I'm an old man. Old men tell stories more than once.

No one at the time believed in this concept. It was in fact cutting edge oil recovery technology, involving the injection of gas, oil or water, and later other materials, into an existing pool in order to increase the pressure within that pool in order to force more oil out of a pool that had ceased producing.

See, when drilling came into existence, there was no solution for the problem that when you drilled down to get the oil from the ground, the condition that enabled that oil's extraction was underground pressure. But as you removed oil from the well, the pressure would drop, and drop, until finally, there wasn't enough pressure left to force the oil up the pipe. It meant that the field would "run dry"... except, in fact, it didn't. Everyone knew there was as much as 40% of the oil still down there, but it was wholly unreachable. And by the 1970s, areas that had once been major oil producing centres were now suffering from this problem.

When this boondoggle, which is what the company thought of it at the time, landed on my father's desk, no one else wanted it. There were small teams in companies all over the world working on the same problem, without any certainty of how it might be solved. The joke at my father's office was that he and the other fellow, I believe his name was John H., last name withheld, were working in "enchanted recovery." That gives a sense of the faith most had in the project.

Enhanced recovery didn't just become my father's field for the rest of his life, it resuscitated the world's oil industry. In the 1990s my father took a month long trip to Russia to explain the concept to Russian engineers. He did likewise take a trip to Indonesia. When he retired, at an age younger than what I am now, he had spoken with engineers about the technology all over the world.

Did he make more money on account of that? No. He never spoke to me about getting any special raise from the company he worked for, though to be truthful, even my mother never knew how much money he actually earned, because he was very 1950s that way. Did he start his own oil company? Did he become a freelance consultant instead of going on working for Gulf? Could he have? Of course. But he didn't. Because, in reality, he was never in it for the money. He was in it for the science.

Over the course of my father's life, doing a few calculations based on his probable income over the years of his being an engineer in the five decades that he worked, I'd estimate he made about ten million dollars. He didn't make it in one place, he made it steadily over the years... but the speed at which money is made isn't the issue, is it?

If I measure my own success in dollars against that, counting what I've earned from various sources, including writing, cooking, office work... I'm not in my father's league. I'd call it about three quarters of a million. Course, I don't have that money now. It went to cost of living and buying stuff that wore out and had to be replaced with other stuff. But I'm throwing these numbers around to stress that point that I don't think like a 20-year-old with regards to money any more. I don't see $3,148,567 in the way that a young person does. I see money that comes in and then goes right out again. I see money that floods a system and then retreats, forcing one to return to one's old way of just working for it. I see 8 persons on the title page who are not Kelsey, plus The Arcane Library, and Boda Games, and recognise that a lot of that Kickstarter money is not flowing wildly into one person's pocket. I don't view business like a child. I see it like it is: a thing that makes a lot of money, and spends a lot of money.

So I'm not all agog at these things. I see the world in terms of what authentically matters to me, and my goals, and things I'd like to design, create and give time to.

And none of those are a new, derivative role-playing game with a title that doesn't, in fact, mean anything. Is there a shadow that isn't technically darker than the space around it?

What Makes a Good Game?

If the Gentle Reader will allow, I'll try to speak of what makes "good gaming." There are different ways of looking at this: one assumption is to argue a rules system, another is to discuss the social aspect, and still another is to discuss the relationship between the players and the DM. Those all matter, of course. And it matters that two people are not likely to define "good" in the same way, since the idea is incredibly subjective.

I'll approach this as objectively as possible... to to say only what I think makes a good game, but taking a position that anyone can functionally employ as a means of providing a meaningful experience for the largest number of players that might present themselves. That is far more useful that my making a point about what satisfies me personally... since I am, after all, a decidedly odd person.

In simple terms, a "good game" is obtained by providing the greatest number of players at any time with the greatest number of consequential choices, that together provide purpose (a reason to play), value (the time is spent accomplishing something), significance (something was learned); and clear intent (for much of the time, the players felt in control of the outcome). That's a tall order. But after all, D&D is not a board game.

A board game provides a simplified version of this structure. As an example, let's discuss the Game of Life. If you don't know it, well... bless you, you poor soul, you're not likely educated enough to run D&D.

The Game of Life is essentially Candyland on steroids; it is a railroaded game where pieces land on random squares that provide a wide range of outcomes; all told from the beginning of the game to the end, depending upon which exact routes one takes, there are approximately 130 spaces to cross, give or take a few, using a spinner that produces a random number between one and ten. Therefore, it takes an average of 22-24 spins to finish the game, plus perhaps a few if you're forced back 15 spaces, as can occur. There is little strategy beyond occasionally being allowed to gamble on an outcome or choosing one route versus the other. The goal is to get to the end first, or to have somehow amassed enough money to win despite the "winner" having gotten a big pot for arriving first. The particulars aren't important.

Life is, essentially a game that follows the rule, "roll and see what happens." Many play D&D in exactly this way. The Game of Life describes, essentially, the "dungeon game." Pick doors, enter rooms, roll dice, see what happens. The "purpose" is to see what happens. The "value" comes from collecting treasure and looking back to see which room have been cleared; and in small part, to see who lived. The "significance" is that a rule was learned (how to kill {blank}). The clear intent is to make the players believe that they controlled their experience by picking this door over that, but in reality, all the doors lead to the same place.

The conception goes that the "strong" dungeon includes problems to be solved: at best, the learning of the underground's geography, the idiosyncracies of the inhabitants, their motives, the resources to be found and the pressures of managing dwindling resources (hit points, spells, food, sleep, etcetera) to get as much treasure before having to give way and get out. Thus the players choose to fight or not; to barricade or retreat; to map, to listen, to bargain; and eventually to heal up and return.

This is, essentially, the Game of Life where every square can be eventually gotten to while risking the end of the participant, as every valuable square is guarded or boobytrapped or lies under a puzzle. As a game, this process is engaging... for a time. Inevitably, it ceases to be. And as such, most people try D&D for 1 to 4 years, then quit altogether and get on with their lives.

Whatever it's value, the number of choices a dungeon offers is fixed. It is obstacle, reward, obstacle, reward... and eventually even the most interesting obstacles and the most cherished of rewards sour. Every obstacle must in some way be tailored for the players, or else the DM is forced to solve the puzzle for them, or weaken the monster for them, or open the door for them, because if no one in the party can bend the bars or find the secret door or cast knock, then the obstacle becomes ill-timed or poorly considered, and in any case, it's a waste of game time to have to go back outside and waste precious play hours when the DM can simply say, "Oh look, the secret door automatically opens for you." Thus, a clue becomes more obvious, a monster makes a foolish decision, a lock turns out to be old and weak, an NPC appears, the puzzle answer is accepted despite being wrong. In the end, continuance is more important than metrics.

Let us consider the board game Careers. The game provides an outside track with a series of inside tracks that the players can choose to take or not take as they will. The goal is to collect money, love ("hearts") and fame ("stars") according to a secret formula the player decides before the game begins. Usually, the aimed-for total equals 60 or 100; thus the player may assign themselves 20 (thousand dollars), 20 hearts or 20 stars. Or they may opt for 10 th. dollars, 15 hearts and 35 stars. Different tracks offer the best chances of gaining some of each kind of thing.

In D&D terms, the outside track is the outside world; the village, the wilderness, the circular back and forth the game offers between purchasing equipment and the "dungeons" which are the inner tracks. Each inner track or dungeon requires a commitment... but because there are eight of them, no one dungeon must be chosen. Some are full of undead, some with orcs and some with lots of traps. Some are easy to get through with little reward, some are excessively dangerous with lots of reward, though with a fair chance of dying and getting nothing.

This describes the generally more advanced game, or the "campaign" game, because it gives a greater sense of agency. The purpose is building up a presence in the off-dungeon game, the value is overcoming dungeons so that the money has a place to be spent, the significance is in learning not only the kinds of dungeons there are and the game rules, but the greater structure of the larger world... and finally, the clear intent is that the players feel at least some control over their lives.

Yet... the purpose just stated is pre-ordained. The player has little choice but to build their house or castle or church or structural centre as a homebase from which to strike out at the next dungeon. There is little value to be compared with that which comes from dungeons, as they are far more lucrative than anything that can be accomplished in the "outside track/game setting." Very little actual significance is achieved since one gets the feeling that there is nothing else to do except build until the money is gone, then upon getting more, do more building. The buildings in game might as well be large round holes into which gold coins are thrown, as there is little if any substance to imaginary buildings, towers, walls or the gathering of followers in one form or another. These things cannot be applied to anything in-game, since the game remains the ever-necessary return to the dungeon, so they are literally just places for the unloading of wealth. As "significance," they have little virtue.

After a while, this lack of significance, this returning to dungeons like homing pigeons, this sense of purpose, fades... and with it, any real feeling of control. The experience is not unlike that of building up a large complex structure in a video game like The Sims, where the more that is built, the greater the need for the player to spend time in maintenance, until it's all just one long sludge of repeated actions that feel like work rather than play.

From a young age we are trained to think within the structure of finite games. Wikipedia, ever the idiot, defines a "finite game" as a game theory term meaning "a two-player game that is assured to end after a finite number of moves." I should like to expand the term in reconciliation of the English definition of "finite," which is, "having a definite limit, bound or end point."

D&D's finite vs. infinite quality is smudgy. On the one hand, the same group of players, stymied only by the fact that an individual life is finite, can enter dungeon after dungeon, or even the same dungeon ad nauseum — and why not, given that I've played the games Life and Careers I don't know how many times — without let up, for as long as they can stand it. Theoretically, a single "campaign" could extend thousands of years, with DM's and players being replaced in Ship of Thesian-like fashion... but in reality, with other things to do, D&D like this is not, in fact, infinite. Players get bored. Life intervenes. One bad players blows up a game. The DM gets old and there are not substitutes. But I am letting digressions get the better of me, so let's back up and go over this again.

Chess is a two-player finite game. After a finite number of moves, the game will end, because both sides are trying to destroy the enemy and inevitably, either the enemy will be destroyed or, importantly for our purpose here, it will be revealed that no further value will come from continuing to make moves. In chess, a factual stalemate occurs when neither side is capable of checkmating the other. No matter how long the two sides play after that point, the play is just going through the motions. No resolution can occur.

D&D is a multiplayer "finite" game that can be played, as said, indefinitely. But a stalemate occurs when the DM or a sufficient number of players, perhaps all of them, are either unsatisfied or sick of playing, and do not wish to any more. Once that happens, no resolution can occur.

This is a very different way to think about a game... and it's problematic, because we are used to thinking about games as having an "end" that occurs as a resolution — whether board game or a video game, when eventually we run out of "game" assuming we don't quit beforehand. And why do we quit? Because the game is not providing us the urge to continue. This latter is the reason that D&D fails. Not just because it's the "wrong kind of D&D," but because, in fact, for whatever reason, either the imagination of the DM or players crashes and burns, or the process being played is unable to hold our attention.

Structurally, we tend to think D&D failed for the reasons a video game fails. Because it wasn't designed well. And when it fails like that, we assume that D&D, whatever version we speak of, can't be fixed. Especially when in fact we can't see what's wrong.

All this, so far, has been merely to unravel what's meant by a "good game." We haven't begun discussing how to make one yet.

A good game is one that urges the player to continue playing.

Chess, though finite, is for some a very good game. They can comfortably and happily play with the same 32 pieces on the same 64 square board for all of their lives and not wish to do otherwise. This sort of commitment is unheard of in nearly any other game. Exceptions include Go, Bridge, Backgammon and Poker, though obviously that's not an exhaustive list. There are few video game examples... though personally I have a few that I do return to that I've played ten years or more. I do not write blogs about those games, however.

My steam tells me that I've played 4,344 hours of Oxygen Not Included. That's a trifle worrying.

No, it is not an addiction. It helps me relax. I swear.

Chess is an important guideline in understanding game quality. It does not need a new map, new factions, new skins (though, for some, they do get weird about collecting chess sets), new editions or new "lore."  If a D&D game pretends that its better because the DM rushes out to buy the latest splatbook or argue one edition over another, or throw out all they have in favour of a new edition, it suggests that everything they've believed or done up until that time has been disposable. And truthfully,  it probably was.

If D&D has an equivalent of inexaustibility to chess, it cannot be "more stuff." Going back to its origin, D&D has always embraced that concept, because "more stuff" means more shit to sell... it's the representation of an excellent business model. Perhaps Bill Gates learned what he knew from it. First, sell a broken, badly created game, full of "bugs" and garbage. Then, sell the user more bugs and more garbage as a "fix." If there's any chance that a fix occurs, reinvent the game as another badly made, "buggy" game and proceed to sell more fixes. Do this every 7 to 12 years. Rake in the profits.

Chess lacks bugs. We might call that the first gate that a game must cross through. Is it broken as a game? No? Then it's probably, on the surface, even if its the Game of Life, a better game than D&D.

Despite those who defend this with "You can make the game whatever you want it to be," this is not — sorry, not — a virtue.

Let's go back and repeat this paragraph, because I wrote it about a hundred years ago now.

In simple terms, a "good game" is obtained by providing the greatest number of players at any time with the greatest number of consequential choices, that together provide purpose (a reason to play), value (the time is spent accomplishing something), significance (something was learned); and clear intent (for much of the time, the players felt in control of the outcome). That's a tall order. But after all, D&D is not a board game.

What, first, is the reason to play? We can loosely describe that as the concept of D&D, but this only works if the participants accept the premise of that concept. Since most participants have no idea what that premise is, or how it works, they fail utterly right out of the gate. Because they don't know what D&D is, in part because the books don't explain it at all, or so badly, there's no way for them to buy into the premise. Without a premise, the game falls apart. In fact, there is no game. It becomes "whatever you want it to be," which demands multiple people to want the same thing, in the same way, in an mutually regarded and compatible fashion. That's not possible, so we get either a mess without a premise, or even less than that.

The Game of Life offers a simple premise: move along this available track, record the accumulation or loss of resources, proceed until the end is reached. Chess says, defeat the opposing king within an enclosed tactical structure that both sides adhere to. A vast number of people, even those who have played this game for decades, cannot do this for themselves or for other people. Try it, without relying on me. Create a phrasing for a premise that will stand up to the scrutiny of others. Go on. I'll wait. 

Fencebuilding

Hold onto your britches, because before this post is over, I'm going to praise the White Box set and AD&D both.

I grew up in a house that was built the year when I was born, 1964, and was occupied by my parents within the year. They paid $51,000 for a 2,400 square foot bungalow, counting the basement and main floor. I became conscious enough later to understand that most of the residents on the street were making around $25,000 on a single person income, with that number steadily rising through the 1970s and 80s. It was my only residence as a kid and after I moved out, my parents continued to live there until my mother died in 2012, and my father was forced to move out for health reasons in 2017.

As such, I watched the same neighbourhood change and flow over the first 53 years of my life... less, if we don't count the first four years. I watched trees planted, grow old and die. I saw lawns landscaped and then re-landscaped again to restore the grass. I knew childhood friends and acquaintances who inherited their parents' houses and raised their own kids there. Feuds came and went, neighbours came and went... and there were a lot of fences that were built, then rebuilt, then rebuilt again. Quite a lot of them were fences I hopped when I was young.

And because everyone on the street went from house poor to comfortable to high middle class, I saw attitudes towards yardwork change and adjust from the bare minimum to excess demonstration of homecare to paying someone else to do it.

All this is to set up a metaphor that I hope lands. Where it came to building a fence when I was about ten, it was possible to identify three kinds of resident. There was, first, someone like my father. He grew up in tiny village-towns in Alberta's backcountry, where he learned how to build fences as a boy because it was a way to make a quarter. He went on from there to build firebreaks as a novice firefighter, to building oilrigs in Colorado and Nebraska while he was in university, where he studied to be an engineer. When my father built a fence, he dug fencepoles down nine feet, because damn it, not only is this fence not going to lean, it's going to defy soil creep.

The second group are those who knew it was their responsibility to build their own fence, because it was needed and they didn't have the money to pay someone. So... they did the best they knew how. They knew it wasn't that great a fence, they knew it wasn't going to hold up forever... but thankfully, those who kept their jobs and did not move onto other things also lived long enough to reach they day when they could pay for a profession to come and remake their fence. Which is what they did. They didn't pretend they were fence-makers. They did the best they could until they found someone who could do better.

Then there's the third sort. And on our street, and most like streets, this is one fucking guy, and thankfully only one. This is the guy who has no idea how to build a fence, who does a piss poor job of it... but when it's built, they think it's beautiful. They think it's the Mona Lisa of fences. And the person on the other side of that property, that has to live with this junky row of haphazard lumber until, finally, a hailstorm blows it down, they daren't say one thing about that fence. Because this fence-builder is prepared to stand on his side and scream loud enough for the whole neighbourhood to hear about how great his fence is.

That one guy? That's Gary Gygax.

If the White Box set had found an editor, some one who could have looked at the project and identified the problems that I've seen — mostly issues of writing, continuity, explanation of terms and inconsistencies — the work would right now be vastly better. It's understandable, given that it was published with just $2,000, that an editor was out of the question. But suppose, when the money did come rolling in... and it did, because the new company TSR had the money to publish the hardcover Monster Manual in 1977, just three years later. But suppose that instead of rushing into that book, holding it off for another year, the designers of the White Box had just upgraded that work with the help of an editor and a better printing press? Suppose they had used the artists they had for the Monster Manual and respectfully illustrated it. Just suppose that when someone outside the mindset had said to one of the writers,

"This passage here?  Could you rewrite it and make it make sense? Oh, and I notice you haven't explained this rule you refer to fifteen times through the work. We can figure out a way to lay out the book to fit that rule in. If you haven't the time, explain the rule to me, and I'll have one of my copyreaders write it. You can sign off on it. What d'ya say about that?"

Sure, we'd still have that old original White Box, it would be a cute reminder that things don't always start well. But we'd have this hard cover straight-forward book describing those original rules in a way that made sense, that had structure, that were able to defend what they meant... and all it would have cost was to recognise that for all their idealism and game play experience, in reality none of these guys actually knew how to build a fence... er, knew how to actually publish something competently. I wouldn't now be able to kick the thing around nearly as much as I do. I think, honestly, it could have been quite an awesome, rational, really game beneficial piece of work.

Except, well... Gygax.

We know the record: editor-hostile correspondence, his public statements about rules authority, his reactions to criticism, the way AD&D was positioned rhetorically as both definitive and yet immune to correction...

An editor could have fixed everything. AD&D is only "flawed" because it's half-complete. Half-explained. Badly explained. The system, for what it does, is fine. But its so chock-full of badly organised mis-matched content, in some places scattered weirdly between the DMG and the Players Handbook (er, ahem, armour), in some places lacking the sentence that defines the term or the paragraph that explains why these other three paragraphs are being included... mixed in with declarations by a man who thought his fence was the bestest, most perfectest fence that's ever been built... that AD&D only looks like garbage.

Everyone knows the story about how George Lucas was seriously fucking up as the director of Star Wars. It was way beyond his ability as a director, the technical issues were way outside his ken, the coverage shots weren't consistently living up to the needs of the production... and frankly, it really did look like the film was going to crash and burn. The production itself was troubled. The shoot in Tunisia was plagued by weather problems, equipment failures, and logistical chaos. The special effects work was far behind schedule and had to be reinvented almost from scratch, which is why Industrial Light & Magic effectively came into existence during the film rather than before it. Early footage coming back to the studio did not inspire confidence. Studio executives believed they might be looking at an expensive failure, and Lucas himself was reportedly physically ill from stress during post-production.

The decisive intervention came when professional editors, most notably Marcia Lucas, along with Richard Chew and Paul Hirsch, restructured the film aggressively. Entire scenes were removed or reordered. The opening was tightened dramatically. Redundant exposition was cut. Cross-cutting was introduced to build momentum and emotional stakes, particularly in the Death Star trench run, which in early cuts was inert. Crucially, Lucas did not fight this intervention. He allowed the editors to do their job. The final structure of Star Wars—its pace, clarity, and emotional coherence—is largely a product of that editorial work.

It was only later, after having smoke blown up his ass for two decades, that Lucas became impossible to work with. And we know what happened.

That could have been Gygax's trajectory. He could have realised his limitations, he could have stepped aside and let wiser heads prevail. But by the release of the DMG, there were few editors who would work with him. Then he, like Lucas, could have taken all the credit for what the editor did... because publishing editors, like film editors, are used to that. No one is ever going to remember the ten best editors in Hollywood outside the cadre. Hell, most people don't even know a film is edited by someone else... they assume the director is doing it.

Yeah, I know! It's incredible.

But no, not Gygax. He wasn't going to listen to anyone. This was his fence, damn it, and it was perfect. And this is how we got here.

Yes, AD&D has problems. And yes, my last post was about my willingness to take it apart like the bones of a chicken. But if anyone here actually wants to read the account I'm writing, apart from the failings in the rules, there are rules that exist and are perfectly fine. The base structure is there; it's just that everyone whose looked at AD&D these last forty years and found a problem with it have thought, "That's got to go, so I build my own damned fence!"

Only, none of these guys are fence builders either. And like Gygax, they also seem to have no fucking idea.

Now... and I'm not happy to say this, but... I'm my father. I'm digging the posts nine feet deep to make this fence stand, and you'll see that when I'm done, yes, in fact it will. And then you'll have to admit, in the end, that AD&D's not such a bad system after all. Like Charlie Brown's tree, it just needs a little of the right kind of love.

When We Were Alone

Last Saturday, JB wrote,

"For the most part, I've approached my entire role-playing hobby in this way...and why not, when my introduction to the hobby was the D&D game?...even with game systems that are clearly not conducive to this style of play. Or rather, I did...up until the early 2000s when I started reading RPG theory over at the Forge and recognizing how different systems facilitate different types of play."

 

Okay, so ...

There's absolutely nothing I'd like less than to write a history about how this shit with the early 2000s and GNS theory came about, since I had no conscious part of it at the time and only had to deal with the aftermath.  At no time was I asked, "Do you want the critical elements of the game you love utterly reworked and massacred by an early internet-savvy self-publishing game designer ready to take advantage of an existing ennui perpetrated by a company that didn't actually give a shit about those playing it's RPG game?"

This, however, is hardly understood, and needs a history, one that isn't written by a salivating fan-boy like Maliszewski.  As such, let me piece together the nightmare as I understand it, from what I can find.

Before founding "The Forge," Ron Edwards was primarily known within the role-playing game (RPG) community as an independent game designer and a vocal critic of mainstream RPG design trends.  His early conclusions about the game was that a deep engagement existed between the player and the DM ... the interpretation of which provided him with the insights and experiences that fueled his critical perspectives on game design.  These perspectives had all the verification of a religious zealot ... and had he not possessed them until the present day, or at any time before the mid-1990s, they would have died away without ever being embraced.  But like so many things with which we contend with today, Edwards' particular brand of narcissism coincided with the newness of the internet, which enabled him to spread his ideas through The Forge, which we'll get to momentarily.

Edwards' most notable work was his game "Sorcerer," which he self-published in 1996. "Sorcerer" was distinctive for its focus on personal horror and moral dilemmas, as well as its innovative mechanics that emphasized narrative and thematic depth.  The game made no splash at all within the gaming community; it was just another piece of work, like hundreds and hundreds of others.

In 1999, he founded The Forge, an independent website with its own domain.  This site featured a custom-built online discussion forum specifically designed to facilitate in-depth conversations about role-playing game design and theory. The website was not associated with any of the major social media platforms; instead, it operated as a standalone forum dedicated solely to the RPG community.  While there wasn't a complete vacuum of RPG content at the time, the online resources were somewhat limited and fragmented. The founding of the Forge in 1999 provided a more focused and structured platform.  The alternative at that time were Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists, personal websites and blogs (before those became popular) and a few other forums, notably EN World (originally known as Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D Third Edition News).

Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf and Chaosium had their own websites, which included forums, but these tended to be clumsy, with basic and sometimes clunky designs, and they generally lacked the interactive features that modern websites offer. Most were built using simple HTML and often had rudimentary layouts and navigation.  Features such as forums, chat rooms, and content management systems were in their infancy. While some sites did have forums or message boards, these were often very basic.  They suffered from slow load times, static content and an absence of community engagement, largely because they had a staff of one person who fought mostly to keep the website from crashing.  Compared to these, The Forge, with its focus on community-driven discussion and content, provided a more engaging and specialized platform for RPG enthusiasts and designers.

As The Forge had a clear mission, to explore and develop RPG theory and support independent game design, and because it encouraged conversation rather than dictating a particular belief about gaming, it became a hotbed for new ideas and theories in a community that had become sterile and dissatisfied with D&D.  Many felt that the game, particularly its second edition, had grown stale and overly complex, with a plethora of supplements and rules expansions. The core mechanics and settings were seen as limiting for players seeking fresh and innovative gameplay experiences.  There was a growing interest in RPGs that focused more on narrative and character development rather than the traditional dungeon-crawling and combat-heavy style of D&D. Players wanted games that allowed for deeper storytelling and more meaningful character arcs.  This feeling had led to the proliferation of other games, like White Wolf's "Vampire: The Masquerade," which accentuated storytelling, personal horror and complex social dynamics.

The industry itself, throughout the 1990s, was experiencing fatigue from a flood of supplements, splatbooks and expansions that often felt more like cash grabs than meaningful content additions.  This commercialism left many players and GMs feeling disillusioned with the direction of mainstream RPGs.  This encouraged independent RPGs, which of course was the reason why Edwards tried to do so himself with Sorcerer.  The backdrop of all that was happening prior to 1999 made fertile ground for anyone ready to embrace the internet, see it for the opportunities it provided, and who posssessed a reasonably believable theory that could be espoused upon a dulled, thirsting audience wandering around in a desert.

It should come through this history that I don't have a lot of respect for Edwards.  I can't fault the man himself.  Probably, given what he knew, and the absence of ready game theory books written by educated persons who were unwilling to admit that role-playing games existed, much less to take time deconstructing them, GNS theory sounded plausible.  Unfortunately, like many, many other ideas presented by humans intended to explain things, like "ether" or "phlogiston," it's just fucking wrong.  This is painfully obvious to anyone whose ever done actual research into human behaviour or philosophy, because it bears so many of the characteristics of BAD IDEAS that have occurred in those fields, but to the uninitiated, typical human willing to engage with the internet between 1999 and 2003 (when virtually everyone was either young, a computer nerd or very horny and trying to get laid), it looks completely sensible.  So does Mormonism.  The RPG community was thirty, and willing to drink anything plausible, and Edwards, unknowingly, gave them sand.  And the community drank it up.

GNS Theory, briefly, is a framework developed to categorise and understand different styles of play and design goals in role-playing games (RPGs).  "GNS" stands for Gamist, Narrativist and Simulationist, the three primary types of play styles that the theory identifies.

The Gamist approach prioritises competition, challenge and strategic play, stressing the game aspect of RPGs.  Players in this style seek to overcome obstacles, achieve goals and often compete against each other or the game system itself.  Gamist play typically involves clear rules for conflict resolution, rewards for success and a focus on tactical decision-making, embodying the idea of "winning" within the game context.  Classic dungeon-crawling adventures in Dungeons & Dragons, where players face monsters and puzzles to gain treasure and experience points, are quintessential examples of Gamist play.

The Narrativist approach, on the other hand, prioritises storytelling, thematic depth and the creation of a coherent narrative.  It emphasizes the story aspect of RPGs, where players collaborate to tell meaningful and engaging stories.  Narrativist play often involves mechanics that support storytelling, such as narrative control, character development and thematic conflicts, focusing on creating a compelling and emotionally resonant narrative.  Games like "Dogs in the Vineyard" by Vincent Baker, which center around moral dilemmas and character-driven stories, exemplify Narrativist play.

The Simulationist approach prioritises the realistic or immersive simulation of a particular setting or experience, accentuating the world aspect of RPGs.  Players in this style aim to explore and interact with a detailed and consistent fictional environment.  Simulationist play often involves complex and detailed rules that simulate the physics, politics and social dynamics of the game world, aiming to provide a believable and immersive experience. Games like "GURPS" (Generic Universal RolePlaying System) by Steve Jackson Games, which aim to offer detailed rules for simulating a wide variety of settings and scenarios, are Simulationist in nature.

The theory includes the suggestion that  these three approaches are not mutually exclusive but represent different priorities and preferences that can influence game design and play. While a single game can incorporate elements of all three styles, often one will be more prominent. The theory helps designers and players understand their preferences and make informed choices about the games they create and play.  However, one major criticism is that GNS theory fails to account for the fluid and dynamic nature of player preferences. Players often shift their focus depending on the context of the game session, the story arc or their mood, which the rigid GNS categories do not adequately capture.  Additionally, the theory does not consider the social and psychological aspects of gaming, such as group dynamics, personal player goals and the impact of the game master’s style, which can significantly influence the play experience.

Another issue is the theory's limited applicability to a broader range of games. While it was developed with traditional tabletop RPGs in mind, the rise of diverse gaming formats, including live-action role-playing (LARP), digital RPGs and hybrid games, has shown that GNS theory does not comprehensively address the varied mechanics and experiences these formats offer.

Furthermore, the language and framework of GNS theory cannot be considered academic, but "pseudo-academic."  As Edwards was an amateur game designer, the terms "Gamist," "Narrativist," and "Simulationist" are not clearly defined and can be interpreted in various ways.  This imprecision leads to confusion and misapplication, as different people may have different understandings of what each term means.  Oversimplification, or reductionism, fails to capture the nuanced and overlapping aspects of actual gameplay experiences, making it less useful for practical analysis. Furthermore, much of GNS theory is based on anecdotal evidence and personal observations rather than systematic studies, which undermines its reliability and generalizability across different gaming groups and contexts. While GNS theory uses a formal and structured approach, it lacks the depth and rigor of genuine academic discourse.  This lack of interdisciplinary integration limits its explanatory power. Many professional game designers and scholars have criticized GNS theory for its simplistic approach and failure to account for the complexities of player motivations and game dynamics. These critiques highlight the theory's shortcomings and challenge its validity.

Over the years, more nuanced and flexible frameworks have emerged, such as the "Big Model" or the "Threefold Model," which offer more detailed and adaptable approaches to understanding RPG play styles. These newer models incorporate a broader range of factors, including player psychology and social interactions, providing a more holistic view of gaming experiences.

But the damage has already been done.  The negative imprint of GNS theory on the rhetoric and community think within the RPG community has been considerable. Despite its initial intention to provide a structured approach to understanding different play styles, the theory's flaws and limitations have led to several detrimental effects.  The ideas have contributed to a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction and division within the RPG community over the past two decades. Rather than unifying the community or providing a clear path forward, GNS theory has inadvertently led to a fracturing of concepts, beliefs, and ongoing arguments that have permeated the internet and RPG forums.

One significant issue is that GNS theory has exacerbated divisions within the community by creating rigid categories that encourage a "one size fits all" approach to play styles. This rigid categorization has often led to gatekeeping, where certain styles of play are deemed superior or more legitimate than others. Players and game designers who do not fit neatly into the Gamist, Narrativist, or Simulationist categories can feel marginalized or invalidated, resulting in a fragmented community where mutual respect and appreciation for diverse play styles are lacking.

The theory's imprecise terminology and lack of academic rigor have further fueled endless debates and misunderstandings. Discussions about game design and play preferences often devolve into semantic arguments about what each category truly means. This has led to a culture of pedantry and argumentation, where the focus is on defining and defending theoretical constructs rather than fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment. These debates can be alienating, driving people away from meaningful engagement and innovation in RPG design.

Moreover, the pseudo-academic nature of GNS theory has contributed to a sense of disillusionment. Many in the community initially embraced the theory as a way to bring clarity and improvement to RPG design, only to find that its simplistic and flawed framework did not hold up to scrutiny. This disillusionment has led to a broader skepticism about RPG theories in general, with some feeling that theoretical discussions are more about intellectual posturing than practical improvement.

The fracturing effect of GNS theory has also manifested in the proliferation of niche communities and subcultures within the broader RPG landscape. While diversity in gaming is generally positive, the sharp divisions and lack of common ground have led to isolated echo chambers rather than a cohesive and supportive community. This isolation can stifle cross-pollination of ideas and reduce opportunities for collaborative growth and innovation.

In essence, rather than leading the dissatisfied out of the desert, GNS theory has left a lingering impact on a culture where arguments about play styles often overshadow the joy and creativity that RPGs are meant to inspire. This persistent division underscores the need for more flexible, inclusive, and practical approaches to understanding and enhancing the role-playing game experience.

The state of RPG design over the past two decades has, in many ways, exacerbated the issues that were already problematic in the 1990s. Despite attempts at innovation, many contemporary games still reflect and even amplify the dissatisfactions that existed back then.  5th Edition, while popular, embodies many of the same issues that plagued earlier editions. The game often prioritises superficial storytelling that lacks thematic depth, relying heavily on the Dungeon Master to enforce narrative coherence. This results in a gaming experience that can feel unstructured and unsatisfying, with player whims often driving the story in directions that lack substantive engagement.  Moreover, many modern RPGs continue to stress combat and tactical elements, aspects that were criticized in the 1990s for overshadowing other forms of play. Even games that claim to focus on narrative often fall back on these familiar mechanics, leading to a lack of true innovation in how stories are told within RPGs. This reliance on old, combat-centric mechanics highlights a failure to appease those people who do not care for combat, who still insist on forcing the game away from it.

Indie games, which emerged from the Forge community, aimed to counteract these trends but often ended up creating niche experiences that did not appeal broadly. These games frequently focused on specific themes or narrative mechanics but failed to integrate a balanced approach that could satisfy a wider audience. This has left a gap between mainstream and indie games, with neither fully addressing the underlying dissatisfaction.

Additionally, the rise of corporate influence in game design has led to a proliferation of products that values marketability over genuine innovation. Games are often designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience, resulting in diluted mechanics and superficial storytelling. This commercial approach has further entrenched the issues that were present in the 1990s, making it harder for truly innovative designs to gain traction.  As a result, the promotional rhetoric from gaming companies drastically overstates the innovative aspects of their products. This creates a cycle of hype and disappointment, where games are marketed as revolutionary but fail to deliver meaningful advancements in play experience. Players are left feeling disillusioned, as the promised innovations rarely materialize in a way that addresses their core frustrations.

And the result of all this, the end lesson that cannot or will not be learned, is that the industry, the game designers, the publishers, those in power, and most of those who publish works for a buck and sit on panels discussing their nuanced inadequacy to change anything that's been going on for 30 years now, DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU.  They don't give a fuck what kind of game you want to play, or what your needs are, or where the game is going in the future or anything having to do with your problems as a DM or what your gaming group wants.  They care about your money, about putting flashy, glitzy things in front of you that convince you to dump another pile of money in their pocket.  And so long as they can massage the language in order to make YOU think that they're going somewhere important with YOUR game, you'll keep bending over and letting them fuck your wallet for as long as you continue being part of this community.

Nobody out here is going to help you.  The internet won't, the voices won't, a general theory of gaming won't, a great community full of deep conversational analysis won't, a new module won't, a new game won't.  You're on your own.  You've always been on your own.  And pre-internet, when everyone fucking knew this, is when ALL the valuable stuff created for these games was written.

When We Were Alone.

So get the internet out of your head.  You want your game to be a good game, do it yourself.

What is never understood about the culture we're all a part of — that disconsolation and ennui associated with the game in the 1990s, that people thought needed to be solved ... that people today still think needs to be solved ... represents the voice of those who aren't involved with the game's creation.  In short, the voice of those who don't matter.  We should not care about people who "don't like the game as it is."  They don't count.  The game wasn't made for them.  Okay.  Let them go and find another game.  We need to stop thinking that our game needs to change so it can be their game.  Fuck them.  They're not part of us.  They never have been.  Like Edwards, who did not like the game that existed, who thought it needed to be some other game, they aren't interested in what we do, or what we like.  They just want to be catered to.

And we need to stop doing that.

F.F.S.

Rewriting the death page on my wiki, I ran across this:

In Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), death is a significant element of the game's mechanics and storytelling. D&D is a tabletop role-playing game where players create and control characters who embark on adventures in a fantasy world. These characters can meet their demise under various circumstances, and the game rules define how death is handled.

When a player character (PC) reaches 0 hit points or falls to a negative hit point total equal to their maximum hit points, they become unconscious and are considered "dying." At this point, the character typically starts making death saving throws at the beginning of their turns to determine whether they stabilize, continue to lose hit points, or die.

The key aspects of death in D&D include:

1. Death Saving Throws: A dying character makes death saving throws at the start of their turn. A d20 is rolled, and a result of 10 or higher is a success, while 9 or lower is a failure. A result of 20 counts as two successes, and a result of 1 counts as two failures.

2. Stabilization: If a character accumulates three successes before three failures, they stabilize and are no longer in danger of dying, although they remain unconscious. If a character accumulates three failures, they die.

3. Healing: Another character can attempt to stabilize or heal the dying character using spells or abilities that restore hit points, preventing the need for death saving throws.

4. Death: If a character accumulates three failures on their death saving throws, they die, and their character is considered deceased. The player might need to create a new character to continue playing.

5. Resurrection: D&D provides various magical spells and abilities, like "revivify," "raise dead," "resurrection," or "true resurrection," which can be used to bring a deceased character back to life, though these typically come with limitations and consequences.

Death in D&D is an integral part of the game, and it can lead to dramatic and emotional moments in the storytelling. It serves to add a sense of risk and tension to the adventures, as players must carefully consider their actions and decisions, knowing that their characters' lives are on the line. The handling of death can vary depending on the edition of D&D being played and the house rules of the Dungeon Master (DM).

 I'd like to propose another rule for Texas hold 'em in the same vein:

If there are two or more players remaining after the final betting round, they reveal their hole cards.  When it happens that the player with the worst five-card hand is revealed, then that person draws another card from the deck and adds it to the total number of cards in his or her hand, which applies only to that player.  If this isn't sufficient for that player to obtain the best five-card hand, then another card is drawn, and if that card still isn't sufficient for the best hand, then the player draws two more cards.  And if that isn't sufficient to win the hand, then the player with the original best five-card hand wins the pot.

But if any of the newly drawn cards do enable the player to have the best five-card hand, then the player who originally had the best five-card hand should now draw a card to see if that's sufficient to restore that player's lead.  If it does, then the original losing character should draw another card, and so on, until all the cards in the deck are gone or until one of the players, after drawing four cards in succession, fails to have the best hand.

What's really weird, is that in trying to discuss the concept of death with chatGPT, which wrote out the rules from what I presume is 5th edition, it kept saying that if the player couldn't bring the player back to life, then the game was over for the player:

"They may no longer engage in the game's events, respond to interactions, or contribute to the ongoing narrative. Instead, the player's role shifts to that of a spectator, observing the unfolding story and the actions of their fellow players."

It took bending over backwards to get the program to admit that players "might" begin the process of creating a new character to rejoin the game.  Like this is so anathema to the concept of the "unfolding story and the actions of their fellow players" that it's hardly worth considering.

Mechanical Design

Watching this lecture introducing algorithmic game theory, I feel a small amount closer to defining what's wrong with D&D, as a game concept.  This is not something a lot of people like to hear, about a game they purportedly love, but I love it too and I'm prepared to acknowledge that the structure and the function of the game has failings.  All things do.  We study these things to make them better.

The reader is free to watch the lecture, though in no way does it mention D&D, or specifically any of the points I'm going to make here.  Tim Roughgarden uses, as an example, the case where several badminton teams during the London 2012 Olympics deliberately sought to lose matches in an effort to place themselves more effectively on the roster of an 8-team knockout round for the gold, silver and bronze medals.  In the lecture, this leads to an examination of how the goals of badminton players in the tournament failed to align with the goals of the tournament's organisers.  It was at this point that a light went off in my head.

Take this quote from Roughgarden:

"You cannot expect participants to behave in a way other than in their own interests, that is an unreasonable assumption of the designer. You must account for strategic behaviour. If you don’t do it carefully, you will get unexpected and often undesirable consequences."

Matters of system design that properly take into account the strategic behaviours of the participants come under the term, "mechanism design."

D&D, as a game, is a mechanism — one not designed by persons coached in game theory, but by a bunch of amateur game designers in a much more primitive world without the benefit of quality assurance by others with experience in RPGs ... because RPGs did not exist.  Expecting D&D to be sufficiently functional, just because the guys who made it were "smart," is like saying the original horseless carriage with an internal combustion engine should also be sufficient, because Karl Benz was also a smart guy.  Yet, constantly, many, many participants of the game fervently argue exactly that, when touting the original models rolled off the assembly line by Gygax and Arneson in 1974 and 1975.  Even AD&D is no better than a Model T.

Why are we arguing that because a Model T runs, that's all we need for the design of the mechanism?

In the badminton example above, a mis-alignment occurred between the strategic goals of the players and the strategic goals of the tournament's designers.  The players wanted the best medal possible.  The designers wanted the best effort from all teams in all matches.  However, by deliberately losing a match, some teams realised they could compete for the silver and bronze medal effectively, if they weren't knocked out by the team everyone acknowledged to be the best in the world — who did, in the end, take the gold.  The result were two highly laughable matches in which multiple competitors deliberately sought to lose their games against each other, so they'd not have to face best team early in the knock-out process.

Car manufacturing also features two groups: buyers of cars and manufacturers.  Buyers wanted a reliable machine that would go faster, look better and be more comfortable; and they absolutely would not settle.  Manufacturers who produced cars towards those goals could rely on owner of lesser cars to forsake older models to buy new ones — as long as the new ones met the buyer's standards.  Goals for both sides were aligned, so cars grew radically better over the decades, despite the fact that they regularly cause the deaths of thousands, while disastrously promoting local disorder, greed, war, ecological destruction and so on.

D&D, and most role-playing games, feature two groups: the players and the DM.

The players strategic goals are to get more stuff, more money, more power, more choices and in general seek the easiest path towards these things.  In the original game, the balance of these were measurable.  Higher numbers defined coin, experience and level, while the decimation and effect caused by magical items were plainly evident, though somewhat less measurable.  The "easiest" path suggested not dying, and indeed not coming close to dying, with a minimum of hard problem solving — the sort that required coaxing or clues from the DM.

The DM's strategic goal, for the most part, has never been valuably defined.  As someone whose written much about DMing, and has much experience with the subject, I'd boil down the general attitude towards the DM's goal as, "Provide a good game."

I don't want this to be a strawman.  If someone would like to advance an alternative goal, one that can be pointed to on the game company's website, or any other official source, I'd be happy to read it.  At the same time, I can easily find hundreds of examples that exhaustively describes what the DM does, and is responsible for, without a single word of what the DM wants.

Verbs used include in charge, controls, describes, making rules, develops, serves, modifies, removes, creates, says and draws the line.

Not only do we ghost the DM's goals, we're oblivious to why an individual would take on the role.  In part, I believe, this is because virtually any discussion related to "a desire for power" must be censored from correct political discourse (see chatGPT) ... but also because I frankly believe most people haven't a clue.  Like trying to explain why a masochist would be a masochist, anyone who doesn't want to be a DM can't understand why anyone would want to be.

The remainder — on stackexchange, reddit, in the comments section of the company and those seeking my advice — seem most concerned with appearing or being capable, effecting a game that people will like, finding new ideas to present or just, as I've said, providing a good game.  There are a few deplorables who gloat about the acquisition of power.  That's about it.

It stands to reason that this acts disfunctionally as a design formula.  First off, the DM's desire for a good game isn't measurable in any degree.  Informerly, it translates as everyone leaving the table having had a "good time" or "fun," which must assume that from the player's perspective, something was achieved towards their goals of becoming wealthier and more powerful, and not dead.  From that we can extrapolate pretty easily that if a DM consistently makes the players less wealthy, less powerful or more dead, what's not being run is a "good game."

In the short term, the game remains sustainable under this premise.  Initially, the players accept that they must achieve their goals through boundaries imposed by the rules, where the doling out of their goals is also defined somewhat, and where achievement has to occur through situations of combat and problem solving.  Many of Gygax's earliest skeins of wisdom revolve around not making the game "easy" for the players, which goes directly against the player's goal of easy winnings ... but so long as the players are achieving most of their other goals of wealth and power, "easy" can be overlooked and in large part mitigated by a predictable collection of both easily-won and hard-won victories on account of the random die roll.

Gygax was, however, ignored.  With the Dragon magazine, a discourse becomes evident during the second group of fifty issues of pushing back against many of the game's rules, asking for additional abilities and powers, starting players in a campaign at higher levels, pre-made characters and abandonment of encumbrance and other accounting  —  anything that winnowed out player inconvenience or boredom with certain game requirements.  In short, unable to achieve ease through the actual game, players and DMs alike strived to redesign the "meta-game" in accordance with player goals.  Arguably, this helped align what the DM wanted with the players; a good game progressively became giving the players what they wanted, primarily because what a "good game" was had never been effectively or satisfactorily explained.

This alignment has resulted in considerable degradation of system performance.  Consider how it's created an equilibrium.  A typical DM knows what the players want and realises that a change that imposes an additional difficulty on the players may result in quittage of play.  There's even a resistance against encouraging other DMs to create difficulties.

If I, for example, were to tell you, dear Reader, that you should force your players to use encumbrance, and you do, there's a danger your players might quit your game.  This would give you reason to hold me responsible for giving you bad advice.  Fear that I might give you bad advice of this sort discourages me from taking such a position.  Therefore, I strive instead to give you advice that I know your players will like, which perpetrates the overall degredation of the system.  And you, the DM, can point to my advice and say, "Well, Alexis approves of me making things easier for the players."  Not only are your players "happy," you have the benefit of authority to tell you what a good job you're doing.

This has gone on for 40 years, with many "advisors" making good book by playing it safe with players and DMs they'll never meet.

Imagine that the entire car industry, after the Model T, suddenly found that the only thing that buyers cared about was "safety" and "cost."  For whatever reason, the whole population ceased to want any car that went faster, looked more sleek and cool, was more comfortable or was even more reliable.  Maybe everyone in the world somehow acquired this terrific fetish for cars that would break down all the time, were uncomfortable to ride in, had trouble making journeys of more than three miles, couldn't possibly go fast enough to cause a serious injury and so on.  This would mean far less demand on fuel, no real change to the way cities are arranged and probably the disappearance of the automobile altogether.  Not saying this is a laudable goal, I'm just proposing a circumstance.

In that sort of culture, it would make sense for someone to make a case for what a great car the Model T used to be.  After all, it ran pretty well, it got you where you wanted to go, it was more comfortable than a horse and so on.  In a world where automobiles made after the Model T ran like garbage, promoting the Model T would make a lot of sense.

This is what happened with OD&D, and is now starting to happen with AD&D.  Mechanisms that were, in fact, not very good, are being lauded as superior because they are to the degraded hunks of junk roaming around now, pretending to be part of the originator's vision.

I've never had any trouble telling DMs to do irascibly hard things with their games because I'm of the opinion that if your players quit, you should get better players.  My definition of a "good" game is drastically different from that of what was embraced by the industry and pundits fearful of losing their "official" status.  I believe that good games throughout history have been good because they're HARD, not because they're easy.  The easier we make a game, the less value it has.  There may always be people who are ready to spend an evening playing a rousing game of rock-paper-scissors, but most of us grow out of it at a young age.

"Hard" is rather indefinable.  If you play checkers against a 6 y.o., you'll find it's a pretty easy game for you.  On the other hand, play it against a tournament player and good luck.  It stands to reason that D&D, and any RPG, must be measured on the same scale.  If I run a bunch of 10 y.o.'s, I can't employ the same mechanics as I do with a group of adults.  The subject material can't fit the same format and the problem solving must suit the participants.  I may be able to run a more complex, dilemma-ridden game, but my ability is not, and should not be relevant.

At the same time, it wouldn't be my desire to make it easy on the little tykes.  Like examples JB has given with his children, possible death remains part of the context and the need for uncertain choice as well.  The overall must maintain that the game is difficult to play, without being excessively frustrating or impossible.  'Course, a definition of "excessively" is wanting.  Players find it excessively frustrating to write up their own characters, or track how much food they've eaten, or what clothes they're wearing, or accept that no, they can't climb a giant like a tree.  Trees don't move, they don't have hands, they don't kick climbers off their legs or slap creatures in the face who have their arms full.  It's a little funny that these climbers usually purport to accomplish this feat one-handed, since the other one's carrying the knife to be plunged into the giant's neck.

I do not, therefore, encourage that people should get excited about driving a Model T.  Yes, it's an improvement.

But for fuck's sake people.  We can do better.

_____

If you wish to comment, please write questions, ideas or opinions to alexiss1@telus.net and they will be posted on Saturdays.  I do wish someone would, as Saturday's the day after tomorrow, and I haven't got anything to put there yet.

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

Not Enough Game

D&D started as a wargame, in which the goal was for one's unit, represented by a paper chit, to defeat or destroy other units and claim victory.  Thus the payoff, or reward, was the visceral feeling of having "won."  As the playing board lacked any other features, and as the units had no "character" per se, the pursuit of strategy and survival represented the entire game.  It was called Chain Mail.

The introduction of character evolved from the tendency of the players to anthromophise their game chits, "rooting" for one to win, or do well, because it had displayed qualities of luck that caused viewers (including the players) to impart empathy to the chit.  I've experienced this sensation many times while playing wargames, feeling myself drawn to a particular unit that "somehow" (e.g., luck) kept surviving when it should have been long dead.  The mind impresses a vision of a small and desperate squad holding a position against all odds; despite being surrounded by the enemy, they somehow last turn after turn, even inflicting damage in kind.  And if the unit does die (though when is more common than if), one feels a solemn respect that, in consideration, makes no sense at all.  But the sentiment is very human.

Steadily, this emotional tone suggested first the notion that a given unit would naturally continue onto the next battle — and having been a "winner," it should be somehow stronger and more capable in the next fight.  The fights themselves were transformed into affairs that had their own personalities, until it was conceived that the fights were taking place against a fantasy background, based upon the idea of romantic knights pursuing evil creatures in the dark and dispatching them, in the manner of Beowulf, St. George, Lancelot and other themes to be found in the stories of King Arthur and The Faerie Queen.  Thus established the notion of a "dungeon," into which characters entered to kill monsters ... but as the game was invented by Americans, so that "honour" and "renown" ceased to be adequate for the victory, treasure was installed as a meaningful payoff.

Various alterations to this theme produced a game in which acquisition was the goal; specifically, acquisition of experience, treasure and ultimate prowess and empowerment.  This would establish a pattern of "characters" — essentially player-manipulated chits, though the chit and its manipulation now took place in the imagination of the "dungeon master" and the player — killing monsters to get treasure to buy objects that made it easier to kill monsters, so that bigger monsters could be killed, with bigger hauls of treasure that could buy even more fabulous monsters, with more fabulous treasures and so on.

Though despite the clear establishment of a game that definitely aroused the imaginations of the contestants, and appealed to a wide age range of gamers who were willing to shell out quite a lot of money each, the result was rather ... repetitive.  This was understood almost at once, within a year of the game's initial basic launch.  Yet it was conceived that with additional monsters, additional powers, additional character-based collection of powers, additional things to buy at the market and more elaborate arrangements of underground rooms and monster collections, the repetitiveness could be forestalled indefinitely.

Yet these things merely exacerbated the market's dependency on "new" things, without in fact addressing the repetitive aspect of the game's design.  It was seen, generally, that all games are "repetitive."  Chess, checkers, cribbage, poker, bridge, boardgames and even outdoor games and sports have a repetitive aspect, so this element in role-playing games was viewed in the same light as any other game ... overlooking the fact that the games listed above, and most other games besides, are easy to play, and don't require enormous prep work, understanding of the rules and time to gain experience and proficiency.  Other games involve a single cash layout, or may be borrowed, require very little time before play can start and enable the player to develop a fair skillfulness after 20 to 40 hours.  D&D and other role-playing games have multiple price points, encourage continuous outlay of funds, requires considerable time spent familiarising oneself with the rules and often more than an hour of game time just to start playing.  And many DMs who try to run the game find that they're ineffective or still struggling after years of play.  All for a game that's still repetitive and from which most players drop out after 18 to 30 months.

I can still sit down to play a game of cribbage right now, though I haven't actually played the game since the 1990s, without needing the rules re-explained.  Any player who hasn't participated in a D&D game for the last 25 years will not only find that they've forgotten nearly everything they might have once known, that many of the rules have been changed and vast numbers of things have been added in pursuit of the "newness" that counteracts the game's repetitiveness.

Some pushback to be felt among players who tire of the amount of time spent includes simplifying the rules, reducing the amount of time "wasted" on character creation, reduction of "excessive" combat (the original game, that brought about the game's popularity, possessed only combat), shortcuts to rule management and emphasis on non-game elements like "character" and "story."

The rise of these latter elements stress "game" elements such as objective, in which the player attempts to achieve something; interactivity, or engagement with the game world; player agency, in which the player influences or shapes the game's narrative; cooperativeness, in which players strive to achieve prepared goals; and aesthetic, those elements of the game that appeal to the player's emotional connection with the game experience.  The payoff, then, is having achieved these things to one's satisfaction.

Game elements not enhanced or even addressed by character and story include rules, what's allowed and what isn't; mechanics, those specific actions or alternatives available to the players; feedback, hard evidence of the player's game progress; challenge, concrete difficulties that must be surpassed to achieve the objective; skill and mastery, which describes the player's learning of the game and grown more masterful of it; and strategy, in which choices dictate the possibility of achieving the outcome.

Take note of how exception of the latter category makes the game's objective more easily obtainable, since advancing characterisation and story requires no specific actions, no evidence of progress and difficulties that can be handwaved, without the player needing to be skilled, capable of planning or subject to consequences.  With much of the game stripped away, either by ignoring multiple game elements, or by drastically simplifying rules and fixed character skills and stats, the result becomes something that's, quote, "easy to play" ... which is exactly the drawback that D&D has had since the beginning, that makes it different from other successful games.

Unfortunately, it's still repetitive.  And while chess, checkers, bridge, cribbage, poker, bridge, boardgames, outdoor games and sports offer inescapable competition between participants, scaled-down simplified D&D offers none of this.  What's left is a repetitive, easy to play game that's yet drowning in game elements like monsters, feats, characters, races, special rules, equipment and magic, so that the DM still has to remember vast amounts of information and still has to manage a game group in a manner that keeps the experience as fresh and lively as possible, while ensuring their agency to be whatever they want to be without restriction or measurement.

Yeesh.

Returning to the original concept of the game that firmly placed acquisition as the game's objective.  Initially, it was acquisition of survival as a chit on a combat game board, and later it became the acquisition of materials and character empowerment.  These things are not the fault, as I see it.  The fault was that, having established the dungeon as the place to get materials and empowerment, the game CEASED to evolve, stopping there.  Materials and empowerment were specifically tailored to manage dungeon play, and nothing else, because nothing else was meaningfully addressed as a long term ideal for game play.  It was imagined that eventually player characters would become powerful enough to establish themselves as rulers over part of the game's setting, but what they would do as rulers was never properly addressed or described, while none of the community's on-the-side game development considered player fiefdoms or castles as merely places to store stuff while the players went back to the dungeon for more.

Essentially, what D&D lacks, and which it needs desperately, are other challenges against which players may apply their wealth, their gear, their intuition, their strategy and their empowered selves against.  Then, when that had achieved the goal of plundering a dungeon, there would be other entirely different goals, ones that couldn't be solved by more fabulous equipment and stronger abilities, but which would challenge the players in a totally different manner.  If the game could be drastically enhanced in this way, it would cease to be repetitive — and participants who, at the beginning, fell in love with the game, would have less reason to quit.

Unfortunately, such would require more rules and more mechanics — and not merely of the sort where we're able to churn out the same motif, but different, as with monsters, spells, magic items and feats.  No, to support advanced game application would require the establishment of boundaries, limitations and a structured framework, with puzzle solving and resource management of a completely different manner.   In many ways, we're speaking of a completely new and additional, yet compatible game, within which the players would be able to develop new personal skills (rather than selecting character skills) and mastery over these new mechanics and strategies.  Done well, this would allow players to engage with the game very differently, increasing the level at which players are absorbed and connected to a game that they've long loved, but with which they've grow increasingly tired of due to its dissatisfying repetitiveness.

Unfortunately, this would make the overall game more difficult to learn.  It would mean even greater preparatory time in many cases.  It would defy the simplicity of producing commercial material on a standardised template, as the expections of the players would be that much higher.

But I don't think it would necessarily take longer to learn.  DMs could cut their teeth upon the game's original dungeon format, until gathering the necessary acumen to elevate to the advanced game.  Once sufficient numbers of advanced DMs and gamers had come into existence, it would be easier for these to lend a hand up to others, especially as they gathered insight into how to step up from the "lower" game.  Then, after the usual two year period at which DM's quit, because there seems little point to just starting just another adventure in a dungeon, they might recognise that they're ready to move onto the next thing.

True enough, I'm always postulating such things as though they might happen, when it's highly probable they won't.  But they might have.  IF the goal of Gygax and others in the beginning had reached higher in the game's formative years, they might have realised — though clearly they lacked the necessary vision — to understand that what they'd wrought wasn't actually enough game.  But the fooferaw convinced them that they HAD done it, that they'd thought of everything, that what they had was the sum total of the game's potential, and thus they fell into the trap that would have them, and hundreds of game leaders after them, perpetually polishing a turd to be as bright as it could possibly be.  Today, nearly all of what's written about or designed for D&D has been trying to improve or make it look better, without it actually becoming better.  So much effort has been put into enhancing the appearance of the thing, while ignoring its fundamental flaws and lack of quality across the board, in every edition, that it's been lost to the vast majority of adherents that D&D, and other games like it, just AREN'T as good as they pretend to be.  And let's admit: the underlying problems are substantial.  Because the game, as a game, is substandard.

I continue to believe that additional applications to player character development are legion.  Cast aside the dungeon, and the characters' host of skills are applicable to any pursuit the players choose to undertake.  A practical minded, experienced DM ought to be able to manage a party attempting to do any of those things — which we can see in the structural mechanics of media and video game sources with which we're all familiar.  Players ought to be able to find their missing adoptive daughter; settle personal struggles with fellow gang members; grow as leaders and build relationships with followers and others; piece together the history or culture of the game world; uncover mysteries such as the disappearance of fellow characters; navigate through, or take over, an existing civil war; respond to massive breaches in space time and reality; face moral dilemmas; make moral judgments about others; and do all of it without ever once needing to get a McGuffin from a dungeon, or wholly rely upon their magical abilities to solve every problem or overcome every obstacle.  Players can find themselves face-to-face with real world situations that mere empowerment, wealth and special tools can't fix in a heartbeat.  Where they have to fix the problem by thinking about it, and acting with dispatch, courage, risk, compassion and pragmatism, as the case calls for.

We're already building hundreds upon hundreds of video games where every conceivable form of human interaction or struggle is being given RULES and MECHANICS.  Why can't these same rules and mechanics be imposed in a D&D setting, with a little imagination and practical methodology?  It's not like clunky video games, which rely upon pre-programming a finite set of interactions, can do something the human mind can't do, an instrument that can instantly produce a spontaneous interaction, within a second or two, as needed?

There is far, far, far more game available in D&D than we give the potential structure of the game credit for ... but first, we need to understand how, and why, we continue to cling to an outdated, clumsy, badly designed, unevolved piece of junk.  And for the sake of what?  Nostalgia?  'Cause that's what we played when we were kids?  Because we already have the books?  Because design is takes a lot of time, despite the billions of hours that are shoved into video games that still don't produce a human experience like D&D can?  Piffle.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.