Like the Spider

Taking my morning walk, I could feel myself break a spider's web that had been strung from the tree on my left to the car on my right. Given that people must walk there every day, and given that the car must move off from the curb also, I found myself wondering about the spider that releases a light silk line into the air to let the wind carry it until it catches another surface. Once it catches, the spider tightens and reinforces it, then uses it as a first bridge line for the rest of the web. Course, that never happens, because human activity produces a routine environment destruction of the spider's efforts. Yet, "orb-weavers" who do this rebuild often, sometimes daily, even eating their webs so they can be reused, because if it catches just one decent sized insect (and for some of the smallest types, that can be very small from our perspective), then the effort hasn't been wasted.

My first thought was to connect this effort to prepping games for Dungeons and Dragons. Weird, huh?

It's a matter of apparent wasted effort when it seems to provide no real value or consequence. Obviously, the spider is functioning from instinct. It lets its web to the wind because it has adapted that way to its environment. Humans are harder. We do things by instinct, but because we have the capacity to think we find ourselves endlessly forced to justify that instinct in a concrete, identifiable way... even if that way becomes story-making we tell ourselves. We convince ourselves that this jam is better than that because this is "sweeter" or "less chewy" or "thicker"... when in fact, we're just reaching for things to call the jelly we like versus how to describe the jelly we don't. All jellies are sweet, chewy or thick; they're jelly. We only care which is which when we're forced to rate them. Human instinct says, eat the one that's closest when your hungry. Human thought tells us, we can choose which one to eat because we can prepare for when we are hungry. And... for the most part, that choice is simpler if we need only go to the shelf, look for the cherry and buy it. Cognisance, explaining the reason we do things, only gets hard when we have to explain to someone else "why cherry."

In turn, D&D preparation gets easier when we turn off the signal that keeps asking "what are we doing this preparation for?"  There are a great many DMs who simply enjoy making megadungeons. They don't need a reason. The dungeons don't ever actually have to be used in a game. Yet the act is just pleasant, and because it is, the act can consume hundreds of hours in the space of a season. It doesn't need to be justified. Like the spider, it's just what we do.

The leap comes when we realise that non-intentional preparation actually IS preparation, just in another form. Because it's more enjoyable than the forced stuff we have to do for a specific game, we do more of it. And it changes what we know, and how good we get at it, and how rational we become doing it and... ultimately, it gives us a group of skills we can apply to other things. Steady work enlarges our stock of patterns, instincts, procedures and solutions. We learn scale, we learn how rooms connect and how big they ought to be... and most of all, how repetition, drawing the same thing over and over again, pushes us to invent new things to draw, new ideas, new possibilities.

Anyone who's decided they're going to make a world because it has to be done, not out of love for world making, soon discovers how dreadful the experience is. As soon as you have to use your head to convince your body to go through the motions of dungeon design, you've already lost the battle. There's no way, when you're thinking about it all the time, and wondering if this is going to do any good, or if it has value, to just keep at it. You're like the spider would be if it fretted all the time about whether or not it would catch food today. The spider doesn't think about that because it can't. It just does. If it doesn't catch food, it dies. And it doesn't think about that either. Which might be a blessing... except the spider can't recognise a blessing.

This is why "shortcuts" appear so desirable. We don't want to make a world, but we want to have one. We get bored trying to make a module, so we buy one. We don't want to learn for ourselves how to DM through practice and effort and pattern recognition — we just want someone to tell us how to be one, in such a way that it happens easily. Like a fingersnap. Poof, you can DM now. That's much better than having to slog our way through endless room drawing and tedious research about things we don't in fact care about.

The spider is born to do what it does. People want to be born with the knowledge of how to DM. That would be perfect.

This is why the theory that some DMs are just "naturally" good at this is so popular. It lends credence to the belief that knowledge is a lock that all we need do is find a key for, and again, just like that, we can do it. And if we can't, well... there's no point trying. "I wasn't born a DM, so realistically, there's no point in my trying to be one."

I'll be conceited and arrogant and say that I've never met one of these "natural" DMs who especially impressed me, as the all seem to be a lot of show and performance and not much on flexibility and design. Mercer, for example, is all show; as a DM, he runs a pre-made story that's fleshed out with glitz and glamour... but it only works if the players don't have there own agenda. This is fine for what he was doing: "acting" like a good DM. I didn't see a thing in any episode I watched that suggested he had any skillset except that.

Dungeon Mastering as a skill we "inhabit" like the spider comes down to two things: the ability to assume authority that, right or wrong, causes the players to give way when we speak. The other is managing player independence. If you take that independence and cram it into a set of "if-then" options, as modules do, as Gygax told us to do, as the company continues to argue we ought to do, that solves the second problem. This argues that players, in essence, are leashed. They have only the independence we allow them to have. Which isn't really "independence," but hey, what'ya want for a game where the rules ain't really the rules anyway?

All the DMs I've met that were worth their salt had a "second game" going on the side. Not running other people, not creating their own characters to run in a dungeon like playing chess against ourselves (but a lot of us have tried it). No, just making. Like the whittler who makes squirrel after squirrel with a pen-knife until the squirrels look really, really good, and there are hundreds of them on every shelf in the basement, with a pile of them in the corner over there. Because the squirrel's end is not the object. Making is the object.

For the DM, the whittled squirrel is a laptop or a file book full of unused dungeons, failed attempts to create an economy, maps for other planets and planes the players will never see, scale drawings of towns that have no application, price lists, geneologies, histories... the list goes on and on. It does not matter that these things are not "useful." At some point, when the DM needs something, the thing may be remembered and sought after — either without success, or only to discover that the thing was made so long ago that it pales compared to how the DM would draw that map now, or design that dungeon now, or make up that geneology now. Which is fine, because the DM learned how and can churn out a better, needed product in a matter of hours. You want a squirrel? No, don't take that one off the shelf. Listen, give me two hours, I'll make you a better one right now.

That brings us back to the spider. I break the spider's web and think, what a pity, the spider spent that effort for nothing. But the spider's "effort" is irrelevant. The spider's nature makes the effort fluidly, unconsciously, and when it's gone, it's not wasted because it's not thought about. Thinking is the stumbling block, not doing.

The common DM thinks about objects. They want a dungeon, a world, an "adventure," an end result that they think they need to make their world happen. They are utterly trapped in the materialism of DMing because its the only part of their gaming that they can remotely understand. Thus, if a module sits on the shelf and is never used, it IS a waste... of money, of expectation, of space on the shelf. And because they need the object to run the game, they're dependent on others who can make it for them, They're dependent on the object arriving in time, or they need to make sure they have enough of every kind of object so that if something unexpected comes up, they'll be ready. They run their game worlds like an inventory.

But the more capable DM thinks of skills. Making the dungeon, making the world, making the adventure. The skill means I don't need to have one ready made, it will pop into my mind because I've made so many of this thing, out of nothing really, that I can do it for myself, any time, on demand, for free. And if I make it and it's not used? No matter, I didn't pay for it, I made it... and whatever the end object that is now, the process of making it remains eternally a part of me, forever. Without my needing to think about it.

It is impossible for something unexpected to come up that I can't deal with in the next five minutes. I've been doing this too long.

Obviously, I don't expect any reader to suddenly stop being an object-dependent DM, if that's what you are. I only want to make it clear that your manner of thinking about what "prep" means for you defines whether or not you are dependent or independent... and for you to think about what's a better strategy for you in the long run.

4th Class: Practice & Rehearsal

I'd like to start by saying that while I may sound like I have all the answers, much of this content is as new to me as the reader. It has come about because of certain things that were said by readers two weeks ago, which produced the breakthrough that I wrote about in my 1st Class introduction.  That in turn encouraged me to follow up on content described on this wiki page, which led me to examine more closely the methods of prepation, that led me to reading materials on these things and then reinterpreting them for role-playing games. I'm not inventing new information, but rather translating academic research that already exists; nor have I been holding back this knowledge for the day when I could release it to the world.  Rather, I'm describing the material as I have understood it, sometimes having made the realization an hour or so before.

I would have included this material when I wrote my book, How to Run, but I didn't know it then.  Unlike many people on the internet who pretend to have all the answers, I will state coldly that I absolutely do not have all the answers and do not know everything there is to know about managing or preparing for role-playing games.  However, I am researching the concept and learning new things, which is a damn sight better than every other person I have ever read on this subject.  I feel I'm eminntly qualified to write posts like this not because I'm a know-it-all; but because I desire to know it all.  In the pursuit of that goal, I learn things.

What we tend to think when we hear "practice."

And so, if we can begin today's class, our subjects today are practice and rehearsal.  These are often confused and often understood to be the same, so we should take a moment and define the difference between the two.  Practice is a free expression of the individual's desire to explore and examine their own ability; it is largely done alone and is not subject to the will or actions of other persons.  Practice can be done any time, and for as long as one wishes.  On the whole, practice does not have a time element.  Rehearsal, however, is a group activity.  It is typically scheduled.  It is not an exploration of a personal expression, but rather a designed activity to achieve consensus, or a gestalt, among individuals working together.  There is a strong motivation not to make errors in a rehearsal, but to produce the desired result as perfectly as possible.  Practice is a method by which perfection in rehearsal is obtained.

And because practice leads to the success of a rehearsal, let's begin there.

Practice

The concept of practice does not normally exist in the role-player's lexicon, so it is upon us to demonstrate that it happens all the time and that it is something we do whether or not we are aware of it.  I'll take a moment and say one last time in this course that the game as written does not actually require anyone to give any time towards practice - but it is, in fact, very hard not to practise a role-playing game, once we have a clear idea what we mean by practice.

Practice is the act of repeating a physical or mental action over and over, and in the process improving the efficiency, or mastery, of that action.  For example, if I give myself to thinking about the various ways in which my player character might buy equipment, or choose spells, or express himself, or otherwise participate in the fictional world, and I continue to do so each day for many months, I will slowly master an elaborate set of resources and choices for the character, effectively improving my game play.  I will remember, by practicing to remember, to buy specific things when they are needed, to combine bought items in a myriad of ways, to draw attention to my dress or my appearance when I speak, to speak more clearly, to use my words better, to adapt those words to a character ideal in my mind, which I shall know much better through continued contemplation and so on.  If I try to live in my character's head as I do my own, I will remember more clearly what my character's abilities are, and how they will best be employed.  And I can do all these things whether or not I am actually playing in the campaign.

Moreover, this is what most players who are enamoured with the game do, whether or not they are told to do it, and whether or not they believe it will improve their play.  They do it because it feeds their compulsion to do it; but this is no less a form of practice for that reason.  To understand this better, follow the work of K. Anders Ericsson.

Allow me the benefit of an analogy, which may better express what I mean, since using a player character as a template is unfamiliar territory.  Let's presuppose a musician who chooses to practise.  Naturally, our thoughts reach for the musician's desire to play a musical instrument more effectively; say, in this instance, a guitar.  But there is more "at play" than the guitar.  The guitarist must obtain and slowly grow comfortable in the right posture.  Calluses must build up on various parts of the hands.  The fingers must grow more nimble, and stronger, to press down on the frets or hold the pick.  The guitarist grows more comfortable with not looking at the guitar so that music can be read; and one gets better at reading music more easily so that the notes can be heard on the paper as well as understood.  The guitarist grows more adept at tuning and maintaining the guitar, and at the way the guitar is put into a case, and the manner in which the case is carried, and the habit of remembering that the case must be managed as the guitar is carried from place to place.  The guitarist steadily learns more about other guitars and what are the best guitars, and why, and how the materials of a particular guitar will change the way that something practised will sound.  And the guitarist gets more comfortable with being identified as a guitarist, and being asked to play, and what songs to play for which audiences, and what things people will dislike, and getting used to some people being haters, and recognizing that not all people who like the guitarist do so for good reasons.  And so on and so forth.  There is a lot more to being a guitarist, and practicing at being a guitarist, than merely learning how the strings are played.

And a role-player is no different. There is lots to remember and lots to learn and many ideas to consider and a lot of details to manage and attitudes of players and a desire to play vs. a willingness to DM and so on and so forth ... and all these things require practicing a way of thinking about role-playing games and how we identify ourselves with them.  We don't think of it as "practice" but it is, nonetheless.  We are increasing our cognitive skills and our ability to use our senses in game play; we are assessing the skills of others and our own skill; we are giving ourselves feedback and comparing our efforts with past efforts, and with the efforts that we've seen others display; and we have the option of pushing for better skills in creating maps, designing characters and backgrounds, narratives and hundreds of details we seek to add to the game.

We don't "need" to practise, but we do.  We do through repetition and constant thought as we dedicate ourselves to something that interests us.

This is, incidentally, an argument against artificial intelligence.  When we, as humans, perform repetitive tasks, we are affected by a large number of hormonal impulses that produces a level of boredom that becomes a compulsion to stop doing a particular task.  We then intellectually argue why we should continue to perform the task anyway, because we can see an end result; but to counteract the boredom we start looking for ways to make the task more efficient (to reduce the time to reach the goal), or more interesting (by paying attention to details we did not formerly recognize or by making a game of it) or by thinking of other ways to achieve the goal without having to do the task at all.

Computers can't do any of these things. They don't get bored.  They don't perceive goals.  They can't identify an alternate route to a goal once a route has been established.  They haven't any hormonal impulses that compel them to seek any other action but to continue the repetitive task.

Because we will get bored with creating parts of worlds or adventures, if we push through that boredom or try to mitigate it, whatever we seek to practise will eventually become the part of the game that we are best at.  If we emphasize our willingness to be role-players, then we will view role-playing as the end-all and be-all of the game because that will be the part of the game that we are best at, and with which we are most comfortable. If we spend all our time designing for places in our games where rolls will need to be made, then "roll-playing" will be seen as the most important element.  We build our own prejudices by whatever part of the game we practise at thinking about or designing, just as a country singer will have a prejudice for country music, or a jazz guitarist will have a prejudice for jazz.

But Music, and Role-playing, exists with or without prejudices.

Rehearsal

While my definition for rehearsal (as linked above) states that, "... rehearsal is not the final outcome of practice," and goes on to make a distinction between a rehearsal and an original performance, we can bend those restrictions a little by recognizing that each session of role-playing between players and DM is, in a strong sense, both an original performance AND a rehearsal for the next original performance.  The DM ensures that the various elements of the game are ready to be played, whatever the level of preparedness, and that they are coordinated to make the best possible impression on the Players.  The Players, too, come to each session with ideas in hand and proposals to be made, and expect to impress or surprise the DM after their own manner.  Everyone is expected to give their whole attention to the performance of the game.  Even if errors, lapses in attention or interruptions are common place, it is understood that the game is more important than who did what at what place, or who said what the other day, or what might be happening outside while the Game is progressing.

We tolerate distractions and interruptions to be friendly and convivial.  But when someone says, "Let's get back to the game," no one groans as they might if someone said in a workplace, "Let's get back to our jobs."  We want to play or we wouldn't be there.

The purpose of the rehearsal is to coordinate the various dynamics of play and the participant's interaction with play.  The recently coined "Session Zero" is an effort to do this on first meeting without the attention issue of having to actually express what the players are doing in a setting ~ but the reality is that we should expect a group of players to take multiple sessions before expecting them to adjust to matters of the rules, the personalities of other players, personal take on the game, a group consensus towards purpose and many other factors that arise from people acting as a single entity.

If we were to join together to put on a performance of Othello, no one would be surprised to find that there were going to be 13 weeks of rehearsals with 30 to 40 specific nights where we would come together to prepare for the end performance.  Which doesn't include the private arrangements between Othello and Desdemona, or Iago and Brabantio, to run through the lines and blocking of a particular scene without the director or crew present.  Everyone is typically good with this investment, because it is understood that in three months plus a week, we're going to do this in front of a live audience and we don't want to look like fools.  Some of us want a good review, because we think of having a career as an actor.  And so, there's very little sympathy for anyone who doesn't put the play first ~ since a single bad effort by a supporting character, say the Duke of Venice, can wreck the performance for everyone.

So to settle things, we in role-playing take the time to get everyone to agree to the same rules, and the same methodoly of interpreting those rules (as written, by DM fiat or by group consensus).  We discourage a single player from hogging the DM's attention.  We put a ban on player-vs-player ... or we encourage it, because that's the sort of game we've all agreed to play.  We get everyone on board, a little bit more with every game session, because it makes the game session in the future better and better.

If we don't rehearse this way, however; if we don't arrive at a consensus; if the players won't surrender certain behaviors or attitudes; then each game session gets worse and worse, because there seems to be no purpose to going on if it's just going to be another boring fight every night.  Once again, as the goal with these players and this DM seems less likely to be the game we want to play, we quit and go find another game.  That is how we biologically function.  It's what makes us "intelligent."

The purpose for a consensus, or in choosing to see the game session as a proper rehearsal for future sessions, is not to play the game "right" or "well," but to play it more effectively as a group.  Which is why it can be difficult to let in a new player, who will fail to see the importance of this consensus (which is rarely explained, if even understood by the original group members) and will act as a discordant note for weeks and weeks, until they're pushed out or they conform to the standard the others have agreed to play.

As a DM, the more clearly we see that standard, the more clearly we can explain it to players, both old and new, and the more quickly we can jump from a bunch of people with separate agendas to a single working whole.  It takes time to do this without becoming an autocrat (which many DMs descend to becoming, because it is direct and easy), because it takes empathy, a fair ethical framework to look from and an awareness of both self and others that most DMs do not even care to possess, as they see no reason for it.  And thus we get the games we get, as we have all seen with our own experience.

This completes our introduction to preparedness.  With our next class, we will examine expertise, the process of gaining experience through practice, education and the various other elements of preparedness.

3rd Class: Resources & Education

In our last class, we spoke about three forms of preparation that focus one's thoughts upon self-improvement, judgement and achieving goals.  For this class, we'll step outside of ourselves and talk about how we can prepare through the use of resources and by means of education.

As before, actual game play of RPGs does not require preparation.  The rules are all there to allow people to sit down, roll up characters, posit the existence of monsters, dungeons or wilderness places and just start creating a joint-narrative in an utterly improvisational manner.  The single drawback to this approach is not that the game does not work, or that it isn't fun, but rather that repeated efforts to be improvisational without preparation soon become repetitive.  My creativity is limited to what I can think up in the immediate moment.  I haven't the time to build complex ideas, or research an idea in a manner that might lead to a discovery, or make a detailed plan of my intentions.  Others are waiting. And when they speak, when they improvise, I am waiting.  So after a time of playing, we're limited in our "fun" to those moments where some spark of genius has momentarily touched a given player ... and because these moments are transitory and rare, we grant them far, far more importance that we would otherwise if we were to compare them with a methodical effort at creativity.

We've all heard stories from players who talk about how something happened and it was SO funny, or SO clever.  Because we are not limited in our time to reflect upon these stories when we hear them, the stories are rarely as funny to us, or as clever to us, as they seem to be to the teller.  This is how improvisation of the immediate lowers the bar for what is considered to be "good" play.

We can create better play if we can take advantage of preparedness ~ the time spent in preparing for an adventure can vastly improve the quality and intricacy of that adventure.  One of the best ways of creating time is to take advantage of resources.

Resources

A resource is any source or supply of work that has been compiled by ourselves or by others over time, which we are not required to "know" ourselves so long as we can access the material quickly, similar to the way we access our memories.  Instead of simply remembering, our senses locate a sought for passage and the resource gives us the information for our use.

The most commonly used form of resource for an RPG is an adventure module, purchased so that we may have the hours of work that someone has invested so that we can reproduce that investment in the time it takes to read the material, either to ourselves or out loud to others.  It is presumed that such modules produce better material than we would ourselves, because they are created by talented persons with lots of experience, and most participants in RPGs would agree very strongly with that presumption.  It is possible, of course, for a DM to invest their own time to create their own module, but failed attempts and lack of experience soon convinces most DMs that it isn't worth the effort to learn how to do this, since so many modules already exist on the market and it is easier to exchange money for expertise than one's own time.

Another major resource is the collection of rule books.  These often form the basis for some inspiration, but are more important for keeping track of rules that we couldn't possibly remember, except for the moment in the game when they become important.  This does require a motivation to look up the rule ... and many participants don't bother, because even that would be time spent that they feel would undermine the pacing of their game.

Even the least creative DM will have notes that can be checked, if the time has been taken to make them.  Simple to complex maps can be drawn to keep track of the party's location.  A diagram or a symbol can be produced upon demand, not only by the DM but also by the players, who may wish to elaborate their characters with backstories, icons, crests or other details.  Many players will draw out castles or other buildings they would like to bring to life.  In a strong sense, all of these things are resources.

These resources pale to the immense resource that is the Internet, with all human knowledge available with the touch of a few keys and the wherewithal to read what's written.  Need to calculate an area, or identify the pieces of a suit of armor, or determine the effects of electricity in water, or find the name of a character from a given fable, or measure the force of wind, or even look up any detail connected with actual RPGs of every stripe?  It is all there on the internet, whether in open source documents or pirated material if the user so wishes.  None of this content is necessary to game play. None of it was there when I began playing in 1979.  At best, we might turn to the library, or our own books on shelves, but of course we did not play next to a library that contained every piece of knowledge.  And yet because none of it is necessary, most participants of RPGs do not even play with a computer on their game table, sometimes as a political proof that play is better without this inexhaustible resource.  We need to question the veracity of such claims, and wonder exactly what is gained by having less material with which to play, or less knowledge, or less hands-on help in the form of scientific, practical or imaginative literature.  We are often asked, if on a desert island, what book would you take with you?  Here we are asking, if you had all the books in the world with you, would you read them?

Turning to a resource has the side effect of educating ourselves, which is the point of research that we spoke of in the last class.  However, education differs from research in one key way.

Education

This is the process of facilitating learning in others, or in having others facilitate learning in ourselves.  We speak often of "educating ourselves," but this is nothing more than allowing the creators of texts to teach us ... and so the key mental condition that applies with education is the willingness to humble oneself with the acknowledgement that another person, whether in person or through some form of media, knows more about a thing than we do.  Education is a means by which we allow others to change our minds ... and in turn, we set out to change the minds of others who humble themselves to our expertise.

Put that way, it is easy to see how easily education can be misused to put inaccurate positions and ideas into the heads of those who have humbled themselves to the educator.  If a person approaches you, and asks you to explain how something works, it is a tremendous responsibility to give them accurate information.  The reverse might serve you as educator just as well, but it will cripple your student.  Not only does it fail to provide the student with the necessary knowledge to succeed at whatever he or she might desire, it also requires that they pass through a disruptive and unpleasant period of unlearning the lies they've been taught, before they can set about learning things that will help them in life.  That is why an abusive educator, one who will tell lies and do so for their own pleasure (for they know the truth and are not harmed by the lies), is perhaps the greatest force for evil in our society.

So it has ever been the case ... which is why there has always been an effort to give validation to places and persons of education, to ensure that wrong education is not received in place of right education.

As a DM, I want to receive education from others to be a better DM.  But I also want to take it upon myself to teach others around me to be better participants in the game, just as I have learned to be.  It is enough, for game purposes, to merely dungeon master players.  But a better game environment, a better experience all around, can be obtained through the process of educating the players to more effectively run in the DM's world.  It is beholden upon the DM to recognize that the world is a product of an individual and the resources that individual chooses, and is therefore alien in large degree to the players of that world, even if they have known the DM for a long time.  There is nothing wrong with making suggestions to the players, or explaining one's motivations, if that effort is put towards increasing the player's effectiveness at navigating the game world at hand.  To do otherwise, either through inaction or by deliberately undermining the player's potential to succeed, through false information, is a malicious act.  The players deserve to have all the tools that are available at their disposal.  Education by the DM can provide that.

We will discuss this further in a later class, once some of these base tenets become more familiar.  With our next class we will be talking about practice and rehearsing.

2nd Class: Research, Estimation & Planning

We might imagine that I have spent the first class hammering home the point that values are not part of a thing's definition, and that a lack of expertise is not a detriment to the functionality of game play.  You or I may think it is a detriment, because it is not our game, but that is a value judgment, arising from our expertise.

As the students file in for the second class, we can move on. In my proposition for a course regarding role-playing, I named point [b]: what preparation best feeds the participation of the fundamental game?  Here we're bound again by the limitations established in the first class.  We want to know, if you knew nothing about the game, what preparations could you make?  Before we can answer that, we must understand what preparations are and why they work.

Preparation is committed action in the present that services a situation that is expected to occur in the future.  It exists to enable the best possible results in any situation while reducing negative happenstance.  For example, in emergency services, we make sure the equipment on a fire truck is in excellent working order, every day, so that when we have to use the equipment on a moment's notice it accomplishes the goal of putting out the fire without letting us down and causing injury or death.

Obviously, preparedness figures into every human activity ... for most of us as that thing our boss keeps talking about that we have to be ready for.  Of late, I've taken a job in a costume shop.  Everything right now, absolutely everything, is about preparing for Halloween.  And rightly so.

Although many DMs make an argument that they don't "need" to prepare, it should be obvious that any thing that can be done on the fly and on a moment's notice can be done better with preparation.  I can run a game on the fly; but that is mostly because I've spent nearly 40 years preparing games and because of that I can shrink my preparation time down to a few minutes.  But that is NOT what we're talking about here.  We have to assume there are thousands of players who don't know how to prepare a game.  They don't know what they need to do, they don't know what's involved and they haven't had practice at doing it.  It follows, as well, that whatever will work best for them, will also work best for anyone, if we acknowledge that preparation is not a willy-nilly thing based on personal values, but something that is an established practice, honed by millenia of other people readying themselves for everything that has any human has done, ever.

What, then, is that established practice?  Specifically, seven ideals: research, estimation, planning, resourcing, education, practice and rehearsing.  None of these can be dismissed and all of them ought to be embraced and examined closely.  Mastering these to one's best potential is the best route towards vastly increasing your Dungeon Mastering experience.

Most of all, anyone, of any level of expertise, can advantage their play by understanding what these are and how they work with relation to game play.  In today's course, we're going to address the first three.

Research

The accumulation of knowledge regarding the game, which encompasses an enormous number of elements that are part of the meta-game, in which the only participant is usually the Dungeon Master.  The highlights of research include: (a) the applications of worldbuilding on both a macro and micro scale, using investigation into research, fiction, architectural design and the preponderance of works created by other people on which we can draw; (b) understanding and comprehending the rules fully, while affirming for one's self what rule systems and precendents, as well as what derivations and alternate rules, best services one's personal view of what the rules should be, so that when a rule is challenged the DM has at least a grounding in the existence of that rule and why it was made; (c) understanding player motivations and desires, so that it is clear to the DM why the player wants, or resists change, or questions rules, or otherwise feels motivated towards a particular action; (d) solving problems related to group dynamics, by asking questions of the players to determine how best to get a disparate and unique group to work together; (e) examining the results of groups that fail to work together; (f) developing new rules for parts of the game experience that have none, or where the DM views those rules as inadequate; (g) understanding the components of describing or explaining things; (h) understanding how narrative works; (i) understanding the elements of story telling that evoke emotion; (j) exploring the DM's inner capacity for creativity, in creating things that are new as opposed to rehashing old ideas; (k) testing the validity of dice, as well as the math behind randomness, so as to understand how bell curves and other perturbations and combinations affect game play; (l) understanding risk; (m) understanding a correct amount of payoff to be given in exchange for risk; (n) organizing rules and created work so that it can be employed when needed; (o) documenting the research that has been done so in can be found and understood when needed; (p) questioning and evaluating one's personal experiences so they can be learned from; and (q) experimentation of new ideas and evaluating those results.

This is a lot, this is daunting, and many simply avoid all of it.  They blindly accept the rules as written, make no investigation into design or human behaviour, do not care about the effects of dice on game play and are in no way introspective about their behavior in the past or how it might adjust.  This is the key to the above: none of this list is necessary to game play.  It is all dismissible, evidenced by those who dismiss it.  But look again at the definition of preparedness: the actions above are preparatory measures taken to increase the likelihood of things going right and decrease the likelihood of things going wrong. They are not guarantors of a great game, any more than the most efficient and high tech fire truck is a guarantor of no one losing their life in a fire.  Life is just too complicated for certainties.

Those who invest themselves in research do it primarily because they like research.  Like this recent PhD comic, people who end up in academic fields tend to dream of working at academic projects ... sort of like the way I spend my day off writing a long outline of how to prepare for a D&D campaign.  We research, investigate, come up with new ideas and use up our time to advantage ourselves and our games because we are built this way.

Yet any examination into any of the points above will greatly increase one's ability to run or play the game.  Knowing the rules by heart, so that we can hear someone make a comment about some rarified idea, we can recall, "Right!  There was a comment about that in the 3rd paragraph of page 45 of the DM's Guide."  Then go directly to that page in seconds and read the note word for word, then debate it among players.  Once, when I practically slept with the old DMG, there were parts I could definitely recite word for word.  It takes no experience, however, to read any rule book cover to cover ... then do it again a month later, and a month after that.  Regularly, I used to reread parts of it just to kill time.

Reading enough starts to connect dissimilar concepts in one's head, so that with research connections tend to arise through sheer repetition and combination.  This connectivity inspires creativity, which is in turn fed by extemporaneous passages that express particular viewpoints, strategies or successes, all of which steadily serves to prepare one for the unexpected ... so that when a player does something truly off the wall, it is (a) not that off the wall, because of the reading you've done; (b) just another new thing, because in your reading you've encountered many new things; and (c) completely manageable because you've already trained yourself to manage new things when you've encountered them.

Estimation

The method by which we measure the effect or importance of things, or the needfulness of things, in order to satisfy demand when it occurs.  The highlights of estimation include: (a) how much preparation an idea needs, prior to the implementation of an idea or process; (b) how much time it takes to express a given number of details to a party, and the speed at which that detail can be relaid, as well as how much can be understood by players who have never heard it before; (c) what images or other resources will be needed to cover a presentation when that occurs; (d) one's own mental and physical limitations, based on time of day, personal health, mental acuity, ability to concentrate for a set number of hours and evaluating how one feels in the present moment; (e) understanding what it the best tactic, or model, to use in presenting a particular element of the game (should this be a physical representation of the battle or can we play this with descriptions only); and (f) what matters and what does not matter where gameplay is concerned.

Estimation is primarily a mental preparation, though it often adjusts real time processes and pacing.  To estimate accurately usually requires experience ... but even without any experience or proficiency, the very fact that estimation will be required to produce a better game is an enormous step forward for any would-be Dungeon Master.

Many DMs, inexperienced and experienced alike, enter into a game session presuming that the players and the DM will do their thing and it will all somehow work out in the end.  This is confidence, but it is not rational.  A DM has the choice to reflect upon the various elements of play and question, "If I were being told something without having previously understood the research, or heard the idea, how long would I need, and how much description would I need, to grasp the idea enough to play with it?"  The choice to step outside of ourselves in order to estimate how our words and actions, as DM, affects other people, matters.

Realistically estimating how much work needs to be done to present a particular adventure or session to the best degree can both increase the resultant success and save time, as we can evaluate what over-preparing is.  And as a neophyte invests into these various aspects of estimation (empathy of the players, amount of preparation needed, a clear idea of their own limitations), the practice of estimating becomes second nature to the DM and it is then done later on with more and more alacrity.

Naturally, there are some without skill who will make an estimate and find the estimate was way off, then come to the conclusion that estimation is pointless.  Nothing is ever accomplished with that thinking.  The assumption that others estimate, but I don't have to, would be a clear effort towards justifying laziness, a habit for which no limit of invented nonsense will ever be reached.  The laziest people will always find a good and rational reason to be lazy; this does not make it a good route for preparing for future games.

Planning

The formation of a plan is a series of steps designed to produce a specific result that will give us what we want.  For example, if we are homesteading previously unoccupied land, and we want water, we must dig a well.  To dig the well, we must plan to have tools, we must have materials, we must have time to do the labor, we must have the capacity and the will to work as long as necessary and we must have a place to dig.  Understanding that we need these things, before actually putting any of these things into use or effect, is planning.

The highlights of planning are: (a) having players to participate who are eager and ready to do so; (b) planning a world that will satisfy the players who will play; (c) having a space to play; (d) knowing that an understanding of what a DM does will matter; (e) knowing that estimates will have to be made; (f) having the various tools and researched material, along with game books, designs, rules, written adventure points and so on available for use; (g) understanding of the basic premise of the rules and game play; and (h) planning to make further plans for what needs to be addressed when the present incarnation of the game grows tired and ineffective.

Most of these things are fed by research, which in turn lends itself to estimation and understanding.  Even so, the first things on this list don't require actual experience in game play in order to assemble.  Communication with persons establishes them as players.  A few questions identifies their expectations.  The space needs to be large enough and convenient for the participants, but is no worse than planning a small party.  Knowing that there will be estimates is not being accurate with them, it is merely being aware that some sort of stab in the dark is necessary.  Tools, books, designs, rules, what have you, can be purchased and need to be carted to the game space.  Reading the books to understand the bare minimum of rules is expected for any game.

Planning for future plans, however, is another deal ... but it is assumed that these plans will be fed by what has already been experienced.  If you've run an adventure through to the end, you know you will need another adventure.  If the adventure before wasn't very good, you need to plan for a better one, and not just follow the same pattern again.  If you bought your first adventure, buying your second one isn't a new plan, it's the same plan you already carried out; don't be surprised if this plan, carried out ad nauseum, begins to fail. If you don't seem to know the rules very well, read them again. If your players seem unreliable, plan to sit down with them and get a stronger commitment, by addressing existing problems and negotiating.  Plan to replace players who won't commit, or who commit to a narcissistic idea of their own that is not your game.

Carrying out your plan is NOT planning.  If you conceive of a plan in one instant and move to carry it out the next, you're not planning, you're acting on impulse.  Planning is the process of concieving a solution to a problem (we need water) or the pathway to that solution (let's build a well).  It is not grabbing the nearest stick of wood and digging in a random spot until you get tired.  That is not planning.  That is the absence of planning.

Before carrying out a plan, we need to examine the problem and the proposed solution from all sides.  Once we conceive of an idea, say for a game world or for an adventure, we must take time to consider what others will think of what we would propose.  This has to be done realistically ... not merely from the notion that, because I thought of it and I think it is cool, others will automatically fall in line once they see the thing's magnificence.  Again, that isn't a plan.  That's narcissism.

Most people do not like to plan.  They like to jump in and do, and they will tell you so, often.  But like the fellow with the stick digging a well, they soon get tired, they stop digging with the stick and despite a lot of effort, nothing actually gets done.  The key separation between "doing" and "accomplishing" is in how much planning was given to the original concept.  A plan has to include estimations of how much is needed and why, the employing of a trusted friend who can act as a sounding board, a willingness to admit that perhaps the idea is a bridge too far given one's actual abilities and exactly what is to be accomplished ... and to work, this has to be decided before any work is done.

As with Research and Estimation, Planning is not actually necessary for game play.  It can be discarded, and is discarded, without changing the definition of an RPG in the least.  But choosing to plan enables long term solutions to problems that will one day arise; choosing to plan enables a steady increase in one's abilities; choosing to plan saves time and effort; and choosing to plan makes one aware of more than what has been made.  It creates much of the structure in one's own mind in a clear, fixed sense, so that even if it hasn't actually been put on paper, the very planning of the idea has made that part of the plan real.

Before we start digging the well, we can see it in our minds; seeing it, knowing how it will happen, relieves the stress of doubt that comes from just winging something.  If you already know as an engineer that your plans are sound, that the equipment and materials are available, that the water is accessible and that labor is plentiful, there is no doubt in your mind that the well will be finished and ready to provide water, when you're ready to make it happen.

Without a plan, you're never sure of anything.

That's enough for today.  With our next two classes we'll be talking about resourcing, education, practice and rehearsing.

Reverse Sides

Let's try a thought experiment.

Instead of the usual game, we'll have the players run a group of humanoid monsters located in a subterranean lair.  We can call them "orcs," but any group will do.  We'll assign two adult males, two young males, three adult females and four children to each player ~ and we'll say that orc children grow quickly enough that these children are all mobile on their own, though we could force one of the females to be burdened with an infant if we wanted.

We'll start by assigning each individual hit points and combat abilities according to their status.  Each player should then designate one of their adults (male or female) as a "leader."  Then one of these leaders can be designated the "chief."  Orcs don't usually have stats, so we can forego those, making the character creation fairly simple.

Now assign some weapons and have the characters pick ten pieces of basic equipment for each adult and each young male ~ no more than two weapons, a suit of armor, and 7 pieces of whatever else they feel they'll need (including a shield), but with this limitation.  It has to be something made without an industrial or academic process.  No metal, no alchemy, no poison, no magic, no unusual tools, etcetera.  If we want, we can argue that one of the weapons each orc has was stolen from the outside culture, so they can have a sword or an axe.  Treat each article of clothing as a separate piece, so most will just wear a hide shirt that reaches to their needs.

We will also make one stipulation.  The orcs have two picks.  Without these picks, they wouldn't have been able to dig their lair out of soft rock.  So they'll need those.

Good, now ask them to make their lair.  They have to create tunnels that connect certain necessary points together: a breeding place for young (orcs are birthed from mudpits), a food-producing chamber (fungus or whatever other imaginary food can be grown underground), a place for each orc to sleep, a place to eat, a place for tools to be made, a pen for animals and one or more entrances to the outside.  Give dimensions that these rooms have to be to support the lair's food/shelter needs ~ such and such an amount of space per inhabitant.  Then limit the distance of connecting hallways to 10 feet per person.  The animals can be whatever exists in a dungeon environment that we feel can be reasonably domesticated (lizards, salamanders, weasels, carnivorous apes, worgs, whatever we want).  Fit the number of animals to the space you'll let them build.

Give the players time to draw out the lair.  While they're doing so, explain that they won't be able to carry weapons and wear armor all day long, for months and months of non-fighting time on end, so they will have to store these somewhere that they can be reached in time of crisis.

Let the players devise any crude traps they want to create, giving a 35% roll per trap set of the trap going off, potentially killing one of the members of the tribe.  Make sure that the players understand that any trap in a commonly used corridor (the shortest distance between any of the above required places) will mean a 1 in 10 chance of killing a random resident, from child to chief, because of its ill-considered inconvenience.  Remember, too, that the traps have to be fashioned from ordinary goods.  No complex rock digging, however - we're talking soft rock and the orcs only have picks.

Still, they can make pits with logs over them for daily use and fill the pits with offal or spikes (since wood is easily obtained from outside).  They can make rope from the fibres or sinews of animals that will make springs and stuff.  They can make doors of every variety.  We might want to limit them to a set number of traps, perhaps five, ten or fifteen.  Of course, anything really vicious will start to take its toll on the population of their lair, so they'll think twice about really deadly things.

Good.  Now, give the players a bunch of gold and silver coins, with jewelry and gems.  Give them each a minor magic item.  Once again, point out that they can't carry any magic weapons with them all the time.  They'll need both hands to work.  Have then show where precisely all the money is hidden.  Let them be as precise as they want about hiding it, so long as they keep to the rules of no special means that can be made from the tools they have.

Finally, have the players identify where their orcs are at a given time of the day.  Stipulate that such and such many have to be tending the food making, the animals, the children, maintenance on the tunnels and tool fashioning.  Tools are always breaking and need to be remade.

Now, attack the lair.  Use the players' own characters.  We could create some of our own.  We may want to pick ogres or giants as our humanoids if the players are high level.  Have the players defend the lair with their humanoids while the DM attacks the lair with the adventurers.

If the orcs (or whatever humanoids) are easily killed, or if the treasure is found easily, find some way to penalize the players.  Get them to talk about how they could have done better.  If we want, we can hinge the player's success as orcs to how much experience the players' characters get at the end of the session.

Our goal here is to demonstrate that if the players had to play orcs all the time, they would be a lot smarter about where they stored their goods or how difficult it was to get into their lair.  Even the weakest humanoids could create insanely difficult lairs for a player to break ~ and the above experiment could demonstrate to players and DMs alike what to build and how to break it.

This is the sort of thing that provides empathy for both sides, player and DM alike, while vastly expanding the possibilities of presenting the game.

Play

Have you thought about the way children play? There is a conception among adults—an irrational conception—that “play” is somehow frivolous, that children are blissfully leaping about the flowered landscape waving bubble makers, without a care in the world.

This could not be farther from the truth.

Children, when they play, are deadly serious about what they’re doing. They don’t see it as frivolous at all, but as vitally important. You don’t think so? Watch a group of children discuss the rules of a game, and count the number of seconds before fists start flying.

This “childish” behavior is more or less dismissed by adults as evidence of an undeveloped emotional maturity. What it actually shows is the extent to which children care about what they’re doing. They have not yet developed the cultured apathy so prevalent in adults, you see.

Consider a typical situation. John and Mark have spent about four hours carefully building two cities out of Lego, at opposite ends of a basement. The crowning effort has been to “post” one hundred army men on each city, with the stipulation that the army men MUST be placed on top of buildings, and not on the “ground” (children would never refer to it as a floor…the distinction is relevant and steadfastly adhered to). Children make up such rules without being told to invent them—the reason for the rule being there is as follows.

John and Mark intend to throw wooden blocks at each other’s city, as a war to destroy the other person’s army. Thus, the men must be on top of a building. A man not on top of a building will be considered “dead” unless they fall and somehow remain standing.

Remember, it is has taken four hours to arrange this combat. The combat itself will require about ten minutes. At no time, all afternoon, will the two boys remotely consider the effort-to-payoff ratio as anything but worthwhile.

Now, introduce Jeremy, who has shown up just before the battle is ready. Jeremy, who won’t have his own city, might just decide he’s going to muck about with the army men or maybe with some of the Lego…quite probably out of boredom.

Watch John and Mark’s response to Jeremy touching anything. Watch the two boys run towards him, screaming, fists out—you will not see any evidence of “fun” in the boy’s behavior. Their faces will be twisted, menacing, furious…their play has been spoiled by Jeremy’s failure to understand the IMPORTANCE of what is happening.

This is not restricted to boys. Girls have rules like this too. At the tea party, the stuffed animal named “Bonita” ALWAYS serves, and “Clarisse” ALWAYS gets the first cup. This blouse belongs to Malibu Barbie and is NOT worn by Staci. EVER. Friendships will end over things like this.

Which brings us at last to D&D. I know there are many Jeremys in the world who see the game as cheesy, who feel the need to mock and laugh because they don’t understand the importance of the rules as they’re played by others. I don’t quite want to make the argument that the game can’t be played by adults because of their tendency to filter everything through their cynicism, but to a certain degree, that IS the problem.

Children do become adults, and they are made to feel silly as they get older for playing games that many adults feel they should not be playing. The game I describe above between John and Mark really was something I used to play at 8 years of age…and at ten, and at fourteen.

As we got older, the rules got more extreme. From the Lego we built “ships” which had specific designs intended to bear the brunt of a hit; each ship demanded a certain minimum of pieces, and the design was up to the player…but there were designs that were tougher than others.

We ascended from throwing wooden blocks to golf balls in the back yard. And from that to darts, which produced very interesting patterns as we fired them at ships placed in the grass (and there were rules about how you could not dig them in). From darts we expanded to lawn darts, played on a school field on the weekend – hurling the darts thirty, forty feet at Lego ships we could barely see, and still hitting with accuracy.

But as we got to be fourteen and fifteen, and interested in girls and gadgets and so on…we began to feel pretty dumb building things of Lego and blowing them to pieces. For some reason we became conscious of the houses around us, and the people in those houses, watching grown boys with Lego. Somehow we began to feel shame about what we were doing.

Shame is the great destroyer of childhood. It is shame that encourages us, as we get older, not to get too interested or excited about anything. We are all supposed to remain detached, remote from feelings of passion, so that we no longer feel the need to beat up Jeremy for being such a fuckwit and not understanding. This is how we descend towards tolerance, where the rules are less important than appearing “cool” or self-assured.

By our twenties we're expected to limit our concern for games with rules to acceptable sports. This is why the thirty-year-old who spends his weekends playing Halo doesn’t talk about it much. This is why, if you’re a rock star, you don’t mention too often that you enjoy a good session of D&D when you can get one. Because the Jeremys of the world will descend on you and do their best to make you feel as much shame as they can muster.

Building a serious campaign, and making people take it seriously, requires one inward philosophy and one outward philosophy. Inwardly, the DM must find again the attitude he or she had as a child—that the rules are important and that they are not cheesy…except to those who don’t get it.

Outwardly, the DM must quash any and all frivolous behavior in a campaign, immediately and without qualm. It doesn’t matter if this means being rude or inconsiderate—if you want players who can take a campaign seriously, they must be made to understand that they WILL take it seriously or they can take their fuckwit selves to another venue. It may take time, but a DM prepared to have standards like these will eventually draw people who LOVE these standards…who will enjoy being able to play the game without shame, at least within the confines of the campaign on weekend evenings.

They may not be able to talk about it with outsiders; but the other insiders who are with them will back them 100%…and the campaign will develop and do what its supposed to do.