Spoonfuls of Sugar

Maximillian asks,

"Why do you insist on saying that you play D&D when the evidence clearly shows that D&D is about bizarre stadium shows and infantile, nonsensical rules?"

I gave a straight answer that can be seen on the link, and no fault assigned to Maximillian, though the query is plainly evidence of looking at the world a certain way.  The question is odd given that the name of the blog is "The Tao of D&D," and has now been in existence for 17 years.

This means that readers who were 18 when I first launched into this project, perhaps still in high school, are now 35, at a point where they've probably stopped playing, have had time to advance their incomes, have families and come to a recognition that career and home are ultimately more important than friends and acquaintances — a comprehension of such staggering proportions that it often takes people an entire decade, usually from the age of 30 to 40, to grapple with it.

If means that those who were 35 when I launched this, with infants and toddlers, are now 52, with adult children who have graduated and are themselves entering college, while managing the empty nest and free time is their largest personal concern.  52 is old enough to "feel old," and question the relevance of an RPG, even if when they were in their thirties it felt like something they'd never quit doing. 

Those who were 52 are now 69, seriously wrestling with medical issues — if not their own, then certainly those of their partners and parents, realising that a lot of the things they might have wanted to do, but never did, are falling into the categories of "too late" or impractical.

In other words, I've been at this a long time now.  I began at 43 and am now just a few weeks shy of 61. This blog launched a month before 4th edition officially came out, that was going to change D&D for the better. When I picked the moniker "D&D" it was still that, still exactly what it had been for decades, the time frame being even before the invention of OSR, which was a backlash to 4th edition.  And my game, apart from various house rules introduced, and manners of setting building, remains what it was in the 1980s, when no one would have questioned it's D&Dishness.

No one reading anything here could seriously question what I mean by that acronym. And anyone in the real world — whom I do not hesitate to tell, it's even on my CV — doesn't know one game from another. True enough, everyone I meet who actually plays is a fucking dweeb, unquestionably... which is to say, they know next to nothing, even about the version of the game they actually play, and are unable to talk about the game except in a foolishly generalised manner... which, in fact, would describe my meetings with D&D players just as well in 1989.  The game has always been innundated with gushing morons.

Thus, while it might be supposed that I cling to the name because I'm old, and I find it hard to change, or that I'm clinging to the glow of something that's now gone, I assure the reader that I'm not. The fundamental concept of what I play and the present-day "infantilism" is unchanged. There's a "DM" and there are players.  Everything else is just window dressing.

I've felt this way since 1980. When Rolemaster and Tunnels and Trolls emerged, along with a host of others, they were still just "D&D" to me. Different name, different rules, it was easiest to assign the "new label" to the version of D&D, but it was still the DM-player model. Change the genre and made it space opera, dystopia, spy thriller or the old west, the real model remains unchanged.  Information is given to players, the players respond, the information giver updates the information, wash, rinse, repeat.  It's all the same thing.

I would argue that "dungeons and dragons" was a sad, poorly considered, irredeemable name for the process. It doesn't describe the process, it doesn't even really describe the game itself... and while dungeons are very common as settings, dragons aren't.  They have no place in the setting's fundamental heirarchy, they provide none of the required equipment an adventurer buys, they're not relevant to the list of magic items, skills or spells a character employs, they don't contribute to the combat model and they're not actually needed in any way as a part of game play. And of course, the word does not describe any of the makers. It's sole relevance to game play is that the name was adopted by an important early publication, which then felt it necessary to keep inserting dragon-based articles that, ultimately, never really advanced game play. When Emil Jellinek named the car he made after his daughter, his own name evaporated from history; Ford did not make that error. He knew what to call his car, which is why we know his name and what it stands for.

So the name was flashy and thematic, but ultimately misleading.  But that has been the feature of this game from the beginning, and it continues today. Daggerheart is just as obscure, just as non-descriptive a name as can be put on a tin, while the recently released Draw Steel is likewise equally unfortunate. These names sound "dramatic"... but ultimately, they just disappear into an ever-growing pile of hundreds of other games a year that have accumulated for decades now. Naming things is not the gift of this community. Ten years from now, if anyone still plays these games, they will experience the same temporal inconsistency that Maximillian now consigns to my use of D&D.  Which, in fact, doesn't matter, in light of the fact that people don't relate the word "monopoly" in its real meaning to the game, while no one would ever mistake the Game of Life for actual life.  Because, in fact, words for products don't really mean anything. Most, for example, don't know the car was named after Jellinek's daughter. That detail is lost to all but a few afficianados, and girls who happen to also have that name, who have frustratingly looked up the coincidence.

So, here's the destination. What am I going to call it? The world calls it "this." I didn't choose it, and when I first started using it, considering the value or import of the name was not part of my attention. It is now, because the present fetish of the defanged internet is to play the game, "Let's redefine everything."  Let's not actually talk about, let's not actually prescribe anything, let's just quibble pointlessly over nitpicky language until we're all sick of the subject.

Which is why I've never been popular. I don't want to write a post on "Ten Reasons D&D Should have been Called Something Else" or "Ten Better Names for D&D"... consisting of a lot of petulant self-importance regarding why this name is better or why I don't want to, in excruciating detail, provide specific quotes from Arneson, Gygax and Mentzer on why they did or did not like the name. I want to write a blog that actually talks about, you know, the game.  The setting, the things required to play it, the structure of a setting and why your game actually sucks, not for reasons to do with cosmetic choices about music playing in the background and costuming, but because you don't know what "rules" are or how they work.

This is like medicine that works, but which most readers find really hard to swallow. So hard, in fact, that they'll say anything or do anything to avoid getting cured, just so they don't have that taste in their mouth. I'm dead certain that most anti-vaxxers just don't like needles, and thus can't bear the idea that they'd have to sit and endure one, even if it takes all of one second of real pain and two minutes of ache. People just don't want to be discomfited, even for the briefest of moments, and will build whole realities for themselves to avoid it.

Those who, right now, are quitting the game "because it's gotten really stupid," simply baffle me. The original books still exist. Every version still exists. People are still writing and making videos about old D&D. Where's the compulsion for anyone to even acknowledge "official" D&D?  I mean, who gives a shit, and why do they?  Just because a company says "D&D is this now," is that any reason for me personally to accept their word on that, or feel some requirement to obey, or in anyway suppose that my players or my readers would give a rat fuck?  Nothing has changed.  Nothing.  D&D is not "bizarre stadium shows."  That's just an invention for rubes, that happens to be using D&D because the market for "how to grow a business by telling stories" and "make money through the internet" has been innundated with tens of thousands of other charlatans.

I know how the thread of "We must listen to loud voices who tell us how to think and live" stretched from the 1970s to the present. I can describe it in book-scale dimensions better than most youtube creators, mostly because I was there and am not getting the information out of a single old magazine apparently found at a used bookstore. I can tell that story with nuance and detail and cause-and-effect, how this led to that, why people heard and embraced, where fear played it's part and what happened when each step along the highway was taken.  But it's all a waste of time, because people are not mechanical machines that function rationally or predictably.  They're largely just frustrated messes of unpleasant events they never did reconcile in their heads, searching for something they hope exists without reflection on what the consequences of that might be.

That is why its possible for me to be respected for what I write, and be believed, and even be accounted an "expert," so that those who disagree with me feel compelled to add, "with all due respect"... but still have that advice ignored, discounted, cast aside and not applied, because it would be too difficult, or because explaining it to others would impose either a sense of inadequacy or shame upon the reader.  YOU, dear reader, may agree with me... but explaining ME to your players, in such a manner that they'd believe you, given that some of them would bristle and disagree with me if they read my words directly, is a bench at a distance on a road that can't be walked.  Thus you listen, nod, go away feeling thoughtful and a little restored, or you go away thinking, "Hm, there are a few points there I agree with," but that's all you do.  You don't apply it, because you can't see how, or because the how you can see is just too much work.

That's not your fault. And it's not mine. It's simply easier to chase the company, supposing they'll have a spoonful of sugar that makes whatever medicine their offering go down. For a young person, that always seems best. For someone in their 20s, who grew up as a kid on Critical Role, Daggerheart sounds like the best medicine.  It sounds like something that's going to really change the world, that it's going to shatter the old model and represent the new.  It's super-sugarcoated and for that reason it is spectacularly easy to get down.

But... I'm too old a bunny to fall for this. It's not my first experience. Even 4e, at the start of this blog, long, long in the past, was way past it's best-before date for this bunny. So I'm not swallowing it. I'm not swallowing that D&D has been in any way changed, altered, adjusted, shifted or redefined by a company that is wallowing in debt, proxy fights and desperate attempts to keep itself alive by making Magic the Gathering cards with Sonic the Hedgehog. Once upon a time, that would have been enough to make everyone abandon this company in a weekend. But disappointments in this fair world have become so commonplace that this almost feels like "a good idea."  Like any frog slowly boiling to death in water, Sonic seems... right.  Perfectly on brand. Rational.  Not in any way evidence of a company that's had it's day and now needs the good folks from the "Endswell Old Folks Clinic" to come around with their fancy constraining jackets.

All of you who can find the time to give a shit, I wish you well. You'll reach the age of 61 someday, and maybe then you'll get it.

But... judging by the others around me who are my age and older... no, probably not.

The Halfling and the Knight

Time I addressed this point from a recent post; hands up, anyone who knew what I was talking about:

"Much of the time, I believe, people have little understanding of what purpose in the game a rule serves, or how that purpose is compromised, leading to a less robust system, when that rule is casually tossed aside. For me personally, whatever a DM may feel about the presence of experience or encumbrance, and the "inconveniences" they bring, casting those things aside does not improve the game. The game is worse without them.

"Yet this is hardly understood, and even less appreciated. Of course we can still play D&D without those things. Of course the players can still move from place to place, they can still fight, they can yet role-play and even accumulate status and influence upon the game world. But these things — and this is almost impossible to explain to the average player — ARE NOT THE GAME. They certainly seem to be; and most would argue with me on this point ... vehemently. But they'd be wrong."

We don't need to count runs to play baseball.  We don't need teams.  We can still pitch, bat and run the bases without these things, if that's what we want.  We don't need a king to play chess.  We can move the pieces around on the field, attacking one another, deciding the game ends when there are no pieces left to kill, or the opposing player's move assures that a kill can't happen.  We can choose not to race sprinters against one another, having them run without a clock while five judges hold up cards to decide how the sprinter did, like figure skating.  We can play scrabble letters without numbers, ignoring any "score," on a blank lined board, until the board is filled.  We can throw out the property cards of monopoly and just roll dice to move our pieces around the board.

With children, we teach chess in a manner that a modern gamer recognises as save scumming.  Make the wrong move, see the consequences, take it back.  Thinking back 28 years, my daughter moves her rook, I take it with the queen ... then I put the rook and queen back to let her try again.  I let her put her finger on the bishop, deciding if she's going to move it, but I don't make her move it, because she's seven and I don't care if she wants to move the knight instead.  We learn games like this.  We see the consequences of our actions.

Then, as we grow more serious about the game (my daughter didn't, but I did), we don't want those breaks.  We want to win for real ... because we grow to see that it's a measure of the standards against which we hold ourselves.  We put ourselves in situations that aren't comfortable, specifically because the rewards are greater.

There's nothing in my life right now that says I have to walk onto a stage and risk public embarrassment ... but if I had the chance to do it again, to play Uncle Vanya or Dr. Stockmann, I would.  There's no money in it for me.  I have no urge to take up acting as a career (though, admittedly, because no opportunity to do so has presented itself).  But I would do it because I've done it before, because I've challenged myself in that way, I've put my soul and my commitment on the line in a theatre before paying customers ... and received good reviews.  There are no take backs; there's no way to save scum a few seconds before delivering a seven-minute monologue.

I know that the way the vast majority of people play D&D is "entertaining."  Enjoyable.  It must feel good for many to save scum, with getting rewards without risk, to talk their way out of difficulty, to get experience for showing up ... to shirk combat or, to always win, without that much trouble.  Always knowing that the character I have at the start of tonight's session will still be mine at the end.  Never feeling that raw, brutal panic of a die that has to go the right way ... or the plunge of heart that strikes when it doesn't.

But —

I don't want to take my knight back.  And I definitely do not want to play with those who insist on having it that way.  I'm not playing with children.  No, let me put that another way, because it could be misunderstood.  I have no interest in having adults who want to be children play with me.  If you want your knight back, when you lose your knight due to your inability to play, this says more about you than you realise.

Yes, I said inability to play.  D&D is a game with random elements, that a good player knows are there, accounting for them ... expecting them ... so there's no reason to whine or have a fit when they don't go our way.  That is the game's play.  When the player shirks from that, trying to reconstruct the game so as to avoid those consequences, instead of taking them on the chin like an adult ...

The collapse of my game centered on one player who did not like that her 5th level 60-lb. halfling druid wasn't a "fighter."  She chose to be a druid.  She chose to be a halfling.  She chose her spells.  She liked the sound of being a druid.  She liked to make the cute little jokes about being so light that many of the bigger characters could carry her without an encumbrance penalty.  She liked the pretty-sounding spell names, with words like faerie, shillelagh, goodberry ...

But every time a fight came up, she didn't like having to put her trust in that 20-sided die.  She knew there was plenty of power in the party to manage the monsters, to protect her little child-like body, but she didn't like knowing they were going to kick ass and she wasn't.  She didn't like depending on them.  She'd had plenty of opportunities to put out a good spell and help turn the tide of a battle, but that wasn't good enough.  She didn't want to be a team player.  She didn't want to take a bow at the end with the team.  She wanted to shine.  And she didn't have the class, the spells, the hitting power or the experience level that would let her do that ... and she was getting tired of waiting.  Every time she'd miss with that d20, the feeling of failure gnawed just a little deeper.  She didn't need to actually die as a character.  She didn't need that much to push her over the edge.  What she wanted, and what she hadn't earned, was to make the game ... not a game.  To make it into something that would serve her will.  That would obey her.  And when that didn't come out of the things her character could do, she decided it would come out of her inventiveness with the spells, reinterpreting them as she needed them to work.

When I countered that, she tried harder.  She invented more desperately.  She insisted more emotionally.  When it was her turn to throw that d20, she stalled, staring at her spells, sure that they'd be some way to weave them into an action that would get the result she wanted.

And when I put my foot down, one of the other players, a shining white knight, came to her rescue. He chose that moment to tell me how to act.  And what tone of voice to use.  In no uncertain terms.  In my game.  In my house.  And I rose to the occasion, because I don't let people talk to me that way.

The desire not to play a game, but to make the game suit the player's moods and wants, is the insidious poison at the heart of 5th edition and all that the company has done to D&D these last 20 years.  I love the game of D&D.  I do not love the shambling, mawkish doppleganger that is called D&D by nearly everyone ... and I have no idea what's going to become of the game I love.  The game I love.  I expect it to die along with the undead ghoul that it's spawned.

With four weeks gone, I remain uncertain about the future.  The majority of the crowd walked in support of the halfling and the knight, but I think that's an oversimplification.  There is a whiff that remains in my thoughts that the game itself had ceased to satisfy the needs of the party; and as I read the accounts of others lately, I'm detecting that same whiff in their games.

My head feels clearer.  There's a measure of anger.  Of betrayal.  Of the cheapening of this thing I love, which darkly bites at the memory of myself discovering this game as a boy, and thinking of it as a brutal, consequence-ridden thing, like the chess I played, being the greatest game in the world.

Which it isn't.

Anymore.

Resilience

"Civilisation means something more than energy and will, and creative power.  Something the early Norsemen hadn't got — but which, even in their time, was beginning to appear in Western Europe.  How can I define it?  Very shortly, a sense of permanence.  The wanderers and the invaders were in a continual state of flux.  They didn't feel the need to look forward beyond the next march, or the next voyage, or the next battle.  And for that reason, it didn't occur to them to build stone houses, nor to write books."

Kenneth Clark, Civilisation

As I consider virtually everything about D&D, I find myself consistently thinking differently.  I'm not in the least interested about the "excitement" of adventure.  There's no skip in my heartbeat when I read about a new monster or spell, or character class, or upcoming splatbook.  I should think that with all the boredom these things evoke, my jaded self should have shuffled off the RPG coils of lost vaults, shrines and dragons long, long ago.

The rank and file seems concerned with what has been done; or more to the point, what they've experienced, or played, or read, all in the past tense.  There are a few living in the present, like JB, who fill me with interest ... but so much is given to the "lore" that was discussed in the last post.  Gawd, what a pretentious, self-righteous label that is, for something that's just a lot of half-assed writing shoved between advertisements for miniatures and game cons.  Somehow, I don't remember the advertising in my copies of The Iliad, The Faerie Queen or Dante's Inferno.  I must own expurgated versions.

That, or I have a higher standard for what I consider "lore" in the zeitgeist of human experience.

But that's me, absolutely not in the bag for the RPG community.  As Clark notes above, significance in a civilised condition is that which is considered as a whole over time.  It's not what we do today, or even the immediate goals for this Thursday.  It's in those things we contribute with the future in mind, with the encouragement of resilience in the face of adversity that it offers.  What's not wanted is a small, static society that never looks outward from its borders.  What we have done is never enough, especially if what we've done can only be understood by a very small number of people who consider themselves "in the know."  Approached that way, one day some small change in the way the real society functions will come about, and all that we celebrate and praise will be swept away like old food into a garbage bucket.  As Clark says,

"Such societies become petrified, anxious only to hold onto their own social order.  The great, indeed the unique merit of European civilisation has been that it has never ceased to develop."

These words, spoken in 1969, are anathema to millions of people who have decided everything about old European civilisation needs to be torn down one brick at a time.  All right, have at it.  I'm not here to defend it.  Resilience, yes?  A culture that managed to survive a thousand years, the Mongols, the Black Death, Holy Wars, Napoleon, two world wars and a holocaust can take care of itself when faced with the perils of social media.  I'm only interested in discussing the stultification of a great idea by reworking it's past incarnations over and over and over, in part through the glorification of same using ridiculous cool-sounding jargon.

I have created nothing of resilience, so far as I know, which is not to downplay the remarkable resilience of my supporters thus far.  But this is the goal towards which I move, ever so painfully and uncertainly.  Still, I prefer to live in the future ... not because it's an escape from the present, but because it gives weight and import to the present.  It causes me to think every hour of the present contains some duty I ought to be fulfilling.  I should think that after 40+ years of working on D&D that I should be tired, I should be ready to rest and stop troubling myself with such efforts — but strangely, the effort seems more imperative now than ever.  I feel less tired about D&D than ever.  Once upon a time, drawing things and writing out game rules in isolation, I may have felt it was all for naught.  I am far from that place now, when there are plainly listeners waiting for me to write.

It would be folly, however, not to recognise from time to time that I am different.  Oddly so.  I suppose there's something wrong with me ... though it's obviously not Aspergers or Autism, which I've been accused of having by people who have done the diligent research of watching the film Rainman.  Not an accurate depiction, by the way.  In any case, had I either of those syndromes, I could not now be writing this post, which certainly recognises social conventions, defies repetition and expresses a tremendous range of interests.

No, it must be something else.  Oh, I have it.  I prefer to be a better DM.

Expressions

I think it's possible to express the pursuit of D&D, and by extension role-playing games, in four general forms.  This is not to suggest that these ways don't possess nuance, a degree of satisfaction or a personal value to the participant.  Nor is it meant to say that any single individual must fit into one of these forms.  There's room for grey between the forms.  That's understood.

Still, there's a benefit in recognising differences.  I have an audience, for example.  It serves me to understand what comprises that audience, what behaviour they elicit and what things they want.  Understanding this ought to enable me to serve them better as a writer.  These last few weeks have me thinking at length, "What am I doing here?  What am I trying to accomplish?"  I'm struggling to find useful and meaningful answers to those questions.  Towards that end, I'm pursuing thoughts related to motivation and sustainability.

As I said, four forms:

1. Expression of Energy.  D&D is something to do.  It isn't necessarily a game, it isn't necessarily what we're going to do on a Saturday night.  It's something we do when we feel like doing it, like any other appreciated activity we care to give our energy towards.  As such, a minimum set-up is needed.  It's best if Bob or Jane or Thomas can open up a few books and run the game easily, without much lead-in time, because we'd just like to get on with it when we feel like playing D&D.  In which case, there isn't much need for rules or accounting for things that just don't matter in the short term.  The convenience of a module serves, because we can just open one and go.  The convenience of pre-made characters, and characters that don't require die rolls to create, also serves since these concessions stream-line the process towards getting play started.  Since virtually all the energy we wish to expend is in actually playing the game, and because there is no consistent expectation that we'll play at any particular time — or, potentially, ever again — then most of what's discussed in the books regarding preparation, design, character backgrounds or even a story arc can be discarded.

As such, what appeals is the sense of what we do here and now.  Long drawn-out combats soak up time that could be used to move the story-narrative along.  The best moments occur when Paul and Dave and Helen are talking together, intermingling their discourse, with a group of NPCs in a fast-paced, excitable manner.  Stories that we can fly through, collaboratively, are genius and give a great deal of pleasure.  Any part of the game that can be simplified or tossed out to empower this dynamic is preferable and, indeed, obligatory.

2. Expression of Accomplishment.  Again, D&D isn't necessarily a game ... but the participants expect a series of building events that promote a sense of purpose that we've invested ourselves into emotionally, in that the time is spent pursuing a final, overarching sense of accomplishment.  Play is regular, and the participants are cherished for their commitment, as we intend to play towards an agreed-upon goal.  The emotional satisfaction and proud feeling of having done something difficult and worthwhile is the central theme of our gaming.  As such, game elements and opportunities that don't directly contribute to the goal at hand can be ditched — should be ditched — for the greater good.  Each moment along the way exists in the campaign because it's part of what we've agreed to attain.  And therefore, elements of detail, worldbuilding, even choice, can be happily dismissed without feeling that any meaningful part of the activity is lost.

As such, the campaign's appeal can is found in what we're trying to do, both now and in the foreseeable future.  Momentum demands that the storyline moves along, that a sufficient amount of the narrative is accomplished each session, so that we feel we're moving steadily towards our goal.  Drawn-out combats that must be won in order to set up the next situation are anathema to the activity's agenda.  The best moments come when we've done something, when we can get on to the next thing.  Any part of the game's rules that can be simplified or tossed out to empower this dynamic is preferable and, indeed, obligatory.

3. Expression of Game.  D&D is definitely a game.  It functions as an exploratory, adventurous possibility, enabling the players to discover what they can see or do.  As such, hex crawling, dungeons for their own sake, personal exploration in character building and design, challenge and inventiveness are all intrinsically part of the experience — which must have, above all, strong elements of amusement and novelty for the participants.  Things that are fun, things that are new, things that allow us to run characters we haven't run before, do things we haven't done before, and act our way are highly important to the shared adventure we're undertaking.  Aspects of the game that are repetitive, tiresome and not strictly necessary to our fresh and creative agenda can be rejected or — at the bare minimum — grossly simplified so as to allow a quick notation now and again when their inclusion seems moderately important.

As such, participants are welcome to be keen on the game, keen on what the game tries to do and well-versed in the game's concepts and principles without these things challenging the success of game play.  No fixed agenda exists as to what we're going to do in any given session — nor is it necessary for sessions to string together with the same characters into campaigns.  Drawn-out combats that feel like we've done them before are not wanted, and are better when they can be quickly sorted out or played out in new and exciting ways.  The best moments occur when something truly funny and fantastic happens, when someone says or does something so memorable that it becomes a story we can tell ourselves years in the future.  Tossing out any part of the game that doesn't contribute to circumstances that empower the dynamic of players interacting with players is preferable and, indeed, obligatory.

4. Expression of Circumstance.  D&D is definitely a game.  It functions as a rigid ongoing narrative in which individual players strive against limitations to accomplish — and potentially fail at — uncertain goals as a means of self-challenge.  It isn't always fun but it is always emotionally engaging, even when everything going on feels extremely awful.  Character building is secondary to exploration of "self," the question of what can I invent or what situations can I overcome, through innovation.  Amusement and novelty are desireable and appreciated, but less important that proving the party's mettle against all odds.  Running the same character in every session, which must necessarily be part of an ongoing campaign, it crucial to appreciation of the game's power to excite the mind.  We want to accomplish goals, but they should be our goals; and we will accomplish them in our time, not according to some prefixed agenda or even one at a time.  Aspects of the game that are repetitive are what they are, to be accepted as a matter of endurance and pride.  Combats must have a strong element of detail, tactical possibility and uncertaintly; this makes drawn-out combats tense and even frightening, especially when entered into with characters whose existence stretches out into years of the player's real-time experience.

As such, participants are committed to the most difficult aspects of the game that are cheerfully dismissed by others: the rigorous keeping of accounts and measures, the unbending rules, the minimalistic structure of playing out a campaign day-by-day with all the attendant difficulties of feeding and housing oneself.  These things are embraced because they are difficult, because we feel challenged to see if we can survive in a game world that doesn't make things easy, that demands our full attention, that punishes hard players who forget their boots, who don't bring enough food, who make the wrong move in a combat, who haven't crossed their t's or dotted their i's.  Who, in short, can die because they've made one foolish mistake.  Any part of the game's rules that can be made more complex, more difficult, more engaging, in order to empower this dynamic, is preferable and, indeed, obligatory.

Conclusion.  Asking the question, "which one is best," fails to comprehend the matter at hand.  The more useful recognition is that we have groups of people playing four different games ... but we have all of them debating and defending themselves upon one forum.  For the most part, the circumstance of one forum leads many of them to believe they're fundamentally all playing the same game, just in four different ways ... but the basics of game theory defines a game according to the strategy, the payoff, the information set being used and the manner in which the outcome is reached.  These expressions above are clearly atypical of one another.  Commonalities exist, but what's discarded and what's embraced greatly diminishes the possibility of a player who enjoys one of four forms finding any satisfaction from a game played in the other three expressions.

Naturally, there are those who can play each expression comfortably, adjusting their expectations as needed and appreciating what that particular expression offers as an activity.  But these people are rare; and must acknowledge that it's a different way of thinking.  Moreover, attempting to express one type of game in the presence of a different form creates havoc and discontent among the players.  We're either stressing the wrong things, complaining overmuch about what's expected or trying to insert some of the game we prefer into someone else's expression.

Which brings me back to this blog.  Like most engaged and committed persons, I have my personal preference; which, logically, I present and discuss in posts here.  But since others find this blog by searching "D&D" and not actually the game I play and espouse (one forum, remember), I do much more to turn readers away when I write than entice them.  I don't doubt that many of my potential readers have long since given up on the internet because they are looking for my expression, and instead find the other three — which are, without doubt, much more common.

Desirably, when discussing the sort of D&D I play, it's better than I express myself in terms of what payoffs and outcomes I'm aiming to provide, rather than the extremely non-specific, impractical and virtually useless banner of what game edition I play.  There is nothing at all in my expression of play that is intrinsically related to AD&D ... which can be easily adapted to the other three expressions.  What I've chosen to keep from AD&D are those parts that fit my expression — because they fit my expression, and for no other reason.  All other parts of AD&D are useless for me.  Which helps explain my tirade recently about how much I've grown to hate talking about D&D.  I have.  I am sick to death of revisiting any subject material from any edition that matter-of-factly is a useless kitchen sink in my modeled game's structure.

Frustratingly, however, I continue to think I can write the words that will change the world to suit me ... which, obviously, I won't.  And so, what am I writing the words for?

Still working on that one.

Succeeding Well

By the age of six, I did what all little boys did.  I tied a sheet around my neck and ran around pretending to be superman.  I built forts out of chairs, couch pillows and blankets.  By eight, it was playing guns, cowboys & indians ... and because it was 1972, Star Trek.  I liked being Scotty.  By the age of 10, it was chess and RISK.  At 13 it was Squad Leader, Panzerblitz and Tractics — this last being a set of wargaming rules for conducting WW2 style combat using armour miniatures.  We did it with model tanks we built from box kits; tanks and artillery pieces that we painted diligently.  By 13, I'd probably built between 50 and 75 model tanks, planes and ships, the last being everything from 15th century clipper ships to the USS Missouri.

Then when I was just nine days shy of 15, I encountered D&D.

Recognize the trajectory?  It starts with make-believe but as I mature, the subject material becomes increasingly more mature — and the rules' set grows denser and more exacting.  At eight we're designating parts of a schoolyard jungle gym as "the bridge" and "sickbay" and "engineering," with everyone respecting those designations.  Five years later, we're measuring the carpets with tape measures, recording distances down to the millimeter and holding each other account for the exact distance a tank can move or fire.

More to the point, as children we're bent on increasing the substance of the decisions we make.  At eight, I'm shouting into a pretend comm during a battle that "Engineering's been hit!  I'm wounded!  I need help!"  Five years later I'm speaking in low voices across the room with my co-commander, building strategies for my mauler, artillery units and guards to draw fire into the woods (this area carpet) so his faster panzers and panzerkampfwagons can move rapidly along the couch and come out around the coffee table, flanking the enemy.  We're collaborating.  We're making important decisions.  We're assuming responsibilities way, way past our maturity.  Leading soldiers; deciding upon acceptable losses; concerned about looking like morons in front of our peers, believing somehow that our ability to lead a battle matters with regards to who we are and what we say.

Why?  Why go down that road?  We read stories about war.  We had hundreds of examples from movies and comics that told us what men did and what men faced ... and whatever the later cultural resistance to all that macho-bullshit, as boys we ran towards that stuff, because it made us feel great.  We felt magnificent, raising our sense of self-importance through the activities we chose to enjoy.

What we felt certainly wasn't as clear-headed as a psychological calling for "adventure."  No, we wanted to be Scotty, to be Sgt. Rock, to act the way our heroes did, when we were still young and dumb enough to believe in heroes.  Rest assured, I do recognize that a 40-something today, growing up in the 80s the way I did in the 70s, could never have had things as black and white as we did.  But none of our assumptions about "taking charge" tacitly recognised the difference between which side we fought for.  Note the "I'm playing the Nazis" in the example about Panzers given above.  No, in the comics, the German soldiers were always portrayed as soldiers, and never as "Nazis."  Nazis were horror villains who died in Weird War Tales at the hands of enemy zombies.  And to be honest, we understood perfectly well that "soldiers" were just ordinary men.  Look at that comic cover: "Easy Company's newest recruit ..."  Soldiers were ordinary human beings who did extraordinary things, because they had to, not because they wanted to.  We grasped the pervading myth that rising above what we were, that being children, depended on the standard to which we held ourselves.  And when we played wargames, that meant winning by ability, honour, innovation and effort.  No one thought winning by dumb luck was praiseworthy.  We wanted to succeed well.

And then ... Dungeons and Dragons.

For all the interest they held for us, wargames were comparatively limited.  The focus, the necessary winning strategy, even the morality, were two-dimensional compared to D&D.  The units in wargames were based on real equipment, or at the very least mechanical elements of types and models of military designs.  Being table based, the limitations were the space allowed by the map board or, in the case of Tractics, how big a space we could play in.  And the number of units were limited by our physical capacity to own physical equipment, or move hundreds of little chits on a board in a space of time, before we had to take it down so the dining table could be used for eating.  These limitations were obliterated by D&D.

Keeping in mind, unit-based wargames required a degree of skill and strategic foresight.  We all remember the one player in RISK who decides, "enough of this patient approach, I'm going all in."  Their next turn, they start attacking, and attacking, and attacking, until every last attack they can possibly make is gone, even as they use three armies to attack ten.  Every territory is left with one army on it; and while the others cheerfully gobble them all up, there's also a question of, "what the fuck?"

Reaching back, there's the eight-year-old on the playground who can't play the Star Trek fantasy pretend game on the monkey bars, because he or she doesn't know what a "warp drive" is, or doesn't understand going to the transporter first before leaving the ship.  As children, we're not very forgiving about this sort of thing.  When Todd decides to run all his tanks out of the wood in a full-frontal assault against hulled-down troops, like Pickett's charge, and gets destroyed, there's a general consensus to stop inviting Todd to any further games.

Fellows like Todd find a new life in D&D.  They still rush headlong at orcs; they still stupidly cast fireballs in their own face.  D&D doesn't make them smarter.  It does give them room to be stupid, however.  There's an adjudicator to say, "Um, Todd, that will kill you."  Whereas in a war game, like chess, you touch the piece, you have to move it.

With the beginning of my experience in D&D, there were players who continued to treat it like a war game.  There are still such people.  They crave the fighting.  The two-dimensionality of it.  The "touch-a-piece-you-have-to-move-it" standards they invent.  But D&D offers much more.  We can't start a cult in a war game.  We can't pretend to be a prostitute to kill clients.  Or reunite lost lovers, or restore a king to his kingdom.  In a wargame, we can't organise a town against a plague.  We can't break into a castle at night and sneak around, thieving and assassinating.  There are so many things we can do in D&D that we can't do in any other game.  It and games like it take the generalised, non-specific parts of pillow-fort building, cowboys and indians, chess, RISK, squad leader and a thousand other games and makes them DENSER and MORE EXACTING.  So much so that most of us don't understand what's going on when we play.

Yesterday, JB wrote a brilliant, strategic investigation into what D&D offers, that the reader should definitely read.  But even at that, he misses a big, fat point that I need to add here (though he almost makes it himself).  At one point, JB uses his American Heritage Dictionary to describe adventure.  I'll repeat them here:

1. An undertaking of a hazardous nature.

2. An unusual experience or course of events marked by excitement and suspense.

3. Participation in hazardous or exciting experiences.

4. A financial speculation or business venture.

JB then elucidates upon the benefits of taking risks — the hazard, the excitement, the suspense, the fact of the undertaking, adrenaline, seeing other places, having strange experiences ... all definite truths and, unquestionably an important part of the game.

But it's not THE game.  No.  The game is not the risk.  The game is what we accept the risk to achieve.

And again no, not just the prestige or the sense of accomplishment, or wealth, or being a "hero," all things JB mentions, though only in passing.

We don't cheer Luke going down the trench, we cheer when the shots go down the exhaust port.  We cheer when the risk is over.  When we've survived.  As happy as a skydiver is falling, it's always a little bit better when the chute opens.  And better still when landing safely.  The fall is a terrific rush ... but it's still only foreplay.

When my players talk of an adventure they had, they don't talk about the risk.  They don't say, "Oh, hey, the best moment was when I thought I was going to die when surrounded by fifty goblins."  No, they say, "We wrecked that fort!  Blew it all to hell."  It isn't just a sense of accomplishment.  It's THE accomplishment.  The one we lived through.  And while others might think we're heroes, we know what it cost.  "Dagnar died.  I miss Dagnar."  They worry more than a bit about having to go through something like that again.  And when they are faced with a big risk, my players hedge and plan and hedge some more.

Because we don't run towards risk.  We run towards getting something we want so badly that will risk the bad stuff to get it.

D&D gives us so many cool things we can want and try to get ... more than any other RPG, more than any other game in existence.  We can literally get anything we can imagine.  The shackles of everyday life are off, the way the D&D struck off the shackles of being a kid under the tutelage of parents and teachers.  We can think of it, we can realise how to get it ... and then we can go get it, our way, using our wits.  Risk?  Risk is just something that happens along the way.

Like Sgt. Rock says, "Livin' is hard, soldier ... it's dyin' that's easy."

A considerably number of early D&D players recognised that the way the game was being structured it was far too easy to die.  This led to an increased sentiment that what these players wanted was the achievement, not the constant reminder that player characters can die at the drop of a hat.  From this sentiment came a host of poisonous game fixes: starting at a higher level, stressing "role" playing over "roll" playing, storytelling and backstories, fudging, matrix-determined ability stats, collaborative storytelling, the "rule of cool" and so on.  These philosophical approaches grew out of the ignorant brutality of early modules like the Tomb of Horrors and Vault of the Drow, complimented by the Dragon Magazine's constant stress upon all the things JB preaches, risk, excitement, et al.

There is a third path.  Lessen the risk.

Don't get rid of it.  Don't smash the game all to pieces in an effort to make sure characters get everything their hearts desire.  Don't eliminate the thrill, the suspense and the hazard.  But get it out of the players' face.  Find another kind of hazardous and exciting experience that gets the players' blood pumping without constantly putting them in fights where being killed has a greater than 5% chance.

I ran my online game for a decade.  Amount of excitement and fear felt?  Lots and lots.  Number of actual player characters who died?  One about every two years.  Granted, there was an incident where three of them died in one fight ... and another when I should have killed them all.  But, I find that killing a player makes a very poor use of game time.  The best use is to make a player think I'm going to kill him or her ... and then kill just enough players to remind them it's always possible.

This is how I'm always able to start players at 1st level, but they mostly manage to reach 12th.  Because not every risk is "life and death."  Players also risk loss of wealth and equipment, loss of opportunity, loss of face, loss of status ... and loss of surety and confidence.  It isn't always necessary to kill them.  In fact, it's hardly ever necessary.

Crying out as Scotty, I didn't decide to be killed, did I?  Where's the fun in that?  But I also needed help, didn't I?  It wasn't this bullshit of shaking it off either.

To use another example, consider the removal of Luke's hand in Empire.  Would it have been better if Luke lost his head?  Or if he fell hundreds of feet to hit the hard steel of the bottom?  No.  No, he loses his hand, he falls through a convenient port that allows him to retreat and fight another day ... but he's suitably chagrined.  He's upset about his father.  He doesn't feel he's "won."  There's excitement.  There's hazard.  There's the hard fact of livin' as opposed to the easiness of dyin'.  It makes a better game.  It allows the player character to try again, to make a better job of it, to succeed.

And it's succeeding well that matters.

Anxiety & Excitement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fear

Picking up on the subject of win conditions from last week ...

"Win conditions" are game mechanics that guide the player's actions in the game towards success.  In most games, these are cut-and-dry: mate the enemy's king, accumulate this much money, put the ball in the hole with the least number of swings, reach base, destroy the enemy's armies and seize territory, whatever.

Early D&Dites made a huge deal out of D&D being a game where "winning" wasn't part of the game.  The argument has been made many, many times.  D&D is an experience, D&D is about discovering the world or following a story ... blah blah blah.  I don't want to spend three paragraphs rehashing this position.  On the surface, it certainly looks to be true.  If you die, you roll up another character, but there's nothing to keep the other players from continuing on ... and since you continue on with them, it all feels like the Ship of Theseus (television's favourite metaphor).  If you don't know what that is, turn on any Netflix or Disney Star series made in the last year and you'll have it explained to you about five minutes in.

A total party kill certainly feels like "losing;" and on some level, finishing a D&D treasure hunt (this being what most adventures are) does sort of feel like "winning."  But more to the point, if you give human beings a game without a clear win condition, they'll just make one up.  The players will get into a pissing contest about who can make the craziest, most insane player character; they'll decide to see how far they can metagame the DM; or how far they can push rules lawyering; or how long they can go it alone, without cooperating; or how powerful a build they can create.  They'll prove how good a player they are, by caring more about their character than anyone has ever cared about any PC, ever.  They'll use D&D to work out their psychological issues, they'll burn the campaign to the ground, they'll role-play until someone knocks on the door with their Oscar.  They'll invent their own game, with their own win conditions, for as long as its allowed.

Worst of all, in a four-player party, they'll all make up their own personal game, with their own win conditions, and fuck everyone else.  Good luck getting that party together.

It is not a solution to preach D&D as a win-condition free game.  Humans are biologically programmed to seek food, shelter and dominance over their environment; the last pumps the body full of those sweet, sweet seratonins — and no one's giving up on those babies.

Nor is it a solution to get everyone to agree on a "win condition."  Everyone's nurtured and natured into squabbling over this corner of the sandbox, fighting over the licorice stick, getting in first through the classroom door to get the best desk, standing first in line for Star Wars tickets, getting picked for the team, getting picked for the job, etcetera.  If you let the players invent win conditions, they're bound to agree only upon those things about which they think they'll edge out the others.

There's only one way to get any number of rugged individualists to agree on a single agenda.

It should be clear to anyone who's played a serious game that D&D is a game of survival.  Survival is THE win condition.  For a lot of people, it's not satisfying.  Survival today only means there's still a chance I won't survive tomorrow.  That makes a dull goalpost.  One way around that is to get rid of survival as a win condition and just make sure the players always survive ... at least until we retire these characters and start other ones.  The practice gets rid of the pesky "survive tomorrow" problem, meaning we can concentrate on those other win conditions already mentioned.  You know, the ones the players invent, having to do with messing around with other people, preening oneself, standing out in a crowd, acting like a dick, mocking other people for fun and profit, you name it.  Survival is just such a bummer, you know?

Exactly.  It is a bummer.  When it''s pushed to the back burner and it's not in the player's face all the time, survival can be comfortably ignored ... you know, how you're ignoring it right now, reading this post, sipping your coffee, listening to whatever you listen to while smarmily frowning at my thoughts.  You're definitely not thinking, right now, about the plane that's run out of fuel and is slowly descending towards you.  Or the clot patiently forming in that cerebral blood vessel.  Or the kidney that's doing okay right now, but if you keep going like you are it's going to quit on you unexpectedly in 2037.  Wow, October of that year will be awful.

No, you're fine.  You're not trying to survive right now, so you're not thinking that sooner or later they'll come a day when survival won't be, well, in the cards.  Oh, you used to think about death back when, in high school ... and what with Covid around, it wedges itself into your thoughts now and then, but then you strategize with a little coffee and a tidy reading of that whackjob Alexis.

See, you only think about survival when it's in your face.  And when it's in your face, you're definitely not enjoying it.  At best, when you get past those moments, you wipe your brow, think "whew, dodged that one," and get busy not thinking about the one you inevitably won't dodge.

D&D is like this.  When the game is played with death on the table, "survival" is never far from anyone's thoughts.  It's there when you're buying equipment, it's there when some stranger rides up in the dark, it's there when Jimmy doesn't make the running and there are only three of you today.  Most assuredly it's there when the DM does something ... weird.

However, we're not talking about survival here.  Not really.  We're talking about fear.  From decades of experience, I can assure the Gentle Reader that intense, riveting D&D is all about fear.  Not in the way that we'd be afraid if someone suddenly broke through the front door with guns.  More in a "Yes, this is badly out of control but we're ready for it," kind of way.

Putting that down and going around another barn — because, hey, what the hell.  It's a barn I've gone around before, when I talked about the movie Greyhound last December.  With that post I wrote,

"In a combat film, the characters are fighting for their lives. None of the characters in Das Boot want to be there. The characters in Greyhound are there because it's a terrifying, necessary job that if its not done, the war is lost and millions will die. We can't create these sorts of tensions for the player, even if the players really love their characters. Therefore, for combat to matter, it has to put things on the line that the players really care about: their mental faculties for making a plan; their shame if it fails; the sense of their joint effort with their friends, to commit themselves to something this big."

I brought this up with an ex-military friend, who has yet to see the film — though I plan on having him around this month.  I asked him what situations like this were like, because he's seen a few; and he agreed generally with my assessment, adding one more detail.

I asked about soldiers expressing their feelings in moments of crisis.  He shook his head, said, "No you don't.  There isn't time."

Right there.  That's the key that pulls all this together.  The invented win conditions for players who don't play in games with death on the table; the process of primping themselves and pimping their rides; the dissatisfaction with survival, when there's time to think about the fact that we have survived; the sense of fear that pushes the possibility of not surviving up front; and the question of why we would play a game that deliberately wants us to feel stress about the possibility of losing, without there being a comparable condition for winning.

You come in, you sit down at the gaming table.  The DM shuffles and mutters prior to starting.  Everyone chats.  Drinks, snacks, stretching out, fumbling with the dice, making notes ... it's like other things that presage something great about to happen.  Musicians in the pit before an opera.  The lights and rumbling of the crowd before a sporting event.  The warning that the enemy is coming over that hill, that one there, as everyone digs in.  A clutch in the throat.  Anticipation.  High expectations.

Two kinds of games.

There's one that rolls along: open a door, bunch of decisions being made, dice being rolled, a joke, laughter, have a role-play ... 8:45 now, get into a combat, get a drink, take a pee, argue over treasure, debate a point with the DM ... 9:10 now, decide which door to go through, search the hall, stumble across the puzzle, solve the puzzle, open the next door, bunch more creatures to fight ... hm.  10:30.  "Let's call it guys; pick it up there next time."

The other: open a door ... shit, it's ten to midnight.

Or, to be fair, holy shit! Fear, swing, fear, hit, hit, hit, fuck, fuck, shit, jesus mary mother of god, JIMMY!  Run! ... ten to midnight.

That second kind comes out of fear; it comes out of forcing the party to act in desperation, seeming to be on the edge of success and then suddenly not.  It comes from a good combat system, from a DM who knows precisely how many whatevers the party can barely handle ... and how to introduce those baddies in a pattern that induces the kind of steady, time-consuming panic that we recognize coming from our own experiences at the worst times of our lives.

I'd like to suss it out, explain how exactly that's done.  A big part of it is practice, fighting a lot of battles, maintaining a single, consistent set of rules so that the battles that were fought in 1989 are still relevant to the battles I fight in 2021.  In part it's knowing what to throw right now and what to hold back ... and then knowing when to throw them in, like Napoleon's last ditch effort at Borodino.  It's running the game so that I'm struggling, too; I'm holding my own line, keeping my own troops at it, breathing the struggle of this group of orcs or that death throes of two treants.  Everyone 'round the table is rushing for their dice, frantically searching their characters for some forgotten note or gadget, some way of looking at a spell to save their ass in a way they haven't had to before ... and I'm doing that too, keeping the game running, making it a real thing.

There's no time.  No time to invent frivolous win conditions.  No time to think about winning at all.  Only time to hope this die drops right; that this try is the one that works.  Knowing the basic system is UTTERLY inflexible, that there's no way to talk oneself out of it, no way to invent hit points that don't exist, no way to take back a bad roll, nothing that can be done when things go sour except to ACCEPT IT.

It's a combination of all those things.  But fear is at the core.  If the dice aren't final, there's nothing to be afraid of.  If the DM is plaible, there's nothing to be afraid of.  If my choices aren't intractable, there's nothing to be afraid of.

And if there's nothing to be afraid of, then there's no reason to worry.  There's plenty of time.  Time enough to fill it with whatever seems clever or challenging.  Or self-aggrandizing.  Or goofy.  Whatever.

Whatever happens, we're going to be fine.

Pulling a Curtain

Okay, JB, I'm up for taking a swing at this comment from September 30th ... specifically this:

"I AM content with the game I'm playing.  I'm not dithering about rule changes and shit anymore."

This is fine and I've no trouble with this position and won't try to dissuade you from it.   But you've made clear with writings on your own blog that the materials provided by AD&D (and by extension, other materials of the period) are sufficient for play.  You're not alone in making statements towards that as a "goal" in play.  I don't disagree; sufficient is what they are.  But sufficient isn't really a positive.  It isn't worth aspiring to and it definitely isn't praiseworthy.

I ask you, and others, to consider the following.

When the first three books of Advanced D&D were published, TSR and the "original" version of the game were all of five years old.  If you credit the idea of player characters and sequenced adventures existing in the minds of the writers before the actual publication of OD&D, surely it's implausible that those things could have manifested before 1971 ... given this is the year Chainmail became available.  From the writings of that game's creators, we can reasonably argue that the IDEA of D&D had to formulate past the formation of the IDEA of Chainmail.  All told, at best, Gygax's experience at the moment when AD&D was published was all of 8 years.  Given that it probably took at least two years to produce the work, a normal amount for material of this scope, his initial experience was no more than 6 or 7 years.

Unless you're prepared to make the argument that GOD came and gave the words to Gygax, who then inscribed the holy writ into the passages we recognize today, we must assume that these were ideas and writings ARE fallible.  In other words, they are not the rules that Gygax would have written had he chosen to write the books three years later than he did, or six years later, or ten years later.  It is, therefore, ridiculous to give them any special merit as THE baseline to build upon.  It happens to be the baseline we have.  That is all.

You may be personally incapable of further dithering with rule changes, perhaps from experience.  But it is ignorant, irresponsible and deliberately obstructionist not to ASK others to take up that effort ... in fact, not to INSIST that those efforts should be taken.  Because, dammit, the effort serves the betterment of the game and everyone who plays it.

The static production of a simplistic game such as Monopoly might be all very well, but more intrinsically satisfying and complex games, like chess, golf or baseball, pass through dozens of iterations ... and in the case of some games, are still changing.  D&D is vastly more complicated and full of potential than any other game in human existence: it stands to reason that the iterations of this game would smash through the ceiling set by any previous game form.  Just because the attempts so far have been materialistic, stupid and short-sighted doesn't mean the "changed" game is an idea to be abandoned.

For all your equivocating, and justification of position, there's no way to see your phrasing as plainly narrow-minded, slow to understand and unhelpful in directing ANYONE, the innocent and the savvy alike, to an altar of any value except one built on the bones of dogma and charlatanism.  You have put a stuffed figure on a throne, called it "Oz" ... and chosen to hide behind a curtain as if you're not responsible for this half effort.

Not enough.  I want you to think harder.

Common Sense

Before writing How to Run, I read every published book about dungeon mastering that I could find, including Matt Finch's Primer.  It's terrible.  It is better than other more terrible things.  Frankly, I'd forgotten it's existence — as I do with many pieces of old school junk — until reading this from Dennis Laffey's blog:

"In the Primer, the section talks about how description should trump die rolls and common sense should trump dedicated game mechanics. I don't have a problem with that."

 

This is not a take-down of either Laffey or Finch.  The logic expressed here is quite common and if I wanted to rant, I could find the blog of someone I didn't like.  I'd rather talk about the trouble with simple solutions to things.  Take this example from Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe, vol. 8-13:

Plainly, old school DMing is Confucianism

An extreme example, but I'll try one of my own.  New players to chess often become enamoured with the Queen.  They prefer the queen to every other piece; and when they lose the queen, they're sure the game is lost.  But the game is not won with the queen; it is won by using all the pieces in concert.  

Description does not supercede die rolls, because in the case of DMing, ranking one part of the game over another makes no sense.  Likewise, it makes no sense to impose a rule such as common sense superceding game mechanics, when what we want are game mechanics that incorporate common sense.  If a game mechanic is non-sensical, get rid of it.

When building a structure, whether a plan to defeat an enemy or redesigning our kitchen cabinets, every part of that structure matters.  Every part deserves our attention and every part must work in tandem towards the common goal.  This is self-evident to me.

Die rolls are used when randomness improves the character of the game; description is used to build emotion, when making a die roll would be foolishly destructive; game mechanics, or rules, demarcate the players' possible responses, using voiced problem solving (which is "descriptive" but is not "description," which may incorporate dice as the rules dictate.  Common sense exists at every level, not as a gut instinct that feels right, but "sound, practical judgment concerning everyday matters ... or the ability to perceive, understand and judge in a manner that is shared by nearly all people."

Our common sense doesn't derive from a "personal" perspective!  It derives from an empathic comprehension of how others would view this matter that's come up during the game.  If a DM is gainsaying that something should be so-and-so according to their gut, then they're not demonstrating common sense, per definition.

Though often, we think that's what common sense is; something we automatically share with the human race.  We tend to believe that if we think a given way, it must be that others, probably most other people, also think that way.

A thing is sound when it is free from defect or injury; that is why we say we're "safe and sound" when avoiding an accident, or we've gotten home without trouble.  The word equates with a tone that falls pleasantly on the ear; if a tone is off, it's unsound; if you're unhealthy, you're unsound.  Therefore, when we say that an opinion is "sound," it's because the opinion resonates equally on the ear of those hearing it.  If your "common sense" isn't immediately met with the entire table nodding their heads and agreeing, without the need of an argument, then you're not invoking common sense at all.  You're producing an opinion, just like any other opinion, and your need to attach a "soundness" to that opinion is merely puffing up your ego.

Something is practical when it can be applied as an action or a use.  It comes from the same root as "practice," as in a thing being practical when it can be practiced.  Practicality is being concerned with material considerations and when we say that something is "practically true," we mean that it has proved itself through practice.  Therefore, if you produce a ruling in the middle of your game that amounts to nothing that the players can use to play your game, you're not exercising common sense.  You're just producing air.

From this, it's painfully clear that "common sense" things ARE game mechanics; and that when someone says that I'm superceding game mechanics with common sense, what they're actually saying is that they feel constrained by game mechanics and the game's structure, so that they want an "out."

Now, this is interesting.  It serves us to remember than any person faced with a game rule, or a social convention, or an imposition of the law, will feel resistance.  To "resist" politically is to organize covert opposition to an occupying or ruling power.  The key word is covert.  One of our best strategies in resisting a group dynamic is to trot out "positive sounding" phrasing in order to redefine our actual intent.  Saying that my opinion, which elicits neither support from the players, nor invokes any obvious application, is "common sense," gives weight to my arguments because I've marshalled the whole human race into my corner.  "SEE?  Of course I'm right, because everyone agrees with me — except you, you and you."

Rules are hard to follow, even in a comparatively simple game, like chess.  That is why there are rules about touching the pieces, or talking, or otherwise distracting your opponent, because when those rules dictating behaviour don't exist between consenting adults, players will attempt to fiddle with the pieces and adjust what square they're on, or talk incessantly about aggravating things, or thump the table with their palms or hum.  People won't follow the rules, even "common sense" rules, where it comes to preserving their own lives.  We have to make laws about maintaining our cars, ensuring the brake lights work, wearing lifejackets, respecting private property, even not grabbing a police officer wildly — because even when there are laws designed to protect people, people still ignore the laws and grab cops, trespass, drown in boating accidents and ignore all those little pesky things having to do with driving a safe automobile.  D&D has so many rules, of so many types, that are often very restrictive on player behaviour, and equally so on what the DM can and cannot do, we should not be surprised that a vast number of participants just don't care about those rules, or why they exist, or how they're meant to function.  The rule exists so I can't do what I want, meaning the obvious right thing to do, the "common sense" thing to do, is to ignore the rule and do whatever the fuck I want.

Now, where has that "I'm Being Facetious" sign got to?

Under public scrutiny, of course, we can't be that obvious; we have to at least pretend we're on the straight-and-narrow.  What I can't understand, and having already said this: if we don't like the rule, or game mechanic, why go through all the rhetoric of "common sense blah blah blah," when we can just change the rule to something that we do like, or which works better?  Where is the logic to assigning the caretaker work to a barely understood phrase (I've spent most of this post defining it, because we don't understand it) instead of simply fixing the game?  It isn't like the company is going to swoop into our kitchens and fine us for House Rule Violation 6.2 section-B paragraph 2.  We own our own games!  We can do whatever we want!  If the damn thing isn't sound or practical, then for pete's sake, make it sound and practical!

Surely, if we're looking for a "primer," the first rule ought to be, "If it's broke, FIX IT."

Significance

Let's set a few rules.  In the real world, you're not a game designer until you've sold a game.  You're not a "good" game designer until you've sold a million games.  You're not a "great" game designer until your game is still selling at least a hundred thousand copies a year ten years after launch.  Finally, you haven't done anything important unless people are still playing your game a hundred years after you've made it.

Ouch, eh?  Yeah.  I concede the gentle reader will want to bend those rules a lot in their favour, which is fine.  Only, I have no intention of bending them for me.

It is hard to write a book that your own generation will enjoy and appreciate.  Most will never do that much.  I once hoped I'd do that much and more, but I'm learning to be comfortable falling short.  I may yet, who knows?  But significance as a writer is a whole other thing.  Pick your writer: Louisa May Alcott, D.H. Lawrence, Jack London, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickensen, Horace Greeley, Ralph Waldo Emerson ... these were all celebrated as writers in their own time.  Then they were celebrated by the children brought up after their own time.  Then they were celebrated by the grandchildren.  And now they are celebrated by a generation that might, at best, barely remember anyone of the generation for which these writers wrote.  These work of these writers survived.  A written word that has not yet survived, that has not won its right to be significant to people not of its time, cannot yet be called important.

The game designers of today are entitled to their fleeting respect.  But that is a far cry from my believing that anyone is going to care about the old school renaissance 58 years from now.  My book How to Run is sure to be dust; as will any of this work put down for this blog.  This is the standard to which I hold myself.  As of yet, I don't think I've done anything significant.  Perhaps this is why I don't take to praise all that well.  Or why I won't give it easily.

A respectable game designer is a rare thing, from this point of view.  It requires that for a game designer to earn my respect, they have to want more than making a thing for common use by the general public.  For most designers, that's the pinnacle for them.  For me, that's barely putting one foot forward on the mountain.

In 2004, Penny Arcade was a significant voice in the games industry, including influencing thought and philosophy about D&D.  This comic from 2004 created a considerable stir:

The observation remains seminal to this page on Wikipedia.  We've been living this reality since, so I'm fairly sure they were dead on.  When it came out, it felt edgy and new; now it feels ho-hum and obvious.  Penny Arcade has been off the radar for 8 years.  Imagine what it must be like for them, to have hit their stride at a time before Patreon.  Yet what gamer didn't read Penny Arcade in 2004?  What happened?  Why did they stop being relevant?

You and I can play a game where we name hundreds of people in the music industry, film, literature, politics and youtube who were huge once ... and are now unrecognizable to most of the population.  Recently I ran across a musician named Duane Eddy.  Eddy had 15 top-40 hits between 1958 and 1963; he had 7 in 1958 and 1959, two more than Buddy Holly had in that same time period (Holly had 8 altogether, from 1957 to 1959, when he died).  How many Duane Eddy hits do you remember?  Have you even heard of him?  I'm 57 and I hadn't.  His last hit happened the year before I was born.

So, deciding to listen, here's his first hit in 1957: Rebel Rouser.  And it's instantly recognizable ... from Forrest Gump.  Which, interestingly, fits with the film-time of the scene in which Forrest is running from a truck — well done, Zemeckis.  Eddy is not a one-hit wonder.  He had more hits in his time than Bon Jovi (6), Blondie (8) or Barry White (10).  But you recognize their names, right?  Maybe that's only because they're more recent.  There's a good chance someone reading this has no idea who Bon Jovi is.  Yeah.  Frightening, eh?

Let's look at those rules again.  Yes, I'm not a game designer.  Oh, I call myself that, but it's a lie.  I've never invented a game that I sold to anyone.  I did invent a few games that were very popular with my peers for a time, but none that I've sold.

My agenda has been explaining how a particular game can be played a LOT better.  I teach how to be a better dungeon master; how to build a better game world; how to advance rules that fix game problems; how to view the game; what the game can teach you; and the relationships between the game and the real world.  I have written books about this ... but I've never written a game.

I'm piggy-backing on the game, and that is no way to become significant.  Once the game ceases its hold on the populace, the work I've done will come to naught.  Except that those people I've affected will apply what they've learned from me, and what they teach themselves while following my example, to whatever comes next.  I will be forgotten.  I will never have a wikipedia page like Penny Arcade and I'll never be brought up as an example of an ex-famous person, because I've never been remotely famous.  But the work I'm doing will still have an effect.  I am changing minds; and that's my fundamental goal.

I'm not a game designer, but I am a game philosopher.  As a philosopher, I have less and less interest parsing subjects that will never achieve a resolution.  "Should game-designers take responsibility?" is a null program.  Whether or not they should, they either will or won't, about which I have no influence, because taking responsibility isn't a game issue, it's a psychological issue.  A person who wants to take responsibility, who happens to be a game designer, will automatically take it.  A person who feels no desire to take responsibility won't, period; not as a game designer, not as a lawyer, not as a doctor, not as an engineer.  Which, incidentally, is the reason why the academic expectation is impossibly high for those professions: because you won't survive if you don't work with others; and others will recognize instantly if you're the sort that doesn't take responsibility.  In which case, they will exclude you, and you will go down in flames.

Game design is a soft subject.  It isn't socially crucial.  A game designer can be woefully irresponsible and no one will die.  A few marks will lose some bucks.  Big deal.  Game designers can work alone, even if they're terrific monsters like Phil Fish ... until they gather so much hate that no one will touch their games.  We gain nothing trying to convince these people that what they do matters, because IT DOESN'T.  If it did, there'd be harder consequences than unpopularity.

Talking about expectations of responsibility, or for example, when rules should be simplified, or how rules should be made more readable, is a waste of my time.  I'm not giving a game designer seminar here.  If what's wanted is learning how to write clearly, there are only a million videos online talking about that.  Those videos are ONLY useful to people who can't write.  For anyone who can write, those videos are ... erm ... well I guess they're useful to someone.

Occasionally I've written a post about why rules are necessary.  I'm befuddled by having to address this subject at all.  It's a group activity.  ALL group activities, even those that involve nothing but a bar, a table, drinks and time, have rules.  These rules may not be written down, but it's sure fucking obvious when someone breaks one.

I was recently asked to write another post answering this latter question.  As ever, I go straight to Calvin & Hobbes:

Judging from game descriptions I find on Reddit, this is how everyone except me and some 60 other people plays D&D.  It's easy to find huge discussions on Reddit and elsewhere in which every commenter defends this approach, as the only decent way to play, while vilifying anyone who so much as mentions a steadfast rule.  I must point out that the above depicts a child and a make-believe toy.  Two real children have to be pulled apart when this shit occurs ... by an adult who THEN MAKES RULES because that's how children grow up.  Calvin, funny as he is, is funny because he's a fuckin' sociopathic narcissist, not a role-model.  Except, of course, on Reddit, where everyone is so far apart, anonymous, has an audience and can therefore be a fuckwad/shitcock ... just like Calvin is to everyone.

Anyway ...

There's no sense in going down these roads over and over.  It's far harder to talk of things we can change, things we can improve, ways we can be better at something we love doing.  Let's talk of those things, since they're significant.