Tonight's Running

Had a total party kill tonight.  11th level druid, 9th level ranger and mage, 8th level fighter, 7th level monk and thief, 1st level druid.  All dead.

Four mind-flayers.  Small room.  Underwater.  I didn't use mind blast, because there are no actual rules for what it does.  I didn't use the combat-oriented tentacle pulling the brain out of the body.  The only special ability I gave them was that each flayer that wasn't stunned could dominate one character, mentally enslaving them, so they'd fight against the party.  I aided the party by teleporting them into the fight, granting them first round surprise.  At first, it really looked like the party was going to wrap it up fast ... but then the ranger blew save and everything went BAD very quickly.  Two mind flayers died; the ranger bashed the druid into pulp.  The party couldn't use magic, since the mindflayers are 90% magic resistance, most of the magic wouldn't work in a submerged environment and I use a spellcasting system that makes casting slow.

But ... and this is a big but ... I felt there was a high chance the party wouldn't come out of this alive.  So I built a plan.  The actually dead party found themselves in Elysium, with it being fully understood that they had died trying to keep a very bad door to a very bad plane of existence closed.  So the judges in Elysium have granted the party, who are dead, the privilege of placing their case before the angel Arseil, Prince of Gehenna, who may release them from death (though I haven't told them yet).  Before the night ended, they set out from Elysium for Hades, because first they must cross Hades to find Abaddon, Keyholder of the Abyss and Gehenna, the former down, the latter up, and convince their way past the gate.

To aid them, remembering that Dante had Virgil, I chose a guide.  The players exist in the year 1654.  In the year 1650, Rene Descartes died.  So that is the party's guide.  He has advised them, and taken them by boat from Elysium to the shores of Hades.  I described it thus ...

Two miles out to sea, with the cliffs of Hades in sight, around the sloop being handled by Descartes, souls began to burst onto the sea's surface, taking in breaths of air and looking about.  With the ship nearing the land, I could tell the story of how these souls reached the land ... a beach between cliffs, where they would have to try to wedge their way through gates there.  The party saw that the people floating started to swim towards the land.  Then they passed through a part where everyone was swimming.  As the ship passed, these souls banged on the side of the ship and tried to catch it, wailing as they failed.  The water was full of swimmers.  As the ship moved faster than the swimmers, they could see the swimmers closer to the land were getting more and more tired, moving more slowly.  They began to fail ... and as the boat went on, the swimmers helplessly clumped together.  Descartes could no longer find open water.  By a few hundred yards out, all the souls were spent, helplessly letting the waves drift them towards shore.

The party reacted finely to this horror; the side of the boat was only five feet above the water's surface, so the misery they passed was fully visible.  I gave it as much description as I could.  Descartes explained that he would try to land the boat between the beach and the cliff, but that it was necessary for the party to travel at least some way along the beach, even if only 40 yards.  The philosopher explained that the party needed to realise that they weren't living persons moving through Hades, but dead souls; which meant, if they allowed themselves to be corrupted by Hades, or took actions of violence and anger, they could become permanent residents.  Meaning, mistreating the souls all about them could bring down a terrible judgement.  Descartes also advised that these were not "evil" people, but only people who had "failed to care" about religion and duty.  Thus, though they were destined to suffer, the players could have no justification in adding to their misery.

Thus the party gingerly leapt from the boat into the water near the beach, where the slough of exhausted, corpse-like bodies had formed together as a mass.  On the nearest part of the beach, the tired bodies lay everywhere and atop one another, forming a difficult carpet to climb over.  While further up the beach were those able to drag themselves onward, towards a great wall, with gates and a parapet ... gates they had to get through, to free themselves from the horrors of the beach.  But the press of people made it difficult to open these doors, so that the guards inside — whatever they were — had to beat back the petitioners to let a few in at a time.

With this mass press going on, the party moved along the edge towards the cliff, to climb it.  There were souls trying to climb the cliff, but they were much too tired to succeed ... but the party had come in by boat, so they had their strength to do it.  Still, they had to fight off the clinging hands and hear the desperate cries of the souls, who tried to swarm over them.  The party handled it well, and though there was trouble in starting their climb up the cliff, they succeeded in wresting themselves from the mob.

Stealing from Dante ... looking back from above, the 1st level druid, now nearly 2nd level, saw a childhood friend below, trapped on the beach.  This reference had all the effect upon the player I could have wished.

This is where I stopped the running.  The fight, the dismal feeling of the party as they realised they were going to fail and die, was sharply contrasted with the party realising they were being given one last try at life.  Naturally, the party wanted to joke about it all, so I had to wade in and warn them that "I am still trying to run a game here, and I need you to take it seriously."  The effect this had was chilling.  Much of being a DM is "presence" ... the ability to be in charge, even of friends, by centering their attention on the game and not themselves.  The experience of being in Elysium, being given exhaustive information, without hesitation, about magic items they possessed and hadn't fully investigated, about ordinary things they wanted that were simply handed to them, was doused by the grisly scenes I've just described above.  I couldn't ask for a better running.

A Test Proposed

Since it's a Saturday, there might be a chance someone can perform an experiment with their players today.

Take an object in your house; preferably a large, heavy one.  Fill an opaque bag with sand so that it weighs a healthy amount.  Then at the beginning of your session, reach down and pick it up, and drop it on the game table.

"This," you'll tell your players, "It 10,000 gold pieces."  It can be 50,000 or 200,000, depending on the level of your players.

Next say, "This money, and the experience that goes with it, will be given to any player here that's LIED TO by an NPC.  If any NPC you meet in today's running lies to you, because I've made them, and the player can provide proof that the NPC has lied, then you get the gold and an equal share of experience to go with it."

This, whether or not you give X.P. for gold.  Make an exception.

Finally, say, "This isn't a game of 'spot the liar.'  As your DM, I'm not going to give away any of this money tonight.  Because none of my NPCs is going to lie.  At all.  Understand?  This is a sign of my commitment that what you hear is the exact truth.  Every time."

Tell me what response you get.

Bored Games

To appreciate this post, it has to be undestood that I was born in 1964.  I was 9 y.o. before there came a 3rd channel on the TV.  I did not see my first arcade game until I was 11, and only then because I was in California visiting Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland.  I didn't see an arcade game in Calgary until 13.  I didn't have cable television until I was 15, which only meant about twelve channels.  I didn't have a Betamax video recorder until I was 16, the year after I began playing D&D.

In short, the number of distractions apart from boardgames and sports was far more limited than now.  Thus, when I say I spent hundreds of hours playing a wide number of boardgames and card games, it was because there was lots of time.

My parents were serious about games.  By the age of 6, I'd learned to play numerous card games, chess, checkers, battleship, parcheesi and Chinese checkers.  Game nights on Saturday were a regular thing, two or three times a month, so that by eight I'd was a veteran of cribbage, backgammon, rummy, canasta and poker.  Whist, and then bridge, would come later.  Every member of my extended family, especially my hard-fisted German material grandfather, played cribbage ... and he in particular played "to educate" trusting young children.  If your not familiar with the cold-hearted rules of cribbage, if you fail to count all the points in your hand accurately, your opponent can call "mulligan" and count those points against you.  No empathy intervened.  My grandfather would be the first to say it was a mean, son-of-a-bitchin' world out there, and if you can't learn to rely on yourself, you deserve to get kicked in the teeth until you do learn.

So ... games were a weird, fucked up battlefield.  Virtually every elder person I played cards with held those sosrts of beliefs, on both the German and Russian side of my kin.

I got rather good at cribbage; there's more to the game than might be imagined, as it's about leading your opponent into playing cards that will enable cutting their throat.  No need to go into it.  Like poker, it's a skill.  I'm an excellent poker player ... if the poker is REAL poker, that doesn't rely on ridiculous levels of chance, such as the ignorantly popular Feckless Hold-em.  I love convincing a bunch of young "players" to try stud or draw; they just don't understand percentages or pressure.

As a kid, I played poker for literal peanuts, poker chips, matches ... whatever was available.  I once was busted during a school science fair for playing poker while waiting for the teachers to bring the classes down to the auditorium one at a time.  Gave lots of time to sit around and be bored.  Got a week's detention for "gambling" ... with jelly beans.  Authority fails to recognize a lot of the time that they're teaching the wrong lesson.

 I never liked checkers as much as chess.  If I played with my sister, it had to be checkers because she didn't understand complicated games.  She was good for games like "war" and "go fish," or any board game that was really linear, like Careers, Payday, Life, Mille Bornes, Snakes & Ladders, Monopoly, that sort of thing.  I played more board games in my childhood than I can possibly remember now.  My sister and I used to play games at the family cabin, all afternoon, playing one kind of game after another.   For my sister, the tougher games were onces like Masterpiece or Stock Ticker, and she certainly wasn't up to RISK.

But, let me get back to chess.  My father taught me when I was very young and I regularly played with him and with my brother, who was five years older than me.  My brother was and is a bastard; he and I have been in the same room four times over the last thirty years.  The last time I saw him was my mother's funeral, nine years ago.  I began beating my father at chess when I reached 11.  My brother, when I was 12.  By 14, I was deep into chess with the school club and competing in the occasional tournament.  My best rating was just over 1400.  I did okay, not great, but I was studying chess by then in addition to playing it; the game became a science rather than fun.  But ... as writing became more important to me, and with the time I wanted to give to D&D, I recognised that to get better at chess I would have to give up other things I liked more.  So I backed away.  I continued to play into my 30s, but I haven't played a game offline in 20 years now.  I'll be sure and teach my grandson, and play with him if he likes it, but that's all chess is to me now.

Stock Ticker hit me like a fever around age ten or eleven.  I got better at the game and my father liked it a great deal.  He did all the calculations instantly in his head — it's just two and three digit multiplication — but it was impressive when he could rattle off how much 11,500 shares of stock would cost at 1.35 cents a share.  He taught me tricks that I used through high school and university, but computers ruined me.  I'd have to struggle coming up with the right number in my head today.

I liked S.T. because it consisted of edging out the competition by risk and tenaciousness ... personality traits I still possess, though I apply them to other things.  I don't imagine many readers here have played the game, and if they did most likely found it rather dull.  But around age 11, it was my favourite game.

RISK, not so much.  I appreciated the geography of it and I was always a strategy player, but children playing the game are liable to argue, kick the board over, sneak armies onto territories and that sort of thing.  I lost friends to RISK, some from cross-accusations and some from hard feelings from getting pasted.  It's hard to like a game when, if a run of luck occurs, the losers start screaming.  I began to shy away from invitations to play that game.  I did try Axis & Allies for a time, but I felt the game was structured against complete freedom of play.  Every game tended to follow the same objectives, reaching the same three or four possible conclusions; I didn't feel there was enough imagination involved to hold me.  In any case, by 13, I had a friend introduce me to Panzerleader.

Before D&D, that set of Avalon Hill tank games became fairly central to me, apart from playing chess.  I continued to play Panzerblitz, Arab-Israeli Wars and Squad Leader through university, until other participants evaporated.  I had two copies each of Panzerleader and Panzerblitz and I remember one summer our group of four played a vast game with 14 boards and seven hundred units to a side — two commanders to each side, each moving two armies against two armies.  Obviously, we never finished it; when the tide of battle started to go one way, the losers lost interest — though of course it could have gone either way, still — and I learned my first lesson in player "commitment."  Often, the idea of a game is much more interesting than actually playing it.  I could have happily played that battle to the last man standing.  Perhaps if there's a heaven, I'll get to yet.

D&D was the elephant that changed all my patterns.  I still played boardgames with my family, but with my friends it was mostly D&D.  There were some dalliances with Car Wars and The Creature that Ate Sheboygan; The Awful Green Things from Outer Space was a riot.  Those were games I never played with family.  Much later on, my parents got interested in things like Puerto Rico and Settlers of Catan ... but these are games that have a limited number of practical strategies, and once the strategy is realized, the game is as linear as Careers.  Truth be told, video games in the 1980s began to obliterate any interest in board games.

My father taught me how to play whist when I was 10 and cutthroat bridge soon after.  Bridge was his favourite game; he played it like a tonic, and once I'd become a decent player he wanted to get up a foursome between him and mom and me and whomever I was dating, engaged to or married to.  So a string of girls sat in as a fourth until my first wife Michelle, who was about my level.  But my father really understood that game; he never failed to teach or praise after every hand, as necessary.  For a time he turned me into a good player, a skill I used well at university; through the 80s I played nearly a thousand rubbers with other friends and strangers; sometimes we'd play all day, changing out partners as people went to class, picking them up again when class was over.  Typically, there were two or three tables going at a time, with alternates waiting to jump in.  It wasn't a "club" ... it was just something to do in a world without social media and cellphones.

There are no boardgames of the '70s I didn't play for hundreds of hours; and most especially Monopoly, as there was always a copy of the game around.  On one level, I count a lot of that time as wasted.  There's not much to learn from one's 157th game of Life.  It's really just waiting for death.  It helps put a little perspective on those who talk about teenagers "wasting" their lives with social media.  At least that's a potential to learn skills like communication and writing.  We tend to forget that many of the pasttimes of erstwhile days were based on chewing up hours with purposeless make-work.  Roll the dice, move the piece, buy the property.  Wup wup.

'Course, anyone reading this will argue, "But Alexis, clearly you established a set of game principles that have served you in good stead these decades since!  Not cheating, waiting for others to take their turn, thinking before acting, understanding how many, many different games were constructed — all of that is good meat for the stew!"  Sure, I'll go with that.  One thing a video game doesn't do well is teach participants to wait their turn; and both D&D and life require a considerable amount of letting other people speak and act ... and not just waiting for our chance to speak.  But I'd argue that D&D was a better teacher of that then those old board games.  It's a far, far better game.  I'd far rather work on my game world than spend a minute playing a board game or a card game.  I've spent enough of my life doing that.  I'm not interested anymore.

Game Details

Recently I was asked some questions by a reader ... and now seems like a good time to answer them.  The question was about my gaming group (I have two of them), which admittedly I don't talk about much.  There's a reason for that:  I've no wish to parade them in front of my readers for the sake of views, given that they have private lives and their participation in my game is a private thing.  Still, there are some things I can say that I haven't related so far.

I'm going to answer these in the reversed order they were asked ... but only the asker and I know that, so I don't know why I'm bothering to say it.  Meh.  There it is.

Question: would I run my game differently if I could run only once a month?  How would I address finding the balance between wanting to run an immersive game vs. the players having to work hard to pull threads and find their own adventure?

In this country, Canada, we have a social system that has successfully passed laws that have been passed to control the spread of covid in order to protect the greater number of people.  This law-passing process occurs because there is only one Government body involved, which is not limited in its power by bullshit laws about phony filibusters, or even real ones.  One of these laws at the present, disallows private gatherings of any kind where more than two households are involved; period.  If such a thing occurs, the police can appear, demand the end of the private function and, if not complied with, can make arrests and end the meeting legally.  This actually occurs, despite the nutjobs in this country who make stupid videos ... because in Canada, the actual law is the law, and not what internet boobs pretend the law to be.  Therefore, for some time now, since the appearance of the Delta Strain, I haven't run D&D in person, at all.  Although, for a brief time in early 2021, I ran it a few times, about a month apart.

I ran the game exactly the way I always run the game.  After 40 years of play, I know of only one way to run; that is, with the expectation that I will run again, definitely.  When we pick up the game at some point in the future, the first session will begin with where the last session left off, even though that may be a year or more in time.

Keep in mind I have participants who have advanced as players for more than a decade, couched in the sort of game I run.  They also play in other games (though not lately), and tell me about distinct differences, but once they sit down with me they're ready to be immersive as soon as I'm ready to run.  It is a mindset that both DM and player possess, when they're adjusted to thinking of the game that way.  It's evidence of the "practice" I describe regularly.  There's no "hard work" involved.  While away from the game, the players consider and think about the things they'd like to do next, even calling me up and chatting about them out of game, whereupon I'll offer advice or angles they perhaps hadn't considered ... and when the game starts again, they'll say, "Oh, and there's that thing I wanted to do.  What are the numbers on that, or can I meet with the right people, or we get started on our way to pick up the thing we'll need.  Can we buy the land tonight?  How much is it?  That kind of thing.  They're as anxious to get started on their ideas when the game starts as I am to answer.

I've been experiencing this dynamic for virtually all the time I've been running, so it's weird for me to think that most players seem compelled to begin each game session utterly cold, with nothing to think about until the DM tells them what's in the next room.  Seems a very stale enterprise.  Yet until now, I don't think I've mentioned what goes on outside my games in just this manner.

Question: Can I tell a little bit about the dynamics of my in-person gaming group.

Okay, sticking to the character names and concealing some details.

The Smaller Party consists of one family member and two close friends.  This is variously called "Demifee's Party" or the "Airship Party," the latter because the players uncovered an ancient airship in Egypt and have been tooling around in it returning sacred objects to their origin in order to raise a member of their party who was in bondage on another plane of existence.  That member has been returned, those quests are over and the party has decided to use the airship — which is driven by force of will and not by currents of air — to venture to the Moon.  They were busy insulating the ship against the cold when last we played.  It has been almost two years before I've been able to get together with this party, though the four of us recently took a trip to B.C. together.  We hope to begin playing again in February.

The Larger Party consists of two direct family members, two in-laws, one member who was a cousin of my first wife Michelle and is therefore a cousin of my daughter, two lesbians — and "the lesbians" is how they expect to be called by everyone, all the time, with their expectation that we should do so — and one friend, for a total of eight people besides myself.  This game has been ongoing since 2004, though not everyone has played for that long.  It is typically thought of as "Falyn and Pikel's Party;" with the original "main" characters and their henchfolk, the total number of "party characters" available to the players equals somewhere around 35.  As some have reached name level, another 40 followers, whom the players are free to run, can be added to that number.  These are scattered in three groups, with the middle body in Transylvania, where the players possess land, a secondary group in Volhynia, in Poland, where they are attempting to seat one of their number, who drew royal blood as a background, on a throne of some kind, and the primary group which is off the coast of the Canary Islands, submerged below the sea, having transmuted themselves into waterbreathers in the hopes of finding one of two missing treasure ships of the Portuguese Crown that were stuffed full by Antonio, Prior of Cato; by the story the players discovered, these ships were driven south by Dutch pirates, only to fall prey to a Spanish patrol that sunk the ships somewhere immediately south of the island of Gran Canaria.  Either ship might contain as much as a million gold pieces in valuables, perhaps much more.

When they sit around my table, using their main characters, Arne the ranger sits on my immediate left; Arne is very much the "enthusiastic" player I described in my book, How to Run.  Falcon the mage sits on Arne's left; Falcon is an intense bookkeeper, keeping track of names, where things happen, how much everyone has and so on, without my expecting it.  Sebastien the cleric sits to the left of Falcon.  Sebastien is a talker; he gets bored more easily than the others and he has to be shut down by me regularly if he's not directly involved in play.  Hof the thief sits to the left of Sebastien; Hof is a jovial, Santa-like figure, clever and very innovative.  If there's a strange, excellent way to do something, Hof will think of it.   However, he's self-sacrificing and fiery in combat, making him a lot of fun to battle with.  Garalzapan the wizard sits next to Hof; he's much more powerful than Falcon and one of the first two participants in the game, along with Falyn.  Unfortunately, Garalzapan cannot tell the difference between an eight-sided and a ten-sided at a glance; so Pikel the druid sits next to Garalzapan and gently sorts out some of the game's details.  Pikel is my power player, my munchkin.  He's stoic, patient, a die roller of mysterious and devastating luck (which occasionally runs out) and decidedly the brains of the outfit where it comes to tactics, organisation and problem solving.  He talks very little with NPCs.  Next to Pikel is Fayln the other ranger; Falyn is the role-player, the scrounger, the one who remembers to buy everything that anyone ever needs on the equipment page.  Falyn started with Garalzapan, Pikel joined to make it three ... and all three remember clearly when they were brittle, fragile neophyte adventurers.  They've come a long way and been joined by smart people.

There's one missing; an in-law.  Very eager to play, very anxious, but has recently joined our number and hasn't had a chance to roll a first character.  Once again, we hope to start running again in February, but it will depend on what the restrictions are after Christmas.

Question:  How long is a session?

Sessions for either party start between 6 and 7 PM, depending on when everyone can arrive.  By 7:15 we're usually in full swing.  There's often a 15 minute break between 9:30 and 10, which often involves a run to the local convenience store.  This last summer I moved to a place that's literally 150 yards from a 7/11 (do they have those in the States?), so it will get visited a lot.  Games then run until midnight, usually, even if people have to work the next day.  Now that the grandson is 13 months old, I don't know about that end point; we'll have to see.  In former times, if a good battle was still in swing, it wasn't impossible to keep playing until 1 or 2 AM; but none of us are as young as we used to be.

 

Well, if anyone else has a question, I'd be happy to answer.

How the Rules Should Read

Before I start, I want to warn my readers that this isn't going to be an easy post for some to read, because it involves domestic violence.  I would recommend that you approach this post cautiously for that reason.

Yesterday, on his 'Crossing the Verse blog, Ozymandias quoted a dialogue, that I'd like to post here as well.

We are all seeing a lot of stuff like this now, and not just connected to role-playing games.  I have no specific things to say about any of the posts above, except that they are more or less representative of a growing number of people who believe that the means to making their own lives easier is to create rules that they themselves feel that they're able to live by, and that ~ they feel ~ others ought to live by too.  All this, we are told, is so that everyone can feel "safe." Because "safe" is the most important thing there is, especially in any sort of group activity.

Now, let me take a step back.  I am going to talk about D&D again, but first I want to explain about something else.

When I was young, my father hit me.  I have talked abut this on this blog before, but about a month ago I had a revelation about it.  See, my father did not hit me when I was an infant, or when I was a child.  I remember that I was 14 years old the first time my father hit me with his fist. I had been given spankings, and I had experienced my father's belt, but as far as I knew, those times were not done in anger.  Growing up in the 70s, most kids had stories of being hit with a belt and that wasn't unique.

But at 14, my father made a connection in his head that a belt wasn't controlling my behavior.  I wasn't growing up the way he expected me to grow up.  I wasn't working hard at school.  I wasn't pursuing a future in science or engineering.  I wasn't speaking politely to my mother or my sister, mostly because they weren't speaking politely to me.  And I wasn't afraid of a belt.  In fact, I was getting to the point that I'd rather take the belt than kow-tow to an agenda that did not fit my interests.

So my father got desperate, and he lost his temper, and he hit me with his fists.  I had said something to my sister that was inconsiderate, and my father found me in the laundry room.  I can remember him coming right at me.  And me putting up my arms to protect my face.  And being hit in the face and the body.  And then it was over and I remember being told that I better never speak badly to my sister again.

That didn't happen very often.  But it did happen, and no, I didn't feel safe.  It happened right up until I was nearly 20.  But before I explain what stopped it, I want to explain what caused it.

When my father was hitting me at 14, my father felt SAFE.  I was just a young teenager, about 120 lbs, less than half my father's weight, and I was a nerd.  I avoided fights as a kid because I lost fights.  My father had worked as a forest fighter.  He had worked as a roughneck around oil wells.  When I was 14, he was 42, and a big man.  He had big, beefy hands.  I wasn't gonna do anything to him.  He didn't have to hesitate before rushing in to beat me up.

At 19, I was out of high school but still living at home.  I was bigger.  I had worked construction jobs.  My hands were harder.  My shoulders were wider.  I had played football and I had grown.  That's where I was when my father got his last try to learn me something.

I remember I was in the basement rec room.  And it was really late.  Something had pissed him off but I don't remember what.  I heard him coming down the stairs and I must have known why then, though I've forgotten now.  He had his fists closed.

I had my fists closed too.  And I remember I said, "Come on, old man.  You wanna fight.  I'm ready for you."

And just like that, my father backed the fuck down.  We never did fight.  And he never closed a fist in my presence again.

He didn't feel safe any more.

That's the center point of this post. I had a relationship with my father after that, and it was never what I'd call satisfactory.  Towards the end, it became fucking impossible.  But not because he hit me.  No.  We settled that business.  And settling that, for a time, there were things we were able to sort out between us and I did have some good times with him.  He's in an old age home now, with Alzheimers, and I don't visit him.  I stopped visiting him casually in 2007 when he was healthy and well.  I saw him at my mother's bedside in 2012 before she passed.  And at my daughters wedding in 2016.  Not since.  Because not all parents are good parents, and not even family deserves an infinite number of chances.

Beware of people who make a crusade out of feeling safe.  Asking to feel safe by controlling what other people say or do, or by what emotions they display, is not a good thing.  Any policy that begins with what other people have to do is a road to persecution and the abuse of power.

I did not treat my daughter as my father had treated me.  I did spank her on three occasions, all of which my daughter remembers. Those spankings consisted of her bending over my lap and being smacked one time.  And not hard.  Because I learned as a child that the worse thing about being spanked isn't the pain.  The pain is nothing.  The pain is choosing to be hit by the wrench by your father because fuck him.  The worst thing about being spanked is the humiliation that it is happening.

One spank just makes the message stick.  The first time I spanked her was to stop her from touching burning wood in the fireplace.  She was, I think, four.  I don't remember why the other two times.  It seemed to matter at the time.  But I felt safe too, didn't I?

I was not going to be my father.  And that's what matters.  It isn't about what people do to us. We can't, and shouldn't try, to control other people. That's my father's crime.  Not that he hit me.  But that he refused to understand me, or try to understand me.  I could stand here today and talk about how I didn't feel safe ~ and I sure didn't ~ but it was far, far worse that I wasn't understood than that I didn't feel safe.  I'd have taken a hundred beatings if it meant my father would have asked me a fucking question about what I wanted, and believed me.

But he never did.

People who want to feel safe aren't listening.  They don't want to listen. When someone raises a voice in their presence, from pain or confusion or from frustration, they don't want to hear any of that.  The safety people don't want to reach out.  They don't want to forgive anybody, anything.  They just want everyone to bend, to make them feel safe.

And once they feel safe, believe me ... that isn't going to end well.

I want to say that D&D shouldn't be about any of this.  It shouldn't be about people making rules about the behaviour of other people. If you don't like other people, then don't play with them. Or find a way to speak with them, and understand them, and forgive them.  There is no kindness like forgiveness, and no cruelty like shame.

Forcing others to quiet themselves for the sake of safety is shaming.  It is ritualized humiliation for people who don't fit it, who don't toe the line, who are too passionate, or too high strung, or too stressed for reasons that have nothing to do with a D&D table.  I am ready, as a DM, to ask someone who won't speak kindly to others to leave my table.  But I won't take a part in shaming them.  I won't make rules that enable them to stay on if they act as I dictate.  And I will let them join my game again, if we can talk and discuss things, and make room for our forgiving one another.

If we want to make rules, let's make that one.  Let's demand that if someone has an issue, if someone has raised their voice and gotten upset, that no one is allowed to speak with superior judgment that a role-playing game is THIS, or that people have gathered for THIS reason, or that for the sake of EVERYONE, an individual is disposable, or that the right to play somehow justifies a right to dictate how other people should present a game, or check-in because we say so, or kowtow to the lines we draw for ourselves, or fail to be acknowledged because, while they're of some kind of race, they're not of a certain kind of passively accepted personality.  How about the rule reads, "Everyone has a right to be heard, and acknowledged, and forgiven, even if that doesn't make everyone feel safe."

The Evaporation of Interest

Wow.  And I thought the LARP reality show was cheesy.

I found the above image on the WOTC website fully intending to write a post asking what was new in D&D and pronouncing the words, "absolutely nothing."  I felt that was a safe bet where it comes to the commercial side of the business.  Then I found this:

This is not a movie poster.

But we're used to this, right?  It's an expansion for Neverwinter: Underdark, based on a character and novel by R.A. Salvatore.  Sold as something extreme.  In the words of the press release (no, I'm not linking it), "deadly and insane . . . epic."  Is it possible to write a promo for a game that doesn't include the word epic?  I doubt it.

Correct me if I'm wrong . . . isn't Salvatore the shit hack writer who churned out about a hundred Forgotten Realms books?  Hm.

This isn't a new game, mind you.  It's a storyline.  Yes, we have moved so far into the epic world of game manufacture that a storyline is deserving of this sort of hype.

Gah.

I just know there are little fan boys all goosed-up about their excitement at seeing this thing get released. I'd hate to rain on their fun, but hey, let's face it - that's impossible.  These people are in way, way too deep for anyone's words to upset their habit.  At this point, these are people who wouldn't care if they woke up and found Larry Niven's fictional wire hanging from their brain.

Who's Larry Niven?  An actual science fiction writer.  Not that I ever really liked him.

No, this isn't written to change anyone's mind.  This isn't even written to shout at anyone to get the fuck off my lawn.  This is just . . . well, let's say I'm just keeping track.

In four weeks I'm going to be up at the Edmonton comic-con and I will meet none of the people who find the poster art above the least interesting.  Oh, they will be there - but I won't meet them.  I will meet a lot of people like me, people who are fascinated by the game as it was originally designed and who want to improve it as a work of love.

The sort of people who are selling the above art and the sort of people who are buying it . . . I don't know who the hell these people are.  As far as I can tell, their fascinations has as much to do with D&D and RPGs as people who attend NASCAR.  We live on the same planet.  The similarities seem to end there.

Eventually, every gamer arrives at the point in their lives where they look at what's happening now and compare it with the thing they enjoyed once upon a time . . . and realize those things have nothing to do with each other.  It isn't that maturity incurs a lack of interest - it is that at some point the interest we had is simply not being made.

Someone figures out that they can get money for creating a storyline based on work someone else did - someone they basically own, since he's an old asset they created in the 80s - for pretty much the same money they used to get actually working to improve something.  Storylines are cheaper than real game design and they're cheaper still when we don't even need to create our own.  Then its just a matter of plugging the new storyline into the old format and selling the same game over again to the same people for the same $80 (or whatever the cost would be - I went looking and I couldn't find a price).

And those of us who have seen better drop our jaws and wonder how it ever came to this.

There's one simple reason why so much of our economy is directed towards young people.  It isn't that the young have money to spend, although they do.  It isn't that the young have a taste for new things, although they do.  It is that the young have only bought a few things in their whole lives - and mostly pretty small things - and they're unsophisticated.  They have no reference point upon which to base whether something is viable or not.  They're easily duped.  They're stupid.

They make great consumers!  No sweat, no fuss, no annoying questions arising out of experience . . . and when a kid hits 18 or 19 and has bought enough games to ask those questions?  No problem.  The market has already dumped them.  We want 10 to 13 year olds, kids who we can clinically prove haven't fully developed brains.  No, seriously.  Brains still in development.

Okay, here's an old man statement, but it's a joke.  Seriously.  But wouldn't the world be massively different if we decided that children younger than 15 were disallowed from buying anything?

Not because it is bad for them - hell, kids are resilient.  But it is bad for us.  Because we have to live in a world where the above crapfest is sold as a bloody big deal, epic and exciting.

I Like Killing

Well, all right, fictional killing.

I find it very tiresome when 'heroes' in television shows get their morality on by whining endlessly about their refusal to kill people, even incredibly bad people who clearly have no morality at all. Particularly in shows where the villain's lack of morality is ramped to fetish levels.

This invariably makes the hero look like a moron.

If the hero were an ordinary soul, like you or I, then obviously this character would not be putting on a mask, chasing bad guys through the streets, initiating fights, smashing criminals, breaking bones, drawing blood or any of the hundred other things that 'heroes' do.  This character would be having their 'moral dilemma' as you or I have it, in the sense of, "I am extremely ambivalent about causing any pain at all, so I pay taxes supporting a legal entity that manages this stuff for society as a whole."

You or I are not vigilantes.

However, were we to become vigilantes, it would be sheer idiocy to pretend that we could do it without having to occasionally - and practicably - apply deadly force to the equation.  The cops have to do this, occasionally, despite having the option of jails, courtrooms and ultimate prison.  As a vigilante, we would have none of these options.

Moreover, if we were to target a specific enemy, over and over, repeatedly, at some point I should hope that - having had some measure of success - we would recognize that we were now in a fucking war.  In war, killing becomes a necessity.  Pretending that we could start one and then fight it without having to accept the principles of war, that is, that there are too many enemies in war to take everyone prisoner, especially in situations where we are a solitary participant without back-up, is sheer lunacy.

Yet television keeps fostering characters who argue that this is rational.  Because, hey, killing is bad.

What else is bad for a fictional presentation?  Disbelief.  Piles and piles of frustrating, ignorant disbelief.  All this disbelief makes it hard to watch.

Monday, I began watching Daredevil, the TV series.  I'm seven episodes in.  It began brilliantly.  The fight scene at the end of the second show is stunning.

But seven shows in, where we introduce Stick, what are we talking about?  "You have to grow up and kill people."  "That's not my way."  "That's a coward's way."  "It's my way."

Etc.

ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . .

We can acknowledge the idiocy on television, but we can't change it.  Why?  Because people are morons.

Yes, that is the equation.  All the things I've said in this blog so far?  Not believed.  Not in the least. We can fight a war, insists the general public, without having to be 'evil.'  That is, without having to bring force to bear in order to win.

Thankfully, no one actually fighting a war believes this.  Else those people who did bring force would have won.

We cannot 'win' against evil if we won't dig in and fight full-on.

But television . . . sigh.  I must point out that in quite a number of movies, it is perfectly acceptable for the hero to joyfully slaughter everything that moves, even without much provocation, even without all the bad-guy-I'm-an-incredible-villain pornography.  In a movie, it is okay to kill the bad guy if he's standing outside the back door having a cigarette.

That's because if you pay $12, human life has less value.

Interesting, isn't it?  Our morality is founded on whether or not you're willing to pay the equivalent of an hour's wage.  You can own that lowered morality on DVD for even less.  You can buy it in the bargain bin.

The reason is clear.  $12 is what separates us from people who are too moronic to accept deadly force as a reality.

Actually, since my Netflix costs $8, the difference is only four.  This world is whacked.

Earlier this week I fell into a short twitter flash-fight with a few other DMs who I'd rather weren't following me.  Well, they probably aren't, now.

Short version, they were all proud of themselves for being the sort of DM's who give experience for talking . . . er, hm, "solving problems without having to resort to fighting."

I've talked about that before - about how experience increases combat ability and little else.  If the character doesn't use the sword, doesn't gain experience by the sword, then it is safe to say that no improvement is the order of the day.

I can only presume that this is the same kind of wishful thinking that bans television heroes from killing the bad guys.  Killing is wrong.  Oh, sure, we've invented a game based on killing, where the rules promote killing, where all the benefits are designed to come from killing in order to enable killing more effectively in the future.  But killing is wrong.

Therefore, whenever possible, my character won't kill.

Oh, but I still want my character to go up levels.  Oh yes.  That's absolutely necessary.  What good is it to play if I don't improve?

Here, we're not seeing players gaming.  We're seeing a very different kind of fantasy being played out.

A big reason why the television audience prefers a Daredevil who doesn't kill - or a Batman or a Superman - is that people want to pretend to be these characters.  Yet they don't have the temperament to imagine getting their hands dirty.  Killing is squicky, even when the villain is very bad . . . and the ordinary person can't pretend to be Daredevil if part of the program is getting squicky.

But that's okay, because the magic writer dust of television will keep Daredevil alive, come what may.

Much of the D&D audience - role-playing games in general - have trouble with the same level of squickiness.  Oh, they want the magic and the swords and the keen-o power toys, but actually playing the game to kill opponents, well, that makes them queasy.  Ew.  But boy oh boy, is this sword with the notches ever kewl!

And it's okay, because the magic campaign dust of DMing is there to make sure the character becomes the toughest master in the universe with that sword.

Because D&D is about role-playing, not roll-playing.

I am happy that these people do not play in my campaign - because frankly, I think it might be a bit too real for them.  I think they'd lose their cookies.

Unless, perhaps, I made them pay me $4.

New

We say that change sucks.  Yet everyday I see evidence of people seeking out and embracing change - something, anything, to invigorate themselves, knock back the ennui, making this Monday night or that Sunday afternoon less dismal and ordinary.  It is only that we don't think of it as change.  We call it doing something new or having a 'break.'

Yet every time we see a new movie, try a new restaurant, make the tandoori chicken with a dash of curry or end something (usually with relief), we are making a change.  Incrementally, we're attempting to inject something into our experience that we feel is missing or getting rid of something that we have to admit isn't working.  Granted, most of the time the change is a failure.  The movie doesn't meet our expectations.  The service in the restaurant bites.  As it happens, curry and tandoori is a bad idea.  Change is often disappointing.  Yet it is nothing near as bad as not changing.

The reason for change having such a bad reputation comes from change that's forced upon us.  We don't mind taking up a project to rebuild the bathroom as much as we mind having to replace the bathroom floor because the toilet crapped out on us.  When we decide to move across the country to begin that great job, we're happy; when our friends do it, that chokes.

Examine these two experiences and you'll find the two camps on either side of anything.  There are role-players who were waiting for something new, something that would change their lives because they needed the change.  The game as it was left them with a feeling of melancholy.  Even though 4e hadn't been around very long, it was tandoori mixed with curry and for some, playing the game that way produced a edition fatigue that didn't break until 5e was released.

For others, the change has had all the appeal of getting a phone call saying a favourite uncle was hit by a bus.  They didn't want something new and they didn't need it.  Now that it's here and in their face, they have to deal with it and fuck, who wants that?  To make it all worse, every voice proclaiming the new as "great!" and "wonderful!" sounds like a campaign for more pedestrians being hit by more buses.

I go back to the change I made when I started this blog.  Coincidentally, the first post I wrote was May 28, 2008, 9 days before the release of the 4e Player's Handbook, the 6th of June.  So for a breath of time this blog existed in a 3rd Edition world.  Or more to the point, when I started this blog, I was only two editions behind.

Today I am four.

Yet the mindset I had when I began this blog was never to preach the superiority of AD&D.  I remember clearly that discovering other blogs on the general subject of role-playing inspired me to write my own, and in writing my own to pitch my gaming philosophy to the public.  I already knew the strange, certain to be unpopular perspective that was going to be.  I had been preaching my views privately for a long time, whenever I could find a conversation about role-play in a non-internet world. From those first few years it was explained to me by other DMs and by players that I was "out there," asking for and expecting to receive a kind of game that no one was prepared to deliver.  Except, of course, me.

As oddly self-promoting as this anecdote is, I remember a conversation in 1987 (or thereabouts) with a friend, Mike.  This is the same Mike I spoke about in this post back in 2009.

Mike had been running in my world since High School.  I was telling him that I'd decided to quit being part of the community, that attending game cons in the city had begun to depress me and that no, I wasn't going to run any more tournaments.  Mike was concerned about that, concerned about my turning my back on the community because of what that might do to me.  He had experienced some bouts with depression in his own life and he associated separation with denial, despondency and the threat of suicide.  I was 23 at the time and Mike was 21 - it seems to me at that young age that the subject of suicide seemed to come up a lot.

On top of worrying about my separation from the community, he argued with me for several hours about what I was taking away from other people.  Keep in mind that I was still running my campaign and that I hadn't intended to quit doing that - but from Mike's perspective, I could only run my campaign for a few people, whereas the contribution I could give to the community was a lot more.  At the time, Mike was closely connected with one of the organizers of the local city, a fellow named Woody that I knew and been acquaintances with off-and-on since '82.  Woody and I had never seen eye-to-eye, but each year when the convention was set up Woody would call me and ask me to come be one a tournament DM.  I'd do it, but I'd hate it, since it meant running the game in a way I didn't like - a hated way that I have been on about in this blog many times.

In the middle of that heated, lengthy, somewhat ungracious argument between Mike and I, he told me that I ran the best world he had ever known.  This is the self-promoting part of the tale.  I had never been told that before, by anyone, and I respected Mike.  He was never the sort to blow smoke up anyone's ass; there's a reason we were friends, we were straight with each other.  In the way I have that tends to piss off some people.  So I did believe him; but I never considered his opinion to matter much in the bigger scheme of things because Mike was a friend; of course he understood me.  That did not mean very much where it came to the vast majority.

I did turn my back on the community (I already had, months before Mike and I went round and round that afternoon).  I turned my back on the community for 22 years; I didn't step back in until I started this blog.

Where the response has been predictable.  Some of you get me.  Some of you have ranked me on the same scale Mike did.  You were looking for answers, you were ready for a change.  You like a straight talker.  When I trash something you've held dear for years, you nod your heads and admit, yes, that always has bit.  You just couldn't see how to fix it.

And some of you don't get me.  You're not looking for answers and my sort of approach to this makes you feel defensive about things you've adjusted and adapted to, right or wrong.  It isn't so much that I'm forcing a change on you, it is only that I'm arguing vehemently that a change is possible and necessary.  Hearing that makes you unhappy.

I wish I could say I was a miserable asshole because I was out of the community and that made me mean and contentious.  Unfortunately, I left the community because I was mean and contentious and that made relations between me and other people disappointing.  I got sick of throwing content at people who were happy with things as they were - those being the days when I and the existing edition were contemporary.  I wasn't behind at all.  I was a long way ahead, however.

I wanted change, right from the beginning.  I just didn't want the change we got.  And as I grew out of touch with the corporate agenda that spat out 2nd edition and then 3rd, I dug into other communities with other agendas and made their lives unhappy by insisting on other changes that other people did not want to make.  Because that is my nature.  I am always looking for change - even the bad sort, because very often those changes that are forced on us make us better people.

I'm afraid of change just as much as anyone.  I can't praise fear, however.  Fear has to be hated.  And for me, contentment and complacency are just another form of fear, a comfortable form, where time passes and things don't get better for anyone.

I quit the community in '86 because it wasn't making my life better.  Here in '15 I stay and fight with the community because it is making my life better.  That's because thirty years ago I had no control, whereas here I have plenty.  Here it's been given to me in exchange for writing and writing and writing.

Thank you, everyone.  And thank those of you who feel as Mike did - but my quality or your quality doesn't mean shit if it isn't a better quality tomorrow than it is today.  That's my philosophy.  Change is good.  I hate that for most people it has had to come in the form of another edition . . . but really, the more editions out of the company, the better.  Increasing that number can only reduce the value of ANY edition.

That will only increase the value of the worlds we make ourselves.

Shared Hope

Writing Tuesday's post about sports, I had intended to follow up with a rejoiner about what catches the player's mind when watching other players fight the monsters threatening the party . . . and comparing that with, say, a typical boardgame.  It's been three days, but I'd like to pick up that thread now.

I feel like an idiot explaining what schadenfreude means, but there is a tradition in English writing that we must always assume that English speakers have no idea that foreign words exist in the world and that every foreign word must therefore be pedantically explained over and over.  Thus, the insertion of this paragraph.  Simply, it is pleasure derived from misfortune.  Being one of the more masturbatory labels used in literary analysis, it will serve you well through all your life if you know it's meaning.

Most successful board games are fundamentally built on a principle of permissive schadenfreude.  When playing Monopoly, your pleasure is in watching one of your opponents crash and burn while counting their money into your hand for landing on your Ventnor hotel.  In RISK, your pleasure is in watching both your opponents slam fruitlessly against each other, spinning into the grave you will soon be digging for them.  As you watch your opponents in the game roll the die, you're hoping they will fail . . . and when they do, landing on the square of death or tossing the twin eyes of misery, your feeling is meant to be positive.  You are meant to obtain gratification from that.

This is very, very different from role-playing.  At least, in the games you play, I hope that its different.  If you are playing an RPG where the other players are hoping that you'll fuck the roll and the dragon kills you, then you have my sympathy for having to spend your evenings with a bunch of wretched prats.

There is something unconsciously amazing about playing a 'game' where your hope lies in the good fortune of your fellow players.  I say "unconscious" because I'm willing to bet you've never considered the rest of the party in terms of your hope.  The tension does not emerge from a desire to see your companion fail and die, but the anticipation that your companions will succeed, killing the ogre that has them cornered, so that they will be free to launch an attack against the ogre that has YOU cornered.

When you roll the die in a board game, the moment is something you share with no one.  The others at the table have a stake in your roll, but it is a stake against you.  The brilliance of the RPG is that when you roll the die, everyone at the table is with you - even the DM (again, I should hope), whose stake in the monsters' success doesn't begin to measure with the desire that the player should live.

I may play the game hard, giving the monster all their due in order to defeat the party, but I certainly don't want any member of the party to die.  I don't want any one to be forced into an emotional disengagement with a character they've invested in and worked hard to improve.  It is bound to happen now and then, but I don't want that.  I, like the rest of the players, am happy when a player drops a natural 20 on a monster's head.

What a sad, sad table is must be when there are players who envy others who chance to roll better, who get the magic item at the end of the night, who can only see the game in terms of their personal wins or losses.  How hard must it be to be a player who measures their experience against the experience of others, failing to recognize that every player's experience has grown together over time.  How contemptible is it when a DM deliberately aids and benefits one player, building that player into a celebrity for others to have hard feelings for, begrudging the success one player achieves at the expense of others.  What a loss to the game that is.

How much worse, when players dream of turning their weapons on other players, preferring a game of schadenfreude to a game of shared hope.  That is the nature of some people, however.  That is the nature of envy, where a feeling of discontent grows not only in one's personal belief in one's own failure, but the deep, malignant need to see others fail and die, even if that will ultimately mean the death of one's own character.  I have no doubt there are players out there carrying secret grudges where they cheerfully anticipate a total party kill, because they are more than willing to sacrifice their tenth level thief if it means the paladin will die or the mage will lose that damned precious artifact . . . that they think should have gone to them.

We can make a good game if we try - but just as things in life are poisoned, so are games, by the same flaws in a person's character.  This capacity of RPG's to deliver the benefit of another's success to ourselves, to take pleasure in others having a good day, depends upon our willingness to incorporate that joint experience in our own behaviour.  If we will insist on seeing things only in how they benefit ourselves, we will ruin that experience as surely as we'll ruin our friendships, our places of work and eventually the ties we have with our families.

It isn't just about our experience, our toys, our wins and our loses.  It is about everyone.  The more you and your players embrace that principle, the more you'll begin to understand that everyone cheering at the table because of a roll that one person made is proof positive for why this is the best game ever invented.

That is why it is never going to die.  That is why it will never be replaced by a computer.  RPGs have the capacity to bring out the best in us.

A Sport?

Last week, New Years' Day, I ran a ten-hour session of my world, from noon until 10 at night.  We would have liked to have gone longer, but as the next day was Friday, a work day, we were forced to cut it off.

Throughout the day, we took several breaks, including one for dinner.  Along with that we did take a while to get started - we weren't hurrying.  In all, I'd estimate that actual pay-attention game time was seven and a half hours.  Which went by fast.  Very fast.

What was actually accomplished?  The party finished off their attack on a kobald village of 80 kobalds, 18 of which were 1st, 2nd or 3rd level (see this post).  Afterwards, they gathered their treasure, paid out shares to their followers, inspected the kobald fortification to determine if it was viable for themselves, discovered it was not, discovered the well could be purified through magic, discovered that the fortification's clay-and-stone platform could be salvaged provided everything else could be built, updated their characters for levels gained and discussed what things they'd want to include in a fort they built from scratch.

Then we were done.

Imagine, if you will, watching a 450-minute film.  For the first 375 minutes, a group of well armed soldiers and wizards hack their way through sixty odd combatants, with each moment of the battle being shown over and over again from every possible angle, both the party and the combatants - the camera showing the thief fighting the kobald, the camera cutting to the cleric fighting another kobald, then a shot of the druid concentrating, then a shot of the fighter fighting three kobalds, then a shot of the young girl who desperately wants to be a fighter (npc) fighting a kobald . . . and then all the same shots shown over again, only this time from the kobalds point of view, so that the kobald is trying to kill the young girl, then we see the kobald trying to kill the cleric, then we see two kobalds trying to shoot the druid and then . . .

And it goes on and on.  For more than six continuous hours.  In brutal detail.

Think of how you feel, watching the Avengers for the 9th or 10th time, watching that oh-so-exhausting 90-second bit where they talk about Coulson and his bloodsoaked cards.  Why are 90 seconds so LONG during a movie and so meaningless during a role-playing game?

I'd like to pull out a well-known quote from an extremely annoying man, one of those men in the history of culture that succeeded in irking me to the point that when he died, my only thought was "finally."  Roger Ebert:

"What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it.  How do I know this?  How many games have I played?  I know it by the definition of the vast majority of games.  They tend to involve point-and-shoot in many variations and plotlines, treasure or scavenger hunts, as in 'Myst,' and player control of the outcome.  I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports."

I find myself turning this on its side and looking at it differently today.  I've always viewed Ebert as wrong about this - as most people do - but I'm thinking just now that while he still is wrong, it may just be that he's right, too.  Perhaps this is the reason why it is so damn hard to define role-playing as a 'game.'  It is a fact that emotionally and chemically, it affects us like a sport.  Time passes more rapidly than it does with a game.  Time passes like it does with a sport - and not a sport like baseball. Time passes like football (european).  Where play doesn't stop to make 'plays' - it only stops when something goes wrong or very right.

Ninety seconds is the time it takes to hear the DM say its time for you to take your action, decide on your action, roll the die, identify the result, communicate the result, listen as the DM contextualizes the result, react emotionally to the contextualization, express your emotion and shift your thinking to the next player's turn.  Blip.  Time gone.  Within the moment of taking your turn, there's no time to self-analyze as there is in a film, where your boredom compels you to examine closely every thing that appears on the screen, particularly after seeing the film ten times.

This isn't possible at the speed that sports take place.  Getting the ball, throwing the ball, stopping the other who has the ball - there's no time to analyze until the ball ceases to be in play - whereupon most of the initial analyzation is about what happened, not how you personally feel about it.

This makes me realize something about players, particularly those players who do not seem to enjoy the game as much as others.  When I am playing football and pass the ball up the field, I don't take my eye off the ball.  It doesn't matter that I've ceased to be part of the play - I am as concerned with what my team mates are doing with the ball as I am with my own actions.  I remain immersed, through every second, because my stake in what's happening doesn't cease to matter when my immediate involvement ends.

Above, I used the phrase, ". . . and shift your thinking to the next player's turn."  At the moment I wrote that, about ten minutes ago now, I realized I had nailed something down that has - until now - skirted out of my grasp.  There are football players who kick the ball away to a teammate and then 'turn off.'  They let themselves rest.  They get interested in something off the field.  They get caught with their guard down when the ball makes its way back.  They're bad players.

Granted, I'm 50 years old now.  If I played football, I know for a fact that my focus on the game would mostly involve not dying from a heart-attack.  Still, I stand by the words above, because fat, aging, computer-bound chair-swiveling geeks make shitty, shitty football players.  I haven't been good at football since I was 23.

Here we're talking about people who play a table game.  Er, sport.  Whatever.  Players who finish their action and then . . . go away.  To think about themselves until it is time to do something for them.

450 minutes of D&D must seem to stretch out into forever for these players.  Every other person's turn must drag like the bloody trading card scene.  Combat in particular, where everybody at the table gets a turn, must be the worst nightmare for these people, who need attention all the time.

I've never thought about that.  See, I don't have any of these people playing at my table.  Probably because I like combat.  A lot.  I like having my NPCs talk to everyone in the party, not just the one player making the most noise.  I like setting up every player at the table with dilemmas and problems to solve, forcing every other player to give everyone their moment in the sun.

Players who only care about themselves - like gamers - jeez, I get creeped just thinking about it.  Even in this first twenty minutes of this epiphany (which crept up on me unexpectedly), I'm realizing how much of the RPG-culture is based upon players who think they're playing a game . . . when it fact it's a sport.

What People Hate

Earlier today Dave made an astute observation:  "People hate being wrong."

I certainly do.   Being wrong is embarrassing and from the standpoint of writing a book, ego-crushing.  It is all the more unpleasant when we're talking about something that I've been wrong about for years, even decades, all the while believing that I knew the truth.  Being wrong just plain sucks.

I must hate it more than most, however.  I'll explain why.

Most people who are wrong about something will flat out disbelieve it.  Now, here I don't talk about someone saying the shop is on 17th Avenue when it's on 16th, or making a mistake in thinking that Cheryl's husband is named Brandon when his name is actually Braden.  This sort of thing is usually accepted by people once they've met Braden.  I'm not even talking about people who still sing "wrapped up like a douche when you're rollin’ in the night" even when they know those can't be the lyrics.  Sometimes we get things stuck in our heads that are tough to shove out.  That's how the brain works.

I am talking about people who, for example, absolutely will not accept something like evolution or statistically verifiable climate change.  Things are are, first of all, difficult to understand if someone hasn't sat down patiently with us and explained, and secondly, much more easily misunderstood than song lyrics once we've gotten it into your head that such things work in a way that's completely different from your interpretation.  We're so used to interpreting things based on our gut instincts that once we find ourselves dealing with something really big, it is easier to keep with the gut rather than apply ourselves to a lot of initially incoherent facts.

So we develop prejudices.  And we develop a defense mechanism against anyone who challenges our prejudices, because we're certain that we know and that they don't.

The problem with prejudice - beyond other, obvious reasons - is that they mean we're going to be wrong forever.  Every time we find ourselves in an argument with someone who does have knowledge about that thing, it's going to be an argument where we have to defend our inaccurate 'knowledge' against a person who won't bend because they actually are right.  And they're going to make us feel stupid, because they're going to pull arguments from every quarter that makes us seem stupid while we're stubbornly insisting on our position without any facts to back us up.

That's going to make us angry every time someone mentions the subject.  We're going to be pissed the instant we meet anyone vaguely connected with that whole thing.  Because we don't want to talk about it, we don't want anyone to talk about it.

I said, I hate being wrong.  The best way to stop being wrong is to be informed.  So all my life, when I've found myself in an argument that's over my head, I've tried to change.  Oh, often not right away - initially I can be as stubborn as anyone.  But I am listening while I'm arguing and if good points are made, I'll follow up on those points the next day or the next week.  And I'll find myself looking at the hard data and thinking, "Fuck.  They were right."  It did turn out that that thing's name was Braden after all.

What this means is that I'm wrong about this thing today, but not tomorrow and not any time in the future. Next time I'm in that argument, I'm the asshole that's actually right - because I'm the asshole that did my homework.

Yes, that does make people mad.

It's particularly galling for certain 'smart' people in the world.  'Smart' is relative.  We can seem very smart when we're 20 and surrounded by people who haven't been through college yet and therefore haven't learned how full of shit we are.  We can apply ourselves to a game that has no verifiable truths to it, so that when talking about that game we are able to be louder and more definite and more popular in our opinions than others, so that we are definitely 'smarter' by reputation.  There is no right answer - at least we're free enough in the context to claim there isn't - so we shout 'IMHO' and 'YMMV' because those are terms that codify deliberate will-to-ignorance.  We think in our heart of hearts, "It's a game and its my table and what the hell, everyone does it their way, don't they?"

The less knowledge we have about something, the less certain we should be, nyet?  Yet that is not how humans tackle uncertainty.  Religion, where every tradition-established opinion becomes fact, flourishes where no knowledge exists.  A lack of knowledge enables intimidation, resistance against universality and all the benefits that come with the fragmentation of community - the power to influence those nearest to us by sheer strength of our personality.  We push others around because we are the loudest, the most arcane, the most elaborate in our 'logical constructions' and our innovation.

In the community, I am most justly proud of those things that I've proposed that others have chosen to embrace.  What I do with my world is irrelevant where the game is concerned.  I make nice maps and explore things that others would never explore for my own sake - but where the reader is concerned, those things are at best interesting.  They aren't 'right' because they're not applicable to the reader's framework.

The best things in life are universal.  These are things upon which we all agree - even when we're not certain of the exact details.  Democracy is better than tyranny, however that democracy may manifest locally.  Love is better than hate.  Evolution provides better answers for keeping us alive and staving off death than religion, which is only interested in comforting us.  If you're Braden, you're much more positive about all the people you know who remember your name than about that one dork who still calls you 'Brandon.'

I used to preach that we need role-playing to be more universal, to have rules upon which we can agree.  At the very least, we ought to adopt practices that are of the greatest benefit to 'fun' and 'comaraderie.'  I stopped making those arguments because of the push-back I received.  People shouted that 'fun' did not require their obedience to a group-think model.  The truth is, of course, that they have no idea what that model entails - except that it almost certainly says that what they're doing now is probably the wrong way to do it.

Deep in their hearts, the majority of players are dead-certain they're playing the game wrong.  They don't like it.  They're divided into two groups, however - those actively seeking answers about what to do and those furiously insisting that they're not wrong, there are no right answers, everyone has to do it their own way and fuck off.

Some people would rather be wrong forever than to change.

There are right answers.  We study psychology because it has been proven to us that even though humans are complex, difficult and unique, we still do things that have predictable, verifiable results.  These behaviours apply to the playing of role-playing games just as well as they apply to any other context in which humans interact.  To cry that there are no definable right or wrong approaches to the game is to deny all of human knowledge about ourselves to date.  That's not opinion.  Your mileage cannot vary.  You sit down with your players and you act in a particular way, we have the experts who can watch your behaviour and point out chapter and verse where you're fucking up.  More importantly, we can universally march experts into the room to watch you play, and they'll all come to the same conclusions.

That is damn hard to accept.  People hate being wrong.

David Wong & I

I like learning that I am not the only one:

"In fact, I'd say it's this "just a game" mentality that makes them think it's OK to throw in these arbitrary rules that take you out of the fantasy. Am I facing a door that only opens if I first kill all of the enemies in the room? Why does it work that way? Or maybe there's a guard at the city gate who will only open the path after I complete some other, totally unrelated task -- so what's his reasoning for doing that in the universe of that story? Is there some actual reason why the pieces of the doomsday weapon I'm to assemble are scattered all across the map so that I have to slowly trudge from one to the next, killing crowds of enemy cannon fodder every step of the way?

"If your only answer is 'Because we programmed it that way,' you've lost me. You've woken me up from the fantasy by slapping me in the face with a stark reminder that this isn't really an adventure meant to capture my imagination. It's just a computer program designed to keep me pushing buttons for 12 hours."

Read more here.

Explaining D&D

Interviewer:  This all looks good - we like your background, and from talking to you I think you can probably bring a lot of experience to the team.  There's just one other thing - I see you've put 'plays D&D' on your resume.

Applicant:  Yes.

Interviewer:  I've heard of that.  I don't know much about it.  Can you tell me what it is?

Applicant:  Well . . . that takes a little time.

Interviewer:  No, seriously.  I'd like to know.  My son has mentioned it now and then, but he doesn't seem to be able to explain it.

Applicant:  It can be hard.

Interviewer:  So?

Applicant:  There's a lot of different ways to look at it.  Most people call it role-playing, but it's really a framework in which people try to solve problems presented by a specific individual.  That's the 'DM' - never mind what that stands for.  The DM creates a set of circumstances that are imaginary, while the 'Players' set out to solve the problems that the circumstances create.

Interviewer:  This is a game?

Applicant:  Sort of.  There are points for those who make the best choices supported by die rolls.  Make a good choice, roll a die and get a good result, you get the most points.

Interviewer:  So it's like Monopoly.

Applicant:  More or less.  Try to imagine that all the events you experience in Monopoly - buy property, buy houses, collect for passing go and so on - are made very gritty.

Interviewer:  Gritty?

Applicant:  Detailed.  You imagine that you're actually on the Boardwalk itself, looking at the property there.  Because it is very complicated, there are fifty or sixty properties on Boardwalk, and you're free to go into each and look around, to decide which properties you want to buy.

Interviewer:  How do I see these properties?

Applicant:  I have detailed descriptions that I give you.  I'm the DM.  That's what I'm supposed to do.  As you tell me you're going into the first property, I tell you about the size, what the carpet looks like, what maintenance has been done and so on, so that you can make a decision about whether or not to buy.

Interviewer:  And my decision . . .?

Applicant:  Determines how likely you are to buy a property that is going to make a good return for your investment.  You don't have a specific idea that this property will make such-and-such an amount of money, so you have to guess.  I have a list of numbers and algorithms that tell me how much a property is going to make based on the condition of the property, but you're not able to see those numbers, so you just have to guess and do your best.

Interviewer:  I see.

Applicant:  Once you decide to buy, there are other things.  You may have enough money to do renovations, or you may have to take a loan out at the bank.  If that's the case, you would have a 'conversation' with the loan officer, which would decide whether or not he trusted you and was willing to give you all the money you needed for the renovations you want to do.  In this arrangement, I act the part of the loan officer.

Interviewer:  So I talk to you.

Applicant:  Right.  You tell me about your circumstances, what you want to do, how you feel you'll be able to pay the money back, what rent you intend to charge on the property and so on.  I have a bunch of numbers that tell me what a good rent on that property would be, so if you name a number that's too high, I probably won't give you the money.  On the other hand, you could try to tell me about your wife and kids, or try to impress me with your business acumen and so on, in which case I would roll dice to see if the loan officer was moved by your pitch.

Interviewer:  Okay.  That sounds fairly interesting.  What if I wanted to go to another source to find out what other properties in the neighbourhood were costing me before I went to the bank?

Applicant:  That's no problem.  You could either ask around to get a general number, or you could pay a small fee to a company that provides that information.

Interviewer:  I'd rather do that.

Applicant:  Good.  Then chances are you get the loan at the bank, since you've done your research.  Next, you'll probably want to -

Interviewer:  Hire a contractor.  Do I know any contractors?

Applicant:  It's possible you know someone in your family that does that sort of thing.

Interviewer:  I'd rather not hire family.  It never works out well.  I'd rather hire a good contractor that's done work in the area, so that he knows the neighbourhood and specific work codes associated with the city.

Applicant:  Good idea.  Asking around, you can find three different contractors who all claim to have done work in the area.  They are all in good standing with the city and asking around, you find they all seem to be competent.  Boardwalk is a high-end area, and apparently there are other influences that seem to push out contractors who don't do a good job.

Interviewer:  Other influences?

Applicant:  Yes.  Boardwalk has a lot of businesses that are associated with gambling.  There is said to be an 'underground' element that keeps the area clean and friendly to tourists.

Interviewer:  How do I meet this underground element?  Do they harass people who buy property in the area?

Applicant:  I don't have any dice, so I'll just have to go with my instincts.  There's probably someone you've met by now who has a story to tell about being roughed up, yes.

Interviewer:  So we're talking the mob, right?

Applicant:  Apparently.

Interviewer:  Okay.  I set out to find someone who can help me contact the mob, so that we can make a deal of some kind.  I don't want to get into this without first knowing who I'm dealing with.  I was thinking of starting up an export business.  Is there anything that the casinos need that I should consider including in my designs?  Or perhaps I should cater to the tourists.  Are many of them from overseas, or is it mostly traffic from the Three-State area . . .

Buy My Book

I got out of bed this morning.  I don't have to ask if anyone cares, because I know they do.  Not just my family and friends, who knows me, has shared a common history with me and would be seriously affected were I not to have risen.  Not just those with whom I've made a bond with here online.  I mean everyone, including those who don't know me, who are in fact strangers, who may never have left a comment or even 'liked' anything I've written.  They care.  It matters to them.

Why?  Because three or four times a week, when they're bored, and they have time, they know they can come to this blog and open it, and see an opinion here that isn't like the opinions they read elsewhere.  Because I choose to have an opinion, and because I have an ability to express.  Because I'm not afraid to express it.  Because I don't care if people like my opinion.

However, people like that I have opinions.  That is why they come here.

It isn't enough to have an opinion.  Opinions have no value.  This is something that all those who write 'IMHO' cannot understand.  An opinion is only a string of words thrown together is forms ranging from comprehensible to not, from interesting to not, from funny to not and so on.  Whatever the form, an opinion is air.  It is junk.  It is the pebble in the listener's shoes.

The only thing that makes an opinion meaningful is the willingness with which people defend it.  The opinions that have the most meaning are those for which people are prepared to fight for, kill for or die for.  Because we are humans, we understand that the more people fight for it, the more people kill for it and the more people that die for it, the more important that opinion is.  Nothing in the world ever changes until someone takes up arms to make the change happen, and people don't believe in the opinion that it has to change until you, or I, or anyone here listening, is ready to fight long and hard and loud and stubbornly for it, until they give the last full measure of their devotion.  Remember that the soldiers of Gettysburg did not only die for the union.  They were ready to kill for it, too.

If you are not prepared to fight for your opinion, then shut the fuck up.  You're only breathing air.  Do it silently.  With the opinion, you're just an annoyance.

I am extraordinarily conscious that people read this blog, and that they support me.  I am never without that knowledge at the fore of my consciousness.  These people support me because I have fought for the things I believe, even if I have not always been polite or considerate or reasonable.  Many of the readers here have slowly come around to thinking about what I've said because they do not believe that anyone could stage a fight this long and this hard without feeling passionate enough about it to know they're right.  They are coming around to believing that they may not be as right as they thought, because they know they wouldn't fight as hard for what they believe as I have been fighting for what I believe.  This is how the world turns.  This is how people are made to change their minds.  We work at them like water and wind and ice on stone.  Slowly, steadily, patiently, until they cracks in their resolve open and with that, their minds.

Here is an opinion that I am willing to fight for.  Role-playing is not about 'fun.'  Fun happens while we role-play.  That is a good thing.  We want to have fun.  But if you approach role-play with the thought in your head that you're going to create fun because that's what you want, what you will create is a whole lot of nothing.  'Fun' isn't a component.  It has no mass, no dimension, no orientation, no cause-and-effect mechanism, no structure, no defineable measure and no meaningful predictive format.  It can't be made, built, designed, installed, linked or downloaded.  It is a chemical reaction to an environment that is not, itself, 'fun.'  Until the average DM gets it into their head that the setting or constructed frame in which fun happens cannot be built to specifications that include 'fun' written anywhere on the plans, then the games that DMs run will be shit juxtaposed by shit with shit stuffed in shit built on a platform of shit.

And here's something that you've got to understand when I say that.  I am ready to go toe-to-toe with anyone, point for point, as long as I have to, to make you, the reader who can't get that truth into your narrow, stone-shaped cranium, get it.  Because you have to get it.  You have to change how you're doing things.  Because they way you're doing things now sucks.  And the fact that you don't think they do only shows how much shit your players are prepared to shovel on top of your ego in order to have someone, even someone that's shit at it, run their game so that for five minutes they can feel like they're playing a character.

They could be playing that character all session, every session, but they haven't got the nerve to risk losing your weak ass, full-of-shit DMing style, because they haven't anyone with which to replace you. So you're making it, right now, on being a really lousy version of the product in a scarcity-based economy.

You better hope my book about How to Run Role-playing games is lousy.  Because someone you run is going to read it and understand why they don't need you.

Only, I think you know it's not going to be lousy.  I think you know that.  And that really sucks for you, doesn't it?

The rest of these people here, however, are smiling right now.  Because they're looking forward to it. They have faith in me, but only for one reason.  Because I'm not nice.  I'm a fighter.  I'm a believer.

They like that.  And they like that I got out of bed this morning.