The Angry DM

"But, look, it’s no secret that I am not talking about your hoity-toity story games who think they are the only way to get a satisfying narrative experience in an interactive medium. And I’m not talking about those abstract as f$&% specialty games whose rules are three layers removed from any actual game fiction. I’m not talking about the elitist indie crap that seeks to elevate the medium. No, I’m talking about the standard fare. The Dungeons & Dragons. The Pathfinder. The Star Wars. The old school and the new school action-adventure games. The ones that CAN be great epic stories of mystery and intrigue, like that Game of Thrones thing the kids are all playing. And the ones that CAN ALSO be the dungeon-crawling fun of killing green-skinned evil-doers and taking their stuff. And the ones that CAN ALSO be tear-your-hair-out challenging tests of your strategy and gaming mettle. D&D can’t be anything to anyone, sorry. I’ve said that before. But it can be a lot of things. And it’s pretty easy to get to a lot of things from D&D.

"Oh, and just because I talk about traditional RPGs and play traditional RPGs, that doesn’t mean I also don’t play (and even sometimes LIKE) other games. I play and run A LOT of games. I try a lot of s$&%. Anyway, I got distracted. My point here is that this site is unapologetically about teaching you how to get the most out of traditional RPGs, however you define 'the most.' Deal with it."

The Angry GM,

The Big Picture: Everything You Ever Need to Know About Game Mastering

What I like about the above is how clear it all is.  When I read writing on this level, I come away from it nourished, refreshed and emboldened by a brand new, crystalline version of reality, as the scales fall away from my eyes and I realize, at last, what I need to know to be a better dungeon master.

"What is a Role-Playing Game?

"A role-playing game is a game in which players take on the role of fictional characters in a hypothetical universe. The players attempt to make the decisions that they feel their characters would make if they were real and if their universe were real. Those decisions are based on the characters’ motivations and the games goals. The results of those decisions are played out and new decisions are made.

"Ultimately, an RPG is about choice and consequence. The players make choices for their characters and then deal with the consequences. And goals provide benchmarks for success and failure."

 See?  If I knew nothing about RPGs, I would want a definition like this one: thorough, exemplifying a full detail and aspect of what's going on, right down to the nuts and bolts of the thing.  "Ah, I see," I would say.  The universe is hypothetical, but we pretend that the hypothetical is real.  That's brilliant!  That is completely different from most things that are hypothetical, which are merely theoretical, conjectural, speculative, putative or notional.  Thank gawd that's made clearer.

But the real genius in the above is the description of RPGs involving choices and consequences.  That is so, so very different from other types of games, activities, sports, recreations and past-times.  None of those involve choices in any way, and certainly are not subject to consequences.  This is so cool, this role-playing thing.  Tell me more.

"The Most Important Rule in Every RPG

"There is one rule, one structure, that underlies almost every RPG that exists. It is the most basic process by which the RPG runs. And it goes like this. The GM presents a situation to the players. The players project themselves into the mind of their characters and decide on a course of action for their characters to take. The GM determines the outcome of those actions and describes the results, which becomes a new situation to which the players then respond."

Wow.  A situation.  That is so deep.  As a GM, all that's needed, the most important thing that is needed, is that I need to present a situation.  Damn.  My head is just on fire with all the ideas in my head.  Don't say any more.  I get it now.  I get it all.

... sigh.

hm.

This is such a good example of a typical attempt to explain the game, I had to march it out.  Go on, read the whole post.  It doesn't get any better, it doesn't get any clearer.  The gentle reader and I understand what he's saying for obvious reasons.  We're the choir.  But someone who has never heard of a role-playing game?  The above is an empty field of useless wordage.

The above, however, has nothing at all on the comment that praise the above:

"These abstract articles are good (and necessary) but it’s watching the way you are able to use the concepts in regards to minutia and moving the little bits around that I find fascinating. Well defined examples, or vague generic ones when you’re in that mood, are exciting to follow because you can see thru the bulls&$(# that trips the rest of us up."

"It’s nice to see this clear outline of definitions. While all of these concepts have been touched on in previous articles at some level or another, putting them here in one place serves well to tie them together."

"Very concise and lays out information and concepts in an easy to follow format. You haven’t peaked, this seems like a good foundation for future published work. Great stuff here!"

"This blew me out of the water. I love the systematic way that you laid out and connected concepts from all your articles. I have a feeling that I’ll be coming back to this article for years. Well done, and thank you for all the great work you put in. I truly appreciate it."

These are Russian bots, right?  They're deliberately creating obsequious content in order to promote a lax, non-educational precept to the investigation of RPGs ... no one actually read the above post and actually felt it worthy of actual praise.  Did they?

I'm afraid that, yes, they did.

"Blew me out of the water?"  Which part, exactly?  The part where the DM wears three hats?  Where two of them were "running the game" and "administering the game"?  Because, apparently, these are different things:

"When running the game, the GM presents situations, determines the outcome of actions, and presents the consequences of those actions."

"When administrating the game, the GM handles the organizational and social aspects of the game. The GM must deal with interpersonal problems, disruption of the game, and other social issues."

Funny, because I call both those things, "running the game," because I do them both at the same time, in synchronization.

See, the baseball umpire wears two hats: he wears the game adjudication hat, and he wears the hat where he has to deal with players who respond to the game adjudication. Oh, wait, he actually wears three hats, because sometimes he calls balls and strikes, and sometimes he has to deal with all the other rules of the game.  Oh, wait, he wears four hats, because he also wears the Umpire is not involved in the Game hat.  Oops, there's five hats ... no, six ... wait, it's eight.  Or is it ten?  Fuck, that's a lot of hats.

Sometimes, as a DM, I wear my "gets out of a chair and grabs a coke" hat ... and sometimes I wear the "joke with the other participants of the game while we shoot the shit" hat.  Once upon a time, I even wore the "stops the game for five minutes while I go change the baby" hat.  RPGs are complicated.

Or maybe, what blew the reader out of the water was the 55 words used to describe "Campaign" (which doesn't even rate "The" Campaign):

"A campaign isn’t really part of the structure of the role-playing game. A campaign is the sum total of all of the game sessions involving any sort of continuity between adventures. Usually the continuity involves the ensemble of characters and the setting, but through one or more adventure paths, there may also be a story continuity."

There's a shell that goes straight for the ammunition supply.  That certainly blew my HMS Hood out of the North Atlantic.  "Any sort of continuity."  An unbroken and consistent existence of a thing over time ... of any sort.  Jeez.  That kind of stark lucidity doesn't turn up in a sentence just any day.

But okay, we were given some examples: there's character continuity and setting continuity, and one or more adventure path continuities, and story continuity.  My, my, my ... I do know everything a DM need to know about the campaign now, don't I?

Remember, that was the name of the post.  EVERYTHING you need to know.  Every blessed thing.  From now until the day you stop running RPGs when the cancer cuts you down at 95.  There are a bunch of different continuities and they all have an adjective in front of them.

When I say the RPG community has its head up it's ass, I mean crap like this sort of thing that is praised to the skies. Someone felt the need to write,

"This article is what every single dungeon master section is missing. I’ve paid money for products that have given me far less."

And someone else added:

"Ditto. Not enough DMGs or other such books really teach you to actually GM."

Now, lest I be misunderstood, I don't care that the Angry DM felt compelled to write this post.  He's been spewing out this inconsistent drivel for years.  He has a steady, consistent formula.  He starts with a long, long self-referential introduction that does little more than pick a given word in the previous sentence in order to go off on a tangent, which almost always ends with him disagreeing with something he said at the start, while obsequiously adding a few sentences to make sure hasn't unduly insulted someone by making a declarative sentence that something is something.  If you'll look at the opening two paragraphs that I quoted at the top, you'll see he's done exactly this.  If you go look at the rest of his writings, you'll find he does it virtually every time.

Of course I've read him.  He's called "The Angry GM."  I had to go find out what the fuss was about.  Truth is, he's not really angry ... except in the way that a drunk asshole on a train bridge finds a reason to scream at something, because they're there and, what the fuck, they feel like screaming.  There's no rationale.  He's not actually "angry" at anything.  He's adept at using a ten-year-old's vocabulary while letting his Mom, apparently, replace the swearing with the top row of his keyboard.

I use the symbols technique myself, occasionally.  It's fun.  But I'm also ready to say fuck and shit because, well, fuck it.  I'm guessing he uses the technique because he thinks there's a chance that mainstream television will pick him up and stream him someday, since it is the only medium still in existence (along with radio) that still gives a fuck about swearing.

My deeper issue is with the readers ... who must live in some oppressive hell where no actual light ever enters, where no academic book learning penetrates, where no documentary ever plays, where education and deliberation on a subject are perpetually hidden and who, when told to ignore the man behind the curtain, do so.

Because I would expect some fifty comments under such material to read, "What the fuck is this supposed to be" or "Are you fucking kidding?"  Yet I expect the same thing to occur when I read the comments under a Mike Mercer video or some piece of bullshit article proclaiming the death of role-playing.  Yet it never happens.

Where are the sardonic, embittered, fiery role-players of my experience, who scoff at movies and books that pander painfully to an audience of gormless gits who obviously haven't read a real book in their lives?  Where are the truly angry DMs of my acquaintance who railed for half-an-hour at the piece of shit module, wrapped in plastic, that they just forked out to buy, only to find they were nothing more than half artwork and a bad rehash of Legacy of the Drow?  Where is the anger of people who opened the post, only to find within a few paragraphs that it was nothing more than another pale, flaccid, insubstantial outline of shit that we actually Ought to Be Explaining?

Instead, there's some cheap little flame war in the comments about whether or not the DM is a player.  Like this matters in the enormity of the dearth of anything of consequence being said in an article entitled, "Everything You Ever Need to Know About Game Mastering."

The readers sicken me.  That's the truth of it. I look at those readers ... and then I compare them to the readers of this blog, whom I've flayed and insulted, whom I've belittled, whom I've mistreated and coldly misunderstood, and I get down on my hands and knees and kiss the fucking ground that you people exist and are tough enough to sustain a little abuse.  You guys are wonderful.  If I had to put up with the spineless syncophants that haunt the cloud castles of brown-colored smoke blown up, then ejected, from most of the RPG sites on the internet, I think I'd put a gun in my mouth.

Yes.  I am angry.  Not F$&%ing angry.

I am fucking angry.

The man behind the curtain.

How to Run: An Advanced Guide to Managing Role-playing Games

For many of my readers, none of this will be new.  I feel that it is something I should do, now that it's been nearly two years since the book was published.

The book is divided into four parts:  The Art of Presentation (6 chapters), Managing Yourself as DM (2 chapters), Managing Your Players (2 chapters) and Worldbuilding (4 chapters).

Breaking it down, chapter-by-chapter:

Chapter 1: Early Days

At the start, I am quite frank about once being utterly unskilled as a DM.  I talk about the difficulty of role-playing games and start the theme of the book.  Although it is very, very hard to be a DM, this is something that comes with experience.  We shouldn't be hard on ourselves at the beginning, we should realize that with time and patience, and a lot of hours spent running, we will steadily get better.  We can learn that the rules are tools, we can learn to experiment in our building and design and we can educate ourselves from a wide variety of resources to expand our minds and the options we can bring to the table. (9 pages)

Chapter 2: The Carrot and the Donkey

Here I talk about motivation - about developing the campaign as a 'theatre' that the players willingly enter.  I talk about the first steps in starting a given session, getting the players "in the mood" and making them feel uninhibited.  Then I discuss arousing the players' curiosity, getting inside their heads and the importance of avoiding 'formulas' that will supposedly get the same returns running after running.  I talk of the importance of making better and better carrots to keep a party intrigued and keep them coming back for more.

From here I talk about the participation of symbiosis.  Everyone in the game must be on the same page and they must want the same things, both DM and Players.  Working together in a supportive relationship will enhance participation and drive the players towards wanting that carrot.  Players who disrupt this formula must have it explained that role-playing is a group activity - there isn't room for one player to hog all the air in the campaign to the exclusion of other players.  By reducing conflict, we can make the game move faster and make the experience more pleasant for everyone. (14 pages)

Chapter 3: The Players

This chapter features a breakdown of player 'types' based on solid psychology templates: three subdivisions of the categories extroverted, introverted and indifferent.  I arrived at nine classes of players - understanding that these are not boxes intended to categorize people, but as jumping off points to talk about strategies in dealing which each form of behaviour.  Any real player will be an amalgam of these classes: the important thing here is that we have something to work from.

These nine classes are Enthusiastic, Obligated, Conditional, Predisposed, Disenchanted, Badly Behaved, Social, Shy and The Guest.  In each case I give the reader an idea of what each has as a motivation, how to recognize that motivation and strategies on how to deal with it - with a reminder that players are the game and that our game must be tailored for the collection of people in it. (33 pages)

Chapter 4: Drama

At last, I get into the gears of running the game.  I begin with a breakdown of the formula that has defined successful drama since the ancient Greeks, discussing it in terms of role-playing and presenting details to players.  I talk of adding complications to the adventure, of encouraging player innovation and about bringing the traditional adventure to a good conclusion.  This first part of the chapter is written as a solid play-by-play for DMs wanting to guideline on meat-and-potatoes adventure building.

At this point I begin to tear apart the dramatic structure in terms of role-playing not being a stage-play created for an audience.  In fact, there is no audience; the Players are the actors upon the stage and there is no script - therefore, there is no real need for specific dramatic cues that were designed to keep an audience in their seats for two hours.  Players easily sit in their seats for four or five hours without any trouble.  While understanding that the game can be run on the traditional dramatic structure, it does not need to be.  We can change what's happening on the spur of the moment - what I call "Here and Now" DMing.  This is where we let the symbiosis we talked about in Chapter 2 develop into a dramatic experience that is both written and experienced in real time. (17 pages)

Chapter 5: Continuity

This chapter discusses the importance of building causality into the campaign, in order to carefully seed events in the future out of what's going on in the present.  Nearly every DM understands that player actions demand consequences when the players do something very bad - but we need to understand that the campaign needs to be reacting all the time to what the players do.  The players have to feel that they are influencing the campaign just as the DM is influencing the players.

To enhance the fluidity of the world, I then discuss five ways in which the DM can poke that fluid:  I call these Shock (surprising the players with the unexpected, unbalancing them); Rage (stirring up emotions like anger and resentment in order to fire the players towards taking action); Distraction (filling out the moment-to-moment game with little things that compromise player comfort while creating obstacles); Despair (letting the players experience the low-point of disaster and ruin without rushing to save them); and Triumph (total victory).  Of these, the comparison between Despair and Triumph is key to the game, for if the players are assured they will always be saved then there is no real sense of overcoming impossible odds; there is no high if there is no low. (29 pages)

Chapter 6: Pomp

For the chapter, I discuss the grind of being a human body putting out a performance - being conscious of one's appearance, stance, voice, personal tells (like in Poker) and other similar ways in which we interact with the space that we're in.  I talk about "Space" as well, the place where the game is played, the distractions of that space and its convenience.  I talk about "Relations" between persons at the table (are they friends or practically strangers) and how this can change the dynamic.  I talk about the trappings of the game, the mechanics of the meta-game and how these things can serve to clutter a campaign, the influence of the dice and the manner in which we sit together at the table. (15 pages)

Chapter 7: Vigilance

Now I have moved out of the presentation and into managing ourselves as DMs.  I talk of how DMing is an act of courage, of how easy it is to fall into doubt and question the authority we've suddenly been given.  This then leads into a discussion of legitimacy: what is it that gives us the right to DM, to make decisions that affect others, that drive the game and enable us to play with the heads of our players?  There are strategies for winning loyalty and respect, strategies that - if we don't follow them - will make more work for us as our games become increasingly illegitimate.

I talk about overload, the amount of information coming at us and how we wallow while trying to handle it.  I detail what I experience while DMing and about maintaining the social context while still managing the game.  The key is data; getting it, distributing it, being open about ourselves and our difficulties and relying on the players to understand our mental limitations where it comes to the information that's flowing into our heads while running.  From here I explain how I got better at managing data through pattern recognition, and about how this same pattern recognition proved to be a back-up for my gaming where it came to stress.

Stress is a large part of DMing and I talk extensively about it, as well as on how to think better while DMing through understanding how our thinking is compromised by our physical limitations.  Finally, I discuss good habits vs. bad - and about how if we're not aware of the latter they can build up and make it impossible for us to ever be a good DM.  I feel this is the most important chapter of the book. (29 pages)

Chapter 8: Decision Making

Here I come back to momentum and experience in running the game, emphasizing tactics that a DM can adopt to make things move faster.  I talk about maintaining focus and about the capacity we have to control our impulses if we are aware of those impulses.  In many ways, these strategies will help in a hundred ways outside the role-playing game.

In every case, it is important to remember that we can only control ourselves and that we must not perceive that the problem originates with the player.  By applying the right strategies to our own gaming we can mitigate or eliminate troubles that the players are having - particularly if we emphasize that player-to-player symbiosis that we are responsible for creating.  This then leads into Foresight, the ability to guess - and effectively - where the players will want to go with their characters.  It may be a very high standard we are setting for ourselves, but if we want to be a great DM we must pursue the harder course - taking that responsibility onto ourselves and changing the way we view running in order to make the game better for everyone. (24 pages)

Chapter 9: Power Politics

Starting the section on Managing Your Players, I use the chapter to emphasize that we cannot change other people; we can only change ourselves.  To Manage others demands changing those parts of ourselves that win over the players - there is no strategy that describes "controlling players" by some imaginative formula.  Control is maintained through respect; respect is maintained by acting in a manner that is worthy of respect.

From here I talk about player expectations and how to meet them, most of all the important balance of providing a game for the players while being the absolute arbiter of the campaign.  It is a difficult balance to walk and it is full of pitfalls.  I debate theories that the DM 'serves' the players or that players need to 'buy in' to a campaign.  These sound good on the surface but in fact they create division at the table and fail to achieve that all-important symbiosis.  DMs play with players, not for players.  Whatever powers the DM has, this can't be compromised - or else there will be no players to play with. (17 pages)

Chapter 10: Bad Games

Here I return to the effects those bad habits have that I introduced in Chapter Seven.  While bad habits do not make us 'bad people,' they can easily challenge the experience in such a manner as to make it bad for everyone at the table.  Relying too much on our personal charisma, for example, or exploiting player vulnerability because it makes for apparently good drama, produces conflict, shame for players who feel used and dissension between player factions that ultimately arise when one group feels pitted against another.  There will always be bad games - the key is to recognize the signs and to see why bad habits should be avoided. (18 pages)

Chapter 11: Beginnings

Conclusively, I begin a four-chapter discourse on making our own worlds from scratch.  This begins with a discussion about what all designers must manage - regardless of what fields they happen to design in: function, structure and behaviour.  Function is the purpose for which something is made.  Structure is how it is made.  Finally, Behaviour is how the thing is actually used.  If I build a cellphone to keep me informed, built from electronic parts, this does not keep a user from using it as a coaster for their coffee.

When building our worlds, we need to keep these three things in mind, if we want to design a world that will serve its purpose, work excellently and be appreciated by the user (ourselves included).  Bringing these things together is called formulation, which I talk about as the chapter closes. (25 pages)

Chapter 12: Elements of Design

Once again, the chapter translates the exact premise that engineers and manufacturers experience when trying to make anything that exists in our world.  The world we build must follow the same principles, since it too is a 'product' that will be 'used' by the Players and by ourselves.  The chapter discusses the individual needs we will want our worlds to provide: a sense of place, authenticity of experience, suitability to the players interests, convenience, simplicity of use and so on.

I speak at length about Aesthetics and the beauty of the world, how beauty draws players to the game and how presenting phenomenal amounts of beauty will awe the players and make them more pliable to the campaign.  If the campaign is impossibly wonderful, then players will feel less inclined to walk away from it - since they will truly be losing out on something amazing, something that holds a greater importance for them.  The more work we put into our worlds to make them beautiful, the more profound will be the effect of those worlds on our players' behaviour.  I talk about how to do this.

Finally, I talk about the materials the world is made from, personal prejudices for some materials over others (and for some gaming systems over others - without naming names!).  I talk about the use of dice, about cheating, about tempo in gaming and finally about the cost of finishing a game (in time and money) to make it what we want it to be. (27 pages)

Chapter 13: The Creative Process

Here we move away from theory and towards practical application.  Having developed a philosophy, now we need to develop ideas.  We need to brainstorm, breaking out of our prejudices and into training our minds to understand that some ideas produced at random can expand and elaborate upon our world concept.

Once we have done that, we can begin writing the proposal - the bare bones of a campaign, to present to players as a way of seeing what might need to be adjusted and what their behaviour might be.  Proposals "sound" dull and difficult, but communication between a DM and Players is the key to a great game.  A proposal need not be formal - but it should include what the DM wants so as to get feedback on what the players want. (23 pages)

Chapter 14: Modelling

Having built up the philosophy and the technique, I embark on a chapter long account of a fictional kingdom, Fallow, that I use to set out the guidelines of what a proposal ought to contain and details that we will want to include.  I talk about entities (everything that exists is an 'entity'), entity sets (groups of entities that function together) and relationships (the pre-existing association between factions of non-player characters in the campaign), to help the reader build up an idea of what to place and where.  There are a great many kinds of relationships - the most common of these are detailed one by one.

I also talk about disclosing this information to the players, what to tell them and what to hold back, so that they can 'discover' about the world as they go forward.  There will always be more world, more kingdoms, more people to be met and more relationships to be discovered, both far away and right under the players' noses. (30 pages)

Chapter 15: Gaining a Level

This chapter falls into the Appendix of the book and is part of no other category.  In it I talk about the ways in which role-playing games can influence the rest of our lives, primarily because they give us skills (education, understanding, interactive abilities, a sense of working for our own causes and so on) that translate well to many other practical and vocational activities.  At the end, I talk about how writing the book has transformed my own perspective of the game, how it made ME smarter and more aware, since it was vigorously researched.  I make mention of how it was not based on 'game design' texts but upon sources far more technical in structure: psychology articles, conceptual design, consumer behaviour, physiotherapy, situational awareness for emergency response, models for persuasion and so on. (12 pages)

Now, if you've read the book, please send this post to them.  Please link it to your facebook.  Please twitter it.  Please get the word out there.  It takes you thirty seconds to slap the url to a page and say, "Read this.  It is worth the time."  Those thirty seconds may make an incredible difference to my experience and my world.  I will get on my knees and beg you to do that.

If you have not read the book, please see from the above that this is not the same patter that you're likely to read in any other book or see on any youtube video anywhere.  This is a hardcore, advanced, deliberative point-by-point attack against the substance of DMing that is designed to shatter the game as you now play it and put in its place something better.

Three Books for Sale at the Expo

Because I am getting many, many page views from people who are finding this blog through the Edmonton Expo, I will write briefly on the three books I will be selling at my table.  Prices below are for Edmonton Expo customers only.

Cost: $30.  How to Run (customer reviews) is literally what it says on the cover: an advanced guidebook for understanding and expanding a skilled DM's existing ability to run their world - whatever that world might be, as the book is in no way genre specific.  The book is as applicable to The Masquerade or Rifts as it is to D&D, because it addresses the dynamic between DM and player, not in-game ideals.

We are all in a position where we are striving to manage both ourselves and the players, while presenting the best possible game we can despite our limitations.  Game play is mastered through a practical use of time, an understanding of goals, the mastery of the game's immersive qualities and our most intrinsic motivations.  These elements of game play are universal - and they are, for the most part, wholly ignored by game manufacturers.

I have written a book that discusses role-play the way an academic treatise would discuss a subject among professors or the way that a trade manual would discuss the subject among masters of that trade.  There are thousands of practitioners of role-playing games who are wallowing, uncertain of what they are doing, particularly because there is no standard by which they can judge themselves.

Therefore, rather than present a series of things not to do, the book concentrates upon those things that a DM does that work - and why they work!  I believe that by firmly understanding why a particular running succeeded, a DM can build upon that understanding and ultimately learn to reproduce that result over and over.  The book How to Run proposes to give that understanding.

Cost: $12.  How to Play a Character (customer reviews) is a collection of essays discussing elements of character development, game settings and the social development of Dungeons & Dragons, along with elements of satire and humour.  It features a challenging, insightful viewpoint of a grognard, me, that has dedicated virtually of his life to the game.

And because most of that time has been spent in serious disagreement with the game's mainstream, the content of my mind expressed in these pages will prove to be well outside what the reader would normally expect to find.  The reader will take note, I don't see Dungeons & Dragons as a game, but as an personal expression, a form of performance art, in which participants are enabled and empowered to investigate and comprehend parts of themselves in exactly the way we imagine artists do.

Players are, in the strongest sense, creators.  Creators of character, creators of circumstance, creators of a destiny, contained inside a structure that enables them to seize a moment in time and make it their own.  This sense of gamesmanship that I have permeates the pages of this small but enthralling book, one that promises to be consumed greedily.

Cost: $12.  The Dungeon's Front Door (preview) is my latest book, published this year.  It is a series of essays focusing upon the underground dungeon: its structure, its biology and sociology, its purpose in the game and most important its opportunity for fun and humour.  With this book I've struggled to identify what it is that makes the dungeon an iconic, compelling feature in D&D role-playing, hoping to enable the reader to reinvigorate their dungeon adventures and look at them anew.

I simply don't believe that the traditional game can dismiss the importance that dungeons have for players and for the opportunities they present - and at the same time, as with all things, I tend to look at dungeons askew from the usual tricksterism that's constructed of traps and clever rube goldbergs.  My view is that dungeons are small, profound worlds unto themselves, allowing for endless variety for player and DM alike.  I believe firmly that this book accomplishes the goal in expressing these possibilities.

There we are.  Three books, all available for sale from my table at the Expo beginning Friday morning.  Come around, have a chat, talk about your hopes and dreams and we'll see if we can't raise the bar for your players higher than they've dreamed!

Conversations with My Old Self

Not to step on the importance of my archery post, posted about 30 minutes ago, but I just stumbled across this from my archives.

I came across this comment that I wrote on a post back in 2013, in which I talk about responsibility. This was prior to the inspiration that would enable me to write my book, How to Run, which astounds me. Because I got the book exactly right with this comment, having totally forgotten that I had written what's below:

"This is about half the original essay I was going to write for the book, entitled "Mastering Yourself as DM" ... it is part of the reason why I felt I needed to take a step back and look at the ideals of the book again. While I feel the above is wholly accurate, it is not the spirit nor the feel I believe this book ultimately needs. I don't want to simplify the material, but I want to direct something that is more positive. I'm stuck in the blog-mode, how NOT to DM. I am right now gathering my thoughts, making notes, preparing for the right book, that being how to BE a DM.

"Not get my book? I suppose that has much to do with how much a person really wants to do this. I don't think DMs are necessarily rare, lone wolves, ambiverts, etc. I believe that the RIGHT books have never been written that would enable someone to learn how to do this. I'm very anxious to write the right book, not plow ahead with the wrong one; I'm very conscious of that.

"Listen, being a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, what you will, is hard; the necessary mindset for those professions only very slightly derives from a particular kind of previous personality - the more relevant question is, Will you change your way of thinking so you can think like an engineer? Or a lawyer? Or a doctor? Many people can't, or won't, and find the course work impossible - they are crushed by the course work. They dislike the idea that at the end of their education, they'll be a different person than they were when they went in.

"I don't think D&D is anything like as hard as that - but no one can learn, or 'get' anything, until they decide for themselves that having always known a thing doesn't make it true, and having always been a certain kind of person doesn't mean they always have to be that person. Change is choice; it's not my responsibility to decide who will or won't understand what I'm trying to say.

"It is my responsibility to say it accurately, helpfully and as straight-forwardly as possible. That is enough on my plate, thank you very much. What other people 'get' or don't get is not my problem."

Whatever the Cost, Ever Forward

Without a doubt, my job has kicked my endurance way down the Fibonacci scale.  I appreciate knowing that others are out there, noticing that I haven't been posting lately.

The worst part is not in lacking the time or energy to write . . . but in lacking the time and energy to think.  Some of these posts appear after days, sometimes weeks of introspection or consideration, as I mull over the best way to express the subject or myself.  Writing, I have learned, takes a great deal of energy; oftentimes I am done with a post or an afternoon's work on a book project only to find myself dripping with sweat, as though I had just been out for a long run.

I suffer as much as anybody from the age old blogger question: what to write about today?  The way I usually master this is to collect, as each day progresses, several small ideas that I then work into larger ones.  I keep these shuffled in my head and, if I feel well about them, they eventually make their way onto the blog.

But there's been no peace of mind and thus no quiet contemplation, no opportunity for inspiration.  Thus does another day on the blog pass uninterrupted by my injections.

It is no accident that I would end in writing a post about exhaustion.

This evening I'm doing some ordering of books for the Edmonton Comic & Entertainment Expo, where I will be from Sept 25 to 27.  I'm getting a little help on the cost of these, trusting that we'll do as well with sales this year as we did in Toronto last year.  I'll be selling the main book of course, How to Run, along with the two essay books found in my sidebar.  I had hoped to have another ready in time, but it has encountered some problems and I'm not ready to release it yet.  Thankfully, Edmonton is close and I will be staying with friends there, greatly cutting down on my expenses.

The event has me thinking about what a pleasure it was to meet people in Toronto who felt the drive to be better DMs, who felt a positive thrill in picking up the book and talking to me about it's potential.  It promises to be a real shot in the arm.  If any readers are in Edmonton or thereabouts, I hope you'll come around and see me.

I continue to feel that there is no greater need in the game than for better and more useful materials that speak towards making us all better at playing or DMing.  Even when I read posts or reports from people who declare they have no interest in playing the complex game I usually describe, they still talk of strategies to play that they are in hopes of employing.  It all speaks to the same thing: improvement.

D&D is a performance art.  I would never want to play in a world where the DM felt their contribution was 'adequate.'

Surprise Review

A very pleasant review of my book, How to Run, on Amazon:

"I stumbled upon this book in the "local authors" section of my bookstore. I love anything written about role playing, especially books on GMing, so I immediately purchased it.

"By the end of the book it occurred to me I was reading what could become (and deserves to be considered) a classic work on the art of gamemastering. Smolensk is an immensely talented and perceptive writer. According to the book he has been gaming (mostly gamemastering) for close to 40 years. "How to Run" is an extended manifesto for gamemasters, giving the author's philosophical views on how to run a good game based on the experience of some 11,000+ hours of gaming.

"The observations in the book are system- and genre-neutral. It does not contain any charts and tables, or reference to specific game mechanics, classes, etc. There aren't many examples given, so it takes some work in certain cases to relate the book's concepts to the real world of your game. But the effort is quite rewarding, and the book has changed the way I view campaign and world design. The author is a firm believer in the sand-box approach, and this was the first clear exposition I've seen about how to build a sandbox that is completely tailored to your players' needs.

"Regardless of whether you agree with his views, I think it would be hard not to be inspired by the author's unapologetic and consuming passion for the game and for gamemastering. It is a rare treat to read something focused on this aspect of the hobby (a sub-niche within a niche), executed with such sustained eloquence and insight.

"A must-read for gamemasters - highly recommended."

Very nice.

Venger

The wiki is down.  Not just my page - all of wikispaces.  That's . . . disturbing.

It's okay.  There was something else I'd hoped to work on today.  In the meantime, in the interest of keeping track of reviews of How to Run, I post this link without comment.

Venger's old school gaming blog

UPDATE.  Oh good, the wiki seems to have been fixed.

A Well-Meaning Exchange

I always think people are going to miss these back comments:

Scott Driver:

A close "artsy" friend has a storefront where she sells boho shit that she's culled from thrifts in the area. Until recently she did it to keep busy while selling her art and treading water. It's not normally sustainable without another income stream. (In her case, her husband ... she's very talented but it's tough to make a living on visual art here.)

She has the social media network you'd expect of an interesting, talented, vivacious person. She starts posting each thrift find on Instagram ... things change. Now she posts whatever she finds, most of which is horseshit, and just based on her personality and a wide net, someone ALWAYS asks "omg how much and what size??" then rushes to buy it. It's completely altered how she views her dorky time-sink of a storefront. Now it's a thing.

Here's my question: Your in-person salesmanship - that face you give randoms at a con or a bookstore - are you doing that online anywhere? As far as I know, you're acerbic and uncompromising online, but willing to glad-hand and suffer fools in person.

You want to sell books or you wouldn't be sitting there watching assholes in front of a Chapters. Why are you willing to make salesman faces in person, where you might talk to three people, but not here, where you could reach a LOT more if you used the same salesman face? It seems perverse.

Alexis Smolensk:

Interesting. I am often astounded at the idea that people prefer to buy from a 'salesman face.' I find them quite off-putting, myself.

I am acerbic and uncompromising online - in two specific ways. Either I have identified an individual as a fuckwit, and I say so, or I attack wide groups of people for having what I consider to be a stupid opinion.

I never, ever, go after an individual person for no reason.

In person, whether I am selling or not, I am remarkably pleasant, friendly, witty, honest and forthright - particularly with strangers whom I do not know and therefore have no reason to dislike. This is why Toronto was an epiphany. I found I could speak quite candidly and absolutely honestly about the book, receiving in kind interest, a desire to know more and a remarkable approval of what I was doing. People who bought books from me did not feel pressured, duped, unsure or 'sold.' They felt enlightened, happy, encouraged and with a bounce in their step. People who bought the small book one day read it in a single night and came back the next day to buy the large book. I didn't have to slap on a 'sales face.' I had the product these people were desperate to buy.

When I am friendly, sweet, gentle in my content, full of tolerance and consideration online, I get trolls who hijack the conversation, treat my blog like a welcome mat, treat my readers like morons and show zero respect for anything that I've written.

Granted, there has always been a part of me that, as you say, does not suffer fools to live. Neither do universities, professional workplaces, the halls of power, people who make a lot of money for a living nor any person of intellect.

The difference between me and all of them is that I'm a WRITER; I write. Most of the extremely smart people I know do not give a shit about anything that happens online. This online community holds no interest for them.

I disagree. I think the world can be changed online. I don't think, however, that it can be changed by being nice.

TED Talks are nice. TED Talks are proving to be a dismal failure.

Now, Scott, I'll be frank with you, because I find you a bright guy. You may have noticed that I'm not selling the kind of thing your friend with the Instagram account is selling. She has a product that STUPID people will buy.

I am not selling something that STUPID people are interested in. I'm not selling cute, popular, sweet, precious, easy, stuff that will solve problems or a balm for people's ills. I am selling hard work, invention, creativity, failure and an admittance that you are inadequate. I'm selling the same philosophy that I live by every day. I'm not smart enough. I'm not working hard enough. I haven't produced enough value yet. This is what drives me forward and it is what I am selling.

I have a limited market. Despite that, in the last six months I have sold 250 books. My overall income from being acerbic and uncompromising has earned me more than $4,500. This is not enough to live on, but . . . it is enough to be proud of. I count these as people who want very BADLY to excel. I think these are amazing people. They put up with all my shit and my intolerance, then they tell me that I'm changing their game and their perceptions, that their players are loving the change and that they are running the best campaigns of their lives.

My god man. This seems perverse to you?

If you want compromise, if you want sales, I suggest you knock at the WOTC's door. Instead, you're here.

My technique must be working, no?

Listen, seriously. If you really feel that I should take steps to change myself in order to sell more - then I presume you feel that more people should read my books. If that is how you feel - if that is how you REALLY feel - then get off your ass and point your friends in my direction. Write a review for Amazon, write another for Lulu, write it on your facebook, write it on Reddit. Your pitching my book online is TEN TIMES more valuable than me doing it - because I'm obviously biased and selling, whereas you're someone who has been CONVINCED.

Go express your being convinced to other people!

No Biggie

Sadly, Chapters did not work out.

We spoke to a few people, make perhaps a few connections with friends they knew, telling us that these friends played D&D, but it was the wrong crowd.  Too many mothers and fathers with children, too many aged couples, too many people walking through the bookstore with a thousand yard stare.  They weren't just ignoring us, it was clear watching them pass that they were ignoring everything.

Having time to watch the bookstore in action, I saw far more customers arriving for the Starbucks next to us than seemed to come for the books.  I saw staff bored out of their minds, clearly with nothing to do and no one to direct.  All in all, a disappointing day.

But an educational one.  A day with a message.  A day reminding me that I've done very well to pursue my book on the internet.  I could not help but think of people with no internet presence, bravely writing their first book, then attempting to do what I did today with everything resting on succeeding at a bookstore.  That would be . . . heartbreaking.  I am glad I did not have all my eggs in that basket.

I woke today to find on my feed that we had sold a book overnight.  In a day or two, I will see another book being sold.  Puts failing at the Chapters in perspective.

It is sad, however.  It is.  By the end of the day, what with feeling one kind of stress before, then keeping up our energy to be hit with another sort of stress at the end (as we debriefed), we came home exhausted and strung out.  I had a sleep and now I'm up, feeling like this is something that happened yesterday.

So, next Saturday I will do it again.  At a completely different Chapters, much further out, in the suburbs.  Could be good.  Could be bad.  We'll just have to find out.

At Chapters

I'm going to spend today pitching How to Run at a bookstore, my first time for this.  Should be fun.  I don't expect it to be very much like being at a table at a convention - I have no idea how many people I will meet that will have even heard of role-playing games.

This should be enlightening - from a statistical sample perspective.

If you are in Calgary and you're up for it, come down and see me, buy the book or come and get your book signed.

I'll be at Chapters Bookstore in Chinook Centre.

News!

I will get back to weather soon, but first I have to toss out a few updates.

First, I will be available and signing copies of How to Run at the Calgary Chinook Chapters Store on the 21st of February, this Saturday, from Noon to 4 p.m.

Then, a week later, I will again be available to sign copies at the CrossIron Mills Indigo Bookstore on the 28th of February, the Saturday after, again from Noon to 4 p.m. (and perhaps a while longer).

The book has been available for sale in Chinook since late December and has sold decently; it isn't likely the book is on shelves yet at CrossIron Mills . . . but they promise me soon.

In other news, late last night I came across a fellow, T. Xenos, who is putting How to Run into practice.  You can read about his efforts to design test sessions for his players in this post and in this one.  Xenos' work is based on Chapter 13: The Creative Process.  He's working very hard and he deserves attention - so go, have a look, give him some feedback (which everyone loves) in the spirit of good will and community.

I'm applying myself to other tasks at present, but I will write more about the weather when I can.

Audio?

Market survey question.  I'll keep it simple.

Is there a demand for a audio book of How to Run, read by a professional voice actor?

Yes, no, details please.

Transacting

Part of selling my book involves - unfortunately - taking a step into the bulletin board environment.  So I've been getting my toes wet lately.  I've put that off for far too long, but only because in days gone by I learned what it's like to write anything on a bulletin board.

For example, lately I wrote,

"Is there anything wrong with a DM making a vocation of their work - of treating the game as something that's done not out of light-hearted entertainment, but from a powerful desire to invest all one's nature and effort into producing a better world and a better experience for the player.

Does this make a better DM?"

This is the first thread I've started on any board in nearly two years.  Naturally, the first answer I got completely rewrote the question and then condemned it.

"A good DM is one that is always focused on maximizing the fun for his players. No DM can force his players to be super serious, when they are looking for light-hearted fun. That is the sign of a bad DM."  - Imaculata

Naturally, any sane person knows not to challenge an answer like this.  Any sane person recognizes that "producing a better world" means the same thing as "maximizing the fun for his players."  But pointing this out is a good way to get a flame war started.

The English language is a mutable thing on bulletin boards.  Every word means precisely what the writer wants it to mean, regardless of any meaning that might exist outside the writer's perception, and that meaning is free to change from sentence to sentence, as the writer likes.  As such, most of the dialogue on any bulletin board is mostly about what words mean, defining them, redefining them, debating the definition and so on until all reason and purpose is completely submerged.  There's a good reason that bulletin board posts are called 'threads.'  They unravel the moment they're written.

We should give consideration to how much influence such boards have had over the perception of many a new, young player.  It takes only a minute or two to find a post by such a player, asking a perfectly innocent question about classes or alignment or some other such subject - only to be immediately indoctrinated - and let's face it, that is the word here - into the endless shredding of the subject by whichever two diametrically opposed pundits happen to get ahold of the subject.  I envision thousands of young, ten year old boys and girls staring agape at the screen as they watch some minor question spiral into the realm of the ridiculous, fighting over whether or not a railroad has to have 'tracks' or if it can be built in the air - and whether or not that makes for a good game.

Me, well, I just want to get the words, Author of How to Run: An Advanced Guide to Managing Role-playing Games in front of as many eyeballs as possible.  If they were stacking eyeballs ten bucks to the dozen at the local supermarket, I'd be standing next to it with a poster-board.

As such, I'm willing to write a bit here and there - but unlike this blog, I have very little hope of changing the mind of anyone who has taken time to write there.  No question that there are viewers, still, in possession of their mental faculties, but . . . well, there's been something of a weeding-out process these last fifteen years.  If you're still writing arguments on bulletin boards after all this time, it's official.  You're incapable of listening.

Writing is all about listening.  That's what they say about actors, too, because if you're not listening to what the others actors are saying, you sound false and discordant.  People in written plays are expected to react to one another as if they've never heard the words before, even though the scene has been rehearsed a hundred times or more.  Reacting is a difficult thing to achieve, but when it is done right, it is brilliant.  The audience believes that the people actually are arguing with each other; they're convinced that if they were to go back stage after the performance, the argument would still be going on, about the same things.  It is what great acting is all about.

[It's also what drives me batshit crazy about Johnny Depp; he never listens to anyone.  He lives in his own little fabricated Johnny Depp space, speaking lines to himself, making it look for all the world like he's waited for everyone else in the film to shut the fuck up so he can metaphorically step two paces forward and deliver the 'Johnny Depp Special Dialogue' written expressly for him]

Arguing on a bulletin board is nothing like writing to anyone listening.  Words are secondary to the process.  The process is to produce a flame war so that the pundit with the whole day at their disposal can feel the adrenaline rush their ancestors' biological processes developed in order to hunt and run from water buffalo - only that rush is being applied to screaming stupidly, "This word means what I think it means" over and over . . . and over.

But if you are wondering what I'm doing there, I'm selling.  I don't mind saying so.  Sometimes, in order to sell to the listeners, we have to ignore the rude, silly people who are wandering around our store because they have nothing better to do.

JB's Review of How to Run: An Advanced Guide to Role-playing Games

Keeping with the policy of posting reviews for my book, whenever I find them, I'd like to link a three-part review produced by JB of B/X Blackrazor:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Thank you, JB, for the time taken.

Forward

It is true, I am pushing the book hard this week.

As of last night, I finally received approval for getting my book placed on the shelves of a local Chapters/Indigo store, the first of many in the city.  Chapters, for those of you in America, is very much like the (defunct?) Borders, a big box store that sells books by the pound.

While writing the book earlier this year, I went to see what else on the subject of RPGs that the store was selling - to see the name of the section and how best I would sell it.  Online, I had found a Chapters selling Pathfinder; and in the past I have seen straight D&D books on their shelves.  My examination, however, turned up exactly nothing.  The 'role-playing' shelf that I was directed to look at contained books describing Marvel characters, graphic novels and fanbooks about Star Wars and Star Trek.

So, I don't think there's going to be much competition.  Nor do I think that Chapters gets a lot of customers coming in and asking for books about role-playing.  So I do have it somewhat clear in my mind the likelihood of the books flying off the shelves.

Still, I understand that it's possible to get a table out front where I can pitch to customers coming in - which will be more or less like a mini-version of a comic-con, where I'm the only presenter.  I am definitely ready for that.  I see that as a terrific opportunity.

So I am happy.   There are other stores (each must be approached one by one) here and in other cities. The process is to just keep marching forward until something tips.

It's strange to me that How to Run was finished only four months ago.  Seems like a long, long time.

Time of the Year

Well now.  I've been dead sick for a little more than two days.  Unfortunately, it hasn't been that kind of delirious sick that gives me really great new ideas.  No, this has been that sort of mundane sick that makes me want to bang my head on the wall until I fall unconscious.

Still, I may live.

I am about to do the following under some duress.  I have voices shouting at me to do it, voices I respect.  Since right now I don't respect myself much (don't worry, it's a symptom resulting from proof of mortality, no big deal), I am inclined to trust them.  So here goes.

Christmas is coming in six weeks.  How to Run and How to Play a Character would make really good christmas gifts.  Order them today.

I know people do not think of these things.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Word

An excellent review from Goodreads.

Rank #1

Well, good news.  How to Play a Character & Other Essays is sitting at #1 for the past month on Lulu's top 100 Games Books' list.

How to Run: an Advanced Guide to Managing Role-playing Games is #22.

Honest Questions

And honest answers, hopefully.

Hey, all.

I was hearing that you had gotten books, you were reading them, that things were great - and then nothing.

What's up?  Is there any news?

Banner Day

I still haven't got the rhythm down of this vlog thing.  But . . . I wanted to show how big my table's banner is going to be for the FanExpo next week: