The Mess

Let's start with a rewrite of yesterday's post including the "Introduction" segment ... rushing things less and being a bit more forthright and clear with the statements being made:

This book is about learning to be a “dungeon master” – a mysterious title associated with the game “Dungeons & Dragons.” The dungeon master, or “DM,” accepts the responsibility to coordinate and take charge of the game. It is a difficult role to play, with many responsibilities and the need for many talents. If you, dear reader, want to learn how it’s done, you’ve bought the right book.

The first thing you must know about Dungeons & Dragons, or “D&D,” is that there is no single game. During its long and tortured history, D&D has been turned, twisted and tortured by many authors into dozens of shapes, some of which still bear the game’s official name, while others are re-imaginings of the game in different clothing. With each iteration since its inception, the various versions of the game have grown less compatible with earlier versions, so that D&D has become a hodgepodge of contradictory rules, ideas and forms of game play.

If you have already purchased a version of the game – and perhaps spending more money than you’d intended – I’m sorry to say that it’s possible you don’t have the best version ... or rather, the one that’s best for you. In the hands of someone else, your cherished copy may be exactly what they’re looking for; but in your hands, it could be a disaster. Learning this may come as a shock. It’s surely the last thing you expected to hear from a stranger telling you how to manage the game. But it’s the truth. You may not now have the game you dearly wanted. The best thing you can do about that is to go online, figure out which version you have, and take the time to find out what the other versions are. This, I’m afraid, is your responsibility. All I can offer is that, if you find you’ve made a mistake, you can try to trade for the version you want. Or you can make the best of what you have, until you learn enough to make a change. This is the climate of D&D as it stands. The game’s existence is a complete mess.

This book won’t take time to compare and review the different D&D versions that exist, because unravelling the mess is not this book’s goal. My goal is to teach you how to dungeon master a D&D game – any D&D game. Thankfully, the skills and methodology of “DMing” apply equally well regardless of the version of game play. DMing is about providing game details, making formal judgements about what’s happening and enabling opportunities for the other participants. It’s about being ready with a great deal of information. It’s about knowing the rules – whatever they are – very, very well.

To help you master the game, this book will provide discussion, knowledge and ethical advice. It will define many aspects of D&D that have existed since the beginning, providing clarification that you will find useful in answering questions and directing the game. To handle the other participants positively and effectively, you’ll need practical knowledge about how to speak, relay information, create moments of drama and prepare yourself for each game session. This book will provide it. Once you’ve finished reading this book, you should have a much stronger understanding of how the game works and your part in it.

However, just so you know, that won’t be enough to make you a DM. It takes a long, long time to learn all you need know to be a good DM – and the truth is, you’ll never stop learning. This book that’s brought you and me together is just the start. To go further, to reach your potential, you’ll need to employ good sense and a great deal of self-investigation.

It’s up to you to dig down and discover what you can do. It’s up to you to commit to the game; to stay up all night as you draw maps or design the next big thing; to show patience in the face of criticism; and to say “yes” when it’s warranted and “no” when you’re prepared to stand your ground.

It’s up to you to believe in yourself, and trust your judgement. What I can do is help you understand the fundamental game, despite its trapping and confusions – and when we’re done, you’ll find you have the potential to be a better DM than you imagined.

Better.   Importantly, it buries two functional justifications I need to go forward: (a) I'm not responsible for the version you play; and (b) I'm free to define aspects of D&D that may not exist in the version you play, which only serves to argue that you're playing "the wrong version."  The upshot, however, is that I'm taking a risk here.  The text had better be solid, helpful and insightful going forward, or I end up looking like a self-righteous prick.  Which, of course I am, but it's best if I don't look like one.

This is the reason for softening the text above somewhat.  The truth is that D&D is a gawdawful mess; I don't want to pretend differently, and that would do no good for the reader anyway.  But if it's possible, I'd rather this was so because it is (and I think a visit around the internet supports that), and not because I said so.

There is a distinct difference between the "game" and the versions thereof.  D&D, whatever the specific rules, is functionally a game where the DM describes, the players react, the DM reacts to the players, the players react again to the DM and so on.  My desire is for the reader to grasp this, rather than the specific details of any specific game or version, because that structure is true of all role-playing games, not just D&D.

Managing this react-dynamic is the key to teaching DMing ... with a strong recognition that no simple format like "always say yes" is going to work at all well.  The game is too complex for that.  But let's leave this part on the shelf and return to Moldvay.

As before, we can see the text trying to do too many things at the same time, while adding details that don't remotely need to be discussed at this time.  With the first sentence, having been told to roll 3d6 on the previous page and apply it to the six character ability stats, the text on the right tries to jump straight to having the character pick a class ... and then realises, almost at once, oops, we forgot to explain what abilities actually are.  Nonetheless, we introduce the idea of a "prime requisite" — a term that offers the flimsiest value to the conversation, yet is there to confuse the reader — then shove pressure onto the character that "success" depends on having a high prime requisite score.

Now you and I understand this as a "duh" moment, since the scores are already rolled and the player's character is stuck with what's gotten ... but for the new DM, there's a sense of, "How can I get a higher ability score?" — which is exactly the kind of question I've fielded scores of times as a DM from new players, and those from other campaigns.

Language has a great deal of power.  Phrasing things in such a way that the player feels their whole success rests on the highness of their ability scores primes them in all sorts of horrible ways.  We see the same thing in advice like, "Any character with a strength score of 13 or above should consider one of the following four classes ..."  Pause a moment and consider.  Of course a character's class should depend on its higher ability scores ... but notice that nothing has been said about the underhand shuffle that's being forced here, where the abilities cannot be simply arranged as the player wishes, stated plainly in the earlier AD&D text regarding the rolling up of a character.

Why?   What does this fundamental change in character construction add to the game, except to build camps of people ready to battle stupidly over a rule choice that makes no fundamental difference to game play?  If the player wants to be a cleric, then why can't the 13 simply be put under wisdom?  Or put under strength if the player wants to be a fighter?  Why go through the complicated, apparently rational act of pumping the prime requisite argument with multiple sentences under each ability?  Because it's clever?  I'll be damned if I see how.  Or is it that we want to force players to play characters they don't actually want to play?  If so, that's a hell of a way to build the game as a support structure.

Can you not see that frivolous, essentially meaningless rule structures like this contributed long term to the impatience and indifference of would-be players, who found themselves stymied by arbitrary nonsense like the above?  Can you not see that resistance to this fanned the flames of a resistance to everything in the game?  Moldvay's version doesn't exist in a vacuum; there are plenty of copies of the DMG laying around, which Moldvay ignores, without a word of explanation about WHY he's chosen to ignore it.  Because there is no explanation.  He's gone with what he thinks is the "right" choice ... and fuck what anyone else thinks.

I remember clearly that this disagreement, and others, presented themselves in 1981-82.  Obviously, we couldn't see at the time how ludicrous these discrepancies would become — at the time they were a mere annoyance, largely perpetrated by an annoying kind of player and DM.

Writing a book that explains how to DM requires that every bit of advice we offer has to be absolutely defensible on some basis other than, "I feel like it should be that way."  Otherwise, we're wasting our time.  Or we don't really know what helps a DM to DM.  Which is evident in the sort of material that's written.

In the introduction above, the word "practical" stands out.  The advice we give has to have practical application, which means that it must adhere to actual doing and use, and NOT according to theory and ideas.  The reader must be able to read it, apply it and find that it succeeds with persons who are total strangers to the writer.

That is a damned high bar to clear ... but as can be seen with earlier attempts, writers like Moldvay and others didn't give a damn.  They felt so righteous in their beliefs that they saw no reason whatsoever to explain themselves.

Which is precisely how we got into this mess.

Version Territory

Our next venture with Moldvay's Basic Rulebook requires a delicate touch.  First, I cannot simply copy his material from page B5, since in the first place it's copywritten and in the second it's only one of nine possible versions of D&D.  Thirdly, my goal isn't to rewrite one of the game versions of D&D as a rulebook.  Remember that it was never my intention to rewrite Moldvay for Moldvay's sake, but to turn to attempts to write a basic game as source material for how to speak simply and directly to a would-be DM.  So ...

Contemplating this last night, I foresee an introduction that plainly describes the discrepancies between various editions, explaining to the reader that whatever version of the game they possess, the functionality of the dungeon master is the same.  This, I think, requires some teaching on how to interpret text rules ... which is a hill to climb in itself, about which I've had one day to think on.

Then comes the problem of discussing the DM overseeing the character creation process without the crutch of describing the process.  That is, when the character is being rolled, how is the DM involved?  What role does the DM play?  As far as I know, next to nothing has been written on this, though I described recently what I do when I'm introducing a new player to my game.  Even then, however, I spoke of my philosophy towards rolling up player characters and not my responsibility.

Additionally, none of this exempts us from dealing with the factual definitions of the terms, details and subject material surrounding the "game piece" that makes a character: the ability stats, character class, hit points, armour class, skills and so on, all of which can also confuse a DM and therefore needs clarification.

Thus we quickly find ourselves drifting in three directions.  The usual course is to smash all three into the same text, trying to force the reader up to speed by sheer force of will ... but as I've said, let's not do that.  Let's find the correct route through this mountainous terrain that leads onto a smooth path come the other side.

My best guess — and it is a guess, since I've had all of five days to contemplate any of this since JB's inspiring post — would be to take the two pieces of "what is" a DM and a Player from the last post and address the relationship between the two a bit further, thusly:

The Player-Character Relationship

Whatever version of D&D that's being played, the relationship between "player" and "character" is all important.  The DM, more than the player, must be expressly conscious of the difference between the two — because during the height of play, the player often becomes too passionate to distinguish one from the other.  The player is the person playing the game, who does all the thinking and bears all responsibility for the character's actions.  The character is a conduit through which the player interacts with the setting.  Often, as a dungeon master you may be confronted by a player who's ready to blame the character for "wanting this" or "failing that," as a means of avoidance.  Try to forestall such behaviour by patiently reminding the player that he or she chose their actionsand that they must now be ready to accept the consequences.  Understanding this relationship helps a great deal in coordinating the game's play.  We'll talk more about this when we discuss "controlling the game."

In making the character, we invest the game piece with attributes that both enhance and constrain the player's actions.  Characters are able to do many things the player cannot; in turn, the character may also be incapable of doing things the player does easily.

For example, the character may be capable of riding a horse, fighting effectively with a sword, casting magical spells and speaking directly to the gods.  However, as the character typically exists in a medieval culture, the character knows nothing about science, medicine, the true nature of the stars or even how disease happens.  The character may not be able to swim, even when the player does this easily.

Acting as a dungeon master, therefore, requires defining precisely what the character can do, no matter what the situation.  It asks the DM to readily say "No" when the player asks to do something the character clearly cannot do.  It's very difficult to countermand what a player wants ... but this is the most important part of DM-player relations.

As such, the making of the character is the process through which the player understands what he or she can do, according to the game's rules.  When making the character, it's the DM's role to ensure the player is made exactly aware of their capabilities — and that whatever the player decides to do, the rules are there to say whether or not that action is possible.

Okay, me again.  From here, the text should move into the "making of the character" more directly ... but since that depends greatly on what set of rules the DM plays by, this is a good time to pull back and examine that introduction I proposed earlier.

Once again, it's not my intent to propose a new set of rules for the game, so going through the character creation step-by-step is outside the proposed agenda.  The goal is to teach DMing.  So an introduction must include some understanding that the text isn't going to hold the DM's hand with regards to whatever set of rules the DM possesses.  If it's 2e, Basic, AD&D or 5th, the introduction has to hold up and work as a preliminary intended to explain what DMing is going to be, regardless.

Look at the problems that have been created on that front.  If I want to talk about ability stats, I'm confronted by multiple definitions in the versions themselves that conflict with one another, ability stats that exist in one book but not another, and rules associated with ability stats that also conflict hideously.  5th edition even destroyed the traditional 3-18 model.  If I want to talk about hit points, armour class and damage, which ought to be core concepts, again, these things have been muddied beyond repair.  If I want to outline races, classes or class abilities, again, the names of these things have been adjusted and the class structures themselves shifted and modified, with some classes and races appearing in some or multiple versions and not in others.  It's rough enough when there are four or five different versions of a spell, but when the role of mage has undergone so many changes and adjustments, it's difficult to write an over-arching account of these matters that's remotely universal.

And, of course, the folks at the company have made it clear since 2019 that they're prepared to go on changing and adjusting every existing rule in perpetuity, regardless of whether or not a new game version results.  It's quite a headache.

Very well; as with patients who are about to die, a direct approach is best:

Introduction

This is a book about learning how to be a dungeon master for Dungeons and Dragons.   To get anything from this book, the first thing you must know about the game is that there's no single game that anyone can play.  In it's long and fractured history, "D&D" has been turned, twisted and tortured into dozens of shapes, growing more and more incompatible with itself following each generation.  If you have already purchased a version of the game, having spent more money than you expected to spend, you should know from the outset that it's possible you don't have the best version that exists.  This may come as a shock to you.  It's surely the last thing you expected from someone telling you how to manage the game.  But it's the truth.  The game in your hands may not be the right game for you or for your friends.

There are officially eight versions of D&D that have been produced since the game was first published in 1974.  Most likely, you believe that the latest is the "fifth edition."  This isn't so.  Time won't be spent here discussing the various editions or what they individually offer.  Woe be to you, dear reader, but the responsibility for which version of D&D you've decided to play — and which versions exist that you don't know about — falls on your shoulders.  Therefore you are responsible for your version's rules and your version's ideosyncracies.

This book is about how to be a dungeon master.  Thankfully, the skills and methodology of dungeon mastering apply equally well regardless of the version.  Dungeon mastering is about controlling the game's play and the players.  It is about being ready with a great deal of information.  It is about knowing the rules — whatever they are — very, very well.

To help you master the game, you may rely on this book to discuss and define many aspects of D&D that have existed since the beginning.  You'll find many lessons within these covers intended to settle arguments and provide you with a philosophy that will strengthen your ability to handle other people positively and effectively.  You'll find these abilities apply as much to life as they do with dungeons and dragons, because the approaches described herein come from the real world.  Once you finish reading this book, you should know at least how to handle players, the game and what's called "worldbulding" — but this won't be enough.  This book that's bringing you and me together requires that the reader employ good sense and a great deal of self-investigation.

It's up to you to explore every rule in your version of the game, and then to set forth to discover what those other versions are.  It's up to you to apply yourself and make the many personal contributions that being a dungeon master requires.  It's up to you to stay up all night before a game.  It's up to you to believe in yourself, and trust your own decisions when confronting one of the game's players.  You will, and must, improve when you apply yourself to understanding the whole game, in all its versions, as best you can.

I can teach you how, but I can't do it for you.

Okay.  I'm spent.  I don't even know if this is good.  I'll need some distance from it.  I won't know what's wrong until I look at it tomorrow. 

The New Dungeon Master

I tend to agree with JB regarding Mentzer, so I choose to distill Moldvay's text as an experiment.  I felt a temptation to post each page, applying different colours to material we could define as fluff, extraneous details about the game, confusing sidebars that take away from the main point and so on, but in fact that would require posting the full text here on the blog.  I'm happy to link to someone else willing to pirate the content openly, but I suppose I have some resistance to doing it myself.  What a hypocrite I am.  I will post sections of the book to be worked from.

Given recent decisions about what content I'd like to include on this blog, I don't wish to address the rightness or wrongness of the games rules as presented, nor disparage the writers nor their decision to write the booklet.  I think my past writing defines well enough where I stand on those things.  Occasionally, as a matter of writing and teaching, I do intend to criticise organisational choices and syntax, that is, the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed phrases and, ultimately paragraphs.  My goal with this is to stress clarity for the sake of the reader.  I believe throughout the booklet that there are many, many choices in this regard that unfortunately interposes statements and additional information at times where they don't belong, which drastically undermines a properly coherent presentation of the material.

All that goobledygook is to say that I think the booklet is badly written.  Examples will follow.

Remember, most of all, to view the book through the eyes of someone who has no experience with any D&D rule; a 10-y.o., say, or a young adult, who has heard of the game, knows no one personally who plays, who nevertheless obtains the game online or as an asked-for present, and is now faced with learning the book though no other means beyond the text.  This is the situation JB more or less describes in several posts, culminating in this one.

The first critical information is found on page "B3" ... a telling amateurish decision with regards to book page numbers.  I don't find anything prior to this point that addresses the game's play.  Some of the discarded material is legitimately interesting, and ultimately useful to the DM's state of mind, but fundamentally I feel that these things could have been left until much later in the booklet, as well as being stated more briefly and to the point.

Throughout the text to this point, the authors try to simultaneously interject details, often with one sentence statements, while frustratingly using words casually that have not been defined yet.  For example, in a section called "Definitions ..." the writer casually uses the word "adventure" in the first and second paragraphs, as though the reader understands what it means, and then defines "adventure" with the start of the fourth paragraph.  This is an issue that a good editor would have caught at once ... particularly as this is technical writing and NOT prose.  The requirements of what was needed wasn't understood.

It can be argued that no one at the time understood the game well enough to write about it technically.  I've had trouble with that also, given that no technical works about D&D exist, so that my efforts in the past have been written without guidelines or previous work to write from.  The authors here suffer from the same problem.  However: we may excuse them, we may applaud their attempt ... but in this day and age is falls on us to correct them, putting forth better work based on their efforts, and not excuse them to the point that we keep ourselves deaf, dumb and blind to a better means of expressing their material.

Editing the material: if the lead paragraph is placed nearer the start of the booklet, and not buried on page 3, there's no need to stress how important the material is or that it should be read carefully.  In defining terms, we're better defining them as they become important, and NOT as an info-dump as shown here.  Nor is it necessary to define "session" by giving it the name "adventure"; just call it a "session" and later, when the session is discussed, the concept of "adventure" can be included.  There is certainly no reason at this time to explain what a bunch of adventures are called.  We don't know anything yet.  Presenting these things in this format only calls for the reader to keep flipping back in the book to this page to grasp what's being said.  The reader shouldn't have to do that.  Each idea should be clearly understood before jumping to the next idea.

Allow me to distill the text to what really needs to be stated first and foremost, drawn from the text shown above:

When a group plays a D&D game, one person acts as a referee.  It is the DM's job to prepare the setting before the game begins.  The DM must be willing to spend time in preparation.  The DM's job takes time, but it is creative and rewarding.  When the DM has prepared a [setting], the game is ready to begin.

Until the above is understood completely, we don't need to know what the other participants are called, we certainly don't need to know anything about NPC's, the assumption that the setting will be a dungeon is prejudiced, the need to map a dungeon when moving through it is not pertinent here and in fact is not true, we're shouldn't be blatantly selling a module or the concept of a module at this point, we don't need to sell the "DM's Job" as super special, and the whole deviation into adventure is completely wasted until the reader clearly comprehends what a DM is.

As the book progresses into page 4, however, we talk about having someone speak for the party, what a monster is (which gets more definition than DM does), the use of the word level, dice and "how to win" ... all of which is discussed and still the reader has no clear idea of what a DM is, what he or she does, any explanation of why a setting is necessarily a dungeon and not something the dictionary describes as a "setting," etcetera.  While you and I understand these discussions easily, and can defend them, the information comes fast and furious to the inexperienced reader as a hodge-podge of confusing additional words that are not immediately defined by the booklet.  The experience would be extremely frustrating for a full-grown, well-educated adult; it's impossible for a 10-y.o.

Like I said.  We need to define each term carefully, patiently and in precise words that assume zero knowledge of the game.  Any term that doesn't need to be defined at the outset — such as a "caller," which has been dispensed with long since despite the push for such a person — must be left for later in the text, when it is pertinent.  That is, when we include a passage about controlling the game, and the need to reduce the number of speaking voices by asking the players to have only one speak for the group.  But this shouldn't be touched upon until we set the stage for controlling the game to begin with ... that is, what does "controlling the game" even mean?

I'll take a swing at the distilled paragraph above:

What is a DM?

Among the participants of the D&D game, one person accepts the responsibility to coordinate and "run" the game, which means to set the game in motion by presenting the game's "setting."  A setting is an imaginary place that surrounds the other participants of the game, where the events of the game take place.  The dungeon master, or "DM," creates this setting in advance of the game, which gives the dungeon master time to know all that's needed to be known about the place before presenting to the players.

For example:  the DM imagines a small one-room house surrounded by woods.  He or she writes down, or has it in mind, what the house looks like, what kind of trees there are, what immediately surrounds the house, what the house is like inside, who lives there, what kind of people they are, what they do for a living and so on ... as many details as the DM can dream up.  Then, when the other participants approach the house, the DM will say, "You see a house."  The DM describes the house and answers any questions the others have about the surroundings.  The DM must have this information ready, or be prepared to "make it up" on the spot.  Once a detail has been said out loud, it should be considered fixed and unchangeable.  Now that they have encountered the house, the other participants are asked, "What do you do now?"

Whatever the others say, or do, or wherever they go, the DM must be ready to say what happens, what the dwellers in the house say or do, and how the situation is resolved.  There are many rules for this, which we will discuss later, but for now it should be understood that the dungeon master is responsible for including details about the setting like the example above.

A setting requires many, many details, and so the DM must be a person whose able to be very creative and imaginative; the DM must have a good memory; the DM has to pay close attention to detail; and the DM must be ready for anything the other game participants say.  This requires a lot of preparation, which takes a lot of time.  However, because the DM controls everything about the game, the DM also has a great deal of power over what happens, and what everything looks like.  It can be terrifically exciting to have this kind of power — but it's also important for a DM to be responsible and to maintain a great deal of concern for the other game participants.

There.  NOW, we can talk about "players."

Moldvay starts with the fantasy roles of the character the players play, in that order, but I'd reverse that, putting the PLAYER front and centre.

What is a Player?

The other game participants are called "players."  Players manage the game pieces, called "characters" who act as the players' alter-egos in the game's setting.  In a sense, acting on the character's part is a sort of "role," like an actor plays; but as D&D is a game, many of the decisions the player makes for his or her character decides the survival, the success or the future opportunities for the character.  Therefore, the player must make each decision carefully.  When the DM asks, "What do you do?", the players are free to do whatever they like — within the physical limitations of the character.

Many of those limitations are, however, fantastical in scope.  Players are able to fight like knights, cast spells, perform remarkable feats and more ... but all of these capabilities are also carefully managed by the game's rules.  Players must make characters at the start of the game, using a complex but ultimately very rewarding formula.  It can be great fun to watch a character come to life out of virtually nothing except die rolls and the choices the player makes.  Let's move straight into how a player's character is made.

Now, see?  We get rid of all the extraneous details.  We don't call the participant a "player" until we're ready to talk about what players ARE.  We don't call it a "player character," except that we cleverly put together the phrase "player's character" at the end, to prime the reader for the term.  To segway into the game's parlance, we use phrases that every game uses, like "game piece."

We don't bring up dungeons or adventures, because it's too soon.  One step at a time.  Nobody needs to be "amazed" but all the shit the game offers up front.  We'll get there.  Until then, let's tidy up each group of details so that later, the reader doesn't have to flip back and forth through the book.  It's perfectly clear, to a point, what the DM does.  And yes, it looks big and scary and frightening; but that has to be understood up front.  The reader has a whole book in his or her hands.  There's plenty of time to get "comfortable" with being a DM.  If a few phrases puts them off, well, it's a matter of whether they keep reading.  Notice I picked a perfectly ordinary setting — one that everyone can easily imagine.  Not something completely alien to their experience, like a dungeon.

This is how it's done.  Patiently.  One bit at a time.  Not a mess thrown all at once.