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.

Players who Have Played Before

I have to be careful with this last post on the subject of bringing in new players — and here I'm speaking of players who are not new to the game, but are new to my campaign.  Having discussed the subject on numerous occasions in the past, I see little value in rehashing old wounds and mistakes made.  People make a mess of relationships for all kinds of reasons ... and more often than not, they don't get resolved because one or both parties feels a crushing load of shame, and not because there are irreconcialable differences.

Recently, I met a former player who left my campaign in and around 2012, largely because he was in a difficult place in his life and chose to abandon other activities in the pursuit of recreational drugs.  His leaving the campaign was equitable, but of course not well-respected.  He's been clean for years and years now ... and in this post-covid time, I asked if he would be interested in rejoining my campaign.  His face lit up and he expressed a strong desire to do so; and later I heard through a third party that he'd wanted to rejoin the campaign for five or six years, but simply couldn't face me to ask.  I saved his face by asking him.

This is how it goes with people.  Harsh words get spoken, the argument gets forgotten but the feelings do not.  It's one of the reasons I'm trying to change my ways and put an end to my ranting nature.  It's not that I've changed my mind on the fallacies of other DMs or that I suddenly respect or choose to tolerate what I consider wrongness in managing players or the game itself ... only that people tend to remember the hurt and not the argument I've made.  This has taken a long time for me to accept; and most people, I know, would feel too ashamed to admit it.

Anyway.  I really should stress that for the most part, I do very well with new players who have plenty of experience with D&D.  Most are tired of cookie-cutter games and want something on a deeper level, as several of my online players will attest.  There's little to be said about people like this because they are so easy to run and get along with that I look forward to their involvement.  I don't have to overly explain the character generation process, I can make a few quick points about rule changes, negotiation of said rule changes go swimmingly and overall it's less work to initiate a good experienced player from another campaign than it is one who has never played before.

The trick is, of course, recognising one of these good-and-experienced players from those who are intrinsically toxic.  A toxic player is also very good at playing; they are also very good at adopting and understanding new rules, and very often are very good at negotiating those rules to understand their stance.  Toxic and non-toxic players alike make good role-players; and they are often both pleasant and cheerful to associate with.  It's the samenesses that make it difficult to deal with toxic players ... because in the beginning, we're never sure that's what we have.

Fundamentally, the toxicity derives from two positions on the game that underlie the player's intentions: (a) winning and (b) self-aggrandisement.  In all fairness, these are the same problems that affect persons in business, in sports, in politics and in relationships.  The characteristics need not be overly pronounced like a made-for-netflix movie.  The need to "win" a situation, or "serve myself," need not manifest as a slavering workaholic fuck-you-I-got-mine perspective that is coldly evident on first glance.  It is most likely very subtle.

The need to win is more often a need not-to-lose, and more specifically a need not to fail.  Failing is the criminality that produces many toxic players ... not just the need not to make mistakes or approach the game with a "failure-is-not-an-option" attitude, but the need not to look like I've failed, or admit that I've failed.  These last two, and the inherent shame that saturates both, gets into the blood of a campaign and begins to taint everything.  Especially when "winning" becomes the equivalent of not putting one's self into a position where losing is possible.

This explains players who won't invest, who won't take risks, who won't calculate the odds, roll the dice and accept a negative result, on principle.  It's not that a negative result, in principle, is something that can't be sustained, but that there's a shame in having to accept that "I made the decision that put me in a place where a negative result was possible."  This belief in self-imposed shame is taught at a young age by fathers, mothers and coaches the world over.  I quote,

"The bizarre thing is, I did it for my old man.  I tortured this poor kid, because I wanted him to think that I was cool.  He's always going off about, you know when he was in school, and the wild things he used to do.  And I got the feeling that he was disappointed that I never cut loose on anyone, right?   So, I'm sitting in a locker room, and I'm taping up my knee ... and Larry's undressing a couple lockers down from me; and ... and he's kind of skinny.  Weak.  And I started thinking about my father, and his attitude about weakness.  And the next thing I knew, I jumped on top of him and I started wailing on him.  And my friends, they just laughed and cheered me on.  And afterwards, when I was sitting in Vern's office, all I could think about was Larry's father.  And Larry having to go home, and ... and explain what happened to him.  And ... the humiliation ... the fucking humiliation he must have felt.  It must have been unreal.  Huh, how do you apologise for something like that?  There's no way.  It's all because of me and my old man.  God I fucking hate him.  He's like ... he's like this mindless machine that I can't even relate to anymore.  'ANDREW!  YOU'VE GOT TO BE NUMBER ONE!  I won't tolerate any losers in this family!  Your intensity is for shit.  WIN!  WIN!  WIN!'  You son-of-a-bitch."

 — The Breakfast Club

Obviously, it's not as clear as that.  Not usually.  It manifests in the player being so cautious that other players are left in the lurch, unprotected.  Or the player deliberately building the character in a deeply munchkinian way, or thirsting after more and more magical items, or anything that will serve as a bulwark between success and losing ... because they cannot lose.  The feeling they have of leaving a campaign where they've lost is emotionally crippling — and reminds the player that this is NOT why they play D&D.  It's bad enough that this failure and losing are part of real life; the craving to escape that real life shame by rushing into D&D, or any escapist activity that assures success, absolutely, is their fundamental reason for being here.

The story is fun, the characterisation and situations are fun, the loot and the power building is fun, the triumph is fun ... but anything that's a part of the game that the player cannot utterly control on every level is anathema to the dogma.  Math is an excuse; the real reason why encumbrance, tracking food, the number of spells one can cast in a day, having to live with less than ideal hit points and so on is so hateful is because they're all a reminder that the character is limited, and limited equals weak.  Weakness is the precursor to failure; no matter how we cut it, "Sooner or later the place where I am weak will lead to my failing, and I just fucking cannot deal with any more failing, especially in an activity I do for fun."

In my book How to Run, I talked about the accumulated pattern recognition that's gained from running D&D over a period of years.  One of those patterns I've been made to recognise are the tunes and tones that enter the player's diction as the game is played out.  Players learn a semantic and conceptual way of understanding what the game is about, for them, which when obtained is virtually impossible to shift or change.  The desires a player expresses in the first few rolls of creating their character; the way they express what they think the party should do; the hesitation they show when meeting a particular danger; the manner in which they physically have their characters approach that danger; the way they withhold powers they possess, "saving them for later," which they perceive is good play but is often evidence of not wanting to let go of something held too tightly, "in case."  Altogether, it expresses a doubt on the player's part that things will work out, or that they can think their way out of the problem when the need arises.  They don't believe they will; or, in the very least, there's a strong feeling that they might not.  And they are simply not willing to take the risk that they might have used a power now, when they'll so desperately need that power later.

This approach of anti-failure by excessive conservation of power seems like an example of "good play."  It's very often defended that way.  A long-time savvy player will have accumulated many examples of evidence that supports this approach, ingraining it further into the player's consciousness as "the right way to play."  It is, at best, "a" way to play.  Unfortunately, it's a heuristically oriented approach, where the player has learned this habit entirely for themselves, and not within a social context.  Socially, the player's failure is less intrinsically important than the party's failure ... but the player who must win is universally incapable of making this distinction.  "The risked shame isn't the party's shame; it's MY shame.  And as long as it's mine, I'll decide for myself how much of it I want to endure."

Taking us to the place of self-aggrandisement.  Let me stress here.  This isn't about being selfish.  Nor is it necessarily about pounding one's chest and promoting oneself as being powerful or important ... though yes, let's admit it, that's been a core-rhetoric in D&D since it's beginning.  We have many famous quotes from Gygax, Mentzer and others that are boasting, strutting and thoroughly toxic.  The meme of gloating player goes well back before Knights of the Dinner Table and the earlier Fineous Fingers.  Oftentimes, old schoolers achieved a certain glee in depictions of this sort.

Just as "to win" means to not lose, being important is served by not being overlooked.  However popular RPGs and D&D in particular may become, it's still an activity enjoyed by those who are educated and possessed of a heightened imagination.  Such persons nearly always end up spending a lot of time alone, in part because they did the homework they were given, in part because they retreat to imaginative activity as a means of freedom in an environment that's not pretty.  Learning how to manage ourselves and the various details in the world have much to do with an individual's life trajectory — and a long-time situation of diligently doing school work and being occupied with one's own thoughts rarely leads to a path of "being cool" and having popularity.

Those who have a supportive family are comfortable with their level of importance.  Those who receive accolades for their schoolwork, or who have even minor athletic gifts or an ability to participate as a team member gain early recognition for their existential importance in a group.  If they're among others and an hour goes by without their gaining any special attention, they're fine with it.  They've learned, either subconsciously or through the point being highlighted by some personal event, that everyone gets their kick at the cat, eventually ... and that ultimately everyone deserves that kick.

For some, however, cat-kicking possesses something of a dearth in their existence.  They're fairly convinced — AGAIN, either subconsciously or through the point being highlighted — that they haven't had their share of attention.  And it's very, very hard for them to sit among a group of people and not be recognised a requisite number of times ... that requisite being decided in their minds, and not according to some other, more socially agreed-upon measure.

In it's worst form, this manifests as the grabbing character who must have the best object at the table, for being the strongest and having the best is surely a way of getting attention.  Toxically, it also manifests as a need to push others down, since the importance of others is a challenge to the player's importance.  Much of this stems from a certainty that there's only so much attention to go around, that it's in short supply or that it must at least be cornered to the greatest degree possible.  Time, after all, is a limited commodity; therefore it follows that attention must be also.  "And anyone else getting attention robs me of mine."

But ... these monsters are so obviously horrific that types like this never get invited to my house, much less be given an opportunity to play in my world.  I've had a few of them turn up online; but they're easy to identify and dispense.  The more obscure variant of the species is the player who seems perfectly normal in nearly every aspect, except that — often to a very slight degree — they have trouble keeping themselves occupied.

The rest of this sentiment can be immediately recognised by any DM out there.  These are players who need a lot of handling.  Less needful of gaining importance from the rest of the party, they zero in on what the DM can give.  Being imaginative, they're full of ideas of things they want to do; but they usually lack some skill in getting anyone else interested.  Usually, it's because the "things" are impractical, too personal or ultimately not very lucrative.  Sometimes, the player will urge the DM to step in and ensure their idea becomes the game's direction — through wheedling or merely by never dropping the subject, ever.

It's an Amphipolean problem, which can only resound with those studying Greek history.  The party get tired of hearing it, the DM gets tired, the issue never gets dropped ... and increasingly the attention-seeking player chooses it as the hill to die on, the evidence that "No one ever wants to do the thing I want to do."  Sooner or later the thing will come to a head; and the worst of it is that in not giving the player their kick at the cat, denying the player further participation in the campaign feels like kicking a dog.

[Sorry.  From the moment I wrote about kicking the cat I knew the other metaphor had to find a place]

There's something undeniably hateful about pushing a fairly benign, often quiet, often socially paralysed individual out of a game ... so hateful that a DM — certainly me — will endure the situation for years if it means not having to address the matter.  In reality, the party begins to ignore the player, I begin to ignore the player, all because the player can only see the game from their personal, self-identified point of view.  And being ignored is the thing that player least wants to experience.  The situation is awful.  No question about it.

Unfortunately, social situations have their rules.  Participating in a social situation requires that the individual be conscious of their personal need to be socialised.  They must gain a comprehension of other people's needs, they must learn to view themselves as a part of a group and not an individual within a group; they must reflect upon how their language and their choice of subject-matter affects other people.  They must learn to give life to their words so that the words deserve attention, not the speaker.

These are skills we all must learn.  No one learns them perfectly.  Many reach a certain point and quit learning.  I personally wish to keep working on my socialisation for the rest of my life.

Concluding this series of posts, I'll end by saying that the goal of introducing a new character is to ensure the machine, the game, keeps running fluidly.  Whether the new player is wholly new to the game, or any RPG, or comes from other games to play yours, the DM should strive to keep the cogs and rods lubricated and smooth-running.  Any bit of grit, that occurs for any reason, is contrary to the manifest importance of a well-run, humming and exciting game.

Understanding that "grit" is defined according to what sort of game you're running.  In most games that others play, I would definitely be a very large bag of sand thrown into the gears.

Best that I don't play, then.

Bringing You In

As I said with this post, at the beginning of my D&D playing I was told to "watch and learn" ... which I did.  My first action, taken in haste and without understanding the consequence, got me turned into stone; whereupon I had little choice but to watch and learn.

The lesson here is that it didn't matter than my first experience was "easy" or not.  What mattered was that the party didn't overly mock me for being so stupid or in any way make me feel unworthy as a player.  Instead, as soon as they could, they got me turned back to flesh.  This is what matters.  As a player in this game, bad things happen.  It isn't the bad things themselves that turn players off, it's the way that other players, and DMs, respond in those moments.

Whatever I felt about those guys later — I played with them for 18 months before deciding their goals were fatuous and limited — they brought me in, adopted me as a player, let be become one of their number and didn't hold it against me when I stopped playing.  By the time I quit, I had three other regular games to play in and my own to run, all of which gave me a lot of experience in a short time.

Once a new player in my campaign gets to where the character is sorted, we can play.  The situation is briefly explained and the new player is encouraged to ask questions.  Usually, off balance, they have none to ask and we get into it.

Let's say we're in a dungeon and you, Dear Reader, have just joined the campaign.  Now how does that work?  The party is fifty feet underground and they've slogged through a hundred vermin to get here, and now you saunter as if you were looking for the washroom and you've ended up here.  I know that other parties make a big deal of such meetings, trying to justify this strange happenstance, but I prefer to wrap it up with something simple.  I've introduced hundreds of characters to games and I'm rather bored with the fifteen-minute "getting to know you" scene.  Rather, I'll say something like, "This is Horace, the fellow you met at the tavern in Ipswich three days ago; remember suggesting that he ought to come along?  Well, he's been about fifty yards behind you this whole time, getting over his nerve at the sound of battle and so on ... but here he is, ready to fight.  Aren't you Horace?"

You say yes and there we are.  The players ask about your equipment and if you're short a helmet or a weapon, they'll give you one.  "Uh, I had this extra +1 hand axe I'm not using right now; can you use a hand axe?"  "You've got leather armour?  I've a suit of +1 studded on my horse; if we get a chance, I'll give it to you."  This sort of thing.

I'll ask the party, "What next?"

And they'll say, "We're going through the door."  They outline where they're going to stand and who will do the actual opening and I'll ask, "Where should Horace stand?"  This is me ensuring you're not forgotten; I know you, as a new player, haven't any idea what this "where are we going to stand" thing is all about, so I'm there for you.  The party will tell you to stand here, draw your bow, point it at the door.  If anything comes in, shoot."  I move your image to a place on the map you can see, on a monitor screen.  That's you.  You can see how you relate to everyone else.

That'll sound reasonable to you, there's no reason not to trust this party, they've been friendly so far ... so you say, "Sure."  The door opens and 20 bats fly through and into the room.  You blurt out, "I shoot at them!" and I say, "no problem.  But first, we have to see if you're surprised.  You didn't expect bats, did you?  Roll a d6."

You're rolling the d6 for the whole party, but you don't know that.  I can get anyone to roll that d6, and the rest of the party knows this, but I'm picking you because you're new and I want you to feel involved.  You roll a one and the party groans ... and maybe you clam up in confusion or maybe you ask, "What?  What happened?"

And I'll say, "You rolled bad and the party is surprised.  It means the bats get to attack first."

Whereupon if you're chatty you'll say, "Gee, I'm sorry."  Keeping in mind that most new players don't say that or anything, they just feel real bad they've screwed up — without even knowing why or how they've screwed up.

"Don't worry about it," I'll tell you.  "You were rolling to see if the party was surprised is all; it happens.  These guys are tough.  You'll be fine."  I start filling the monitor screen with bats and as they pop into existence, there looks like way too many bats ... and you start to feel uncomfortable as more and more appear.  You feel a bit of a blood rush and so do the others.  Now I'm slating how many bats are attacking and who gets how many attacks against them personally.  This is done in the open, no DM screen.  I run through this process with about 20 seconds per person or less; we'll say two bats attack you and I'll ask your armour class.  Not because I don't already know your armour class, we sorted that out just half an hour or less ago, but I want you to look up your armour class so you can see where it is and remember it.  You tell me the number and I roll, saying I hit you once for 1 point of damage (they're only bats).  "Remove it temporarily from your hit points," I say, "While keeping your maximum written on the page."  If necessary, the player on one side of you will show you what I mean ... or maybe you just saw her cross out her own present hit points because she was hit for 2 damage.

"Okay, party's round," I'll say.  I go around the table, one at a time.  No one rolls a die or makes a statement about what they're doing until it's their turn.  I point at Jimmy and he picks up a die and says, "I attack," without needing to say with what weapon; essentially, his main one, the one he nearly always uses.  He'll only specify a weapon if its something else.

Although he has the die in his hand, and he's shaking his hand, he won't let that die go until I say, "Okay, roll."  If he rolls before I say, the number doesn't count.  But I don't hesitate.  The second he says that he attacks I tell him to roll, because I want the combat to go fast, fast, fast.  Player, player, player, 20, 40 seconds a player.  While Jimmy's die bounces on the table I'll say, "Allie, you're on deck."

What does that mean?  It means, Allie, get your shit together, get ready to tell me what you're doing when I call your name or point at you.  Hearing me say that Allie is on deck shakes her out of her lethargy as she watches Jimmy's die bounce — she wants to know that result as much as anyone, but I need her focused on the next thing, too.  Jimmy calls out the number of his die, a "7."  I don't like Jimmy to withhold the die and say, "I missed," because in reality, I've learned that many times the player is wrong about that.  Jimmy doesn't know what the armour class of the bats is; I do.  I also know Jimmy's level and his THAC0, so I can say absolutely that a "7" hits, because these are big, slow-moving bats that have been woken up out of their sleep and in a cold room.  Jimmy is happy and rolls damage.  "Allie, you're up," I say.  "Horace, you're on deck."

Now, maybe you say "What does that mean," but probably you've heard of baseball and — having seen Allie's turn come up — you can figure it out.  Maybe you ask, "What do I do?"  Chances are I won't answer that; I'm listening to Allie tell me what she's doing ... but here I can count on a player to say something like, "Get ready to attack."  If you have dice you've bought, he or she might pick out the d20 for you.  Allie wants to use a gadfly cantrip to attack a bat, which works because the casting time is so short a bat doesn't have time to spoil the magic; not that you, a noob, understand this.  Nor is there time to explain it; you're reaching for your d20, you hear the word "cantrip," which is utterly meaningless to you.   I say "go ahead" to Allie, who hasn't technically thrown the cantrip, and she instantly says, "I do," which means she's now thrown the cantrip, and before I take a hit point from the bat I turn to you and say, "You have your bow out.  You need a different weapon to attack the bats."  Then I turn back to Allie and say, "Your cantrip killed the bat."  Poof, the bat disappears from the screen.  "Anything else you want to do with your move?"  She tells me, I move her little image on the monitor screen and now I'm turning to you and asking what weapon you're using to attack a bat.  You say, maybe a little confusedly, and I tell you to roll your d20, and since it's already in your hand, you know it's the one to roll.  So you do.  And I call out, "Taber, you're on deck," as your die bounces on the table.

See, now?  You're in this.  You feel the speed as I move around the table, you feel the experience I have in managing multiple details at one time, the sense of things moving around you, the image of the bats popping off the screen ... this gives you the feeling of being in a fight, of standing with others, of not having time to chat or ask questions.  No one else does, not now, because I'll shut them down if they choose this moment to talk about anything except the combat going on, in the order their names are called.  You don't feel "new."  Just like that, as puzzled as you are by all the terms and choices being made, you feel like a member of the party.  And as you learn the terms, hearing them used again and again, it all becomes comfortably familiar.

But suppose this is not how you're introduced to the campaign.  Suppose the party's still in Ipswich when you join the game.  "This is Horace," I say; "He's been listening to your conversation and you've gotten to know him."  Again, we skip over the introductions.  The party is talking about what they want to do next.

Allie says they ought to hurry back to Cirencester and fetch the book they need before heading north.  Taber worries that the wizard won't part with the book unless something is done about the situation with the wizard's daughter.  "We ought to fetch her back from St. Albans first," he says.

Jimmy says that before they do anything, cash is getting low.  "There's a dungeon right there in Thetford Forest," he says.  "We know where it is.  Why don't we hit it now?"

You ask, "What's a dungeon?" and I say, "It's an underground set of catacombs where monsters live."  And Jimmy instantly adds, "With lots of treasure."

You're really a noob so you ask, "Treasure?"  So I say, "Yes, loot.  Plunder.  Gold coins, jewellery, magical items ... fun stuff.  You need 2,251 experience to reach next level.  A dungeon is a way to get it."

"Oh," you say, not really understanding, but getting a sense that it's a place to go.  I quickly explain how the wizard's daughter has run away from him to marry her lover, but he's abandoned her and now she's sheltering in St. Albans and is afraid to go home.  The party was hired to find her in Ipswich, and they've just learned she was jilted here and that she's left for St. Albans to hide from her father with a cousin.

Allie says, "First, we go tell the wizard where his daughter is; he gives us the book, goes and fetches her and then we can hit the dungeon before going north."

Taber says, "We get the daughter first, take her back to the wizard, exchange her for the book and hit the dungeon before going north."

Jimmy says, "We hit the dungeon first, and then we can figure out what to do after that.  If we die in the dungeon we've saved ourselves some trouble."  He laughs.  The others laugh.

You ask, "Die?"

I say, "You lose all your hit points and your character is dead.  But that's not likely with this crew.  They'll have your back."

And Jimmy tells you, "Not to worry, I'm just kidding.  What do you think of my plan?"

Because they've been trained to think as a group, they want your opinion.  For one thing, you're the deciding vote.  It doesn't matter to them that you're new; in reality, one choice is as good as another, and once they've made up their minds, they'll move on.  This whole resentment thing you hear about with selfish people who stew that they didn't get their way?  They got turfed out the door months, years, decades ago.  Besides, you've never played before.  You have no idea that people actually get upset when they don't get their way.  It all sounds interesting to you.  So when you say, "I think we should get the girl," Taber cheers and the others go, "Okay, fine.  But we're definitely checking out the dungeon after."

Everyone says "agreed" and as the party heads for St. Albans, you feel like YOUR voice matters to these people.  That you've made the decision for them where to go.  That it's okay to speak up, even if you are a johnny-come-lately.  That taking part is something that's acknowledged as a good thing ... and at the same time, there's a feeling that no one's trying to freak you out about what might happen.

I really hate negativity in a campaign.  I dislike unneeded mind games, or people deliberately making up stuff to get a reaction from others.  And woe betide anyone who catcalls or shows the slightest glee at another player's misfortune.  You won't believe how fast I'll come down on someone who does that.  Everyone gets my attention and everyone is subject to misfortune if they try to get my attention for them personally when I'm giving it to someone else.  Everyone waits their turn.  When the party wants to hash something out, I shut up.  I wait until information is needed, but I don't wade in and tell anyone what to do.  I don't care if the party goes to St. Albans or Cirencester or Thetford Forest.  It's all the same world, all the same campaign to me.

No one is "special" ... because everyone is treated with grace, consideration and according to their needs at a given time.  Players who come in, new players especially, see and recognise this almost instantly, making the game easy to run.

Savvy players, on the other hand ... those who have learned a lot of bad habits from other campaigns ... they can be a fucking pain in the ass.

I'll talk about them next.

The Framework around Character Creation

As promised, with this post I'll begin on how I manage the new player sitting down to play.  I've tried to explain the positive mindset that sets the atmosphere for the game; now we can get down to the gritty details of what's done and in what order. 

Before diving in, I must explain the nature of my campaign for those who don't know me.  New characters run by new players are nearly always introduced into a running game; I've started all of three campaigns on line in the last ten years and I don't plan to start another.  If I returned to running online, I'd owe my time to those who I've left in the lurch.  Offline, I haven't started a new campaign since 2011, and I've started exactly two in the last 24 years.  I was supposed to start one in 1998 that never came off, no games at all were played.  Before that, I started three campaigns altogether.  Reverse chronologically, that was one in autumn of 1984; one in the spring of 1981; and my first campaign came in January, 1980.  I got my D&D books for Christmas in December 1979.

This accounts for all the D&D campaigns I've started and run.   I've never run a game of my own that wasn't a campaign.  Stew on that for awhile.  I've run three different one-offs, each when I was acting as a DM for game cons in 1984 to 1986, all for strangers — with the same adventure being run four times, Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and evening, and Sunday afternoon.  I never, ever run one-offs for myself.  I feel I could do it, but I don't feel I'd get anything from it.

As such, all the players I introduce tend to be into ongoing games, where the existing players have already started several adventure threads, some of which are resolved and usually two to three that aren't.  I like to keep the players hopping with multiple adventure threads at one time, just like the accumulation of events in books and movies.

Because of this, there is no such thing as a "session zero" for these players.  They arrive, they generally know most of the players socially, though they might only know me; there's a simple meet-and-greet, as usually there's a half hour or hour of getting comfortable before I begin play.  Players start showing up as early as Six PM and we are usually playing between quarter of Seven and Seven.

With the campaign ongoing, there's no real opportunity to "make the first combat easy," as I often hear advised.  The first combat the new player will face will be the next combat, whatever that happens to be.  As the new player will roll a 1st level character, REGARDLESS of the level of the party, if the battle is something that high levels would face, the party are sure to do their level best to shelter the new character while assuring there's some experience gained from the event.  It's not my goal to encourage the player to feel "safe" in a combat.  It's my goal to teach the combat system, explain what's going on with the other characters, give options to the neophyte and let the events work their effect on the new player's psyche.  So long as the battle is exciting, I've witnessed no difference in the new player's attitude towards the event.

New players, I find, have NO preconceptions about what's expected ... and therefore, unless they're told otherwise, they will always assume that whatever they're experiencing is normal and reflective of everyone else's experience.  This understanding is paramount.  It's aided enormously by other players saying, regularly, "I remember my first time ... I was a 1st level and the party was fighting giants!"  Or some such similar story.

All right.  So the new player is introduced and the first order of business is rolling up a character.  This takes half an hour.  I'll get it started at 6:30 if everyone is settled, as this gives time for people to still eat (as they are getting off a shift and have come straight to my place), organise themselves, use my shower, whatever.  I do not hand out a character sheet.  Character sheets narrow the player's sense of what's important according to someone who ISN'T me or the player.  Therefore, what the fuck is this interloper doing telling my players what matters with regards their character?  Moreover, I have so many alternate house rules, many of them very elaborate, while character sheets are full of detritus and bad game design, none of which I use.  Additionally, character sheets are thick as jeebus with blank ink circles, lines, images, elaborations and other bullshit that only gets in the way of the DATA, which is the only thing that's actually needed.  Finally, if the player is an artist, and wishes to enhance their character sheet, they are free to do it as they please.  In any case, the second best character sheet is a blank sheet of paper.  The best character sheet is a word or excel document on a laptop.  Fuck pencils.

But ... usually, the start is a blank sheet of paper.  I've written out the process in my world, so let's skip the details.  There are decisions to be made regarding class, race and other things, and if the new player is completely unfamiliar each requires explanation.

I was told in my first game that I had to be a fighter because that was "simplest."  Everyone wanted to get past the trouble of getting me invested in the game, because they were basically kids ... and kids see things in terms of primacy.  I was told to write, not make choices ... and the advice to do this with new players is all over.  However, it's been nearly 43 years since my first game and I've learned much.  It's true that a first-time player can't "appreciate" which class or race they play ... if "appreciation" is defined as knowing what to do, how to get the most from each, or even exactly what it means to be a given type of character.  BUT, as I've stressed, it also doesn't matter what character class the new player fails to play well.  Good play is not what we're teaching.  We're teaching the fundamentals of play.

IF the first time you play baseball it's in a league game, then yes, it makes sense to put you in right field where you'll do the least harm.  Chances are, however, you're only playing in that situation because someone has the means to force the coach to let you play at all.

On the other hand, if your first time playing baseball is with your friends, or in a practice, then it makes sense to try you in every position possible, even on your first day.  A good coach can recognise a player's reach, stance, speed, coordination ... in short, the player's potential, and it may be that a brand new player may find his or her self playing short stop on their first league game ... and doing well at it.  Pitching is harder, but the player being a back-up pitcher is a possibility; so if the lead pitcher gets injured in the first inning, then yeah, you're up.  "Do your best kid.  The worst thing that happens is that we'll lose."

The playing of a difficult character class can't possibly act as a detriment to the party, no matter what it is — unless you're the sort of dumbfuck asswipe who thinks game results like "accidentally setting the ship on fire with a fireball" is possible from a mage who has spent at least 20 years of his or her life learning HOW to be a mage.  Any character, even a non-level with 1 h.p., adds something to the party ... so the negative consequences of letting the new player try a mage, bard or assassin are none at all, at least for that reason.  If a dumb noob gives away the party's position by shouting out, it doesn't matter what class is being played.

The argument is often made that it's time consuming to teach the new player how to play a spellcaster.  Why?  Because 1st level spells are so complicated?  Because the DM can't just name off five or seven of the most obvious good spells to take early in the caster's career, define each in a sentence and let the player choose?  Because the other players are really, really bored having to wait for the new player to roll up this class?

Nonsense.  Players in my game are as fascinated by someone else rolling up their character because they are also invested in the results.  And because they're encouraged to call out advice and take part in the proceedings.  The creation of the new character is a group activity.  There is no right answer and no wrong one.  Only possibilities.  And everyone has an opinion — with the necessary argument to back it up.  New players are not stupid.  They recognise the tone and facial expression of someone legitimately trying to be of help.  Remember, my game table is a positive community.  They like the feeling of having their opinions given latitude and consideration.  Soon enough, the various details are sussed out and the character comes into existence.  It's okay, whatever the character is.  The player will get LOTS of help on how to run it, with respect given absolutely that this involves suggestions and not dictates.  I'm there as DM to ensure everyone has a fair say and that no one is bossing anyone around.

That is my nature as a DM.  I may boss you around, Dear Reader, but that's because I'm correcting your gawddamn rotten thinking.  You start sounding like a giving, supportive, positive, creative person, and I'll bend over backwards for you, writing posts you want and spending endless time replying to difficult questions.  I take this same stance with every player in my game, new and old alike.  Have a question?  A beef?  Something unclear?  Let's haul it out, talk it over, come to an agreement and move on.

Games I've watched other people run are always rushing to get to the "game" ... and as a result, try over and over to blast through player questions and doubts.  As such, these never get properly and patiently addressed.  Which builds resentment.  Which builds discouragement and players not turning up at games.

A good campaign has to invest the time — an entire session, if need be — to sort out every petty detail down to the nap, until everyone is in agreement and on board.  Those who repeatedly resist each resolution are recognised as "in it for themselves," and are called out for that behaviour.  If they cannot adhere, or won't adhere, to the agreed-upon sorting out of game play, then they're asked to leave.

The result is that everything is eventually discussed, reviewed, redacted or tabled for discussion later when more evidence is accumulated.  Different matters having to do with my game, such as the implementation and function of sage abilities, are still in session with regards to my party ... and here we're talking of a subject that was ultimately placed in discussion by four different campaigns over the last ten years.  Each group of players brought their own take and slowly, steadily, the function has taken form — not strictly because of what I wanted personally, but through what seemed to be best for all concerned.

It's generally disbelieved that real human people can come to conclusions like this through talking.  I don't know why.  I've witnessed it hundreds and hundreds of times.

So.

The new player is now ready to play.  But I have written quite a lot today and I'm ready for a break.  Thus I'm going to suspend this next part for the next post.  Farewell.

They Don't Know Anything ... Yet

The first post of this blog talks about how I was introduced to the game of D&D back in 1979.  It briefly references having to play the game to understand it, the fact of my being given a fighter to play because it was easiest for the DM and that I was told to "watch and learn."

I believe that of course you have to play D&D to "understand" it, but the same argument has to be said for any human endeavour.  What it looks like from the outside, or how puzzling it might be, is always overcome through participating, whether it's learning how to sew, how to raise children, how to build an office building or what it's like to live with cancer.  On the other hand, I've learned through experience that it's perfectly possible to get the general idea of the game without actually having to play it ... as this is merely an explanation of the "interactive storytelling" dynamic that has been around since flip books were invented in 1860.  You're given information, you make a decision, the decision has a consequence ... and repeat.

D&Ders like to make things seem a lot more convoluted than they really are because they're super-conscious of all the choices and nuances of the game ... along with many, many interpretations and alterations of the rules that have gone on for decades — which most players, even those with only a few years experience, can't unsee.  But it's important to realise that people who have never played D&D before do not see the game as a "scary set of rules and math."  Most people expect a lot of rules when playing an intelligent, compelling game.  Most people do not see "math" as an insurmountable problem, since calculators exist ... and, in fact, since the math related to D&D is arithmatic, this is math on a 4th grade level.  Most people do this math constantly and necessarily as a part of their jobs, IF they have a university or college level education.

The rules of D&D occasionally ask us to invoke geometry (the spell effect is 30 degrees wide), but hardly ever asks for trigonometry or calculus.  I mean, I don't know when in 42 years I've needed calculus; occasionally I use algebra or simple perturbations.  But these are still lower grade school maths.  "Experienced" D&D players often invoke the trials of "math" as though speaking of math as something one needs to be a mathematician to negotiate.

People who have never played D&D before do not think of character creation as onerous or tiresome.  They've never done it before.  When the system is coupled with random generation and provides a thorough approach, the actual rolling up of a character is a fascinating process.  New players, once they obtain the needed materials, spend hours and hours generating character after character, appreciating and delighting in the process as they experiment.  They soon learn the system really isn't that complicated after all ... whereupon soon after they grow bored and conveniently forget they once had a different outlook.  Having become jaded, they assume everyone else, even brand new players, must also be bored, and so think that by providing pre-generated characters at the start of a game, or for giving to neophyte players, saves everyone that terrible, monotonous time-wasting process of character generation.

New players have no idea that being asked to keep track of so many things is unreasonable — that is, unless the DM harps on and on about how many things there are and how so many of them aren't used much, and how sorry it is that these things have to be tallied and included.  If a new player comes to the game and finds everyone else easily managing the details of their character without complaint, cheerfully expressing their anticipation of having enough money to purchase something, or reaching the next level, or finding ways to cut their equipment down to make them more effective, new players will adopt that attitude and embrace it.  If we prime the new player to see parts of the game as a burden, they will adopt the burden ... and take note of every other player's protests and complaints.  On the other hand, if the new player expects to step up and behave like everyone else, dutifully keeping track of things, THEY WILL.

Introducing a new player to a game varies remarkably according to the game table's social practice.  Bad habits perpetrate, as do good habits.  Positivity, demonstrated by the attitude of the party towards themselves and each other, constructs positivity in the learner, who then acquires the capacity to be positive with regards to the game.  When the DM hands the player a pre-gen character, a profound and definite message is being sent: you're not up to making a character; you're not meant to understand that process; we don't trust you; we don't have the time to teach you; we don't have the time to let you discover this process for yourself ... and so on.

Of course, if the "new" player actually has plenty of experience with D&D in other campaigns, they understand what to do with the pre-gen sheet.  And they may appreciate being able to skip that process.  But here I'm not discussing "savvy" players; I will address that matter later.  Nonetheless, it can be recognised that if a DM gets into the habit of using pre-gen characters, then he or she will distribute them indescriminately to everyone ... including wholly new players, players who like rolling up their own player characters (and thus have this opportunity stolen from them) and players who just don't care — thus equating all three as the same person for game purposes.  This is very definitely a mistake where learning and introducing players, even savvy players, into one's campaign.

A useful approach to the introduction of a new player can be taken from the social practice related to apprenticeships.  This is not merely a matter of introducing others to the base learnable materials associated with the game, but also reproducing a functional, affirmative mindset among all the players that establishes play.  I already have a group of constructive, enthusiastic players who are supportive of each other.  Introducing a new player, I want that new player to learn how to be constructive, to feel that enthusiasm is rewarded, and to participate in the support of other players beyond themselves.  Teaching someone How to Play is much more than teaching the rules or telling them when to roll dice, but also includes the attitude that's expected here, at this table, where you're being allowed to play.

This is no different than any other group activity, or any trade where multiple people work together towards a common goal.  It's not enough that you have the skills to be an electrician; you're sent to work in the field, with other electricians, to learn how to behave like an electrician does ... and those who chafe at being told how to act or conduct themselves, who act too rashly, who conduct themselves too independently, are denied their ticket.  This denial happens for two reasons: one, because no employer wants this person around, which gives the school a bad reputation as an insitution; and two, because people who cannot conform get killed.  Failing them so they find some other occupation is saving their lives.

Allegorically, the same principle applies to D&D.  Selfish and unsupportive players, players who brood over undesired rules and search endlessly for exceptions, those who seek to be rewarded for behaviour other than problem solving and risk, are those who forget what the game's meant to be about, or why we're here together, or the needs of others.  They're so busy grouching silently about what they want and not getting that they'll miss details, fail to grasp fully what's happening, make assumptions about what to do without sharing with others ... then bull their way ahead when overcoming obstacles.  This pattern of behaviour produces untenable situations that lead, again, to death ... though thankfully only a fictional one.

An apprenticeship takes a two-tier approach.  First, that the apprentice learns every part of the activity from the start, without exception.  The apprentice creates their own character.  Each part of the character creation is lightly explained the first time through, and then time is taken to explain these details again and again until the apprentice understands every part of the character creation process.  Judging from my experience, this takes about four or five years. (joking)

Second, the apprentice is corrected, as often as necessary — in a supportive manner, arguing that yes, you're allowed to make mistakes, but you're expected to know what the mistakes are.   I won't hesitate to let a player choose a bad spell for their spellcaster.  But I also won't hesitate to explain later why it was a bad choice and why I'm ready to let the character make a better choice.  Players are not sacrosanct in the way they manage their characters.  They are, and ought to be, subject to the criticism of every player around the table, and the DM also, because none of us are playing this game by ourselves.  We are playing together.  This means that ANY decision made by every player affects all the players, always.  If you choose a rather feckless spell for your mage when a better spell may have been more supportive of the group, then every person in the group is entitled to weigh in.  And you, dear player, are expected to accept this criticism ... and either defend yourself effectively or comply with the group's opinion.  If your defense of your choice is valid, others around the table, including me as your DM, are the sort who can recognise it and change our minds.  But if your defense is so invalid that it changes no one's mind, you are expected to change your mind.

This is why my players have no trouble disagreeing with me, or taking me to task when I cannot effectively explain my position.  I've trained them to be this way, with me and with each other.  This approach may strike many, many players out there with, "Oh my fucking gawd, I have my own opinion, thank you!" ... but I assure the reader, it makes awesome game runnings.  Those who want to be individuals in their game play should play chess.  Or video games.  D&D is a community; and the participants of my game are expected to act like they're a part of that community.

New players have zero trouble with this.  They have no preconceptions of how they're supposed to play, so they cheerfully jump into the supportive community model without hesitation.  They find the instant collaborative encouragement and advocacy as the vital element that makes the game fun and exciting.  They love and adore the idea of winning against a monster as a team, since everyone else exhibits that same ideal.  It doesn't occur to new players to seek shortcuts and gamesmanship advantages because they see no one else pursuing these.  It would never occur to them to ask if they could use a shield and a two-handed weapon at the same time, because on the face of it the question is ridiculous, given their non-game experience.  It takes a participant with lots and lots of D&D under their belt to pose most questions that try to circumvent the rules in such a fashion ... and they usually occur because some other DM said "yes."  New players simply haven't been trained to approach my campaign from the perspective of other campaigns.

At the same time, any time some new player introduced to my campaign tries to play with someone else, the disappointment has nothing to do with the rules, the edition or the amount of roll-vs.-role playing.  It has everything to do with the incessant, poisonous self-involvement of the other players and especially the DM.  Having been introduced into a positive D&D environment, the intrinsic lack of personal support from others around the table is unpalatable, to say the least.

In short, I ruin players for other games.  Been doing this for forty years now.

With my next post, I'll take a whack at those critical first hours when a new player sits down to play.  I can only explain these things as I do them; I can't hold in much regard why or what impels other DMs to do what they do.

Cacophony

Thinking on the last post, I was reminded of the basement suite I had back in 1985, back in the dark ages as it were. I had no computer then, but certainly an ongoing game that I’d started in high school and had followed me into university. I would sit at my small, cheap dining room table filling out ordinary paper with notes, lists, encounter tables, monster descriptions and so on … much like now.

I had no one to share it with except for my players; and my players could only share it with others by description. I did not have copies. We played every Friday like clockwork. Apart from my players, there were no voices in my head. Apart from what was written in the books and a few Dragon magazines, there was no advice. My players did not play at game cons, they could not watch others play and … for the most part … they didn’t have the time to play in another campaign other than mine.

Apart from the lack of a computer ~ that I would really miss now ~ I suppose I was very lucky. I could follow the advice I gave yesterday because there was no other way. We were all going it alone in those days. Clubs would form (the university had one, so did the games store) and then fall apart, because apart from needing space and a table, there wasn’t anything to talk about between campaigns. You had yours and I had mine … apart from boring war stories, what were we going to talk about?

People did not stand around bitching for hours about the things they do now. There were no other editions, though there were other games: Tunnels and Trolls, Rolemaster, stuff that’s all gone now. We looked at B/X as just more content for our advanced worlds and no one played or even mentioned the White Box set. I played it briefly in 1979 before Advanced became available and no one called it that when we were playing it. I never heard it called the “White Box” until after the internet.

I hear now from people that there was a hue and cry for a 2nd Edition; but I remember none of that. I remember that when the edition came out, the response was surprise; then the first echos of the later edition wars, as people started to shake out if they were going to play it or not. My players didn’t ask me to change. The subject of my embracing these new rules never came up; my players were happy. They were invested. The rules were established and everyone knew what they were. A new edition seemed like a silly idea.

That lack of a culture was a blessing, I guess. It didn’t feel like one at the time. There was a hunger for some kind of approval; it always felt like we were morlocks, furtively hiding our dread secret about role-playing in the dark. We didn’t talk of it with outsiders, not because of the Satanic Panic but because we didn’t want to be judged as sissies. We rarely met anyone new ... and most new people we did meet had never played the game at all.

It must be hard coming into the game right now, with the cacophony of voices. Naturally, like anyone with a yen, a new player is going to rush to youtube to find out how D&D is done … but unlike doing something like building a shelf, there is no agreed upon template. There are hundreds of channels dumping their values on the new enthusiasts, sometimes repeating the values of others and sometimes slagging them off. I think I would be a hard site for a new player. I don’t explain my references to content, I assume the reader already has played and knows what they’re doing … and I disagree with everyone.

It isn’t about a backstory; it isn’t about making up a story at all. You don’t make a world by drawing a map. Most maps you will ever draw for your game will never produce any results at all. Don’t play with people who are rude, indifferent, inconsiderate or dull of mind ~ and be up front about telling them to get out of your campaign. Miniatures, pen and paper … burn those things and get a computer. Pre-made characters, empty room dungeons, mega-dungeons, modules, splat books … don’t use them. Make house rules. Stop using game puzzles. Break the fourth wall when your players overthink. Live-play sucks. 4th and 5th edition aren’t only bad choices for systems, they are literally poisoning the water.

I just had a fellow this morning explain how it was possible in his game for a rogue to hide behind the leg of a fighter during a full-on melee, then climb the fighter’s back and leap at enemies from above, attacking them from behind in the process. Then it was explained that it’s possible to sweep attack and kill three opponents with one blow. Then it was explained that if you’re on the edge of dying from lack of hit points, you get a saving throw that enables you to survive. Then it was explained that when the player rolls a fumble, the DM can just make up any sort of story to explain what that fumble means, entirely arbitrarily, from throwing your weapon deep into the woods where it won’t be found to being told that you have handed your weapon to the enemy and given some money from your belt pouch as well. In combat. Which then continues unabated.

So. Not my game. But out there. A kind of poison that flows furiously through the game community, enabled by the collection of voices, noises, insistences, arguments, flame wars and shit knows what else on bulletin boards set up by fools and poisoners.

To be a new player in this culture … jeez. All I feel is pity. Not sympathy or empathy, just the utter pathos for the hopelessly damned. It must be hell to exist in this culture without a solid background of playing this game intelligently.

I wouldn’t know how to help. I’m one DM. I run maybe 15 people semi-regularly, on and off line. That’s not enough. I could maybe stagger 14 different games over a three-week cycle, with five people a campaign, if I had the money to do that and nothing else, and an aid to help me prepare the campaigns … and that still only 70 people. It isn’t possible for even a small, rational gathering of people who still remember how to play to teach this psychopathically poisonous culture how the game is actually designed to work. The company is methodically enabling the shit I just described in the paragraph above through tens of thousands of players weekly all over the continent. There are rational DMs, but the mindset is fading fast.

It wouldn’t be enough to write a book for noobs. Even if they read it, even if they embraced it, they’d still rush to the net to read what they could find and they would still be poisoned by the culture. No one who starts this game today is free. They all have the ridiculous over-dramatization of Matt Mercer echoing in their heads, with the goofy, continuous spattering laughter of streaming play, telling them that the game is supposed to sound like this, look like this, present like this: the slurred, mumbled speech of people staring into splatbooks on a table as they piece out what powers they can declare between the DM’s over-the-top, incomprehensible descriptions of doors, rooms and physical features.

That is all they can see.

The poor buggers.

Who is Responsible

The following sequence rose from events played between February 24 and 25, 2009.

This was, in fact, the first day of the first game that I ran online.  It was quite an education for me ~ the players and their approach took me completely by surprise, so much that eventually I was to lose patience with them.

I had run with a wide number of groups between 1979 and 1985 ... but after that, most of my experience was with a very steady group with which I played for another ten years.  Following the break-up of that group in mid '94, which occurred because of job opportunities, marriage and other issues, my gaming became sporadic.  I would get in a running now and then, but probably less than six times a year ... and by 1998, even that stopped.  I would not find a group until 2004 ... which happened because my daughter wanted me to run her and her friends.  I still run that game, even though they are now almost all in their 30s.

During this long separation from the mainstream of the D&D Community, in which I had retained a lot of my original beliefs about the game, the WOTC shifted the rule system in a very different direction.  This created a different kind of player.  What, I am sorry to say, was a very lazy character.  I hope to explain how.

An actual tavern at Rothenburg, only 198 km north by
northwest of Dachau.  So, fairly accurate.

Having rolled up the characters online through the previous week, I decided to start the characters off on the porch of a tavern in the 1650 town of Dachau, some centuries before that town became famous for something else.  As I remember, the players wanted to start in Germany, and I was looking for somewhere wit access to large cities, the mountains, the Black Forest and easy transport by river.

At the time, I had no idea how cliched this idea was; I had not spent twenty years reading hundreds of game modules that included the motif ... and at any rate, I had no plans whatsoever to follow any parts of the cliche except the presence of the tavern itself.

The inn I had in mind was not far from the one pictured, but I did not possess this picture in 2009.  Primarily, I wanted to give the players a home base; a place to sleep, rest, be recognized by the proprietor, who might save them a room while they adventured in the area.  I called the tavern & inn simply "The Pig" and the bartender Helmunt.  I started them sitting in the open air, looking at the square, explaining,

DM: You’re bored. This has been the routine for nearly two months now. You four, Tiberius, Josef, Delfig and Anshelm, met on a cold morning in mid-spring (for the region), finding yourselves all strangers, fairly compatible with one another and equally of the opinion that many of the vicissitudes of life are unappreciated by most. At the moment, however, you could stand a few more changes than there have been.

To my mind, this was to suggest they get off their feet and do something.  If they had sat there for two months and no adventure had presented itself to them, then it should be clear that it was time to make an adventure happen.

This is not how the players read it.  In fact, they made nothing of what I had said about the routine dragging on.  I did not know at the time, see, that D&D players were very used to having everything handed to them on a silver platter.  I had been blogging only nine months.  I had not played in a group with strangers in more than ten years ~ and then only briefly.  So I was unprepared for the response, as I'm sure thousands of DMs are, who think to themselves, "I'm going to run a sandbox adventure."

continued elsewhere ...

This is the second of two such posts I have written in the month of April for the Tao's Master Class blog, where the rest of this post can be found. Examples on the Tao of D&D blog can be found here and here.

To see the rest of this post, you must pledge at least $3 to my Patreon account. You have just 20 hours to do so, as it will be the 1st of May almost at once and you will then have to wait until the 1st of June.  Because it is difficult to keep track of who is donating $3 to me each month, I am no longer accepting small direct donations for the Master Class blog.

5 Tips on DMing the First Time

Knowing that DMing for the first time is scary, and feeling their first time viscerally in their bones, most DMs will present a list like this encouragingly.  They will rush to celebrate the new DM's courage, love of the game and generous spirit, hoping to create a wonderful positivity that argues that if you want really, really bad to be a great DM, and you believe you can be a great DM, then anything is possible.

This is not a list like that.

See, unlike other lists that purport to give advice on what to do if it's your first time as a DM, giving you zero help, this one seeks to tell you what you need to know.  And just so long as we understand each other, part of this advice takes the position that maybe you are not cut out to be a DM.  The fact is, maybe you're not the right material for this.  Maybe you shouldn't DM at all.

No, this isn't some clever psyche job.  I'm being dead serious.  Some people are shit at DMing.  I'm not trying to inspire you to get mad, tell me I know nothing, so you can find the confidence you need to be great. I want you to be consciously aware that running a game requires a mindset that you might not possess.  See, unlike those who will spoon feed you and tell you that anyone can DM, I don't agree.  I think most can't.  I think they know this, deep down inside ... so if you're someone who suspects, deep down inside, that you can't run a game, then you're probably right.  And you need to face that.

Good.  Let's get started.

None of this advice is easy.  But if you follow it ~ if you can follow it ~ then you might prove to others that you can do this.


1.  Research

I hope you've played before.  In the very least, you've got to see another DM run a game ~ an actual DM, not someone on a youtube channel, playing it up for an audience, where everyone plays politely because they're being watched by tens of thousands of people.  Or because they work for a game company.

Assuming you've played ~ and if you haven't, stop now, go play for about six months, then come back and read the rest of this ~ it's time to figure out what you believe.  I suggest writing down, for as long as it takes, at least twenty things that you've seen other DMs do that you disagree with.  The way they talk, the way they present, the adventures they run, how they manage people, how they've treated you, how they roll dice, whatever it is that bugs you.  Write it down.  Look at it.  Understand why you think it is bad behaviour ... and then precisely how and why you're not going to do the same thing when you're a DM.

If you can't think of a thing, don't DM.  You either haven't run long enough, or you're incapable of seeing how DMs are screwing with their players.  And seriously ~ if there's one magnificent DM that you know, that the sun rises and sets upon, then drop any hope that you will ever DM.  You're far, far too naive and poorly educated to be in any position where you have to manage people.

Now, maybe you can't think of twenty things.  Fair enough.  Try for ten.  If not ten, then five.  If you can't come up with five, no one can help you.  If you can managed ten or twelve, I can give you a pass ... for now.  But you're going to have a lot of trouble, because you haven't got a voice of your own.  You're not remotely prepared to answer confidently most of the questions you're going to be asked by players, who will certainly dig out and find everything they think is wrong with your game play, and exploit the ever-living shit out of you, their newest punching bag.

You might get better at seeing errors in others if you give yourself more time playing.  Eventually, with enough playing, and enough DMs, you might start to see patterns that indicate bad running techniques.  But truly, if you don't come out of the gate thinking, "Everyone else is doing it wrong!" ~ you're probably not of the right stuff.


2.  Know Your Game

You've probably heard this before.  And maybe, just maybe, you've read through all the rules (once) and now you think you've got this.  Or maybe you think with all your playing experience, you're ready.  Okay.  I understand that feeling.  But no.  You're not ready.

You're not going to be a player, now.  You're going to be a DM.  That is a different game.  You used to play for fun and laughs, but now you're going to play for a sense of satisfaction.  You're going to be too busy to have a good time ... and if you are having a good time, then guess what: you are seriously jacking your players, using them as your little pawns in a game you absolutely should not be playing!

But if you're evil in this way, I probably can't help you.  lf, however, you find yourself sitting at a table with a bunch of social rejects, who can't find a shower on their way to your house, who can't seem to find a garbage for their empty cheezie bags, using their orange, grubby fingers to make their grubby noses orange, then don't blame me.  Evil DMs do find players ... a particular kind of player, the sort that would probably frighten you now ... but one day you will be screaming at someone that these are, "My best friends!"

Know your game.  Know what you want out of this.  Is it to expand your experience, talents and social circle, or is this the beginning of a dangerous drift into obesity and forties-something infantilism?  You decide. The kind of players you will have applaud you will depend on your decision.

And if it happens that "your game" is going to be too high-brow for this bunch of dumb-asses you play with, or "your game" is going to be too much "fun" for these self-righteous college students you don't respect, then probably you shouldn't run a game at this time.  It would be a bad idea.  One that might cripple you for some time.


3.  You're the Referee

If it's necessary, go watch a professional football game, straight through.  Live, even at the high school or college level, is a thousand times better than one televised.  While there, watch the referees.  Take note of a few things.

The Refs decide when the game starts and the Refs decide when the game stops.  When the Ref blows a whistle, everyone acts.  They stop what they're doing and move on.  When someone does something against the rules, the Refs call it.  They stand their ground.  They don't argue with the players; they let the players bitch and moan, but in the end, the Refs are never, ever wrong.

The Refs are never wrong because they know the rules cold, and they see everything.  Players bitch and moan, but the players know the Refs are right, because that's the fact, Jack.  And because, if the players don't accept it, the door is thataway.

But understand.  The Refs are never deliberately jerks.  If another Ref were to see a Ref being a jerk, the jerk would very quickly never be a Ref again, ever.  They all know this.  If you think the Refs are harsh when they call a player, they're freaking psychotic about calling other Refs.

That's you.  Or, at least, that's what you think you want to be.  Someone who knows the rules, someone able to be utterly without personal bias, someone ready to stand their ground against any argument, no matter who is screaming or how loud they're screaming.  Without, if possible, losing your temper.

You, and not the players, are running this game.  They have to believe that.  You have to believe that.  And you have to work very damn hard to get that message across.  Believing won't cut it on it's own.  The players will also believe it when you prove, over and over, that you're one step smarter than they are, because you're the expert.  You're the rules guy.  You're the one who got to the conclusion before they did.

Start figuring out how you're going to do that, because if you can't on your own, you're never going to be a DM.


4.  Don't Write a Story

Everyone who gives advice to new DMs says, "Come up with a good story!"  Don't.  Don't try.  You've never DM'd before and even if you've been a story teller all your life, you don't know how to tell a story in the context of this game.  And I'll bet you're not a story teller.

Look, this game is complicated enough.  Spare yourself some misery.  Forget the damn story idea.  Kill it with a spade, then use the spade to bury it.  It's your first game.  I'll explain what you should do.

Have them fight something.  Something very uncomplicated.  Orcs.  Giant rats.  Slow-moving tree stumps. Anything that swings and hits or swings and misses.  Nothing more complicated than that.  You're not used to running this damn game ... you need time to practice the simple stuff.

Okay.  They've won.  Now think of a reason to give them treasure.  It doesn't have to be a good reason, it just has to be a reason.  Now think of a reason to get them into another fight.  Then a reason to give them more treasure.  Then find a reason to get them to a town, so they can buy stuff.  And then find a reason to get them into another fight.

Do this until your reasons for moving from this thing to the next thing start to impress them.  Do this until the reasons start to impress you.  All this practice at coming up with reasons is going to make you a lot better at coming up with connections for things.

These reasons are called motivations. Getting them from one thing to the next thing is called momentum. There.  That's all you need to know right now.

I know, this doesn't sound exciting.  You're not ready for exciting. You're ready to learn how to run combats and figure out how much treasure to award, and that's it.  That's enough on your plate right now.

And if some jackass in your group says, "This is boring," you just come right back at them with, "Fuck you, I'm learning how to run this fucking game.  You can shut up and like it or you can sit in this fucking chair and run this thing yourself!"

Hey, I ran for five years doing nothing more than schlepping people from combat to market to combat.  No one ever, ever complained.  In fact, they really liked it ... especially as I got better and better with all the confidence I had gained learning how to run combats and award treasure.


5.  Don't Let Anyone Write a Backstory

If you give this a moment's thought, you will realize that when you used to write backstories, you would always use them to manipulate your DM into letting you do stuff, because your character "needed it." Backstories are ways for players to top from the bottom, if we can use that phrase.  You're not experienced enough for that noise.

For your first campaign, give all your players amnesia.  Tell them none of them can remember a single thing about their former lives.  And if they demand to know how they can restore their memories, tell them, "It's impossible."

Make it stick.

Trust me.  No backstories.  You will be real sorry if you don't listen.  And real damn glad if you do.