Scattered Enthusiasts

At my job, where I work in a downtown vegetarian kitchen for good wages (comparatively), several of my coworkers have a passing familiarity with D&D.  The assistant kitchen manager played when she was 17; another fellow started in a supposed campaign as a player just two weeks ago (and already says it isn't going to meet again); one of the lead hands has played a lot but not for some years now; and finally there's a fellow who is greatly interested, but has never been able to actually play.

They've all been there for much longer than me.  They know about my interests and this blog (though I do not think any of them have actually read it).  They know about my Patreon and that it is based on teaching people how to DM and how to worldbuild.  I told the restaurant Chef straight out at my job interview, because I wanted him to understand why I only needed to work 26 hours a week to manage my finances (Patreon covers the remainder).  And though the Chef was responsible for everyone else knowing about me, he himself doesn't understand the game in the least.  He asked me on Sunday how my "dungeons and dragons party" went, as I'm eternally booked off for Saturday nights.

It's surprising to find so many interested persons in one venue ~ but even more surprising to find such a telling cross-section of the game's participants.  I find myself in strange waters; I can talk as much as I like about D&D and there are always at least two people in the room ready to listen and absorb anything I have to say.  None of them have the least comprehension of anyone online.  They've never watched Critical Role, they have no idea who Colville is, they read no blogs and watch no youtube videos about the game ... and in fact, with the exception of the fellow in the failed campaign, they're doubtful they'll ever play.  Oh, they want to play.  But with job and relationship constraints, and those of their friends, they see life as an insurmountable barrier.  Most restaurant workers between 55 and 70 hours a week.  Most do that because they want between 45 and 90 days off the job as a vacation, next summer or next winter, depending on their passions.  Some do it because they want to live in actual houses, like real people.

This disconnection reminds me of my experiences at game cons, selling my books.  The influence of the company, the usual discourse about editions or coming events, even the chatter about modules, doesn't exist.  People talk about characters, the campaigns they were in, the people they played with.  No one says a word about some old dull bit of company fluffery.  And when I blatantly make statements about what D&D "ought" to offer players, as I'm directly asked for my opinion, the answer I get is, "That's cool.  That sounds awesome."

If ever I wanted confirmation about my game approach, I couldn't ask for better.  I look around at some of my online competitors and I pass the time thinking, how would they fare in this crowd?  What would they talk about?  No doubt, they'd be counted as "cool" and "awesome" as well ~ the audience is ready, and listening, and anxious to hear whatever's thrown on the table.  For DMs who have about their abilities or their relevance, they should catch a taste of what I'm having ... no matter what meat is thrown to the hungry, they'll gobble it up and ask for more.

And yet sadly, what am I do to for these people?  I can't fold them into my offline campaign ~ they're never all off work at the same time and as I said, they work a lot.  I don't have time to start and usefully run a meaningful campaign; even as I start to get my physical bearings after picking up a blue collar job at my age, I'm already to committed to writing blog posts, working on my book, furthering a game design that I haven't touched in months, running my existing campaigns more often or at all, getting more books off the ground and giving passionate, relaxed time to my partner Tamara, who has herself suffered with my being gone and then coming home and laying about the house talking about how much I hurt.  Running a legitimate campaign, even once a month, costs in time to prep and time to think ~ and as a small business owner anxious to improve my tiny micro-celebrity throughout more of the internet, I haven't the time.  I can't rescue these people and let them see what a D&D campaign really looks like.

I could, and probably will eventually, cobble something together in an couple of hours and run them in one session, should time and space ever allow that.  As long as I'm not overly concerned with the bigger picture of a campaign, I don't need to worry about the bells and whistles I've added to character design.  You're on a beach and there are large crabs, two feet wide, rising out of the water ~ thousands of them.  Run random crabs, fight, find shelter, defend the shelter, escape deeper into the shelter, fight something else, kill one last crab and come out into the sun to discover the wave has passed the party by and there are no crabs in sight.  They'd have a blast.  Any simple dungeon scenario would provide the same experience.  Set them up in a town bar amidst a riot.  Sporadic fighting, a chance to share strategies, a chance to laugh at an absurd situation, moments of near death, survival, triumph at having survived ... them's good gaming.

A stroll in the park for me, but something they'd remember a long time.

I hope one of them stumbles across the blog.  They only have to google my name and they know I've been blogging for more than ten years.  But humans, I find, don't rub salt in a wound.  Why torture yourself with something you haven't time to explore?  What good does that do anyone?

I would try to give them that, if the subject arose.  I hate for anyone not to be able to enjoy this game, even in small bits.  I'd be straight with them about what I could do.  It hurts to hear people talk about something they can't actually do, for whatever reason ~ because of time or because someone they do find isn't ready to commit to the promises they've made.  Telling people you're going to run a campaign, then folding the campaign after just one session ... fuck, that's evil.  No other word for it.


If the reader would like to hear from me more often, I write more regularly on another blog, The Higher Path, that is available through my Patreon account (link above).  $3, the price of a cost of coffee once a month, gets you access.  If you like, give a little bit more, and help me reduce my hours working at mindless labour to 24 or 22 hours a week.  I'd appreciate it.

No One is Helping You

So there are people who think about quitting role-playing, and there are people who are frustrated with their game.  There are people who know something is wrong, but don't know what to do about it.  A part of me thinks I should write this post to softly pat the reader on the hand, say sympathetic things, only to lead the reader right out the door.  "Yes, that's right.  You probably aren't suited to run this game.  It's not easy, and you have things to do with your life that will probably be more wholesome and helpful to society at large. Don't feel bad.  Just put your books in your closet, and remember that from time to time you can glance through them and remember how silly you were when you were young.  That's fine.  Now go find a box big enough for everything.  No, don't sell them on eBay.  Don't purge.  Purging never works.  If you sell it all, you'll just feel compelled to buy it again.  Better that you should keep it, so you know where it is, and it can remind you how truly deluded you were to waste so much time with it.  Good.  Now seal the box.  Put it somewhere dry.  Someday, maybe your kids will play it.  When they're really young.  Before they grow up and make the smart choice, like you have.  That's it.  Don't you feel better?"

There.  Will that do?  Does that help heal the pain?

You know, there are people who are destroying their brain cells playing a game where they chase a little leather-and-rubber bladder back and forth over the grass.  It's true, some are paid a lot of money, a very small number, who end up putting that money towards hookers and ex-wives, or businesses that fail, because CTE catches up, until the participants are homeless, or in jail, or dead from overdose.  Thankfully, no one thinks the game that causes this is silly - even though there are hundreds of thousands of participants of the game suffering from CTE who never got paid to play.  That little bladder, and keeping it away from the other team, and getting it across a little line, matters.  Don't you question that.  The whole education system is founded upon little balls being pushed across little lines, hit with sticks, poked through a hole and so on - and without those things, all education and learning everywhere would collapse and chaos would ensue.

So when you're wondering about being the one that plays those silly role-playing games, remember that you're not as important as people who bear up the entire educational framework in the country on the fundamentals of sacrificing the health and welfare of young boys.  If you're a lucky parent, and your boy is 5'11" by grade 10, and weighs almost 200 pounds, then know that your boy's later stupidity in life is worth what he's doing for nerds like us who play this silly role-play.  CTE: Keeping America in Books.

No?  That doesn't help with your perspective?  Hm.

Does it help to know that while your role-playing game isn't working, and while it is really very boring, and you don't know how to fix it, that there are others who are in the same boat as you - except that instead of role-playing, they've chosen to endlessly debate sexual politics?  Yes!  They sit around in rooms, they repeat the same words over and over again, they look at each other with this complete incomprehension that says, "Why don't people who are not like us get this?"  Then they say the same words all over again, knowing that IF we sit around in rooms, in groups, and say these words again, to people who agree with us completely, we'll be ready for the next time the other side comes out to meet us at University-funded events, where we will both stand up and repeat the exact same arguments everyone made the last time this event was funded.  No one will change their minds, no one will have anything new to say, both sides will be very mean and petty and cruel and dismissive, until ultimately three hours will have gone by without anything valuable having been accomplished.  Then both camps will retreat to their lairs, to practice for the next event.

Does role-playing seem less silly now?  No?  Still want to quit because you can't figure out what to do?

Don't be shocked.  No one is helping you.  Here you have a game that is keeping hundreds of thousands of kids off drugs and safe from gang violence, that inspires learning, that builds relationships and creativity, that influences the game industry making $80 billion annually, not to mention the publishing industry, that teaches management skills, negotiating skills, teaching and learning skills and computer skills . . . and no one anywhere cares, except that it's a little weird, it's a little goofy, and most people aren't sure exactly what goes on.  But don't worry about the total lack of interest by anyone with a post-graduate degree; we ourselves choose to make our number one priority in self-made media the satirization of the hobby.  If we ARE going to write something, or depict something, then by gawd, we're going to make it funny.  Because it just is.

No one is helping you.  No one thinks, despite the influence, design or value of the game, or even the psychological proofs that role-playing our troubles is healthy and demonstrative of our will to improve ourselves, that it is worth discussing.  Or examining.  Or writing about academically.  There's only one group in the world that wants to 'officially' write anything about it, and that seems to be a group of dweebs whose whole education seems to rest upon writing code and taking 1st and 2nd year business courses.

No one is helping you.  You're forced to do this shit on your own because you're alone in this.  You're in the cold.  You're not important enough.  You're not worth the time.  You're weird.  You're misguided.  You should be doing more important things.

No one is helping you.

So yes, quit.  Why not?

Building a Market

Because I work in an extraordinarily normal setting, in a building with extraordinarily normal business-people (white males aged 25 to 50, white females aged 20 to 35), I had to make up my mind early about whether or not I was going to mention that I was working on a book ... considering the content of that book. If we want to talk about conservative central regarding whether or not anyone around role-plays, well, they've heard of it.  Some of their kids do.  They don't really get it.  For them, particularly the higher-status types, 'role-play' is that thing you do where a team of people on retreat try to cross a mock stream in the foyer of the company's hotel through cooperation.  It isn't what people would call 'a good time.'

My decision was do more than admit what I was doing, but to deliberately call attention to it.  If I'm asked by someone, "How are you doing" - that absolutely everybody asks - I tell them, straight out.  Full title, all the content, etc., as if they're going to understand what I'm saying.  And I get some interesting responses.

The first group absolutely has no idea what I'm talking about.  They've never heard of role-playing, they don't know what a 'player' is, much less a DM or D&D.  This people are utterly, completely clueless, and it is really quite marvelous that they still exist.  Incidentally, they also tend to be among the better paid lower-level executives in the 20-30 age range.  These are people who went straight from the prom-planning committee and fraternities/sororities into business school and employment with daddy/mommy's brother/friend/ex-college roommate.  There's no table at Las Vegas that gives odds on role-playing, so these people don't know what it is.  Real pity, though, as these people also have a lot of money that is virtually worthless to them.

The second group includes the largest portion - they've heard of role-playing, most often D&D, on television or other media.  About it, they know nothing.  Their eyes show a tiny bit of fear as you talk, as they are completely clueless and anyone knowing something they don't know is a bit upsetting.  Understand, these are sheltered, sheltered people.  They don't go to clubs, they have families, mostly with kids in the infant to ten range, and their lives are mostly taken up with school, events, holidays and social clubs to which they belong. Anything outside that zone of comfort tends to upset them, which explains why things like extra taxes and pet registrations give them the night tremors.  I must admit, I take a sort of pleasure in going on with them a bit over-long as they're taking pains to be polite, but one hopes they might someday meet someone, or have a child someday, that will also play, and they will remember I'm out here and that I am the master.  So goes networking.

The third group is more interesting.  Not only have they heard of gaming, they've actually seen it.  They haven't played, and they know just enough to know that it is something I ought to be ashamed of.  That's even better to see in their eyes than fear.  Once again, they're polite (though a little more abrupt, because they've been haranged before by role-players), and every once in awhile they'll ask something like, "So, do you talk about various games, that kind of thing?"  I have to love that, since then I can launch into the fact that no, no games, but an in-depth evaluation of how to obtain emotional responses from groups of people through dramatic presentation, reading people as you do so, dealing with stress among large groups and how otherwise to handle groups to encourage them to feel motivated and interested, etc.  That usually gets a sort of glazed-eye response, followed by quick excuses and a need to get away from the 'crazy person,' that being me.  It must be remembered, if I were writing an advanced account of the Ghibelline-Guelph conflicts in Florence and Tuscany circa 14th-15th centuries, the response would be about the same.  The same rule applies - these people might meet someone who plays.

Now, the fourth group used to play.  And conversations there go as expected, depending on what game they used to play and how much they remember.  Usually not much.  In six months of talking straight with business people, I've met exactly one fellow like this.  He's in IT.

The fifth group should be people who are playing now, but there are no people I've met who are playing now.  That doesn't mean they don't exist ... I can only speak for the monkey sphere that's closest to me, some 150, perhaps 200 people, who run across my path now and them in some capacity or other.

This is why occasionally on the blog I make some point about people being largely ignorant about role-playing.  I doubt there are more than two or three dozen people in my entire building, of about 4,000, who have ever played DDO or even Warhammer ... these people have money, and they spend their weekends skiing, playing golf, drinking heavily, etc.  They don't videogame.  I know this because when in a media discussion, about the media, or about the state of the media industry comes up, it is very plain that no one has a clue.  It's quite profound to see.  Yes, there are people in the world who do not know that video-games are a big deal.  A rather frightening number of people, actually.  Who have money, and who have control over a LOT of money.

Food for thought.

I intend to go on telling people what I'm doing.  Every kind of person.  I can't build a market by relying only upon the market someone else built.