Universally Good

A big thanks to those of you who helped tweet or share my troubles on facebook; every legal redress of wrongs done is a stressful thing and any support is always appreciated.  I've taken down the post from my blog but the matter remains on my twitter feed, for those who don't know what I'm talking about right now.

Moving onto other things.  For those who have a problem with sexuality, spoilers.

A few days ago, I stumbled across a post I hadn't read from seven months ago, written at the time I was on a tear about player-vs-player.  And on that subject - that of Spazalicious' post - I want to proceed carefully.  I believe that the argument made there is legitimate and worth examining.

The crux of the argument is a familiar one that has been argued before: that PvP can be, at a given table, consensual.  I've never argued that it could not be.  Many things are consensual.  It is reasonable to argue that if every player at a given table agrees to the player-vs-player formula, then it ought to be legitimately pursued.

To press the point home, Spazalicious urges the reader to "take a lesson from the BDSM community:"

"Obtain consent from all persons involved, always ask if your partner is okay, and have a safe word for if [sic] things get too intense for 'stop' to make sense in context."

For those who may not know, a significant part of the BDSM community - that part that is most concerned with winning acceptance from the general public that does not practice BDSM - has promoted something for several decades known as "Safe, Sane and Consensual."  The guidance offered by this policy (SSC) is to discourage harm between participants and to encourage the best possible mental health for those involved.  By talking over what sexual practices are desired, it is sincerely hoped that participants will not find themselves regretting their actions and that the greatest possible empathy will be shared by all.

Unfortunately for some in the BDSM community, a strict adherence to SSC denies many of the desired activities that are part of BDSM.  These activities cannot be reasonably described as 'safe,' simply because they are not.  It is further argued that many completely accepted social pursuits - such as mountain climbing, hang-gliding, white-water rafting and hunting - are also fundamentally unsafe, even though efforts are made to make these as safe as possible.  Still, the best way for a mountain climber to remain safe is to not climb mountains.  This, however, does not work for the climber.

As such, some in the BDSM community have opted for a position known as "Risk-aware consensual kink," or RACK.  In this philosophy, it is desired that both or all partners are aware that the proposed activity is dangerous, that everyone is of sound mind and that elements of SSC - such as the use of a safe word - may be legitimately set aside in preference to an experience that is less concerned with safety and more concerned with sexual gratification.

What, then, does this have to do with D&D and role-playing?

Spazalicious is expressing the philosophy - as it is promoted in the BDSM community - that consensuality trumps all other concerns.  Yes, it isn't safe.  Yes, people get hurt.  But everyone agrees - so everything is okay, nyet?

If the reader ever gets an opportunity to speak with a member of a Search & Rescue team - and better yet, has the opportunity to get a few drinks into said member - then do not fail to ask about the 'consensuality' of people who get themselves into life and death situations while mountain climbing or white-water rafting.  Get ready for a rant - a potentially furious rant if said member has ever lost a friend or relative while trying to rescue a 'risk-aware' mountain-climber, hiker, winter skiier or any of the other truly dangerous pursuits that people jump into with a minimum of preparation or real awareness.  Because people are stupid.  People think they are self-aware and prepared to get consensual with the mountain and forest, but it is exactly this kind of thinking that gets perfectly aware people killed while trying to pull a citizen out of trouble.

The reader might, if the reader knows people at a hospital, have an opportunity to meet someone who can tell at least one story about a BDSM participant who was flayed or beaten to within an inch of their death, on the argument made by the top (dominant, dominatrix, etc.) in the situation who says, "But he didn't use his safe word!"  Because it is reasoned by many in the BDSM community that people, in the midst of being tortured, are consciously self-aware enough to even remember that they have a safe-word.  Human beings, made up of chemicals that flood tissue in the most potentially dangerous soup imaginable, simply aren't that reliable.  The BDSM community likes to pretend that humans are reliable, because it helps sell their practices to non-participants . . . those same non-participants who are just aching for a reason to shut down BDSM clubs, to end the careers of a very vocal and protective Professional Dominant community and to encourage everyone, everywhere, to recognize that BDSM is, in Spazalicious' words, "universally evil."

I don't feel that it is, myself.  But BDSM isn't a very good argument for the magical legitimacy of personal consensuality.  The so-called community is more divisive, troll-ridden and predatory than any group of people that has ever existed - except probably the military.  Fact is, participants in that community just don't care.  They're not participating for the glory of social acceptance - they have other motives.  Social acceptance is simply the veneer that has been lacquered over the top by a small number of voices who recognize that acting as leaders in a beleaguered and largely misunderstood community gains them a small amount of personal power.  It is these leaders who have invented terms like SSC and RACK in order to sustain the pretense of that power.  Most participants, however, simply act as they will.

The key error in Spazalicious' thinking - and it is an error that we all make, continuously, since more than a century of brain-function research and psychological investigation has failed to make an impact - is that we are in control of our desires.  This isn't so.  We would like it to be so, we're very certain that it is so, since it very much seems to be the case.  It is very easy to delude ourselves - since it is an unreliable brain affected by hormone-evolved brain chemistry that we use to convince ourselves.

Sorry, however.  I have no actual way to determine, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all the people at my table who consensually agree to play PvP are actually consensually doing so.  Some will agree because the group agrees.  Some will agree because their sexual partner at the table agrees or because their siblings agree.  Some will agree because they lack information or experience about other ways to play.  Some will agree because they are habitually predatory because of other activities that have shaped their thinking.  Some will agree because it seems that the authority figure at the table, the DM, seems to want it.

None, however, can be absolutely certain to agree on a strictly consensual basis.  Because humans are prejudiced, naive, easily swayed, confused, anxious to agree in order to win approval and on the whole, stupid.

The best solution for this uncertainty is to seek forms of game play that do not promote unnecessary conflict and stress.  Because it is universally recognized that a lack of negative conflict and stress is the best way to ensure that everyone has a good time.  PvP may not be "universally evil" - but it is dead certain that a lack of PvP is "universally good."

People Listen

They say that it's impossible to change minds.  No, it just requires commitment.

Again, thank you JB.

Predatory Play

I wish I could express how saddened I am at the comments lately received on the subject of player-versus-player.  It measures up there with my feelings about the patch for this practice, depicted as a player being shot in the back.  I wonder if the entity who invented the logo even considered depicting two figures dueling.  Probably not.

No, killing another player is depicted as an act of cowardice.

Online, its validity is defended as the personal right of a player's agency.  PvP is freedom.  The freedom of a player's character to act in a predatory fashion towards other players, who - it must also be argued - have no right to live if they will not defend themselves.

That is, if they're given a chance to defend themselves.  Because it is always better, and easier, to shoot the fellow player in the back.  Hell.  Dumb bastard should have known not to let his guard down.

Are we tired of this subject?  I'm not seeing that in my numbers.  My numbers are very high right now.  For a 'non-issue,' it is getting a lot of attention.  I'm seeing a distinct rise in toxic comments - but to be honest, nothing to compare with the comment on a previous post that described PCs dropping their gloves and helmets in order to go at it "like men."

I am flogging this horse today because it is not yet dead.  I'm quite certain that it will never be dead. I'm equally certain that my futile attempts to kill this horse will fall far short of making a meaningful change.  It is only that . . . those here rushing to the defence of player-versus-player clearly feel threatened by the discussion.

Why should they care.  I have no power to enter their campaigns and put a stop to it.  I have no influence with the game makers or with gaming stores that could be encouraged to ban the practice.  I'm just a guy with a blog.  Where is the threat?  Where does the vehemence directed towards me come from?  What is this need to insist that I am somehow challenging the freedom of anybody?

The reader can figure this out.  It isn't hard.

Well, the horse is still alive.  And I haven't anything I can think of to add.  We can probably leave the matter in the street, thinking perhaps that someone will quit a toxic game or that someone will end the toxicity in their own game.  Hope, yes?  The hope that we can find better ways to express freedom than through contests of manhood perpetrated through fictional constructs.

There is only hope when reason fails.

When Wisdom Isn't a Dump Stat

Look forward to the day when players will be able to talk to their own characters.

On January 15, a group of German developers released a video describing "An Adaptive Learning A.I. Approach for Generating a Living and Conversing Mario Agent."  In effect, the model allows the video game character Mario to interact with the user, while learning about his environment - through messages given by the user and through personal experience.

This allows Mario to verbalize the situation that he is a part of - but in fact it really doesn't translate as 'self-aware.'  We are a long way from Mario sitting down and pondering the purpose or relevance of his existence - which would probably end in Mario deliberately running into goomba again and again until it proves impossible to commit suicide in this manner (he always resets).  Thereafter, Mario is likely to get really depressed.

Naturally, this makes me think of characters existing in a D&D game that are animated on the character-sheet, asking the question, "Can I pee now?"  Ignoring the question, of course, results in the character getting distressed and eventually peeing, Sims-like, onto the bottom of the character sheet.  Answering "Yes" lets the character walk off screen for a while before flushing a toilet and reappearing.

Time spent depends on how much armour the character is wearing.

I'm crazy enough to think it would be pretty cool to have a character image standing on your sheet, eating, cleaning their weapons, looking bored and so on.  Upon hearing the DM ask, "What do you do?", the character says to the player, "Oh PLEASE, can we attack it?" or possibly, "Um, let's run away."  When the player rolls a 3 on the attack die, the character raises an eyebrow and asks, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" of the player.

A good thing?  Well, it depends on the sort of relationship you develop with your character.

Yesterday, I had a moderate flame spat about player-vs.-player - which I'm going to continue to carp about in the future.  We all have our pet causes.  Were I to play in someone's world, only to find that PvP was allowed, my first thought would be, "Well, it will be impossible to ever develop or get attached to the character I am running in this world."  My second thought, a nanosecond later, would be "What the fuck is the point, then?"

I used to play war games.  As my experience in role-playing grew, the war games steadily lost value for me.  Today, I freaking despise RISK, though I've easily played a thousand hours of it.  I'm not interested in faceless, wooden characters.

If playing meant coming to a consensus with my character about what we should do next, that would be fucking awesome.  I mean that.  Being able to instill my character with traits of cowardice or aggression or what have you, so that these were elements that needed to be overcome when I was recommending the character do this or that - fuck, that's a game within a game that I want to play.

Part of that is because I am actually very easy.  See, I will write here and tell you that you're a fucking idiot for playing a game a particular way.  I will express my discontent and disgust, I will provide a host of reasons to explain why others should - and probably are - also disgusted with you, or even why you ought to be disgusted with yourself.  I'll go on and on about it, brutally, miserably, without any tolerance, empathy or respect for you as a human being or even a biological entity.

What I won't do is stop you - at least, unless you want to do it on my carpet.  I won't lobby the gaming convention to put an end to your game play, I won't physically come around and knock the dice out of your hand, I won't crash your computer or SWAT your house or send crap to your mailbox or start #gamergate on your dumbass in an effort to intimidate you into changing your moronic ways.  All anyone ever has to do to continue an activity I don't approve of is to ignore me.

Granted, that can be hard to do.  But the fact is, I don't care about you.  You're just one more of the seven billion on the planet, 35 million of which are dying every day.  Until you comment on this blog, you're just a statistic to me.  And I am really, really comfortable with your existence as a statistic.  As a statistic, you can run about playing your game your way, however that pleases you.  You can live your life, work your job, fall in love, get married, raise a bunch of wonderful kids, whatever the hell you want - because, in reality, I am only a statistic to you.  It works both ways, you see.

The only thing that changes our statistical status towards one another is our choice to listen.

There are some out there that I don't care to hear.  They haven't got an argument, they haven't the courage of their convictions, they're slippery and obfuscating and they don't take responsibility for the things they say.  It is always someone else's fault.  It is always someone else's responsibility.  Fair enough.  These people exist, they will always exist.  But I will choose to let them exist as a statistic.

People who stand up to me, who fight, who present a position they're prepared to embrace, these people always find me very easy-going.  When the issue is, how are we going to get this wall built, I know perfectly well when it is time to stop arguing and work.  And I do work.  In the scheme of things, I spend far more of my time working than I spend trying to change minds.

A character of mine that can talk back to me would be marvellous.  Someone with guts and good instincts, someone ready to get in there and take chances, someone with practical suggestions and strategies that I could consider and tweak . . . I dream of that sort of thing.  There'd be a lot of "Yeah, let's go with that!" and "All right, if you're up for that, go!"

And if I had a character that disagreed with me constantly, that deliberately threw monkey wrenches into success for the hell of it?  I would shrug and tell them, "Whatever."  Because, in the long run, that is what I always say with people I don't care about.

Believe me, when characters in D&D start to develop personalities, wisdom will very quickly stop being a dump stat.

This Is Not Me Being Nice

Last night, I blew my player's minds.

I don't care to go into details - there are a lot of them and I could rattle on for a few thousand words trying to get the reader up to speed, but that would accomplish very little since the emotion of playing would be lost.

These are players who began in my world in late 2005.  They are running the same characters they began at first level.  They have crawled their way through a very difficult, sparse experience system that has enabled them to where they are now hovering around 275K in experience.  Today they shrug off blows of 20, 30 damage, but they remember when it took only a few little hits to put them on the edge of death.  They remember when the druid Pikel, now with 91 hit points, always needed saving. They remember when the mage Garalzapan would enter combat and go down with one hit.  They remember when it took an 18 to hit something, when they would miss and miss before getting knocked unconscious.

Their characters are a mass of memories.  Memories of dozens of humiliating combats, of staggering through cold weather after a near escape, of collapsing and literally dying of pneumonia, of begging for help from people much stronger than they were . . . and now they are those people, doing the work themselves and needing help from no one.

These are characters that have been painstakingly crafted, infused with purpose, struggling with the unknown, searching and puzzling out the things going on with the world and steadily getting a handle on what's happening.

Last night, I made a series of reveals to the party in the form of an NPC the party has been trying to find for an actual year of gaming.  I revealed information I conceived of in 2007 that I have never, ever told anyone.  Other things that I have keeping to myself for three and four years.  Secrets locked inside my head to explain why THIS GUY has hiding and what THIS THING is actually for.  Secrets telling WHO they're up against and why they've already MESSED UP where it comes to killing him.  Secrets that made the party laugh and shout at the absurdity, curse, pound the table in excitement and finally applaud.

Maybe in other worlds there a people who do not experience the transforming lives of their characters, their creations - for I consider these characters to be works of living art that the players are building through years of play.  It does not matter that the player may be the only person to truly enjoy the character to its full degree or that knowledge of the character does not reach out beyond the party.  These works of art are real to them, adored and LOVED.

The reader doesn't understand this?  Has the reader ever made anything?  Does the reader have a novel that they've tried to write, that they still have in a folder somewhere?  Does the reader have a thing they made for their father or mother?  Does the reader even remotely understand sentimentality?

Now suppose I break into your house and the only thing I do is burn that thing.  It's worthless, right?  It's stupid that you still keep it, right?  I mean, anyone who would love a silly thing that isn't valuble to anyone else, that person must be pretty fucked up, eh?

Yeah.  It does matter, doesn't it?  Even if no one else cares, YOU care.  You love that damn thing, even if you get a little embarrassed at the idea of showing anyone else.

But some people . . . fuck, some people.

I got this comment earlier today to a silly joke I posted about player-vs-player:

"Something that puzzles me about this blog is the intense dislike of PvP you seem to have, not just as a poor gameplay mechanic, but to the point of animosity towards players who enjoy it. It just doesn't match the vast majority of my experience playing and running, or what I've heard on other blogs and message boards . . . In the course of standard campaigns, PvP has been a very rare occurrence and hasn't seemed to ruin the game for anyone."

There's more, asking me why I have such a bug up my ass about this.  The reader says he's confused; he doesn't want to start an argument.

Well, it punched my button.  And methodically I set out to rip the guy a new asshole.  Because his innocence was almost worse than his ignorance.

Yeah.  What's the big deal?  So what if I destroy something that belongs to someone else?  How is that wrong?

I know what the 'vast majority' is thinking.  You're not that invested in your characters.  You don't care that much.  When you kill the character of another player, they don't seem to care very much either.

Does this not express how pathetically sad these worlds must be?  And how vacuous?  These are participants that are so far down the evolutionary trail they can't muster the least sentimentality about something they've made.  How can these people have any fun if they are so dead inside they can't . . . feel something about their characters?

Worse, they can't understand how someone else can have feelings.  If someone at my table raised a sword against one of my characters, believe me, the battle wouldn't be carried out with dice.  I wouldn't have to intervene.  My players would rise as a body and toss that fucker out the door.

Believe me, if that isn't the game you're running, you should WISH you were.  If your game doesn't work like this, and you still think that yours is a good game . . .?

You wouldn't recognize a good game if it kicked your reproductive junk through your windpipe.

Make Friends

I may change my mind about player-vs-player, if . . .

Proposed:  if you have a character dumb enough to get into a combat with another player, and not make amends before the combat is over . . . and your character dies . . .

You're out of the campaign.  Permanently.

See?  No revenge possible.

Make friends with your new co-players.