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.

Don't Fear the Noobs

I appreciate that there will always be some who feel that the role-playing game/D&D needs to stay accessible for the general audience, particularly in the game books that are sold in stores. Frankly, however, I can’t say I care much about that any more.

Yesterday I wrote a post about taking the time to talk to genre-savvy folk about house rules. I’d like to take a moment and express myself regarding complete noobies who have never played a game before: they’re no problem at all.

Oh, of course not every noob likes the game. It’s a strange culture, it’s odd to compare a Saturday night of gaming with Saturday night at the bar and certainly it becomes a ‘thing’ that the new player can’t talk about what happened with the co-workers on Monday. I have lost players in the past because they found themselves thinking too much about the game (because they really liked it) only to feel isolated by the experience because talking about it to family or acquaintances was just ‘weird.’

Even now I get someone who makes the connection between D&D and Satan-worship. That campaign decades ago was very, very pervasive.

So a noob will come out and play a few games and feel pressure to quit because they’re having a good time. That happens.

On the other hand, if the noob possesses a strong sense of individuality, doesn’t identify too strongly with the opinions of ordinary people and has the imagination (and patience) to apply themselves to the game, I usually discover that they’re infatuation gets a good, solid grip on their psyche. A passionate grip, even.

This is why I can never take seriously those people who claim that table-top RPGs are declining. When I see fifty people in a room (as I did recently, at the local gaming club) playing in a manner I would describe as absolute crap-design (5th edition tournament/pre-generated style play), I don’t worry about a good DM finding players. There are millions of people with the right qualifications (individual, imaginative) who have simply never been given the opportunity to play. That’s a tremendous, untapped resource, one that exists among the common people, that is nearly always overlooked by the community.

It’s really just a matter of reaching out to people we already know and encouraging them to give the game a chance. We don’t, however, because . . . well, some of us feel shame.

I ran into that in Edmonton this year and Toronto last year. There are a surprising number of people who approach this sort of gaming with a great deal of shyness and doubt; they only know what’s been depicted in the media (not good) or by journalists (exceptionally simplified), and this has encouraged many DMs to believe that role-playing is better done with a small group of people we can trust. Reaching out to others would be embarrassing. This is why a lot of games break up when the participants get to university; it just seems too childish to approach people at 19 or 20 about a game we played in high school.

So, no new blood and the old group disintegrates because of life. Leading many to think, might as well quit. Better that than putting it on the line and finding new players – or worse, introducing new people to the game.

Still

As near as I can tell, none of the people I played D&D with in the 80s or 90s is playing the game now.

Now and then I chance into someone - at the grocery store, strolling through downtown, sitting across the coffee shop - and we chat.  How are you, how did that job in Dallas work out, oh you got married, any kids?  Same conversation everyone has . . . with a rejoiner, of course, because I'm always asked (because I was the DM), "Are you still playing that game?"

That game.  It is at once a pejorative and a sign of respect, in that clearly it is a guilty memory and at the same time something that doesn't have to be referred to by name.  It is plain what game is meant.  It is equally plain that my old friend hasn't mentioned the game to anyone in a long time.  The merest wisp of a thought about it has likely not come to mind in years.  But meeting me, all those memories of hundreds of hours spent at a gaming table come washing back and for the first time, my friend can exhibit some curiousity.  "Do you still play?"

Of course, I always grin and tell them that I do.  I have no shame about it.  I consider the time I've spent designing and playing to be golden.  Whereupon the answer is just as predictable: "Wow."

See, if it is someone who was in my game for a long time, nine or ten years in the case of some, they remember how my world grew and transformed steadily.  They remember that I was always working, always trying new things, always expanding some element to make the game more interesting and playable.  They measure the time between when they played and now - 22 years - and their heads spin.

Then, every time, I see the geek within emerge from the outer vestment of electrical engineer, investment planner, market consultant or whatever work they're doing now that earns them enough for that $450K house an hour away in the Stix, where all is home maintenance, childcare and gardening.  I see the garment's strangling top button pop open and for a brief while comes the memories, the nostalgia, the curiousity about what I'm doing now and the questions about how and why, for the love of all things believable, am I still playing?

Then the coffee is gone and wearily they fix that button closed again, wish me well and move away.  Oh, sometimes they'll get the courage to say something suggesting that they'd like to play again; I always offer.  They never accept.  It's the reality they've chosen.  They're too busy.

How and why am I still playing?

Because I loved it.  Oh, yes, at the time, we all said we did, but in retrospect much of that love was a love of convenience, of available time measured against a minimum of responsibility.  When something came along that seemed more important or necessary, they made their sacrifices realistically, rationally and as best they could.  And me?  Well, I sacrificed other things.

My daughter was telling me the other day that when she was a little girl, sleeping in the room next to my study, she would fall asleep every night to the sound of my fingers hitting the pads of my computer's keyboard.  I began writing with a manual typewriter in the 70s, progressed to an electric by 1980 and my typing has ever since been hard and resonant.  The keyboard I'm typing on right now was designed to mute the sound.

Because of the noise, however, the surest way to put my daughter to sleep (she says) is to play a recording of anyone typing.  That is because I did it so much it was hard-wired into her head.  After she went to bed, after her day was done and my parenting responsibilities were finished, there was only one thing I ever wanted to do.

I've always been like that.

Quit D&D?  Hah.  

Crossed Party Paths

Thank you, Maliloki, for asking a question yesterday that gives me an excuse to write this.

I have had three campaigns running in my world at the same time.  I still sort of do, but the online campaign's hiatus cruelly drags on.  Offline, I still have two running.  The question was, is it the same world for all parties?  And if not, is there a chance that the actions taken by one party will affect another?

My first party began in the town of Kolyeno in the county of Voronezh, Russia, on May 1, 1650.  It began there because that was the first part of my world that I mapped according to the principles my blog readers recognize (elevation, 20 miles per hex, etc.).  I began with Voronezh because it was flat steppeland, lightly populated and a long way from the ocean.  I felt, at the beginning of my mapping, that I should start deep inland, developing my skills as I moved outwards.

I know that in my book How to Run I proposed starting on an island or a peninsula.  I made that suggestion because I know most campaigners don't set out to make nit-picky maps based on the actual world's latitude and longitude.  A writer has to know the audience.

At the time of starting that campaign, eight years ago, I hardly had more of the world mapped than that tiny area of south European Russia.  Kolyeno is a tiny village of about 200 people, the right location to start a 1st level party.  In such a small village, their own, where they had friends and family, they weren't likely to be threatened until they took their first risks.  The choices the party made, combined with random events that involved the party indirectly, led them first towards China, then Persia and finally to Transylvania.  Throughout it all, it was their choice to stay or go.

The online campaign began within two weeks of a spontaneous idea I had in February, 2009.  I called it a 'stupid idea.'  It turned out to be somewhat better.  By 2009 I had four years of mapping under my belt and I had produced sufficient areas of the world to provide several options.  However, as I was working on advancing my trade system specifically for a start in Germany, I wanted to experiment with that.  Therefore, I offered the online players a choice of Mecklenburg, Saxony, Sudetenland, Vogtland, Erzgebirge, Bohemia, Moravia, Upper Austria and Bavaria.  The party ultimately went for the last option.  I rolled randomly for a center in Bavaria that wasn't Munich, Augsburg or Nuremberg (I did not want to start them in a big city) and got Dachau.  Yes, that same Dachau.

That location created the events that followed.  The choices the party made, combined with random events that involved the party indirectly, led them first towards Switzerland, then Cuxhaven (after a slight reboot) and finally to the Azov Sea.  Throughout it all, it was their choice to stay or go.

Of course these two campaigns were utterly unique, though they both started on the same date.  At the moment the First Party was in Kolyeno in Russia, the Second Party was waking up in Dachau, Germany.  When the year turned to 1651, the First Party was stumbling south through the desert east of the Caspian Sea, while the Second Party had just been freed from the hands of a bandit in northern Italy.

The Third Party began late in 2011.  Because I had done detailed maps of the area, and because that party did not care, it began in Kronstadt in Transylvania, again on May 1, 1650.  That party consisted of three persons who poked around the area a little before wandering generally southeast into Serbia, Kosovo and ultimately Albania.  When the year turned 1651 for them, Demifee had died and they had made their way to Amisos in northern Turkey.

Now, this is interesting.  In game time, the Third Party passed down the road from Amisos to Melitene before the Second Party, during January of 1651.  However, in real time, the Second Party had already been down that same road, in April of 1651.  Technically, after the Third Party in game time but the actual campaign took place in winter 2013/4.

If this doesn't fuck with your head, nothing will.

The Third Party never came to the little dungeon I set up for the Second Party (which they encountered on the way back to Amisos), for obvious reasons . . . I didn't need to!  As the Second Party came through, they came across the wounded Sphinx, who they saved, setting up a totally different adventure on the same ground.  Why wouldn't I?

Will these parties encounter each other?  Possibly.  For the next year, until Spring 1652, the First Party will be wandering around the northern Ural Mountains.  This because two members of the First Party pulled from a Deck of Many Things, earning the enmity of the same demon, then played stupidly playing with certain picture-portals in a dungeon (they were warned, seriously, that the pictures were EVIL), the demon grasped their souls and dumped them onto the first level of Hell.  Literally.  The rest of the party then went on a quest to get them out (the characters weren't dead, just trapped, a'la Theseus).  I doubt if the Second or Third parties will stumble across them, there, as 1651/52 plays out.

After that, the First Party settled in their Transylvania fief, only to spend the next year trying to wake up King Carol, the last king of the Avars, who slept for 900 years under a mountain in the Tatras between Slovakia and Galicia (Poland).  That is a whole other story.  For them, as I said on the previous post, it is now late 1653 . . . and for various reasons, they will soon be heading for Khorezm in Turkestan, to fight a big, big fight against an old enemy.

I expect that the Second Party, online, will be managing to keep alive in and around the Black Sea for all that time.

Meanwhile, the Third Party is returning these holy items to their origin.  I can't say yet where they will be, since the players only have some of this information . . . however, it looks like they will be crossing to Aria, in northwest Afghanistan, seeking knowledge.  Just now, they're involved in events in Egypt.

See, my world is so immense, so HUGE, that even if all three parties happened to be in the same place at the same time, it would probably be a big city - where they could easily not stumble across one another unless I arranged it.  Or, like the Second and Third parties both passing through Tokat, they would be there three months apart or more.

I don't have to take special steps to ensure they don't meet.  Though I do need to keep good records on the date.

Something made easy by the fact that my world uses the same calendar.

P.S.:

Do be sure and catch the newest post on my new cooking blog.

The Ruination of Players

I just want to write a short post in the middle of this series - for it is a series, I intend to write tomorrow about initiating the actions of the party and shepherding them into the deeper parts of an adventure.

We have got to get rid of this idea that a DM is only as good as his or her players.  The players do not run the game.  It is necessary for the players to support the DM, but the DM must do the work, the DM must manage the game, the DM must see to it that the players have a reasonable, respectable place to play and the DM must intervene where players argue, where players insult players, where players make sarcastic comments or bully others.  I recognize that many do not see the role of DM shouldn't be that of principal or daycare worker - but those people are simply wrong.  If there is no authority at the table, the game will quickly devolve into a Lord of the Flies shitstorm where only the strong and only the loud are able to enjoy themselves.

The reason DMs tolerate this is because DMs are untouchable.  From there perspective, there's no need to involve themselves in the squabbles of players.  They're all adults, right?  So fuck 'em.  If they want to fight, why does that matter to the DM.  Since, after all, if any of that shit gets dumped the DM's way, that's going to either get the player's character killed or the player expelled.

This untouchability, coupled with apathy with regards to the players enjoying themselves, is a hell of a crappy way to organize any activity.  It takes a fool to think that five adults without a previously established agenda can agree on anything - and an even bigger fool to think that the DM's running is an agenda the other four can follow.

A bad world is never the fault of the players, it is the fault of a DM that is too weak to take responsibility.  It is that same weakness that means we'll probably never be free of DMs crying in their beer about the inadequacy of players and what players can handle.  "If Only I had better players!  Then I could really run a great world."

It's never talked about how quickly a bad DM ruins good players.

Postscript:

I wrote two chapters in How to Run about how to manage players.  Those two chapters, in a nutshell, translate as 'change yourself, change yourself, change yourself.'  We have no power to change others.  We can only hope that as we improve ourselves, others will see the wisdom of the choices we make.

People Wanted

My good friend Carl yesterday made a marvellous observation about badly behaving players in role-playing games.  Find the whole comment here.  I'll reproduce one paragraph of it:

"The pure, unfiltered escapism offered by role-playing games is like booze to a drunkard. Anti-socials are addicts of a kind. Addicted to getting their own way on everything. Addicted to breaking off sociality at a whim with little-to-no consequence. Addicted to being the star of their own play."

This morning I had found myself thinking how much this sounds like this ongoing debate of the last ten years, the 'internet generation':  The Entitlement Creed.  (Warning: it is a fairly condescending vid, but it speaks to the exhaustion of management).

Because really, the people Carl describes and the people these employers are tired of dealing with are the same people.

So with that in mind, if you are over 25, here are some things you should be looking for if you want players in your world that won't act like a bunch of dweeby self-interest gits.  I have to make it clear that I'm speaking mostly to people who should be well past the difficulties that arise with youth. People don't always come from good circumstances, and it can take a while to overcome both a financial hole AND a disastrous emotional upbringing.  I don't want to be seen as being unreasonable . . . so the first twenty five years are free.

However, after that, players without the following should be treated suspiciously.

Employment.  I know that an unemployed player sounds like a real dream, in that they always have enough time to show up for your games, but there's a dark side.  The unemployed player is also likely to be sponging off you and your other players for silly things like food, rent money, a couch to surf on and self-esteem.  These are going to be people who haven't yet figured out how to get a job, keep a job, or encourage anyone else to believe they're reliable, except the friends they've chosen to role-play with. The same friends who have already lent this player upwards of $1,000 altogether, and who are now having to deal with this same player's barbarian fighter demanding the massive diamond gem because of all the work they've done for the party.

Confession:  I spent a lot of time unemployed between the ages of 20 and 40.  During that time I worked something like 40 jobs, between writing gigs and performance gigs in the theatre.  I did surf a few couches.  Somehow, I always managed to get a new job within a week or two, when I wanted one, and I preferred to borrow money from my parents.  Since most of that time was spent running the game, and not as a player, I still managed to run sessions on my own table and in my own kitchen/living room.  So there are exceptions to the employment rule.  So take it with a grain of salt.

Education.  It isn't so much that I would expect a player to have a professional degree.  Thinking about it, and remembering my own experiences in university, I knew a few 'professionals' who managed to squeak by in their classes, who didn't get work in their fields after university and who never respected their education in the least degree.  What you really need to look for are people who don't equate education to 'job,' but who actually respect 'book-larnin' as an activity that bears merit. Your better players will read books. Actual books, where the words differ from page to page, as opposed to trash, and which might impress upon the reader some kind of knowledge.  If your player disdains reading, or books, then you are dealing with someone who thinks they already know all they need to know.  That is going to be a problem for your world.

Confession:  I didn't start university until I was 21.  I spent three years working in various statistical clerk jobs that I got because those were the days when you could take a test to see if you had enough education to start.  I spent seven years at university, on a student loan, on the understanding that I wouldn't have to pay it back so long as I kept going to school.  So the late 80s and early 90s were spent as a professional student, with time to do theatre gigs and a lot of writing for the university paper.  Ah, those were the days.  I spent a hell of a lot of time in the university library, though, during my off hours, because I was building a D&D world.  So I admit.  I'm an educated snob.

Family.  Now, like I said, not everyone starts with the best family.  I went to junior high school with a girl who worked the hooker stroll downtown because her family needed the money, and my daughter knew a girl who was not allowed into any part of her parent's house but the basement because her parents were running a drug cartel out of the upstairs.  Family can really suck.  Moreover, I haven't noted that ancestors have much to do with a role-player's cred, so just throw the progenitors out of the picture, huh?  What I'm talking about is their perspective on every having a family.  Do they know children exist?  Do they think well of them?  Because if you have a player in your world who despises the very idea that there are children, or the idea of having them, then you are dealing with someone who is still an infant.  Take my word on that.

Confession:  Hm.  I gained my daughter at 24.  I had always wanted children.  My first wife, my daughter's mother, passed away now, had multiple sclerosis, so I felt it was really up to her if she wanted children, but it worked out and we had one.  I don't find merit in the statement, "she is the most important thing in the world to me," because my present wife is also important, my writing is important, world peace is important, the improvement of role-playing is important and so on.  I don't like to rank things.  I just work hard to keep everyone happy as best I can.

I really haven't got a fourth one.  Believe me, if you can manage ALL of the first three with your players, you're going to have a solid group of reliable, smart players.  Even if they haven't got the job they want, even if they haven't finished their education, of if they haven't any children, they have aspirations.  They understand sacrifice and reward.  They perceive the world does not revolve around them.  They grasp that if things are going to get better, they are going to have to work at it.

They will bring that exact same quality to your world.  So look for those people.

Behavioural Effects on Design

I'm going to muddle through this post ... part of the reason I want to write it is to organize some of my own thoughts on design, and the process of design, specifically upon the behavioural response to design.  As I'm writing this, I'm thinking about yesterday's post, about Dave Cesarano's comments to that post, and about the inimical Ron Edward's endlessly present GNS theories.

My personal feelings - opinions, yes - is that 'GNS' is a will-o-wisp.  It is presented as an attempt to nail down the sort of game that people play, but it does so from a perspective that views the whole matter from an 'in game' perspective rather than a 'player at the table' perspective.  The effort reminds me of the endless hair-splitting arguments about whether a particular band plays 'synth-rock' or 'electronica' ... where in fact neither distinction means very much.  Whether the game is narrative or simulationist doesn't tell the outsider anything about what the game feels like for the players, nor is there any relationship between any of the forms and 'quality' - in fact, quality, or any measure of value of any kind, is deliberately left out of the mix.  In fact, the theory offers a great deal where it comes to contributing to a meaningless, unsolvable argument, the kind the internet loves, without there actually being any point in winning such an argument.  Whether my world is narrative or simulationist is a matter of complete indifference.  It is my world, regardless ... and stating that it is this or that doesn't actually tell the reader the least thing about my running style, or whether my game is something that others should avoid or embrace.  It is a will-o-wisp in the sense that because it seems to be the brightest, most interesting thing about the dark forest surrounding us, in no way whatsoever does it offer the least knowledge about the forest itself.

I think Mr. Edwards meant to offer insight into how a game should be run, or how by understanding how we do run games, we could tweak our behaviour in order to play the game closer to the purpose we hoped for. The difficulty, however, is that it is not the character that is playing the game, but the player; however much the argument may be advanced to make the character 'feel' more real, the player will always see the game as a thing to be utilized.  Some, yes, will want to feel the reality of the situation, but others will only be concerned with how to massage the figures to get the best angle on success for them.  That is, no matter behaviour you WANT as the designer of your supposed game, the players will ignore your want and pursue their own, as that is human nature.  Calling the game simulationist or narrativist, or going for either, without an eye to the actual behaviour of your players, and redesigning in order to take into account behaviours you never imagined, is only massaging your own ego and not addressing the realities of play.

Here and there I've been reading arguments about DMs beginning worlds where a behavioural response is deliberately requested.  For example, I am creating a game about pirates, and I want the players to behave as pirates in that game.  I want them to exhibit the behaviour of pirates, hopefully because they want to, and not to exhibit some other behaviour because that would be anathema to the game I'm creating.

This is something like saying, I am planning on creating a phone that will enable use underwater, that will be of use to scuba divers and so on, but I would really like it if you wouldn't use the phone unless you're underwater.  That is, in effect, the purpose of the phone, and if you're not going to use it for that purpose, we would just as soon you didn't buy or use our phone.

IF this is really the sort of thing that's wanted, the solution should be easy: don't ask people to respect your product wishes.  Make the phone so it doesn't work in the open air.  Don't give people the option.

Let me give a good example of the actual behaviour of customers compared to the expected behaviour of design function.  Back in the 90's, Panasonic decided to create a disposable camera.  This being the age of film developing, Panasonic's plan was that people would take their pictures, mail the cameras to Panasonic and that the cameras would pay for themselves through developing costs.  This seemed like a good idea. Only, it took very little time for people to realize they could just break the cheap plastic cameras open and either develop the film themselves or take it to anyone local.  The end result was that Panasonic lost a lot of money.

When I see someone online writing about an idea for changing the rules, I rarely see any mention of the desired behaviours that their players are going to offer once these rules are in place.  If there is a mention, it usually comes down to, "they like it."  How useful is it to you to ask someone about their phone and get no more answer than, "I like it"?  Do you not then immediately want to ask why?  You're not really concerned with whether or not someone else likes their phone, your concern is whether or not you'll like it.  Thus you want evidence or some sort of explanation that suggests you would.

If what you're reading about a rule is mostly, "Here's how it will better reflect reality," you're not getting any sense at all about whether or not it will improve your personal game.  You'd perhaps like an improvement for your game, and you might be looking around for such an improvement, but you need more than to be told this IS an improvement because it is more real.

Nothing about game design has anything to do with reality.  It has everything to do with evoking a chemical mix in your body that puts you on edge without toppling you past the point where you start to feel threatened or overwhelmed.  If the game is just at the edge of what you can handle, so that handling it is difficult but not impossible, and it fits with imagery and interests that compel you, then it is is a good game.  If you can handle it by moving very, very slowly, and the game allows that, the difficulty isn't a selling point.  It's annoying. Difficulty is only a selling point if you're also hopped up on adrenaline, dopamine, seratonins and so on. Difficulty without those chemicals is equivalent to filling out your tax forms (which might produce other, less pleasant chemical reactions).

What is wanted then isn't reality, but a sense of overcoming a challenge that is fast-paced, potentially threatening, requires problem solving without making that problem solving a dry, distended process, and ultimately packing that all together into a utilitarian form that you can adapt to fit your personality and perspective.  You want to fight combats in role-playing, but you don't want to get bogged down in things that don't contribute to your 'high,' you don't want to find that something has suddenly gotten very easy if you fit puzzle piece A into slot B (which destroys the problem solving aspect, as a problem ceases to be interesting once you've solved it) and you DO want to feel agency.  This is your phone.  You'll use it in the open air if you damn well want to.

If you look around, you'll soon find that virtually every past-time humans have invented for themselves includes aspects of the past-time that are based on no logic.  Why is the king only able to move one square? Certainly it isn't for a realistic reason.  But it makes for a good game.  Try to play the game with the king moving as a queen and see what happens.  Take note - the king's movement is the phone that only works underwater.  No other movement scheme works ... because every other movement scheme doesn't make for a better game.  It is irrelevant that other movement schemes are possible.  In this particular case, for this particular game, in 400 years no one has found a better scheme.

Because this is simply so, the players don't want another scheme.  They're not looking for it.  The improvement of the game is not based upon the design of the game, but upon the behaviour of the participants of the game, who set about to crack it by refashioning their strategies.

It would be this: even though the phone can only be used underwater, it is such an amazing phone that it thrives despite that drawback.  That is really, really good design.  So good, in fact, that even though this is your phone, you don't want to use it anywhere but in the water.  The behaviour it inspires might be to compel more people to spend more time under the water just so they can use your phone there.

This post is, as I say, a strange muddle, but it comes down to these principles:

A.  You need to design for player behaviour, because utilizing your design is all that matters to a player.
B.  The behaviour you want may not be the behaviour you get.  There's nothing you can do about that.

C.  If you want to deny behaviour, build it right into the design.
D.  If you deny behaviour the player really wants to have, your design will fail.
E.  If your design is incredible, it may change the world.
F.  You can never count on E.

Chances are, your design is pretty shitty.  And that your players will ignore the behaviour you're asking for. And that you were better off letting them continue the behaviour they already possessed towards the design that already existed before you waded in.  If you must wade in, however, do so on a better ideal than satisfying a wish to make something more 'realistic.'  Ask your players what they want, then make designs that give them what they want ... and to hell with whether or not the final design fits with history, physics or reality.

You're not designing for the approval of history.  You're designing for human beings.

The Door Is There

In the interest of providing myself background noise, I've been working through a series of course lectures delivered by Dr. George Phillies of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute on Game Design. The gentle reader can find the series of lectures beginning here. For those not yet familiar with University lectures (there are young people who read this blog) or those who simply never attended, please take note of the total lack of patience Phillies has for persons who are not serious about learning. In fact, he's really a prick about it, but only because he has to be. It's hard to imagine that students who pay tens of thousands of dollars to attend classes can't get their heads out of their collected asses, but Phillies pre-judgements clearly indicate that being a total prick up front is a necessary part of being a lecturer. For those who want to get straight into the material, I suggest jumping forward to the second lecture.

I know that I have changed considerably since university ... but lectures like these that one can find online really make that clear to me. Whereas once the ending of a 50-minute lecture would have meant relief and a chance to rest my mind, now I think, "What, that's all?" ... and immediately plow into the next recorded lecture without a moment's hesitation.

(Incidentally, Phillies apparently knew Mr. Gygax, and has a few comments to say about the creation of D&D here and there in various lectures. If you're patient, you'll stumble over them).

Anyway, I've been meaning to pick up a topic he covered in lecture four, that of 'Eurogames' or German-style board games. This would include recently popular games (recent to me, I'm fifty, and the year 2004 still seems like last week) such as The Settlers of Catan, Carcasonne, Puerto Rico and so on. Starting about 43:00 on the 4th lecture link, Phillies discusses the 'shape' of these games. They're designed according to various constraints, which Phillies describes as coming from the way Germans raise children. Games are played in the evenings, after homework is completed, by the whole family. Therefore it is necessary that the game END prior to the time when the children must go to bed (limit of about two hours). The rules have to be simple enough that the grandparents can understand. Everyone has to be playing for the WHOLE game. No one can be eliminated as part of the game rules. The game has to have a relevance to child raising - the game must be in some way 'important.' And, as Phillies points out, part of the restraint also was no warfare. This was very much a consideration for older persons in the family who personally remembered the destructiveness and suffering of WW2. Finally, it needs to 'look pretty,' as it needs to appeal to children that are five to seven years old.

I confess, I have only played one game of Settlers of Catan in my life. I didn't particularly like it, primarily because I make decisions quickly (even if they are wrong decisions) and I found the effort it required for others to come to a decision meant that I was sitting about doing nothing for far more time than made me happy. This was ultimately the reason I lost interest in RISK, also, in that while I was not defending, there was very little to do, and I would grow bored. I blame this on DMing far too much, where gameplay is for me a continuous, unrelenting assault on my brain, which makes any other casual game activity dull. I don't say this is something most people would experience from Settlers of Catan.

My parents played Puerto Rico for a time rather a lot back around 1999-2000, so I am more familiar with that game - the same that Phillies uses in his lectures for his game 'lab' to make his points in lectures 2 & 3. I therefore have some understanding of the concept. There is an uncertainty as to who has won until the actual end of the game, thus building 'tension' about winning (tension dies in games like Monopoly when its clear who is going to win), and about the reduced but present interactivity of the game, which rewards innovation in oneself rather than the suppression of others, that almost all American games emphasize.

I'm rather past boardgames these days. I grew up in a house where boardgames were played religiously on Friday or Saturday nights, along with various card games, so I feel I've done my time. But there is a great deal to be said about the improvement of games where player smashing player is replaced by player out-playing player.

Last night I wrote a long discourse on how competition ceases to become the purpose of pursuing complex or difficult games or activities. I'd like to make a point about the importance of SUPPORT in activities ... a matter that is given so little consideration when the dynamic of role-playing is discussed.

Now, I am a DM, so I have my role in the game defined. I'm both the friend and the enemy of the party, as it's necessary to swing back and forth in order to keep the party's interest. Each member of the party, on the other hand, is free to take a stand about their treatment of others - and I must say, the very best parties are those that fight FOR each other, rather than against each other.

The genius in D&D is that the party is utterly free to be anti-competitive with one another, reserving all their energy to fight the DM. My sense has long been that this position ('all for one, one for all') offers a gamesmanship that is so utterly unique to role-playing that I'm often flabbergasted when I see a player fail to take advantage of it.

Consider, the members of a soccer TEAM join together to defeat the enemy ... and all the effort that one takes to support the team is done wholeheartedly with the understanding that to win requires complete support of one's teammates. There is something outstanding in being a part of this, especially on a good team, where everyone embraces the concept. People who don't embrace the concept - and who do it vocally - tend to be pushed out.

However, in team sports, there are TWO teams that are both competing, and someone has to lose. Part of the program, obviously, but it still sucks when you don't win.

But coming back to D&D, the party 'team' doesn't compete against another team. It competes against the DM - who shouldn't have anything to lose.

As DM, I'm not, or at the least I shouldn't be, invested in the existence of my monsters beyond their use as foils to stimulate the party's enjoyment. If I am involved with my monsters, that's a problem. Since I can conjure as many as I want, and I should always be aware that the party's need to live are greater than a monster's need to live, I am happy when a monster dies. I don't let this happen easily, of course, that would spoil the resolution, but I certainly am not cheering for the monster to win. That's crazy. A DM in love with monsters over the party is a DM hopelessly in love with his or her self ... and that is just pathetic.

So the party CAN win, there is no meaningful loser, and virtually all the other conditions of the Eurogame (which we had to come back to) are satisfied. Everybody plays for the whole game (you make up new characters immediately if you die). Players do not eliminate each other. The game can be interesting for the grandparents, and children adapt easily to interactive story-telling. The game play can be suspended at any time, so it can stop when the children go to bed, and be restarted the next night. The only two issues are that individual adults in Germany have not been generally educated to be DMs, and there's still that pesky 'no war' policy. But as Phillies points out in his lecture, that's disappearing ... mostly because the problem is being solved actuarially.

One last word about players who don't support the party against the DM. Players who are in it for themselves. As I say, this flabbergasts me. That is because virtually every stupid, ignorant thing I ever see in a game occurs because the player is being wholly and absolutely selfish in that moment. There's no way to dismiss it. On some level, the decision being made by the player is intended to be something self-serving.

And one of the worst philosophies that has become attached to the game is that this is acceptable.

It really isn't. Call it whatever the reader will; call it competition, call it role-playing, call it initiative, it still comes down to one thing. A player that thinks only of the self deserves to be shown the door. Period.

Wrong Play

My post earlier in the week got these two comments:

From JDJarvis: "It seems a lot of folks can't understand you can have fun playing a character that isn't a Sociopath so they don't make the leap."

And from Jason Packer: "I've encountered more than a handful of players who are unable to create a character who isn't an utter sociopath."

I feel I must reply at length.

I have no particular problem with an individual pretending to be a sociopath at table, so long as their aware of their actions, and are able to view them with a certain necessary, desireable detachment ... i.e., "Yeah, we probably shouldn't have killed everyone in the village, that might have been a bit overboard, but hey - we couldn't leave witnesses, could we?"

Heck, that's fine. In actual life, the Mongols used to push people together in 'herds' of ten to fifty thousand, then spend days and days slaughtering them. The city of Balkh, a great seat of learning prior to the 13th century, was destroyed and ceased to exist for a period - despite almost certainly having a population rivalling that of the fifty thousand people who were killed by the Mongols at Samarkand.  I have yet to have a player character get really ambitious in that fashion ... though of course the template is there.  I hardly have one source for mass killings upon which to draw.

(Though it should be said that with modern, politically correct historical rewrites of EVERYTHING that has ever happened throughout time, NONE of these things ever happened. They were just nasty rumours spread by people who did not like Mongols. Human beings do not actaully do bad things ... except one completely anachronistic group of Germans, naturally)

If I had a character legitimately able to organize an army so as to repeatedly slaughter tens of thousands of NPCs and get away with it, then I think I'd be more impressed than appalled. I've read too much history and too many accounts of mass killings, from Cannae to Cambodia ... I'm too jaded to really have a problem with players 'killing' fictional descriptions of things.

I doubt that either Jarvis or Packer above do, either - though they can correct me if I'm in error. I think what they're referring to is the player who doesn't seem to know they're behaving with psychotic imbecility. The sort of thing where this conversation happens:

DM: You meet a old man on the road, making his way along with a gnarled cane; it is obviously difficult for him to walk, and it may be possible he hasn't eat in awhile.

Player: I kill him.
DM: I'm sorry?
Player: I take out my sword and split his skull open.
DM: Um, why?
Player: I feel like it (giggles). Do his brains run out over the cobblestones?

I've seen dozens of references to this kind of thing on blogs, most often with reference to the old man holding some secret or being intrinsic to a railroaded campaign, and now the DM has no way to tell the party where the princess is, blah blah blah. But the bigger point isn't what the player has lost by "acting hastily" or some other euphemism for being a RETARDED TIT, its the clear and obvious sign that one actually has a garden-variety sociopath sitting right at the gaming table. The player, that is, not the player's character.

Oh, probably not someone really dangerous ... there are probably no bodies in that player's backyard, that player probably hasn't the presence of mind to actually arrange and set up a murder without peeing themselves in a fit of fright and androgen deficiency. Nah, we're talking a sort of kind of ersatz socialized poster child failure who's raver parents operated with "on the fritz" efficiency during that all important formative diaper-to-toilet escalation.

Packer also added a point about how such persons being given the option of rolling a new character suffer a "non-punishment" for acting like pretty much like morons ... and that is mostly true.  In any one's world by mine, that is.

See, I take a rather confrontational style with D&D, just as I take a confrontational style with real life.  If I happen to be in a place where some sort of stupidity is taking place, all too often I'm inclined to speak out.  I'm that fellow on the bus who tells you to turn your fucking headphones down.  I'm the guy who, when standing in line behind someone screaming at the employee at the complaints counter, gets involved. When I see two Jesus freaks cornering some hapless and all too polite fellow on the street, I walk over and pick a theological argument. I like tearing born again Christians apart limb from limb and picking my teeth with the bones. That sort of propagandistic terror-spreading pisses me off more than I can express.

So if I have some hapless moron in my world, in my house mind, eating my food and making my chairs squeak, I'm not going to hold back. Fuck the game - what the fuck do you think you're doing, buddy? What are you here for? Are you aware there are four other people at the table? Are you aware of anything except your own derisive self-aggrandizing kindergarten pud-pounding jizz-spreading happiness? Hm? Can you tell me just what exactly the fucking point of killing the old man was? Go on. I'm waiting.

These are things I'm saying while standing up, looking down at the player, ready for his answer and by little freaking gnomes in the well water, it better be a goddamn GOOD answer.

My game doesn't depend on the old man transmitting any information to the party. As I said in Catskinning the week before last, if I need to put forward that information, I will find another way. What I want to know is why is my precious time being wasted. It is MY time. It's expenditure matters to me. And if some fuck intends to spend it thoughtlessly, then I want that fuck to know plain and simple that I am not happy with the robbery.

Why is it I have a game, and I don't scare all my players away? My players feel about this sort of the exactly the way I do. And it is nice for them that they don't have to handle this sort of shit personally and get their hands dirty. They have me to get my hands dirty for them.

Punishment for wrong play? Oh yeah. In my world there is.

Ah, don't take it too much to heart. I'm channelling all sorts of emotions this week.

Exclusion

I am stealing time from my online campaign in order to write this post, after suspending play there for the day. I hope my players forgive me.

I see it written all over the community that players don't like paper work or accounting. I believe that the favorite way of putting it is that no D&D player dreams of running their character as Thogred the Magnificent, Fighter-Accountant. That joke was made on this blog by an unfortunate commenter a couple days ago, but it's not the first time I've heard it.

Mind you, I've heard it from bloggers who manage to write endless blog posts about the most ridiculous garbage regurgitated from existing books and existing modules, so really all they've accomplished is the effort to scribble it all out again. It also seems to be said of players who write quite commonly on the net; who are willing to sit and design their own worlds, which requires a great deal more "accounting" than playing a character; and who often have other interests which include writing endless code for game ideas that will never see the light of day, chatting up girls on I've-Got-A-Big-Package.COM, trashing random posts on reddit, running flame wars that are based on someone else being booted for running a flame war, etc., etc. By all accounts, what I see on the net are people willing to write out a lot of words for very little expection of return.

And that's fine, obviously. It's just that, where does this myth arise that people are loathe to write out more than 18 words about their character?

What I have found through experience is that what players do HATE is being someone else's accountant. They hate being told to write out things that the DM thinks is important, and they don't like to do accounting that they don't think amounts to any purpose or has any value to the game. Here I agree ... but a player let off the chain, who recognizes that the DM has a world that's complicated with a lot of content, will happily keep even crazy levels of accounting on their own without being told. My players off-line regularly keep binders full of images they've drawn of character representations or things they wish to build, along with massive computer files or physical folders with plans they're making, notes to themselves, notes on people they've met on the campaign and so on. Online, you can see examples here and here, of the players who have been in that campaign the longest. They're not TOLD to keep these records. They want to.

Now, the online campaign is an odd thing. I never see any of the dice the players roll, I have to trust their integrity, and on top of that I am somewhat constrained to procure the kind of commitment that exists from people coming out to my home weekly or bi-weekly. Now these people online are committed, no question ... but I feel there are things I must ask of them that I don't ask of my offline characters. Keeping track of their encumbrance, for example ... which is certainly book-keeping, and certainly a prime example of something that players HATE having to calculate.

So why do I ask this of them? Is it not an unfair accounting request, adding nothing special to the game?

There's an old story about Van Halen on tour having a performance contract provision which called for a bowl of M&Ms, but with all the brown candies removed. I think probably most people who have been around know the story well, and know why the provision was there. I'll let Snopes.com give it:

"The legendary 'no brown M&Ms' contract clause was indeed real, but the purported motivation for it was not. The M&Ms provision was included in Van Halen's contracts not as an act of caprice, but because it served a practical purpose: to provide an easy way of determining whether the technical specifications of the contract had been thoroughly read (and complied with)."

The band could be reasonably sure that if the stadium was too fucking lazy to remove brown M&Ms from a bowl, they probably hadn't done their best job with the grips, the platforms, the electricals and the million other details necessary to make a concert come off without electrocuting the performers and many lesser dangers ... something impossible to know in a few hours of actually being there before the show starts.

Now, I don't need that level of commitment, but I do need something. I'm writing thousands of words of content, I'm providing the world, I'm hammering out the little statistical details like who gets what amount of experience and how much does shit cost, and frankly I'm not doing that for players who can't keep a two column list describing a thing and the weight of that thing. If I had a player whine and protest about the ARDUOUS amount of work that requires, and the immense suffering they'd go through adding two pounds one ounce to three pounds fifteen ounces, well then I'd know I had the kind of player who wasn't worth the crap his mother pushed out five minutes before his arrival ... wouldn't I?

I don't want to spend a lot more time on this for the present, but a very big part of being a good DM and having a good game is to recognize that a very great deal of your responsibility is not to fill it up with crap players who have no interest in playing a good game. You have to discriminate. You can't be a venue for all comers. You are not MacDonalds. The number of players you serve is of no account to your value as a gamer or as a designer. Save yourself a lot of effort and boot these people.

Something you can always tell about someone who talks a big picture but really doesn't run much of a game - how much lip service does he pay towards what players will or won't do? If it's a lot ... if the DM seems to turn again and again to statements like, "Players don't like this" or "I haven't had much luck getting players to buy in with this," then we're not talking about someone who is a great DM. Not because, as the gentle reader might think, because players should like these things, or because players can be made to like these things, but because a good DM will boot these loser players and fill his or her campaign with players who DO like these things.

This is a huge disconnect in the community ... the idea that because some or a majority of professed players won't do this or that, this or that shouldn't be done. It's bullshit. It means that players who won't do this or that need to be EXCLUDED from the process. They need to be dumped, ditched, shown the door, or at the very least have it explained to them in very small words that the really special games are for the really special people.

Cold? Oh yes. Inconsiderate and elitist? No shit. Add to that stuffy, pompous, self-proclaiming and profoundly smug. Add to it everything you want, that helps keep your ego intact. But I'm quite happy with my players and their willingness to meet with my approval, and I'm 100% certain that if I have not met with their approval, they wouldn't be here. So it's a two-way street. I work to keep them happy, they contribute full out and without damands for pandering.

It makes a good game.

The Bar

I'm not clear why anyone would think I wouldn't be extremely selective where it comes to players. This was a conversation last night, with a fellow who argued that not everyone needed to play exactly as I expected, and a DM ought to be tolerant of different styles of play. With that, I agree.

I don't mind if a player swears at my table. I don't mind if they get bloodthirsty, I don't mind if they're just in it for the treasure, I don't mind if they want to put off combat and just roleplay their way around a town. I don't care, particularly, what kind of game the players can agree to play - so long as there's an agreement - and I certainly don't expect people to play 'my way,' not even in reconciliation with the post I put up, How to Play a Character. That's advice. That's not an expectation.

I certainly won't let one player abuse another. I wouldn't let two people at a party of mine abuse one another; I wouldn't let two players on a soccer field abuse one another, I wouldn't let two strangers in a coffee shop abuse one another (it's the kind of thing that gets you shot or stabbed, but I still wouldn't let it happen). People want to call each other names, argue at the top of their lungs, get angry, fine; doesn't bother me. But where one person begins to use leverage against another, that's the breaking point for me. If I heard a manager openly threaten an employee with dismissal in front of me, that manager is going to have a very bad day. I'm going to make him feel very small. I don't see any difference in one player using his or her character to threaten someone else's treasured character. Abuse is abuse. I don't care what the justifications are.

But if a player wants to abuse an NPC, that's fair game. That's what NPCs are for. I'm not personally invested in my NPCs, so I see them as foils for abuse. They're marvelous little punching bags for players who need to get out their weekly frustrations upon. A player wants to leverage his power to make an NPC's life a living hell ... I'll get a real kick out of the cleverness of that.

There's nothing wrong with the abstractive need to abuse people; it's a natural condition of being human. Anyone who says they never need to do it probably ARE doing it, and are probably too stupid blind to realize they're doing it. Not abusing people takes an effort ... you have to decide not to do it when the opportunity presents.

(As an aside, I am accused of abusing people all the time; one of the truly best ways to get your thumb on another person is to accuse them of doing something considered 'bad.' But I don't abuse people here. I argue, I confound, I instigate, I do my own share of accusing - but everyone walks away with the same stuff they had coming in. I don't want anyone feeling that something's been stolen from them ... unless, maybe, it's the feeling of righteous innocence they've adopted out of sheer ignorance. I want people to feel bad, yes, for doing or believing things I think are wrong - but that's tough love. Someone has to tell you you've got your head up your butt, and if your family and friends aren't up for it, come around and I'll give it a try)

The desirable course of action would be to take your need to abuse and apply it in a harmless direction. Sports, for instance. Mass executions of imaginary goblin villages. Sugar-coated escapism. Whatever works for you. This is what I expect to find, psychologically, from people who come to play this game ... an ersatz methodology towards derailing one's frustration and stress and directing it towards a noble and enjoyable goal. And since people don't have the same stresses, or the same means of dealing with them, a DM's got to be flexible in offering the sorts of foils that are going to provide that.

So yes, I do believe a DM has to be flexible with regards to a player's particular way of playing.

That said, I reserve the right to have expectations of my own. I expect to be heard and understood at my table. That goes without saying.

I expect a player to respect the world. What I mean is that I expect the player to recognize that the world is not a joke. That when the Pirate Captain descends from the gang-plank and eyes the party with a cool, dangerous glance, I expect the party to recognize that they're in danger, and to act accordingly. I don't like having to kill characters just because they insist on being dumb-fuck stupid. It's a waste of my time. It's a waste of their time.

I expect players to leave their 'rules' about what the game is or how NPCs act or dress at the door. I expect them to realize that such rules are invented by truly bad presenters of the game, who have created these tropes because they ARE really bad at things like three-dimensional characterizations or a believable setting. Not every 8th level fighter dresses like a peacock. 10th level wizards are not duty bound to live in towers, or be snarling, difficult cliches. Fighters can be 13th level and still considerate; they can still fall in love with ordinary maidens. Not every Princess needs rescuing, not every dwarf drinks to intoxication and halflings are allowed to be very un-shirelike. In short, I don't conform to the demands and expectations of the jackass WOTC universe. I don't hold up neon signs over dangerous wilderness valleys and I don't have trucks rolling up and down streets broadcasting the level, rank and hit points of every citizen. Sometimes, players get rooked on gems they sell, sometimes they get conned, sometimes they end up looking like bleeding idiots and I don't see that as a problem. DRAMA demands that sometimes, just sometimes, it doesn't all go your way, things suck, and it's a good idea not to "try and try again." That's how the world rolls, that's how my game rolls. If the players can mistreat the NPCs, it follows the reverse is true. If the players can adventure the world and never take a damn bath, despite now being 9th level, then it follows that begger with the quarterstaff might be 9th level too. You just never know.

I expect players who realize their in MY world, not someone else's. I expect players to like that, if they're going to keep coming around. And if they don't like it, or they feel somehow it doesn't fit into their prejudices, I expect them to hit the road. A player is a fool if he doesn't realize I'm not going to weep about it.

In the meantime, I'm going to stretch myself to give the players a good game. A game unlike anything they've played. A game they can love, and feel empowered in - once they get their bearings and stop expecting me to do the work for them. After all, you can't feel power if you haven't first overcome your limitations.

I'm there to raise the bar. I expect players who want to clear it.

Meet the Dweebs

Why is it every time I meet D&D players in the real world, they always turn out to be such fucking dweebs?

On the bus home yesterday I sat across from a twenty-something couple in an intense argument about whether or not it would be possible to strangle a god to death; she was arguing for, and he was arguing against, and it became clear after awhile that he was her DM in the game they were playing.  So naturally I spoke up and got involved.

After the initial shock of meeting someone who's almost fifty who understood what they were on about, we got into a three-way discussion about a flood of "practical" game advice - mostly given by them to me.  I learned really important things about why NOT to game with the Devil (he cheats); about how to beat Death (take his scythe away); about the exact wording of wish spells; about how duplicate gods exist in multiple universes, so that if you kill one here the others will be aroused; and how having mass numbers of attacks enables you to kill gods and thus become one yourself.  There was a great deal of discussion about super-powerful magical weapons and which ones are best wished for when you get a wish.  And all this in just under 23 minutes.

I'd say the game is divided between people who would read the above and think, "Good Discussion," and those doing a face-palm right now, thinking, "Oh my gawd this same old shit again."

Guess which camp I fall into.

There's no wonder in my mind why people who do not play this game see players as a bunch of flakey morons.  I can imagine what the others on the packed bus thought while probably not comprehending most of it.  If someone else did know, he or she wisely kept quiet.  I kept quiet for the most part, letting them ramble on in that "keen" or "cool" way people have of getting excited about their thing.  I did say that I had a world.  I didn't offer details, however, and naturally they asked no questions - that type never does.  I learned that they were players of Pathfinder; they got off the bus having no idea what edition I played.

I have to laugh when a conversation about playing the game includes the phrase, "Whenever I have a wish spell ..."

In thirty years of play I have given exactly two wish spells to players.  One resulted from a Deck of Many Things.  I can't remember what it was used for; I think the party returned to somewhere.  The other resulted from a randomly rolled scroll - and it was used to resurrect a permanently lost player character (a mountain fell on him).  My personal opinion is that I don't fuck players who use wish spells by twisting words or reading everything as an entendre.  That sort of thing popped up out of Victorian morality, based on the premise that anyone who ever gets anything for free should be punished for the good of their souls.  I have a more Chinese opinion about these things.  I think a player should be given precisely what he or she wants - which often will not be as wonderful as they hoped.

Oh, during the discussion about becoming a god I learned that the fellow's character in another campaign had become 25th level after a year and a half of campaigning.  I'm never clear about the structure of measuring these intensive games of plentitude - once you blow the doors off restraint, what keeps you from making the treasure 60,000 gold for killing four trolls as opposed to 40,000?  When you massacre 113 frost giants with 113 swings of your sword, do you give 1,000 gold per frost giant or 2,000 gold?  How does one decide, exactly?  Is one necklace of missiles ever enough?  Shouldn't everyone have a bag of holding, and isn't it necessary that every member of the party have some kind of artifact, just so no one feels left out?

I've never been clear on those things.

My apologies to all the pud-pounding fantasy fan-types out there, but there really is a more sophisticated way to play this game than figuring out how many magic swords you can hang around your waist.  See, it's like the two ways to see the purpose of movies.

There are fans of a movie like Transformers, where the thrill is about big honking robots fighting.  The reason is entirely unimportant.  The only reason to have actors at all is because they're cheaper to film than CGI.  You need to plant people in their seats for 120 minutes, and since the budget only allows for 10 minutes of CGI, you've got to fill the other 110 minutes with something.  It might as well be with Megan Fox and some dweeb with which the audience can identify.  Gamers who like this sort of thing just want to be big robots, smashing around, and the more magic the better.

I'm more of a Ratatouille fan myself, where the big climax in the film is making someone change their mind.  If there were giant robots in the world, it would probably take about five minutes for them to start fighting each other.  So, not much effort there.  But people actually have minds that CAN change, yet it happens with such infrequency that it's possible for human beings to get excited about it. Therefore, my games are about changing people.

I'd rather play a game where players think, where curiousity carries more weight than wishing and getting.  I'd very much rather stop meeting freaking morons who think the opposite.

For the Players

Pretty much figures.  Use the word 'responsibility' in a blog post title and watch a slow day pass on the blogometer.

I have really noticed this past three months a diminished lack of time and motivation to "work" on D&D.  The job is a bigger stress this year, with new responsibilities and new angst.  I'm getting older and I'm tired more of the time.  And I've been running three campaigns, and three campaigns need one fuck load of diagrams, design, plans, preparation, thought and effort.

But you know what?  I'm having a blast.  I may be spending less time working at macro-D&D, but the micro is going fuckin' great.  I know that some people might be concentrating on the player troubles and so on I've had this last three months, but meh ... player troubles are part of this game.  Just as actors who pout, or actors who quit, or actors who turn up for rehearsals drunk or having not done the work.

You know, I fired a sound technician once on the eve of a performance I was directing.  He was a part-time musician, and did a lot of gigs and a few drugs (what musician doesn't), and I had known him for years.  But he didn't show up for any of the tech meetings three weeks prior to dress rehearsal and did not return my calls.  For all I knew, he was molding over in a ditch somewhere - so a week before we started, I replaced him.  The woman proved a brilliant coup; she was much better at her job, had great ideas and managed to bring the whole show into line in just nine days.

She had set us up, and I was about twenty-five feet above the floor fixing lights, when the old sound man came waltzing in, ready to set up his equipment.  This is about 27 hours before performance, you understand.

If you think that a few nasty words between people on the internet disturbs me, you've never participated in a shouting match after firing someone, while hanging from the ceiling rafters.  I was not coming down just to kick the asshole out on his ear; and the asshole decided he was going to stage a calculated tantrum because the performance hadn't been organized around his schedule.  Naturally, there's about twenty people standing around listening.  They don't want to deal with it.  They're all goddamn busy, they're excited about the performance, they're anxious to do the dress rehearsal.  As ever, though, there's always one self-centered little shit who hasn't done a damn thing to justify whatever behavior or "stand" they've decided to make at this moment that is so fucking convenient for them.

Well, people like that don't worry me.  I let it go on about five minutes, then shouted down to the venue owner to call the cops.  Turned out, his picking up the phone ended the argument immediately.

Reality is, in D&D or anywhere else, you do what you have to do to make the experience as profitable for everyone involved.  I love that the people playing in my games seem to be enjoying a hell of a lot of profit, and I take pride that I'm instrumental in making that profit happen.  Oh yes, I know the poor suffering insufferable internet pricks who can't understand why I'm so intolerant, and they must have their moment to scream about my intolerance.  The only reason I have comment moderation is because the pricks can't stop themselves.  And I'm willing to be the prick if that's what it takes to keep the peace.  Obviously, its not understood that someone HAS to be ... despite about a million pieces of evidence in the world.

If you want to be a good DM, you have got to manage yourself and you've got to manage people.  You can't be afraid of them.  You can't let them push you around.  You can't apologize when they bitch and moan about nothing.  Develop some principles and stand up to them.

Then give everything you've got to people so fabulous they deserve everything you've got.

This is written in thanks to all the players.  I don't thank you enough.  You guys are great to DM for.

Handling Difficult Players

Everyone finds dungeon mastering hard, especially at the beginning.  The game itself is terribly complicated; the level of creativity required carries the same doubts and inadequacies any artist has; and inherent are all the difficulties a new manager faces when promoted over his or her friends.

I think it is probably easiest on the young.  At fifteen, an individual isn't nearly as introspective or doubtful as they are at 25.  At fifteen, one is more likely to take on the task out of sheer stubbornness, with little or no concern at the prospect of 'managing' friends, or concerns about 'screwing up.'   At fifteen, screwing up gets to be a lifestyle, what with parents, teachers, coaches and every other authority figure explaining how you have, ad nauseum.  It is harder to screw up at 30, particularly if you've gotten good at your job, you have some authority and no one beyond the occasional driver has called you a fuck-up in years.

If you keep at it - diligently, mind - you will eventually learn all the rules; you will develop tools to enable you to create more elaborately and efficiently; and you will manage even large groups with the confidence of an experienced executive.  After a year or two, you'll find yourself comfortably facing a collection of rowdy players with the knowledge you were born to do this.

In smoothing out your campaign, you'll come to decide what rules you will or won't play.  You'll consider your players, debating with them what you'll propose, but in the end you'll make the decision you want, that better facilitates your personal style as a DM and the particulars of your world.

If most of your gaming consists of running one party year after year, changes in your campaign will become calcified.  Character creation and combat will cease to change.  You'll find it hard to play in - or relate to - other campaigns.  You'll chuckle when you hear someone is playing a rule you abandoned ten years ago.  You won't believe people won't play with a modification that's proved magnificent for you, that you began using before Y2K was an issue.

These rule changes - and your ease in getting and keeping regular players - results from your confidence as a DM.  You're entitled to do what you want.  Those who play in your world have abandoned their other game experiences because it is worth it to them to accept what you say as gospel.  Not only because it's the DM's world, but because you're giving them something they can't get elsewhere.
I don't encourage a DM's world to run as unquestioned dogma.  Players should point out flaws in my reasoning when I run; I want players to comprehend the rules, and to know that there are reasons why a particular element of the game is played this or that way.  I don't like the words, "because I said so".  There has, however, been a calcification of certain rules in my world; not because I said so, but because I have had and seen so many people play by these rules, I know how they affect the game and I know that players are able to adapt to them.  Further, I know the problems in the game that are solved by such rules, and I don't wish to throw out the rule and regain the problem.

I've been playing for thirty-three years, and as such, there are many such rules.

I have noted the problems with my world arise with players due to two inflexible positions:

1)  I am doing this, no matter what anyone says.
2)  I won't do that, no matter what anyone says.

The first applies entirely to actions the player intends to take.  Usually, it is something that will result in almost certain death; where the death is uncertain, the odds are long, often ridiculously long.  More often than not, it is other players who will beg the one player to get down off the ledge.  As a DM I find myself forced to make a decision about whether or not to argue a player down about every fifth session or so.

In part, the phenomenon occurs when tension in the campaign increases to a point where the players feel powerless and desperate.  Usually, some indeterminate solution will take hold of a party - it's a little scary to watch them build themselves up - then like Linguini bursting through the door in Ratatouille, it will go something like, "LOOK ... I know it's stupid and weird, but ... so let's do this thing!"

I try to be understanding and forgiving, and not kill parties when they do this.  I often have lots of time.  While the party is squabbling and wrestling with their tactics on how they're going to take on this enemy that I know as DM is going to seriously kill them (I don't balance encounters), I'm thinking hard for reasons why the enemy won't want to, or how I could spontaneously get some help for the party (maybe the servants in the surrounding houses could flood out into the street with brooms or something).

Human beings, if driven to the breaking point, will do stupid things; if your party is doing stupid things, then you, O Dungeon Master, are driving them to the breaking point.  Congratulations ... you have achieved immersion.

On the other hand, there are particular individuals who consistently play their characters as deliberately obtuse as possible:  I don't care, I'm stealing that pouch; I don't care what the Lord says, I'm doing it; screw you, its my armor, I found it; well, you can go if you want to, but I'm staying here; fine, you stay here, I'm going.  And so on.

I don't have any sympathy for these players.  Most of the time they are so bullheaded, selfish and dumb that they don't last long; or they quickly get upset with not being given their special place in the sun that they pack their books and head home.  I've had a party enter a dungeon with one player who steadfastly refused to go in - so I ran the party that went down the stairs, all night.  The one recalcitrant player sat around for four hours, sulking, reading or otherwise amusing himself, ignored by the rest of the party - good for them! - and ignored by me.  He never came back.

What he expected, of course, was that I would put the other four people on hold and invent some wonderful adventure solely for him.

This last is an example where number 2 above, people who WON'T do something, applies to the character's action in the campaign.  Rarely, however, this applies to the rules themselves - those same calcified rules I've gotten used to playing.

These are people who haven't quite gotten comfortable with the DM having control over their own game.  They want to play by certain rules that they are comfortable with, and when they find those rules aren't established in the campaign, these players "exercise their option" to walk out of your campaign - always, of course, with the mandatory apology for "having wasted your time."

Now, as a DM, you're going to run into this issue, and there are things you should keep in mind.

First, anyone who approaches, enters and runs in your campaign, with the idea firmly in their mind that leaving at any time is an option, is going to be trouble.  As Mark Twain said, "Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option."  It would never occur to most DMs to have it in mind that booting a player from a campaign on the turn of a rule was an acceptable practice.  As a DM, you take it upon yourself to be responsible for your players; you organize the campaign for them; you create circumstances in which they can succeed or fail; and you attempt to do this without taking advantage of the player's vulnerability, nor lording your supposed power as DM over them.  If a player makes a mistake, do you scream at them, demand to know what the fuck is wrong with them, then boot them from your campaign?

No.  But you will have players do this to YOU.  They will declare that you've broken player trust or that you've deliberately ruined their chances or some other ridiculous accusation - any of which, if true, would have probably been due to the DM making a mistake somewhere along the way, a mistake that could certainly be fixed within the structure of the game.  DMs make mistakes.  Everyone makes mistakes.  But if the mistake made by a player carries with it the understanding of the dungeon master, it follows that a mistake made by the dungeon master ought to be understood by the player.

The other thing you must understand is that your rules will undergo criticism from time to time.  Remember that players will, it is sad to say, come and go.  Those who are not happy with your rules will find someone's rules they are happy with, or will settle down and make a world of their own.  But your world will be in your possession for a long, long time; and you should play by the rules that make you comfortable and happy.  The game cannot be played without you; but you can play your game without a given player.  So do not become too upset if a given player doesn't see things your way.  You've been working on this world since the beginning.  They've only been here for a few weeks.

While they will be sorry for having "wasted your time," you need not be sorry for having wasted theirs.  After all, their time is only wasted because they made the choice to pitch the time they spent on a frivolous bit of stubborn selfishness.  Save your apologies for when you - irrationally - turn to a player and decide you don't like the cut of their jib:  "Hit the road, buddy.  Sorry I wasted your time."

Epilogue

That's a good place to end the post, but this one isn't quite done yet.  I've had some trouble with players on the net lately, the kind of trouble I haven't had since I used to run strangers at conventions ... and wow, do I hate conventions.  I've had three particularly troublesome players in the last two years, and being that I'm a scientist at heart, I've got enough of a sampling now to make a hypothesis.

(Mind you, that's a hypothesis: a deductive prediction of the outcome to be determined from collecting data.  I don't say this is fact.  Please take note of the English words I use)

I am noticing certain elements which I feel might be used to determine who is a bad player.  I don't suppose I've ever deduced these elements before, because I've almost always had good players - i.e., I've stayed away from conventions.  Here are some warning signs I'd like to advance:

1)  Consistent dissatisfaction with the entire character generating process, particularly with incorporated advice on how it might be done differently, how other games manage the process, and comments upon things your particular process has or doesn't have.

2)  An unusual number of questions about your campaign which can't possibly be relevant to a first-time, first-level player.  If the player is entering your world, knows they are running with a low-level party, and is filling the character creation process with questions about what sorts of men-at-arms they'll get when their ninth level, or whether or not there are oliphants in your world and if they can be ridden, the player is almost certainly going to prove extraordinarily demanding and expectant where it comes to treasure/reward.

3)  A preoccupation with the amount of armor/number of weapons available to the player.  This is particularly so in reference to how concerned the character is with the possibility of being hit.  If you point out that the character's chance of being hit in battle is only 15% - and they express dissatisfaction with that - expect trouble.

4)  A clear disinterest in many peripheral details about the character that you've included but which don't seem to make much of an impression; this could be anything, really, as it depends on your world.  But if you as DM think that something is important, and the player fails to notice despite several statements on your part, a serious disconnect will occur.

5)  Strong dissatisfaction is expressed regarding scarcity - too few hit points, too little wealth, too few magic items, not enough combat, too much difficulty in obtaining supplies, or the player has generally too much trouble with the ordinary business of surviving ... anything beyond an infrequent complaint about any of these or other scarcities suggests a problem.  Everyone has a right to complain.  Most people know when to stop.

6)  Any pervading preoccupation or obsession with things that happened previously in the campaign; players who don't live in the NOW, but continue to concern themselves with mistakes they made once upon a time, and the need to atone for those mistakes.  Atonement is a terrible, cloying thing that is never really possible, but will nevertheless effectively kill a player's ability to enjoy the campaign.

I think in the future, if and when I ask for online players, instead of asking what they'll do with their characters, I will instead ask their opinions on the above six points.