Loving this Game

I have returned, having seen much of southern British Columbia and some of Washington State.  I've had time to think and consider recent matters, and have come to a fully positive conclusion.

Silly that it should be so glaringly obvious, but let me explain how I bumped straight into what should have been staring me in the face.

We visited Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island on Wednesday, obtaining the right sort of cloudy-sunny day for it.  Tamara can walk for a distance of a few thousand steps, but she struggles beyond that; as such, we'd made certain that I could obtain a wheelchair from the Gardens to use for our support, for as long as we were there.  This required that I fill out a form, acknowledging my responsibility for the chair, for the damage that might be done, for any accidents that might occur while using the chair and so on, given that the Gardens are full of steep slopes and it would be easy for such accidents to occur.

I never mind about such things, but I like to play with such regulations in what I consider a fully fair manner.  Therefore, when I returned the wheelchair, I demanded a receipt for the chair, explaining that since I'd been made responsible for the thing, I wanted to make it absolutely clear that I was no longer responsible now that it was returned.

This obtained a rather excellent response, as they were put on their heels, wondering whether or not they should comply.  "No one's ever asked us to do this before," said the 20-something girl to me, somewhat befuddled.

"That's because you've never met a lawyer before," I answered smoothly, letting her believe, absolutely, that I was a lawyer.

And so, she signed her name to the same form that I had filled out, and the date, and handed it to me ... asking, "How long have you been a lawyer."

"Oh I'm not a lawyer," I answered.  "I'm a writer."

This broke the ice, and soon she was explaining, to me, how this obviously proved that I knew how to research things.  I explained that there was no point in telling people, most of the time, that "I'm a writer," because most people automatically believe this means "I write, but I don't make any money at it."  She didn't believe that.  I assured her it was true.  "I've been a writer for 45 years," I said, "and for half of that time, I didn't make any money, and for the other half, I have.  But the reaction from people is the same."

This roused her into a praising speech about the importance of writers and why I shouldn't worry about what people think of me, etcetera ... which ended in her asking, "What do you write?"

I gave the standard, simplified answer, highlighting the part of my writing that I like.  "I teach people how to play Dungeons and Dragons."

"NO WAY!" was her excited answer.  She had me write down this blog and my email, and for all I know she's reading this today ... but I wish the reader here could have seen the look on her face at the moment she learned that the total stranger she was speaking to actually played and liked D&D.  It was ... enlightening.

The tag line on this blog reads, "I Love the Game of D&D."  And so I do.  And it's stupid to worry about why a campaign might disintegrate or go it's own way, however frustrating that is, or whatever it might portend about my finding other players.  I love this game.  And I'm going to go on playing this game, whatever that takes, whatever that makes me look like, whatever inconveniences that arise.  Or however people might believe that my choice to play this game, my way, online, offline, is right, wrong, odd, goofy or pointless.  Because I love this game.

It is something that, for whatever reason, is easy to forget in the midst of those who see, instead, an opportunity for drama, rather than an opportunity to play.

I shall be investigating new avenues of loving this game in the weeks ahead.

Messing with the DM's Head

In the film Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the latter character delivers the line, "Happy endings are stories that haven't finished yet."  Consider the application of this within an ongoing D&D campaign and a dungeon master's description of the immediate circumstances and interactions which the players might experience.  As things take place for the players in real time, the campaign has no predefined ending with an expected conclusion.  Instead, the campaign is an ever-evolving story shaped by the actions and decisions of the players, whose choices in the here and now defines whatever's going to happen next.

The players therefore have no expectations thrust upon them.  They're free to do whatever they like, presently, according to their whim.  There are no guaranteed successes, no situations in which they must succeed in order to fulfill the next part of the adventure's expectation, no need to vie for a "happy ending" or indeed any kind of ending at all.

So long, of course, that the DM can continue to improvise a game that occurs in front of the players, that maintains a sentiment of fun, excitement, threat, opportunity, novelty and so on.  Such a game would require a setting capable of constantly inspiring the DM, so that the events that circled the players had little chance of getting stale with repetition.

That's a big ask.  Yet there's an inherent quality here that is wholly overlooked by the need to always make the game bigger and better in order to please the players:  it shoves the responsibility for what happens off the DM's shoulders and onto the players ... where it ought to be.

This is the D&D that I played when I started the game, that in fact everyone played.  This what the game that I fell in love with as a player, since I was totally free to take responsibility for my own actions and the DM was responsible only for answering my questions and deciding if what I wanted to do was practical.  Since I'm a sharp-minded fellow, I could usually figure out a series of steps that would build one upon the other, all believable, that would force the DM to comply with my plans.

For example, let's say that my player wants to start a riot in the city, preferably a big one, to produce a lot of chaos, violence, buildings on fire and so on, for the purpose of seizing the daughter of an important official, keeping her as a prisoner in a dungeon where she could be reprogrammed in the manner of Patty Hearst, whose public exploits occurred just four years before I began playing D&D.  Clearly, these steps are completely out of the realm of a typical DM's imagination, and while utterly evil in scope, "evil" is an alignment and thus fully and freely available to the player in the original game.  So how is it done?

Well, in the first place, we do not tell the DM that we plan to start a riot.  Our plans are none of the DM's business; it's not for the DM to have a say in what we're going to do, because the more in the dark the DM is, the better our chances of encouraging the DM to think that the "riot" is an original idea the DM is having.  Don't you see?  The idea is to inspire NPCs to respond in a manner of the DM's choosing, which fits the DM's expectations, by deliberately taking steps as a player that makes the DM think the way we want him or her to think.  That way, when the riot happens, it's the DM that foments it; and while fomenting it, the DM thinks the riot is an obstacle for us, the player, which encourages the DM to make it a big riot.

Whereupon, the girl we've already subtly identified is, without the DM expecting it, found and snatched in the ensuing panic, which the DM has started and cannot now claim isn't affecting the whole city.  When we tell the DM, surely the girl's father is busy with the riot, the DM sits there, stunned, trying to speak, trying to figure out some way to fuck us over, but it's too late for that now.  In short order, we kick in the door of the house, slaughter the servants and seize the girl.  The DM is so shocked by our willingness to brutality that he or she has trouble recovering from moment to moment, while we have quick answers for every inquiry.  We seize curtains, quickly tie the girl up like a rug (we've read G.B. Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, while the DM hasn't) and in no time we've seized horses, killed a few more "citizens" the DM has thrown at us as an obstacle and ridden out of town, the girl across our saddle.

Now, the DM thinks we're going to ransom her, because it would never occur to most people that we're going the Patty Hearst route.  But with those events, there were books published about what the Symbionese party did and how and with what resources, and we're fully prepared now to run that playbook ...

Playing is a mind game, where the DM is gotten around by making the DM think he or she is in control.  I don't think this is understood by most people, since all the trappings of control seem to be in the DM's possession.  It seems for nearly all players that the way to obtain those trappings is to wheedle them out from the DM.  But the truth is that the DM is a person, and one person at that, and not necessarily the smartest person in the room.  There are multiple players, and if willing, and given the chance to enjoy the game's intended freedom, without the bullshit of stories and all else that I spoke of in the previous post, the DM can be gaslighted, derailed and gish galloped all over the place, while the player provides sufficient circular reasoning, moves enough goalposts, loads questions to the maximum and so on to have the DM chasing his or her tail into next week.

Is that fair.  Of course it is!  This is a game, a mind game, a game that is succeeded at not by having the best background or spewing forth language in the best thespian fashion, but by players getting what they want, how they want it, in as large an amount as they desire.  And technically, there's no rule in the game that says that as players, we're somehow required to reveal out intentions or plans to the DM, or act in accordance with the DM's wishes, or be nice to the NPCs, or respect the game world's authority, or anything else that might fit with the expectations of "polite society" but don't in fact mean a gawddamned thing with regards to actual game play.

I want to raid the dungeon and take everything it has, with a minimum of risk and to the best of my ability.  There are no rules that say I have to do this in the "standardised" way of walking into the place, single file, like pigs to the slaughter, except a lack of imagination for it being done any other way.

We keep getting told that it's a game of imagination, but apparently none of the players are allowed to have any.

None of this threatens me as a DM ... because, for the most part, I'd find it hilariously funny if the players in my game world kidnapped the daughter of a rich powerful man and turned her into Patty Hearst.  I'd lose nothing, the game would be interesting, I'd wonder what weird damn thing they were going to do next and it would be fun.  I don't give a fuck how the players want to enter a dungeon.  That is not my responsibility.  I provide a game world where the players are responsible for what they do, and responsible for the consequences they receive ... and that's all.  It is in no way my responsibility to make the game "fun" for them, or help them "shine," or any other damned thing that the jargon ministers think ought to be included in my behaviour.

I run a world.  It's quite a task, coming up with new stuff to throw every week, managing massive amounts of detail and keeping a running description of said world at the pace the players need it.  I'm already busy.  Game culture can take it's manufactured expectations of me and shove them, I don't have time for all that crap.  I'm running a game here, not a nursery for pampered players.  They're free to invent shit to do for themselves.  If they want a "great campaign" to be a part of, what's wrong with their imaginations?  Why can't they do it?  They've got one hell of a lot more time on their hands than I have, don't they?

Consequences on Consequences

"From the tail of his eye he saw the Natividad looming up, but he could spare no attention for her. For the moment she represented merely a tiresome interruption to his work, not a menace to his life.

"Then once more he was engulfed in the smoke and din of the Natividad's broadside. He felt the wind of shot round him, and heard the scream of splinters. The cries of the man under the carronade ceased abruptly, and beneath his feet he could feel the crash as the shot struck home in the Lydia's vitals. But he was mesmerised by the necessity of completing his task. The mizzen stay parted under his axe; he saw another rope draw up taut, and cut that as well — the pattern of the seams of the deck planking at that point caught his notice — felt another severed and flick past him, and then knew that the Lydia was free from the wreckage. Almost at his feet lay young Clay, sprawled upon the deck, but Clay had no head. He noted that as an interesting phenomenon, like the pattern of the deck seams.

"A sudden breaking wave drenched him with spray; he swept the water from his eyes and looked about him. Most of the men who had been on the quarterdeck with him were dead, marines, seamen, officers."

— from The Happy Return by C.S. Forester.

Re-reading this excellent post from JB, who argues diligently that D&D is not about "stories," I'm reminded of the above scene in which the British ship Lydia goes toe-to-toe with the much larger Natividad, a scene that runs two chapters, I think, and the two vessels blow the hell out of each other one brutal paragraph at a time.  I've taken the above out of the middle of the action; the whole passage runs the complete chapter, and it's madness unabated, with cannon fire steadily tearing both ships apart over time.

It is a "story" in the sense that it's part of a novel, and the end of the battle has consequences, but with Forester being the writer he was, with an engaged interest in sea travel and battle, it's clear that he's much more interested in describing what such a battle was like, this one taking place somewhere about 1804.  Forester, writing the book in 1937, spares no kindness in essaying the most brutal scenes imaginable ... such as the almost casual death of Clay, who is there one moment and dead the next.  Clay is a secondary character in the book to this point, a young midshipman with prospects — but unlike a traditional story, "prospects" aren't good enough to keep you alive in a battle.  The good die right alongside the bad, without the least compunction on nature's part.

And it's here, I think, where we have a written example of what D&D's actually like.  The stories that JB is speaking of, that he justly counsels others to go out and write in books and not use in D&D, are inherently the type that assumes the group of plucky characters are going to survive whatever happens, with all the plot armour the DM can muster.  But actual D&D offers no such promise.  In my last game session (I haven't run in two months, due to my vacation and that of other players), a fairly large dragon crashed half-conscious near the players, who had taken precautions though they had no idea what to expect.  If they hadn't taken precautions, one or more might have taken upwards of 75 or a 100 damage — enough to kill most characters up to 10th level, and quite a few above that.

In D&D, you can never be sure you're not going to walk into something that will kill you, like a ball neatly removes Clay's head above.  And because of that, when something hoves into sight, like a huge ship that's about to release a broadside, everyone has reason to think they might die this round.  There's a good chance they won't — but they don't know for sure.  And that drastically changes the dynamic during play.

Not only during actual battle, but because much of the setting is unknown.  And here I don't speak of the trap waiting to be tripped, that kills the player.  Rather, the unusual situation, like the Ice Cave linked above, where the player's progressive examinations and choices produce an unexpected, yet reasonable result, without anyone having specifically pulled the wrong lever or stepping on the wrong bit of floor.  Gameplay isn't about one consequence; it's about the possible combination of multiple consequences for multiple actions, coinciding together into something utterly unforeseen.

I understand that's not in the experience of a lot of players.  Many games tend to be quite stale.  Yes, it's still take an action, see what happens, take another action, see again what happens.  On the other hand, it's possible to create a scene where multiple players can do different things in different places, out of sight of one another, though technically all locked in the same battle.  Take the scene with the goblins I wrote about in June.  Because the party's hunting goblins through varying tunnels, without always being able to see what some other group has stumbled across, at any time group A. can make a decision to do something that group B. assumes can't affect them.  For example, someone, somewhere, is wrestling with a door, while someone else is preparing to cast burning hands.  When the door opens, the goblins above pour hot boiling oil down a shaft, with the now open door at the bottom.  The oil flows and splashes everywhere, just as the mage unleashes the burning hands spell.

Multiple choices, multiple consequences.  Fun, fun, fun.

The thrill of the open game isn't just that the players have agency, and can do what they want.  It's also that they can't be sure that something they do will definitely end well or badly.  Unlike a story, where that's been decided, the players are victims of chance and possibility.

It's far more interesting.

_____

If you wish to comment, please write questions, ideas or opinions to alexiss1@telus.net and they will be posted on Saturdays.  I do wish someone would, as Saturday's the day after tomorrow, and I haven't got anything to put there yet.

If you wish to make a donation to Patreon, it will be greatly appreciated and help with costs for illustrating the Streetvendor's Guide.

First Principles

Of late, I've been thinking about the first principles underlying my affection for D&D.  To start, why did I take to the game so strongly at the beginning, so that it became a central part of my creative drive?

To start, I grew fascinated with the sheer power it offered.  As a player, within the limitations of space, time and having a mortal body, I could do anything I might imagine.  Organise an army and raid a castle?  check.  Use that army to appropriate money and establish myself as the monarch?  check.  Employ diplomacy to make allies of other monarchs in order to form a coalition stronger than any other in the world?  check.  Use that coalition to conquer the world?

check.

In essence, my view of what D&D should be used for was from the perspective of a bond villain.

Unfortunately, as the DM had more power than the player, and as DMs in my youth tended towards smaller perspectives and goals, we the players had to be tomb robbers.  Read that with the thought that after getting hired by Disneyland, you learn your job's going to be cleaning toilets.

So it was tomb after tomb for a long time, until I worked out how to manipulate the DM during those brief moments we'd visit a town to exchange our loot for gear.  I began to ask how to invest my loot into other things ... like, how much does the bar next door actually cost?  Or, can I get a house built?  And a tower.  And I'd get back answers like, "the book says you're not allowed to build a castle until you're 9th level."

Whereupon I'd say, "If I put a bunch of stones on top of other stones, how many stones does it take for the book police in the game world to show up and check my pulse to find out what level I am?"

To which the answer would be, "Um ..."

Then I'd say, without waiting for an answer, "If it's a so-called world, with so-called 'people,' and we can't tell what level any of the NPCs are, then how does anyone in this world know whether or not I'm high enough level to build a castle, hire men or anything else?"

And in response, "Um ..."

By the time I'd played the game a year, and had read all the books twice, and gotten used to all the aspects of play, I could fuck up a DM pretty hard with questions like this, one after another, until I got what I wanted.  I wasn't willing to wait to be told that, "in a game of imagination," I had to wait until I'd passed some arbitrary guide post that made no sense at all in the game's setting that I was allowed to do something.  Fuck that.  I have money for stone, in my pocket, plus money for contractors ... so tell me how much my tower costs.

This galvanised the other players, who found the scales falling from their eyes, and right off they wanted things too.  Turns out, constant day-in and day-out tomb robbing is unfulfilling.

[as Jack and Jim wend their way down a narrow, dripping tunnel, acrid torches pouring fire over the cold roof stones]

Jack: Hey, Jim, you ever wonder why we do this?

Jim: Do what?

Jack: Constantly return to dank places like this.  I mean, it's not that I'm uncertain we're going to find whatever's down here, kill it, and take all its gold, but in the bigger picture ... why are we doing this again?

Jim: Well ... it passes the time.  And bits of it are exciting.

Jack: Okay, I'll grant you that.  But still.  Jus ... just here me out.  I have a ton of coin right now.  You have a ton of coin.  Fran, back there, she has a ton of money.  None of us are lacking for money.  So we're not in this for the money, right?

Jim: No, we're in it for the adventure.

Jack: Ah, yes.  But let's just look at that a moment, huh?  We keep plumbing down into the depths of these caverns looking for deadlier and deadlier monsters — because what we used to kill before is so easy to kill now that its boring — and half the time we come within a hair's breadth of the whole party getting killed.  Then we carry all the gold out ... gold we don't need, I'm just saying ... and head back to town, where we heal up and drink ale until we go out and do it all again.  The same old way, time after time.  I'm just asking why?  With all this money we have, we could build a castle or something.

Jim: We're not 9th level yet.

Jack:  What does that mean?  What's a level?  Now come on, man.  Remember that village we raided on the coast.  We waded in, slaughtered half the people, took all their gold and then we left.  We left.  Why didn't we just stay?  We were obviously tougher than the whole town!

Jim:  Whatta we gonna do in a village?  There ain't no monsters in a village.

Jack:  Then why were we there?

Jim:  Duh.  Gold.

Jack:  All right.  Follow me here.  Where did the gold come from?  How did the village get all the gold.

Jim: The DM?

As soon as my fellow players began to follow my lead, it began to sort out DMs from the chaff.  For a time I played in some really terrific campaigns, as DMs tried hard to keep up with our wants and needs ... but in the end, each felt the pressure overwhelming them.  And each, in turn, shut their campaigns down.

As they did, and I was left as the last DM standing among my associates, I forgot that my friends had tried.  In fact, I forgot until just a few days ago, as I reviewed my memories.  It's something I should have remembered before I went gangbusters on this blog 15 years ago.  Back then, I began to ask for things as a player that others could not do as a DM.  And here, for all these years, I've been asking DMs to do something that most of them can't do ... and for the most part, not because they won't (though I've framed it that way hundreds of times).

They can't do it because they can't.  Partly because they don't know how, which I've tried to manage, but I'm increasingly coming to believe that's not a solution.  And partly because they've been bred, like Jim, to a particular sort of viewpoint that they cannot see past, because there's no reason for them to see past it.

Most of all, however, I think it's because my perception of the game is utterly alien to the human experience.

I fell in love with writing in and around grade 3, at the age of 8 or 9.  Four years later I knew that what I wanted to do for a living was to write.  The thing about writing is that it's about inventing your own world.  Even more so than D&D, because it's about convincing the reader that whatever happens, it's reasonable and possible for that thing to happen.  If we're speaking non-fiction, it's about convincing the reader that the thing being said is true.  That these events in history actually happened.  That this part of the body is responsible for the way you're feeling right now.  That the star you're looking at gets dimmer and brighter at predictable intervals.

Everything about writing is about convincing someone of something, even if it's that Dick and Jane really are running.  But people in general, I've found, suck at convincing anyone of anything, even when they try really, really hard.  And this includes me.  Just look how hard and how long I've worked to raise D&D to a higher standard ... with the only people I've been able to convince being people who already agreed with me.

My accomplishment here hasn't been that I'm writing to someone other than the choir.  It's that I've been able to keep the choir amused for this long.

Most can't even do that.  The largest problem with D&D is that it asks people to master the game; people who are barely able to master themselves.  Their momentary success, for the most part, lies in finding a group of people who want to play D&D ... which is easy enough.  We're all here because we like the same thing.  The deeper problem, however, is maintaining that interest once it's given.  For a period that's at least as long as an entire season of Stranger Things.  Most DMs attempt to do this without ever having witnessed another DM doing this.  Imagine that.

If anyone wants to succeed at DMing, it requires a skill set that comes from something other than D&D.  Writing.  Performance.  Design.  Film-making.  It's a way of thinking on your own that the game's not gonna give you, that you're not going to find in the rules, that you won't "pick up" as you go along.  If you've never felt a moment of honest, real power, one that allows you to choose your own absolute destiny in real time, where you choose where you're going to go despite all the forces of nature and culture that says "no" to you ... then you're never, ever, going to master D&D, or any role-playing game, in any real sustainable sense.  Your best hope is to pick up a bunch of losers who keep turning up at your game because they've got nowhere else to go.

And you don't want to run that crowd.

So, if you're not figuring out what it is to DM, then I suggest you put the game down for a few years and learn how to do something you can control, so that you know what real control feels like.  Become an actor.  Learn how to sail.  Go outside right now and try to convince someone of something they don't believe.  Try hard.  Learn how.

It's your only hope.

The Tight Play

I recall that when I played D&D, rather than run it, my favourite tactic was to "play my cards close to my chest" ... that is, say nothing of what I intended to do, before doing it.

I didn't, as my own players do, and virtually every player I've ever run, spend a long amount of time discussing first what they think they might do, then a little longer discussing when to do it, and some more time discussing if they should do it, before tentatively doing it while continuing to speak in the future tense.  That is, "We're going to go to the town," or, "I'm going to hit it with my sword."  Getting players to speak in the present tense about what their characters "do," as opposed to what they're "going to do," can be like pulling teeth.  In fact, I've had players argue steadfastly that it's proper to give actions in the future tense, in case the DM wants to disallow the action.

As if I couldn't disallow an action stated in the present tense.

The ongoing confab is understandable.  All too often a loose cannon — someone who goes ahead and does something without discussion — decides that the thing that needs to be done is something enormously stupid, like killing the old man explaining what's going on or setting the bar on fire.  Acts like this increase the general party's need to control the actions of other players, particularly the very dumb ones, and the confab is a rational, reasonable approach to that problem.

Unfortunately — and rarely does a party understand this — it gives tremendous opportunity for the DM to prepare for anything and everything that party does next.  For example, as the party chats among themselves, asking things like: "What if there's a guard waiting behind the door?" ... the DM can think, "Mm, that's a good idea."

Oh yes, of course the DM's not supposed to do that, it would be ethically wrong ... but if we had put a guard behind the door, there's plenty of time to replay, in our head, all the ways the guard might react once the players go ahead with their plan, eventually.

This makes much of dungeon mastering an effort to avoid knowing something that we already know, that we do know, and that our thoughts are going to be affected by, even if we don't want that.  Because we're human, and we're as libel to being primed as anyone.

The matter is particularly relevant when the players tells the other players (and me too) what's going to said to me when the time come to say it to me.  Of course, the player means when it's said to the guard, but I'm also the guard, so I have to tell myself, "Right, the guard doesn't know this," even though I do.

And it is, in fact, more advanced warning than I necessarily want.

Let's think about this cinematically for a moment.  Our lead character says, "We've got to get into that building," and the plucky supporting player says, "Leave it to me."  The supporting player heads off left and we see the lead turn to the scared supporting player and says, "Make sure your safety is off," or something to that effect.

It that situation, playing as the plucky supporting character, I tell the DM I'm getting such-and-such out, but I don't say why or what I'm going to do with it.  In fact, to make this better, I don't get out my flask of oil (effect predictable) or a whistle (effect predictable).  No, instead, I get out some obscure object, say a ripe beet.  Then, hiding behind the corner, I drop my weapons, squeeze the juice of the beet all over my hands, smear it on my face and stagger out, screaming as though I'm pain, crying out, "They've killed me, they've killed me!"

It's odd, the DM isn't ready for it, and for as long as I can keep the DM's attention on me, I can argue that's how long the guards watch me before they take action.  I just need 30 seconds or so.  No problem.

This kind of thing really fucks up a DM.  They're so used to everything being predictable and normal, if something really flakey turns up, they usually stumble all over themselves trying to figure out how they "ought" to respond to it.  This makes a "tight play" really effective, especially if it's lame or nonsensical.  Because something that's nonsense is much harder to react upon than something rational.

If we play the same scene out as most D&D players would, however, one player says, "We've got to get into that building," which is followed by someone saying, "Well, we could do this," and another asking, "How about this?" ... and this goes on for five or ten minutes, unless the DM attacks the party because they think they've got all day to sit behind this wall thinking up something to do without anyone being able to agree.  And in the meantime, the DM knows exactly how to act, because enough time is being given by the players to work that out.

The disappearance of tight play is a great loss for D&D.  It might, in fact, be appropriate to tell the DM, "We want to talk in private."  After all, why should it be the DM's right, all the time, to know what the players are going to do next?  Why isn't it fair to send the DM out for five, ten or twenty minutes, to let the players work out something that their characters have the time to talk about.  I don't think that's reasonable during a battle, or where the time constraint is all too short, but if the players are sitting at a tavern, discussing their next move against the cabal that's threatening their lives, does the DM have to be there?  Is "gawd" always listening?

Since I run a combat system where a player can do a lot more than just swing again (it's inherent in all the equipment, the movement system and other opportunities that arise, and not just for spellcasters), I'm never exactly sure what a given player will do when it's their turn.  I have run players that kept their own counsel, right up to the last moment.  It's fun.  It takes wit, readiness, and the ability to "give it to the player" for coming up with something that's honestly great.

I don't play any more, in part because I often didn't get a good response to my style of play.  It felt, to those DMs I played with, as "manipulative."  I can see their point of view.  Yes.  Exactly.  It's a thinking game.  Being a step ahead of the DM, in a way the game allows, is a way to succeed.  And when I hold back the cards in my hand, it's harder to control me with all the power of the universe at the DM's back and call.

It always seemed that what DMs wanted to do was control me.

So I stopped playing with them.  I do try not to control the players in my own campaign.  Which is very hard when the tell me everything they're about to do.

Playing Pretend

 The greatest weakness of Dungeons and Dragons, and of all role-playing games, is that they're seen as "playing pretend."  This disparages the game in the eyes of every individual whose heard of the game and never played it, and in the eyes of thousands who have played it and come away with a feeling that they'd rather do something more "grown up."

It is fun to play pretend, even for adults.  It's fun to dress up and act all heroic, waving a pretend sword around or even a plastic copy, while crying out in a pretend voice that we're storming a pretend fortress.  Yet given the simplicity of such pretensions — their lack of mature themes, the presense of fairy tale races and monsters, the wavering voices of those who speak glowingly of "returning to their childhood" or "holding onto their youth" — D&D and other like properties appear infantile and silly.

Some voices push by with arguments that redefine the activity with key phrases like "problem solving" and "resource management."  Some extremely foolish people have even connected D&D with "artistic expression" and other such tripe.  And while admittedly these aspects bear some importance to the game, they hardly raise the legitimacy of the activity.  It's still make-believe when the problems are pretend problems and the resources are pretend resources.  Artistic it may be, but so is children's theatre.  Child-based programs must embrace "education" to give themselves legitimacy.  We may think, for a moment, that D&D could have a piece of that pie, but there are very few out there who want to put D&D play into our schools.

Does it matter if this validity exists?  By far, most in the hobby — an appellation I disdain — do not care.  They wear their silliness and pretense on their sleeves, stiffening their lips sullenly should anyone suggest childish pursuits are something of which an adult should be ashamed ... which, on the grounds that adults are free to do as they like, is well enough.  Nonetheless, the puerile chip on the collective shoulders on the hobbyists cripples the game in two important ways.  First, it's come to mean that no outsider takes the game seriously, or should.  And second, the attitude arrests any forward movement in the activity's evolution.  Institutional infantilism denies the possibility of the game ever growing up.

What is it that makes the game, for some of us, really thrum?  I think we get past the races and the monsters, and past the heroism, and past the pretense that we're accomplishing something great when we foil an imaginative enemy.  These things remain relevant as trappings go, but are they really what digs down into the soul and revs our engines?  I don't think so.  The trappings of any activity, at their core, are pertinent only as conduits to a more satisfying return on our investment of time and thought.

As ever, I turn to baseball because it's universal and it remains something that people do respect as an activity.  What is this "core" I speak of?  Is it hitting a ball with the bat?  Is it catching a ball?  Is it throwing a strike?  No, of course not.  These are the trappings.  It's the arrangement of these trappings; the dramatic process of the ball being thrown, hit, recovered, thrown, with the challenge at the base or plate.  It's the uncertainly of multiple humans performing skilled activities according to their limitations that lifts the simple trappings into something higher.  It's not that I hit a ball, it's that I do it against another trying to stop me from hitting that ball.  Hitting the ball is incidental ... it's hitting a ball that you throw against me that matters.  Beating you.  And then having to beat the fielder who recovers the ball and throws it to first base, where another person waits to beat me.  It's a rapid series of contests, happening seconds apart, that excites the emotions ... not only of the players, but even of the spectators, who can identify with the raw passion taking place.

Where is that passion in D&D?

In the last post of this DMing series, I noted that in my game, when the players are truly uncertain about what to do next, the debate doesn't arise between factions, picking one side or the other, but within the players themselves.  Our fictional player Mick wants to go to the dungeon, but then again he's hesitant to go.  Thus he wrestles with his own conscience — not because he feels anxiety, but because he senses a need within himself to have courage ... which he is surprised to find he doesn't have automatically.

This is very different from the D&D player who pretentiously declares in a heroic voice, "We'll return your father to you, good sire!  For we are stalwart and true, and unafraid of death!"

That's not a brave player.  That's a player who has nothing to lose ... because the character, the game, the dungeon, the result and everything else they're playing is just make-believe.  Whatever happens doesn't mean a good gawd-damn because to that person, the game has no real consequence.  Like a child on a school yard, pretending to be Darth Vader dying at the thrust of Luke's sword, death doesn't mean anything.  He or she can just roll up another character.

From any self-conscious point of view, this is awful.  It's a mockery.  And any participant in D&D that embraces this style of play shouldn't be respected — not by people in or outside the game.  From their perspective, of course the rules are meaningless.  Of course they have no reason to concern themselves with feeling anything, except the sham of pretending they're brave when in fact they're so cowardly that the tiniest constraint on their make-believe spirals them into a temper-tantrum.  They don't take the game seriously because they can't; they haven't the wherewithal, the maturity, the emotional capacity, to take anything "seriously."  That's why they've drifted into the game as a fantasy in the first place.

They need the game to be a fantasy like they need air.

Mick, above, doesn't want to lose another character.  He's lost four already, vis-à-vis the last post, and he's concious of how it will look if he tanks again.  Already the other players around the table are ribbing him, like they would if he were a left fielder who'd dropped four fly-balls.  He knows the others are beginning to doubt his ability to play.  He's conscious that he has to do better, especially as he realises the DM is getting tired of his lack of skill and commitment.  The combination of these factors adds up.  It puts pressure on Mick to change his behaviour, if he wants to continue participating in this activity, with these people.

Mick's problem is self-respect.  He has some.  He wants to measure up to what he thinks he should be capable of doing: in this case, playing well enough that his character survives.

In the alternate example above, our hero-fanatic has retreated into nihilism.  Survival doesn't matter; and if the argument is made that it should matter, or that our hero's commitment might be judged at all — by, say, holding him or her accountable for actions taken — then we can expect pouting, huffiness, outbursts and an inevitable hissy-fit, complete with arguments like, "I'm allowed to do whatever I want!" ... the argument a child makes.

There's no point in trying to manage or educate, or appeal to persons of this sort.  They've already started down a path that they're not going to come back from any time soon, so it's best to quietly inform them that they need to do what they want somewhere else.

The intrinsic value of D&D and RPGs is that, as games, they allow us to explore emotions we wouldn't normally contend with: fear, loss, self-doubt, social responsibility, competence, self-sacrifice and so on.  These are respectable emotions.  These are ideals that children ought to experience and come to grips with.  Not only do they provide young people with the opportunity to deal with adult themes and ideals, they allow adults to immerse themselves into those things that are so easily lost in the day-to-day compromises that we must do if we want to pay the bills and keep our families together.  Nothing in this world is so "adult" as compromise ... the ability to place everything we deal with on a scale of importance, with games and childish behaviour at the bottom and competence and self-respect at the top.  Everything else has to be flexible, if we're to survive and do well.

So if a game comes to take up a lot of our time, it better have elements of those things we view as important in it — or else we're wasting our time.  Mick's conundrum of trying to find the courage to go back to the dungeon is a thinking process that serves him in real world situations ... because it's the same.  The courage to head back to the dungeon is the same sort he needs to step up to his manager and ask for a raise; or step up to the neighbour and ask to have that tree's branches pruned back.  It's facing the business at hand ... and it's ALSO facing the consequences.

D&D is not "playing pretend."  It's weakness is that it's seen that way, because so many people flock to the game as an escape, and not for what the game has the potential to offer.  As a DM, we have to decide which kind of game we're playing.  Yes, the players can have another character when theirs dies.  But we need to ask ourselves: does that automatically come without strings?  Are we, the other players around the table, expected to wipe our memories of the old character, and how it died, also?  And are you, the player, absolved from learning anything about what you've done wrong, or absolved from having to accept responsibility for your previous actions, just because you're getting a new character?

No.  No you're not.

Deadly but Fair

Forgive me if I cover old ground with this post, but I wish the point to be included in contest with this series' last post.  If you're a new reader, I suggest picking up this post.

Assuming we've done everything right — as I define it — the characters have every reason not to head back to the dungeon, as it's full of very bad demons and whatever's there has already taken down a full-on noble lord.  Personally, I'd make sure the party knew it meant, yes, a 9th level.

... except that the party, probably, wants to go back.  It's not sensible, but nevertheless it's predictable.  They've already collected a nice surface treasure.  They'll be sure that there must be a sub-surface treasure, and that means more.  And if they go back, let me add, we won't disappoint them.

In the best cases, these conflicting agendas puts the party on a knife edge, with some players being cautious and some not.  If none of your players are cautious, then clearly as a DM, generally, you're not:  a) hurting them enough; and b) humiliating them enough.

Sorry, but I've never had that strange phenomenon of players who have so little regard for their characters that they'll cast one after another into the cauldron of death without restraint.  Perhaps it's because I insist on the character being rolled in great detail, while the table watches.  On that score, I've been reassured by my players many times that they adore the character rolling process, because it involves random generation on a scale large enough that they're fascinated to see what results turn up.  This is how they explain it.  My generation system used to take much less time; but even at the very start of my career, I insisted that rolling a character meant a total stoppage of the game.  When I was but 15, playing with adults over 30, that's how they did it.  No one EVER drew back from the table and rolled their character in private, while the game went on.  Personally, perhaps because I'd been sheltered, or because I read the Dragon Magazine casually, I'd never heard of such a thing until seeing it in The Gamers.  And later, when I discovered that was normal ... let's just say it's rant fuel for me.

Putting the character-generation process centre stage, or in the centre ring if you prefer a circus analogy, makes rolling a memorable, group experience — one that's going to draw ribbing and a reputation if it's something our player does a lot.  Especially in my game.  Once Mick has rolled his fourth character in five runnings, sacrificing each stupidly one after another, he'll suffer a little, shall we say, social medicine in the bargain.  First off, his mistakes and failures are going to get picked apart by others — and for quite a while, at least as three times as many runnings as he's lost characters.  This is something I'm not going to discourage, because in social activities, shame works.  Usually.  If it doesn't then I'll wait until the next time Mick chooses to do something stupid and I'll stop the game myself, and ask a difficult question:  "Mick, why do you want to play D&D?"

See, I'm not of the opinion — as many are, who seem to boast about the slaughterfest going on in their campaigns — that people die in D&D because the rule set is harsh.  Not to disparage, but because it's a good example of someone clearly wrestling with the problem, JB brings up this element a lot.  As an adult in 1984, mass character murder was clearly being pushed, and pushed HARD, by the publishing wing of TSR.  This may have been a lack of creative juice or because for them the game consisted mostly of one-off events (given their schedules and the need for public appearances).  It may be that the many of the group were frustrated sadists — I have no better explanation for Tomb of Horrors — who were using D&D as a way to get their metaphorical buzz.

In any case, I played under multiple DMs between 1979 and 1986, and total party kills were NOT emblematic of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in any degree.  JB, and others, seem to feel it's an inherent quality of the game system:

"... mainly it's just that 1E isn't a cakewalk game to play. Characters die...and with SMALL parties (less than six or seven characters), any single loss can lead to cascade failure and disaster."

I honestly don't see it.  I don't know what JB is doing, or how he interprets the rules, but in four decades of running my own game, I've had maybe three TPKs, period.  90% of the time, it doesn't come remotely close, as I won't even have a single character die.  And this includes the 15 year period before I used negative hit points, and the 25 year period before I added a few more hit points to my characters due to body mass.

Now, as I pointed out with the kobald lair, the plethora of enemy hit points and attacks given in most game modules is simply moronic.  And that no doubt accounts for the party death ratio that many experience.  I ran KotB back in 1981, when I still hadn't cracked the code for how to make a game setting.  It took the party a long time to kill everything, but at no time did the whole party ever die at one time.  There were casualties; the end party that finished off the last room brings to mind the Ship of Theseus.  But the whole party didn't die because, again and again, they approached, fought the enemy, didn't let themselves get stupidly trapped behind the lines so that they could withdraw before it was too late.  They played CAREFULLY.  They measured their steps.  They went at the mobs with boiling oil and traps of their own and didn't mind that the whole adventure took six months to play.  We had six months.  We were still in high school.

Sorry to go all this way around a barn, but this is the only way I can make a point about players not assuming that just because there's a dungeon in my game world, it's easy to take on.  And that's been my experience with most players.  In both the Senex and the Juvenis campaigns I ran online, the players approached the world with the mindset that yes, it was dangerous.  They'd read me, they took me at my word ... and they did not have a TPK.  I don't know what other evidence I can give.  Both off and online, that's the result from the campaigns I run.  Getting a high level party is inevitable, though admittedly it that takes seven or eight years of gaming.

Getting back to it then.  Hopefully, the party IS on a knife edge.  And that sets them to deliberating the matter of going back, with this new information in hand.  In my experience, most of the time, the party doesn't split up and take sides.  Wisely, everyone wants to hold off.  Bravely, everyone wants to go forward.  The battle is inside themselves, not between one another.  Each player has their concern; and each player is there to discuss how their take on the matter might alleviate another player's concern.  And as the concerns are put forward, one by one, they're discussed.  Plans are made.  Ideas are trotted out for things that need to be purchased, to implement strategies.  Not magic potions or scrolls, but oil, holy water, more twine to make traps and snares, caltrops, iron spikes, poles, enough beets ...

[Beets?  I pointed out to a party, and maybe on this blog, some years ago that when encountering a long, dark hallway, the best thing to throw forward into the darkness is a round, firm, goodly-ripened beet.  It bounces, goes around corners, draws attention of whatever might be down there — so we can fight it here as it comes on and not down there — and what's more, leaves a series of bright red spots as it skips left and right, on dirt as well as stone.  If nothing else, its a trail we can use to find our way out, once we've gone in]

These are conversations I enjoy a lot as a dungeon master.  I can sit back, let the party chew the fat between them for as long as it takes — now and then, the entire rest of the running, if I've really got them going — and enjoy the fact that I'm a spectator.  My view of DMing is that it takes a lot of time and energy; that I'm responsible for making the game interesting for five or six hours at a time.  If 90 minutes of that is spent with the party in a state of moderate consternation about making the right decision, that's a load off my responsibility.

In no way is the party "bored."  On the contrary, agitation has a marvelous way of denying boredom.  Nor do I urge them to "make a decision" so we can "get going."  That's pretty stupid.  Not to mention selfish.  After, it's not my character deciding if it wants to put it's head on the block.

On the other hand, if a TPK so rarely happens in my game, why are the players worried at all?

Well, they've all watched a new player, sometimes an "experienced" one and some time a noob, who simply ignored this whole "Let's be careful and not die" agenda.  Result?  They die.  Pretty quickly, too.  Case in point, the Juvenis campaign when they first entered the dungeon with the fire beetles, and three out of five characters died in 10 rounds.  Not ALL of them, though ... because they had a way out and two survived.  After that object lesson, the players all got a lot more careful, all at once.

If the game rules are applied consistently and fairly, and the numbers of enemy are not too great, and a way is possible to get in and out again without the DM arbitrarily trapping the players in a dungeon, in a way that the players have little or no control over, such as a random die roll ... then a group of intelligent, cautious, innovative players can survive any situation, even ones where they're punching way above their weight.  It means not touching anything just to see what happens.  It means staying close and tight and ready to protect one another if a combat occurs.  It means doing your due diligence with reconnaissance.  It means admitting that yeah, it's time to go.  It means accepting that a dangerous situation CAN'T be overcome by clever role-playing, any more than the Viet Minh might have been.  Because the non-intelligent creatures down there are hungry and voracious; and the intelligent creatures down there really, really, really, really HATE surface people.  They've met too many surface people.

If a DM and party can get these things straight, and a few others besides, they can survive.  And it does not matter a fuck what the AD&D rules say, or how few hit points they have.  Don't squander hit points and you'll have plenty.

As Written

To the next step.

Speaking only of table-top RPGs now, the initial lack of control upon the player is imposed by the character's generation.  Whatever method we use to determine what a character's structure is, part of that structure is necessarily a limitation on what that character can and can't do, and in some degree the implementation of a series of odds against the character being successful in a given situation.  For example, if the character's intelligence is 14, and we want to impose the chance of him/her doing something "intelligent" by rolling that number against a d20, then the character has a 70% chance of success.  A character with a 13 intelligence has a 65% chance of success, a character with 12 intelligence a 60% chance and so on.  Which means that when deciding to take an action, the player participates in the same sort of odds evaluation that he or she might at a craps table, or a roulette wheel, or putting up a stake in a game of poker.  It doesn't say you can't do a thing, but it does change the odds against you doing it.

Likewise, the player's choice of character defines whether spells can be used, what spells and how many spells; or what weapons, armour, skills, hit points, attack tables and so on, though to differing degrees according to what games are being played.  And this in turn opens the player to limitations imposed against character agency by a host of rules that dictate how weapons can be carried or used, and in relation to other things the character wishes to do, or how often spells can be used, or the limitations on the effects of said spells and so on.  All these things are there to set forth boundary lines between three categories of character/player control: what the character can definitely do (i.e., swing a sword), what the character definitely cannot to (i.e., swing an elephant) ... and what odds are assigned to indefinite actions (i.e., can the character hit and cause damage with the thing being swung).

These character-generation boundaries will produce the initial pushback that every dungeon master experiences from a player, who — justifiably, from their position — wish to have a role in adjusting such lines in a manner the player sees as more suitable.  Here, at the beginning, we have the first crippling aspect of the role-playing game's inadequate design.  A great many players, nearly half I've encountered, approach the game's structure and rules with the clear perspective that such rules are arbitrary ... and being arbitrary, they are therefore liable to change.  IF we say that a wizard cannot use a sword, and IF that condition is arbitrary, THEN we can absolutely, arbitrarily, change that and allow wizards to use swords.

All rules of all games are arbitrary.  If your friends and my friends agree to play soccer on an existing field, with chalk lines on the grass indicating where the boundary lines are, neither your friends nor mine will begin the game by arguing that we ought to get a line field chalker and remake the lines to suit ourselves.  No, together, we acknowledge the lines must be somewhere and we accept that the established lines that are already here are good enough.  Point in fact, we won't even get a tape measure and test to see if the existing lines were correctly laid out.  They may not be.  Nonetheless, we'll just assume they are, because the soccer field exists at a school or in a city park, lending us to believe, without proof, that the lines are correct.  Because even though the soccer lines ARE arbitrary, they're arbitrary in a manner that collectively we respect.

Fundamentally, however, at it's core, role-playing games, and especially D&D, have utterly failed to impose this same collective acceptance of the rules that were originally imposed, or any rules that have been imposed since.  And as such, if I run a game with completely new players, even if they know me and this blog, at least three out of six players, and more likely four or five, will in some way seek to adjust one of the arbitrary rules that exist in their favour.  It may be because they've played in another campaign where that rule was bent, or because they've always hoped that rule would be bent, or because they believe that if they were DMing, that rule would be bent.

As a DM, when I take a stand on the given rule, saying no, I won't bend it, I've immediately made a negative judgment about that player ... specifically, that the player doesn't — and won't in the future — respect the rules, and that in running the game, I'll need to be vigilant against that.  This means my having the expectation that some of my time — and some of the game's time — will be wasted policing rules that should be absolutely respected, even when the rules are perfectly known, simply because the player feels that the arbitrariness of rules is license to resist them.

This game-time wasting is none of my doing.  No matter what the rules were, no matter how beneficial they were to the players, there are always those players who cannot see any rule in an RPG the same way we'd automatically view those lines on a soccer field.  The reason for this is not the kind of people these are; the reason is not because role-playing games are themselves at fault, though bad writing has to some degree created the problem of interpretion throughout the game's participation.  The larger reason is, rather, that the game culture that's sprouted in the last 40 years has based itself on publications that (a) take challenging the game's rules as the easiest form of content; and (b) have chosen to simply ignore the existing game rules of every RPG in order to install their own, to suit their particular need at a particular time with a particular publication.  Both of these publishing habits are based solely on individuals setting a paycheque or their self-aggrandisement over and above any perceived value of the game, and both have been strongly enabled by editors more anxious to ensure publication of material than any sense of responsibility for what's being published.

However, neither of these actions would have ANY influence over the substantiality of RPGs if not for the utter failure of those who made the game, or are making the game, to stand by anything that they themselves have published.  And especially to the degree necessary to right the ship once it's knocked over.  The original producers spent their time bickering and in-fighting over perceived slights and petty alterations in the rules from the get-go; they set the standard for every writer and every player to take sides and then to invent their own side, leaving the actual game as written to flounder stupidly with no real direction.  TSR happily gave a platform writers who directly contravened the substance of TSR's own game, systematically subverting its own credibility, not once, not twice, but repeatedly for two decades ... rather than defend it's own rules, discredit gainsayers and then BUILD upwards.  Instead, in favour of the fast buck, the company slashed and burned every part of its reputation, churning out dreck, until it's sullied reputation left it wallowing in desperation and debt at the point that the present company bought it's rights.  Whereupon the present company, whose agenda was not role-playing but a card game, continued to encourage the vivisection of D&D and every other game it laid its hands on to ensure the success of another game that required the cachet of D&D to give it's content substance.

No one was more surprised than the company, I'm sure, that D&D survived this attempted extirpation.

The game culture this left behind makes itself evident in the hearts and minds of nearly every player.  As someone who has, likewise, gutted the original game in order to make my own Frankenstein's vision of it, I understand very well that the only thing that gives my version credibility is my willingness to stand by it, steadfastly, to the point that I would rather throw you out of my game than make one concession to any given established rule in it.  There are places where my design has flaws; and there are moments when my players have caught me on those flaws and I've drastically set out to redesign my vision.  The existing sage abilities arose out of players taking a stand against me, and my backing down.  But where it comes to details like a wizard using a sword, the answer is no.  Can you use a two-handed weapon with a shield?  No.  Not now, not ever.  Can you buy another point of strength at the loss of two points of any other stat?  No.  Don't ask.  Every time you ask, you reveal your disrespect for the game, your disrespect for me and your disrespect for yourself.

And specifically this last, because such questions reveal your self-doubt about succeeding at the game according to its limitations upon you.  It says that as a person, you lack confidence.  You need cheats, because you can't "win" on your merits, your ability to innovate or your blind determination to survive.  You lack the capacity to game.  In terms of your resolve, you're weak.  And because of that, every time you ask if you can circumvent some rule, because you see it as arbitrary, you lose my respect.  You should not be in my game world.

But ... I can be generous.  I can fold those thoughts in my head under a mental blanket and encourage you to have a spine.  I can point to the other players who are ready to accept these rules and say, "See, if they can do it, you can do it."  I can't make you believe that, but I can try.  But if you won't try; if you keep chafing at the rules you're given. then I'll send you away.

Remember what I said with the last post about choosing your agenda.  A game is about achieving your agenda within the framework of the game's inherent limitations.  It's not about automatically getting your agenda because you chose it.  So many aspects of role-playing that have become normalised — more classes, more spells, more races, a background you invent but didn't earn — are about rewarding you for being willing to play.  This is stupidity, both on the game's part and on your part.  First, because the game's inception has degraded to where the makers think it needs to bribe you before you'll play, and second because you're so pathetic you'll let yourself be bribed with trinkets and bullshit you didn't earn.

Hard players of hard games don't want anything they haven't earned.  Most of my steady readers here understand explicitly that when I say "you," I don't mean them.  They know precisely who I mean.  To the hard player, this post is meant to empower them: to say, when they feel disgust and a lack of respect for a complaining, wheedling, demanding, vascillating player, they have every right to feel that disgust.  They're entitled, because they've taken it upon themselves to run a game, to JUDGE players who shouldn't be there.

And so ...

Having chosen your agenda, your second goal as a player is this:  how are you going to achieve your agenda within the game rules as they exist?

To answer that, I'll have to discuss the DM's responsibilities.

Adult Fare

Last month, you may have seen this article about a Vegan D&D player demanding a cruelty-free campaign.  If so, you should see the follow-up, in which the DM explained that there was more to the matter than what the click-baity argument let on.

I have a high personal bar for this sort of thing, which arises from personal experience with cruel things and I think a greater knowledge of history than most.

Recently, poking about the net looking into the butcher's trade, I came across this from The Pictorial Handbook of London, dated 1854.  It speaks of Newmarket street, where there were many butcher's shops to be found:

“The slaughterhouses for sheep are almost exclusively in cellars underneath the shop, where the pices or joints are sold in retail. The access to these cellars is by steps, over which a board is occasionally placed, to act as an inclined plane for the animal to slide down. More frequently a much more summary process is had recourse to—the animal is seized by the butcher and pitched headlong into the cellar by main force, where, unable to rise from broken limbs, or other injuries sustained by the fall, they lie awaiting their turn to be slaughtered ...”

 

My first instinct is to include the above in the Streetvendor's Guide, as a visual, to set the scale on which a fantasy world has every right to operate.  Not every D&D game is My Little Pony.  There's plenty of real life human history wallowing in gore, slaughter, sadism and extreme cruelty to justify a group of murdering adventurers chewing up the landscape.  Moreover, such is the material that causes young children to gaze at in rapture, wide-eyed, realising for the first time how spectacularly dark is the reality of human history ... before, that is, growing up and coming to their senses, assuming they do.  I did.  Personally, I've felt no desire to walk in the footsteps of either the Huns or the Mongols, rounding up whole villages in order to massacre every living soul.

Well, there was that one time.  But never again.

Given the youth of participants, coupled with the sheltering from knowledge by helicopter parents, I'm not surprised by the stark reactions of some to the details of skinning and deboning a pig ... a perfectly ordinary operation to a rural-born child a hundred years ago, some five years after my grandfather had come home from the Great War.  Those readers who have dared to watch recent fare like All Quiet on the Western Front or 1917 have merely glimpsed a tiny bit of the day-to-day hellscape that formed a whole generation's perspective on "cruelty."  The truth is, the fact that individuals can feel so passionately about the description of a pig's slaughter only goes to show how very, very comfortable the world has become, for all of us.  The bar for trauma has been drastically lowered ... and that's a GOOD thing.  The last thing we need is a return to the standards of the last century.

It produces an interesting conundrum.  Nassim Taleb's 2014 book, Antifragile, Things that Gain from Disorder, makes the valid argument that bad things make us stronger and better able to handle and overcome other bad things.  There's no question of that.  That doesn't mean, however, that a DM — who may already be fragile — is ready to tackle the rampant fragility of one or more players.  For some groups, the game itself, with it's elements surrounding combat and killing, evil, intrigue, villainous characters and supernatural overtones, is a ticking time-bomb.

It's only a matter of time before the DM advances some idea that seemed "really cool" on the surface, only to find that it's tapped into someone's fragility in a way that ends the session or friendship, or perhaps several friendships and the whole campaign.  We shouldn't wonder that many young people, with little to no experience in dealing with life's most difficult themes, end up pussyfooting their way around every aspect of role-playing.

This is why, early on, I conceived of D&D as an adult game.  Remember, unlike a lot of people who have been around a long time, I began playing at 15, not 9.  By that time I'd played D&D a year, I'd had two grandparents die, I had a front-row seat watching an uncle spiral into alcoholism, I'd been beat up several times by groups larger than two and I'd experienced the dehumanising thrill of playing high school football.  Life was not, as they say, great.  Yet I think I was old enough not to see D&D as a form of escape, which would have been ridiculous ... instead, I saw it as a way to express my frustrations, my desire for having something I could control, and a way to interact socially with others whose lives and frustrations reflected my own.

Children should not play D&D.  They should, first, get some sense of how the world works ... meaning that their early activities should be athletic, competitive, confrontational in a healthy manner that teaches them that sometimes we lose, that we have to overcome loss, that effort itself is a form of success ... and that just because someone is on the opposite side in this game, it doesn't mean they hate us or they're an enemy.  Sometimes, we agree to take sides in order to experience the abilities and strengths of our friends in the cold light of reality.

Not that I could have thoroughly explained this when I was a child.  Obviously.  But playing D&D, especially this decade's form of D&D, is a disaster where it comes to a child's upbringing.  Participating in adventures where the players always succeed, where everything can be changed at a whim, where the losers are always pretend creatures we don't know ... and where the gloss of magic obliterates the day-to-day struggle for existence in a world without technology ... paints a rather debilitating strategy for, um, fragility.

That's because D&D has transformed from a game of attempt/fail to operative wish-fulfillment.  Too much of that cripples children by making a large part of their lives too easy, just as William Goldman warned.

Turns out that taking away all the trauma that a child might conceivably experience doesn't make them happier, or bring about an end to trauma.  Instead, the child to find trauma in whatever can be found among the trivial things that are left.  The end result is a zero-sum gain.  No matter how good or rosey we make the world, it's impossible for us not to find something horrific anyway ... even when that "horrific" is pretty damned silly.

I much prefer a D&D game among tough, resilient adults, who can take being killed as a part of the game, who don't expect things to go their own way, who don't need the game to fulfill some empty hole caused by their lack of a meaningful life.  The adventures are sharper, the stakes are higher, the ethics less black-and-white and the artistry in running and playing the game at it's peak.  Shouting matches are a sign of passion, of really caring, not a form of emotional tantrum.  Nothing is off the table.  Nothing is denied.  No one expects to have things their way.

It's how I think the game should be played.

Accounting Sessions

Running D&D last night, I caught myself doing something naturally that's built up over a lot of years; and I might never have noticed it, except that I'm running regularly for the first time in some years and different things are coming consciously to me.

The players, having enriched their main characters, had returned to their home in southern Transylvania, Kronstadt, with the last running.  They began sorting out where they wanted to spend their money, how they wanted to build up their holdings, and over the interim some decisions were made.  More importantly, they decided to take a group of their "tertiary" characters, or henchfolk, and set off to adventure with them instead.  Specifically, they agreed to pick a hench that was no higher than 5th level, who might in turn have one sub-hench (because one gains a hench at 5th, and henches can have henches).

This meant bringing a bunch of characters up to speed with regards to various rules I've made in the last seven years, including sage abilities and backgrounds.  This meant another night of "accounting," which I don't mind and the players don't mind.  They love their characters, even the tertiary ones; they're able to identify characteristics that please, and they're anxious to explore what they can do with the different classes.  The high level druid play a mage this time around; the high level fighter, a cleric; the high-level mage, an assassin.  We know the drill.  The difference is that the other characters, the ones they played under the sea, aren't retired.  They're building the game world around them, and are ready if the players want to restore their involvement.  This isn't up to me.  I don't start a game by saying, "I've built an adventure for 5th levels, so all of you have to play your lesser characters."  That'd be ridiculous.

I have no adventure planned, as yet, and I'm fine with that.  I don't even know where the players will go.  I know that wherever they go, my world is deep, complex and massively filled with inspiration ... for me and the players.  When I need to think of something, I will.

So, back to the accounting.  To DM is to be interrupted.  Answer a question about horses, about this sage ability, about how knowledge points work in this situation, about this or that spell, about the weapons, about results from die rolls made against the background generator, etcetera, etcetera.  I rather enjoy it.  I get to explain the different parts of my system, though I have before online and sometimes to these same people; I get to propose ideas and possibilities for the future.  We had the conversation about favourite foods and what sort of bonuses there'd be, that I had on the blog here, and the players gave the same responses that the readers did.  [very rarely do my players read this blog].

I unhesitatingly suggest where a character should put a newly rolled up stat (there were two henchfolk that needed creation last night), or what spell a character should take, or what weapon, or even which race or class.  I like to offer two or three viable choices, utterly certain the players ARE able to think for themselves.  For me, these are philosophical arguments: if this, then that, but if that, then this.  I've started hundreds of characters in my world with all sorts of stats.

Let's say you want a druid and you have two decent scores, a 15 and an 18 (which the player rolled).  Now, if you put the 15 under wisdom, you get 3 bonus spells, two 1st and a 2nd, but you get the 18 charisma which has ongoing effects to your appearance, background and your status in life, before you start the game.  And the responses to charisma the game setting produces.  On the other hand, a 15 charisma is still pretty high, and an 18 wisdom gives six bonus spells, an extra 2nd, a 3rd and a 4th above those named.  Those spells are going to come in handy.

And yet, from a different viewpoint, let's say, as the character did last night, you also have a 14, two 10s and a 9.  You only need a 12 wisdom to be a druid, so suppose you put the 14 under wisdom, the 15 under charisma and the 18 under, oh, say, strength.  Or constitution.  Or dexterity.  This cuts your spell bonus to just two 1st level spells, but the strength bonus gives your character a whole different balance.  This is AD&D-based, so there's no percentage roll for druids, but you're still +1 to hit and +2 damage.  Add a +1 spear and you're going to rock the house in battle, even with your average 1 less hit point per level.  That means more experience that's earned from combat, meaning you go up faster.  And you get the pleasure of dropping the killing blow more often.

People don't think about that.  They tend to think about the whole benefit; they forget those six bonus spells take six levels to materialise (for druids; longer for clerics).  The strength bonus, or the high charisma, those things are here today.  Truth is, however, there's no right answer.  The player went with the 15 charisma, 18 wisdom, and put the 14 under constitution.

I like these conversations ... and accounting runnings are full of them.  All the players are listening, and free to dive in with comments, so the practical discussion feeds around the table and everyone feels involved.  I'm not sure why accounting runnings fail in so many campaigns.  Is it that there's always one player whose so self involved they have zero interest in what other players want or are trying to do?  Is it that the DM polices the players so hard, demanding that no one's allowed to comment on what other players do?

I ran across some thread last month that argued a player, during play, wasn't allowed to give instructions to another player in a strategic way.  In other words, I'm not allowed to say, "You stand on that side of the door while I stand on this side, then we'll both holler loud."  Because that would be me running your character.

Can you imagine this applying to hockey?  Or doubles tennis?  What you do with your character when we're in a party together affects my character's survival.  Hell, it affects your character's survival.  A team communicates as a team, that's why teaming up is vastly superior to individual achievement.

I can imagine that a table where the social rule was, "You're not allowed to give advice about someone else's character," that accounting runnings would be death.  You'd have to sit there, grinding your tongue between your teeth, while the 1st level druid chose the spells purify water, detect poison and invisibility to animals, before starting whatever adventure was to come.  The party may not even see an animal, or encounter poison ... but you're not allowed to say so.  That would be "running the druid's character."

Gah.

Anyway, getting to the thing.  People do talk to me at the same time, about different things.  And I have to pick someone to answer.  I try to pick the person who has said the least up to that time, in this session.  I try to give as complete an answer I can, in the shortest amount of time.  And while I'm doing that, I'm not forgetting the others.  Everyone gets automatically ranked in my head for who gets answered next ... and I remember to turn to them and say, "yes, you had a question."  I find myself automatically managing that ranking in my head for long periods, adding new people to the line as answers are given ... because person #4 is certain to ask something while I'm still answering person #1, but person #2 and #3 are still in the queue in my head.

This habit didn't come naturally.  It came after years of running.  It's the two-fold skill of not getting lost in giving an answer, and not forgetting there were other questions.  Not getting lost answering a question means not going too deep into it, right now.  I'm thinking, hitting the main points over two or three minutes, then moving onto #2 and doing the same.  Then, if there was still something to add to #1's question, it can be added later, when there's a lull, when I've got more time.

This keeps everything moving even during accounting runnings.  As a player, you've got a book open, or the wiki, or just the internet, and you've got a question.  You know you can interrupt me while I'm talking to #3, because I'll remember you did.  You just say, "I've got a question," so I can answer, "I'll be right with you," while going on with the point to #3.  Then you're on deck and so it goes, all night long.  Everyone has enough to keep working on their personal puzzle, there's other players to ask about some detail like how sage knowledge points accumulate, and I'm keeping the information flowing.

What's more, I've built tools the players can use.  A player whose been running a halfling now has a big burly human.  With regards to encumbrance, the halfling had to nitpick equipment, since even 15 lbs. was a burden.  Now the human can carry the halfling and the 15 lbs. without breaking a sweat.  How does it work?  Well, I have this slick excel table the player can play with ... that eats up ten minutes of the player's time, plus organising their gear.  That's 40 minutes I don't have to worry about that player.  Gives me time for others.

I would say that the real problem with accounting runnings in other campaigns is that there so little to account for.  Or rather, there's so little power the characters have over their world when they are accounting.  With so many possible choices of knowledge, spells and equipment in my game; and so many levels on which the "smart" game is played; and the freedom to talk among themselves and group think their way through future problems they might face, an accounting running is anything but dull.  In fact, it's a sort of slow burn, where the tension builds up as the characters take stock of what they have, what they can actually carry, what limitations they possess with regards to a lack of spells or character classes, in the face of an adventure they haven't even started yet.

It's a very different kind of campaign that I run.

Last Night

Not surprised yesterday's post fell with a thud.  The game was good, fast paced, though it was bookkeeping.  The trick is to manage everyone's "book" as simultaneously as possible, so that at any one time you're directing two or more people to roll dice or make decisions about their character's accumulated powers.  Last night, we went through a lengthy process of ensuring that everyone had their sage abilities up to date, which involved a great deal of rolling and correcting people's preconceptions about several points.  Not all the characters' sage studies and abilities are "made," so discussion was had of those that don't exist, or exist only as a very short description.  This was highly educational and fun, as every like discussion essentially gave the character, and the party, more power as individuals.

I asked everyone in the party to identify one page on the wiki they'd like me to create, with them rolling dice to dictate the order of priority.  I expanded the page under the monk study, Hand, this morning, to satisfy the player who hasn't played in my game since 2012.  Terrific to have him back, he's a very passionate player with a temperament like Kung Fu Panda, which makes him a joy to have around.  Each session, the players will pick new priorities for themselves and I'll update according to their choices, because I really don't care what part of the wiki I work on.  Although I really would like to finish the character generator.  I did more on that yesterday, for anyone who'd care to look.  Check the bottom of the page, under predispositions and shortcomings.  I'll be starting on describing the results there later today, after a few errands I need to get done before the Montreal trip.  Leaving Wednesday.  Tick tock, tick tock.

I feel awfully run down; the running went smooth, with my being pleased to find I had plenty of energy for it.  I've been taking long walks of 12 to 14 thousand steps once a week, in between lighter work out periods, and finding that pushing my strength to the edge is having a better effect on my health that comfortable, steady workouts.  Probably just a case of amping my metabolism, which has definitely suffered as I near my 60s.  In any case, getting used to finishing 10 km walks seems to have strengthened my endurance for long sessions.  Though, we only went four hours last night.

Okay, I'm about done.  Keep warm and we'll talk later.

Self-Reliance

Imagine that in nine days, you're getting on board a plane to Montreal in Canada, for a week.  Consider for a moment how you'll have to prepare.  You'll need your bills paid, you'll need someone to look after your pets and perhaps your plants; someone here in town will have to be designated to contact you should any emergency arise, most likely either your parents or your adult children.  Your bills should be paid; if it's nearly winter then any water that might freeze in pipes should be turned off.  Any last details at work should be handled or passed off to someone whose able to stand in for you.

Then, you'll need luggage, in the best possible shape.  If you haven't got it, you'll have to buy it, or borrow it from a friend or family.  Luggage is one of those things that people don't use all the time, but they do tend to store old clothes in such places.  Once you have this luggage, you'll need to make lists and start packing.  An appropriate wardrobe comes first — Montreal is somewhat damp at the end of September and gets chill in the evenings.  This isn't a problem if you're a resident of England, Denmark or Wisconsin ... but if you come from Florida or Mexico, you'll need to buy special clothes for your trip.  There's bathroom articles of course, and medication, plus any emergency things you might want to take.  You might want a notebook or tablet, or kindle, or an ordinary book, plus other things with which to amuse yourself on the plane.  You can at least be sure that if you've forgotten something here, you can buy it in Montreal.  We'll still be in civilisation.

And this is key.  A trip might be an "adventure," but it's not a threatening one.  You're off to a hotel that's managed by people who want your stay to be comfortable and stress-free ... so you needn't worry about food or finding your way around.  There's a team of people waiting to help you.  Likewise, with your flight, so long as you make yourself ready and available in time to board, the little inconveniences along the way aren't really fearsome.  Money has been paid to all the persons involved so that your holiday, which might be scattered with difficulties, shouldn't seriously challenge you.

Not so a D&D adventure, where you're distinctly leaving the company of a medieval town or village that is mostly indifferent to you, for a wilderness where you definitely can't replace your sword, should you misplace it.  But before we plunge into the depths to which that might go, let's take a moment and examine the traditional game adventure we've all come to know.

First, you're introduced to the scene by the concierge, who introduces you to the character who will provide all the details you'll need to know before the adventure begins.  This person's goal is to provide you with orientation, so that you can buy exactly what you need from the Gary Gygax Pamphlet of Dungeoneering Stuff.  Then you'll be assigned a guide, or given a brochure that will help you reach the excursion entrance that you'll be embarking upon this evening.

Once you've reached the entrance, by following your brochure and the organised sequence of corridors that will take you to your adventure, by drips and drabs, you'll enjoy fighting a remarkable collection of beasts that are carefully tailored for your level and ability, so as not to upset or spoil your excusion.  However, this may take some time and things are bound to get sticky in spots, so you'll be provided with sufficient bottles and other doo-dads that should mitigate any discomfort you feel along the way.  If something untoward and unexpected should happen, like one of your number being turned to stone or unfortunately killed — yes, unfortunately, it has been known to happen — then you may be rest assured that one or more of our staff will arrive in the nick of time to ensure your safe withdrawal from the adventure, with our assurance that any of your number will be raised at no disagreeable cost to you.  We here at Coast Wizarding Properties treat this sort of thing very seriously.  Our goal is to ensure that you have FUN, and so you may rely on us to live up to that promise.

Now, in this sort of adventure, you the player have plenty of time to dabble and mess with your character's intangible characteristics, since it makes little difference to your survival.  It can be fun to view yourself as a member of a cult, a spy, a student of the arcane, a simple peasant, the son of a God who one day will make a call on the Old Man, to let him know, or simply to bear a grudge against the dirty so-and-so that killed your parents.  But in fact, none of these fluffy backgrounds have much to do with the adventure that takes place.  They are window dressing; somewhat pretty and artistic, but ultimately superficial and misleading.

Let's discuss an adventure that isn't sponsored by Wizardland, Inc.

First of all, sitting in this village and thinking about where you might go, there's no one here to relay the information you need.  Those here in this village are not concierges and adventure orienteers, they're people, busy getting the dandelions pulled, the front door patched or the beefsteak pounded, while worrying about getting caught with the cistern empty on a Saturday night.  They don't stagger themselves out in the hinterland, since hunting beyond the village boundaries and we have none of us days to waste mooning around the wilderness getting ourselves eaten by wolves.  So with no idea what's out there, the players don't know what they'll need ... and what they'll need isn't gathered in an easy list tailor-made for dungeon wanderings.  No, those things are scattered among tables for the blacksmith and the turner, the silversmith, the grocer, the town market, the armourer's and the leathercrafter, among 1,500 other things that might be useful but then again, might only drag the party down.  Hell, there may not even be a dungeon out there, so why would we logically drag along a ten-foot pole?

Who your father is matters not at all.  What your father taught you does.  See, all that business of my character loves this or believes that, or has joined what now or wears this tag, none of that helps you if the world hasn't been designed with a concierge in mind.  The game world isn't Montreal.  There's no taxi waiting to take you to the dungeon, no doorman to unload your luggage as you rubberneck your way into the dungeon's front lobby.  When you're on your own in the wilderness, without that support mechanism, then what matters is what you firmly know, what you can certainly do and how much resilience you have.  All the rest is dingo's kidneys.   You have to piece together your own approach to the game world ... because the game world I run has no institutions set up pre-made to help you.

Now, of course my world has institutions ... but to get their support, you have to hope for the luck of the draw the background generator might offer, or you'll have to prove yourself to these places before they may deem you worthy.  Proving something demands that you have something to exchange ... and your claim that you're the son of a god doesn't qualify.  Neither does any other window dressing you might muster.  Nope, you'll have to earn your qualification, in a world will no one, absolutely no one, is invested in showing you how.

Imagine that in nine days, I'm going to club you in the back of the head and then leave you somewhere in the world with clothes, some money and that's all.  There's no way you can prepare for that, because I won't be allowing you luggage.  It would help, though, if you had some skills.  It would also help if you chanced to have your health, your feet and hands ... and your self-reliance.

According to the background generator, you'll no doubt get a little more.   A supportive family nearby, maybe, or a friend or two, or some unexpected social privilege.  How you manage these quibbling assets is up to you ... and the more assets you have, the better, so getting along with the rest of your party is also going to be important.  After all, you may not have a supportive family, but maybe Jean does, or Hal, or Dennis.  And maybe Jacqueline is a sailor, so the party can buy a boat, or maybe Isabelle knows how to find her way through an untracked wilderness.  Those things matter ... because no one's just going to show up and do it for you.