Unfuckingbelievable

I'm in a terrible mood today. I'm writing this in what is probably the mistaken belief that the mainstream media does not actually represent the mainstream of human culture right now; and that the United States press, both sides of it, also do not represent the mainstream. This is not going to be a blog post about D&D, or anything that most of my American readers are going to want to read about. I'll keep this as polite as I can and try not to sink the popularity of this blog.

First of all, I do not care about the World Cup. I think many others right now are doing what I'm doing... tolerating the nonsense sham of encouraged enthusiasm, just as the Knicks were shoved down our throats when, likewise, I did not care. I do not care who wins the basketball final because I'm not invested in something I can't do, can't enjoy, can't feel emotions about and which, in essence, assumes that because I happen to live in a given city, I give a rat's ass about how the sports team of that city performs, or what other sports teams from other cities that it beats. I feel the same way about the World Cup. I have played soccer, but I have zero investment in other people playing soccer and I do not care what country they come from. No matter who wins, no matter what arbitrary country boundaries they happen to live in or be from, I'm sure they'll be very good at "football."  That is as far as my concern about the matter lies. I'd be able to forget about it entirely, except that Google has a series of extremely annoying short videos that I'm forced to see every day reminding me about something I'd rather not be reminded about.

As far as Iran goes... and I really shouldn't say this, but... for the sake of my soul. The United States people in the majority elected a bloated, arrogant, ignorant rapist and pedophile, with delusions of role-playing as the world's hockey goon... twice. They had all the opportunities in the world to see to it that this goon could not be elected again, that this goon should have seen the inside of a prison, that this goon should have faced some kind of justice, and instead they all thought about their own careers and their own needs and did fuck-all nothing about Jan 6... so this goon went ahead and attacked a foreign country without provocation, like a tin pot dictator, without any real consequence to himself and his cronies, like Hitler invading Czechoslovakia, except that he got his nose broken and his knees broken and was forced to accept that it was an incredibly stupid, impractical thing to do... not to mention a very BAD thing to do, except that because he's American, the American press won't just repeat that over and over again. The country attacked another country — never mind which one, because the rules are that no one does this, ever, under any auspices, period, done deal. Except that he did, and oh poor, poor, poor, poor, poor America, they lost a fucking war because they got their ass beat by the nominal Czechs in this situation, and now have to eat crow or dirt or whatever they have to shove down their poor sick throats now because it turns out that being the "greatest country in the world" doesn't seem to matter fuck all where the end results occur. And now the big bad other country is going to get a bunch of things that even liberals in America are unhappy about... and seriously... seriously... to everyone taking America's side here, fuck you. Them's the breaks. You let this moron goon off the chain, he did something very stupid, YOU LET HIM, and now here you are. Suck it up, all of you.

Congratulations. I didn't think it was possible, but the long and the short of it is that IRAN are the good guys in this scenario.

Unfuckingbelievable.

There.

My conscience is clear. Hate me as you will.

Numbers

Please excuse me, dear reader; I'm going to use this blog as a diary for a moment.

I'm going to talk about politics ... but then, no, I'm not going to talk about politics.  Rather, I'm going to talk about why politics don't really matter.  I expect no one to listen.  But just now, I finally obtained a copy of one of my favourite all time speeches from a movie, a very, very obscure Quebecois language film from 1986 called Le Déclin de l'empire américain.

A little preparation before providing the speech.  These last six or eight years, there has been a sentiment growing that because this or that political group does a thing, it "destroys" or "takes down" or "ends" some part of government, or a political belief system, or the course of history or gawd knows what else.  And this has motivated a great many people to feel frightened, or livid, or the need to lash out, or otherwise suspend all faith in the world.  But see, in reality, all this sound and fury is just nonsense peddled by the media in order to peddle the media.  It doesn't mean anything.  And there is evidence for this.

Here is the quote, said out the outset of the film in Quebecois French.  I'm going to provide the original French first, because I have readers on this blog who speak French as their first language; and yes, some in Quebec:

"L'histoire n'est pas une science exacte. C'est une enquête continue sur la relation entre le passé et le présent. Il s'agit de comprendre comment les événements passés façonnent les réalités actuelles et les possibilités futures. Mais soyons honnêtes, l'histoire est souvent écrite par les vainqueurs. Ce sont les puissants qui dictent ce qui est retenu et ce qui est oublié. Et qu'est-ce qui détermine le pouvoir? Les chiffres.

"Prenez les Basques, par exemple. Un petit groupe, jamais très nombreux, vivant dans une région montagneuse éloignée avec peu de ressources. Malgré leur indépendance farouche et leur forte identité culturelle, ils étaient toujours à la merci de voisins plus grands et plus puissants. Dans l'histoire, les chiffres comptent. Si vous n'avez pas les chiffres, vous n'avez pas le pouvoir. C'est aussi simple que cela.

"Les chiffres nous disent qui gagne et qui perd. Ils déterminent la montée et la chute des populations, des économies et des empires. Les populations plus importantes peuvent soutenir des armées plus grandes, générer plus de richesse et exercer plus d'influence. Les économies qui peuvent produire plus de biens et de services peuvent commercer plus efficacement et prospérer. C'est pourquoi l'étude des chiffres est cruciale pour comprendre l'histoire.

"L'interprétation de l'histoire, donc, est un dialogue sans fin entre le présent et le passé, une recherche de sens dans un monde en perpétuel changement. Mais ce n'est pas seulement une question de dates et de faits; il s'agit d'analyser ces faits, de les comparer et de découvrir des motifs et des tendances. Les chiffres fournissent la précision et la rigueur dont nous avons besoin pour comprendre véritablement la dynamique du changement social, les flux et reflux des économies, la montée et la chute des empires.

"Sans les chiffres, l'histoire ne serait qu'une collection d'anecdotes, dépourvue de la profondeur analytique nécessaire pour une véritable compréhension. Ainsi, en tant qu'historiens, nous devons prêter attention aux chiffres, car ils nous disent beaucoup sur qui nous sommes et comment nous en sommes arrivés là."

And now, translated by chatGPT:

"History is not an exact science. It's a continuous investigation into the relationship between the past and the present. It’s about understanding how past events shape current realities and future possibilities. But let's face it, history is often written by the victors. The powerful ones dictate what gets remembered and what gets forgotten. And what determines power? Numbers.

"Take the Basques, for example. A small group, never very numerous, living in a remote, mountainous region with few resources. Despite their fierce independence and strong cultural identity, they were always at the mercy of larger, more powerful neighbors. In history, numbers matter. If you don’t have the numbers, you don’t have the power. It’s as simple as that.

"Numbers tell us who wins and who loses. They determine the rise and fall of populations, economies, and empires. Larger populations can sustain larger armies, generate more wealth, and exert more influence. Economies that can produce more goods and services can trade more effectively and prosper. This is why the study of numbers is crucial in understanding history.

"The interpretation of history, therefore, is an endless dialogue between the present and the past, a search for meaning in a constantly changing world. But it's not just about dates and facts; it's about analyzing those facts, comparing them, and discovering patterns and trends. Numbers provide the precision and rigor we need to truly understand the dynamics of social change, the ebb and flow of economies, the rise and fall of empires.

"Without numbers, history would be a mere collection of anecdotes, lacking the analytical depth required for true understanding. So, as historians, we must pay attention to the numbers, because they tell us a great deal about who we are and how we got here."

The question we have to ask ourselves is simply this: do we really think they're more numerous than we are?  Never mind who votes, or who seems to be in power, or what bafflegab the media sells, or all the shit that's designed to obfuscate the simple facts.  Of the numbers, which are dying out, and which are thriving?  Which, 40 years from now, when all the adult population older than 50 now either dies or becomes physically or mentally obsolete, is going to make the decisions?  When the seas roll in, and the forests blaze, and the people we're afraid of become more and more certainly wrong to the largest number of people, regardless of who votes, or who's "in charge," because no one's really in charge just because they sit in a desk and have people who tell them so ... who is going to be here?

How important are these folks, really, when they represent just 20% of the population, and the least significant part at that, the part that's going to be dead, along with me, by 2050.

Have a little perspective.  Pay attention to your people and your knowledge.  Do good.  Pass it along.  And ignore the show.  It's just going to go away and be replaced with another one, which won't matter either.  Nearly every person whose ever been alive is totally unknown to us; yet they did all the living and the working and the dying here.  Everyone else, everyone whose names we know, they were just passengers with time.

Consent

On some level, isn't dungeon mastering always by consent?

Elsewhere, JB is on a tear and I sympathise.  I too would unhesitatingly turn my player characters into rabbits, especially if there was some Watership Down scenario to be made of it.  Of course it's sinister for a manufacturer to invent the same cultural protectionist nonsense that's become part of every instance where three people do something together.

But I also need to argue that fundamentally, the act of playing is the giving of consent, because I can't do anything as a DM until I'm trusted by my players.  It's this trust that I describe when I argue my legitimacy as a DM.  It's not enough that I sit at the table, roll the dice and have my setting ready and describe things.  I also have to do these things transparently, procedurally and fairly.  Transparent in that I am answerable for the things I make up, for the consequences that occur, and my reasons for why those consequences exist.  Procedurally because there are rules, and I'm also bound by those rules, so that if a consequence happens, its within the purview of those.

And finally, fairly in that every player has the same reasonable chance of avoiding the consequences, regardless of who they are, or how many times they've succeeded in the past, or what I may personally want to happen as a DM.

We can shout very rightly that it's legitimate to kill player characters, because the rules say so; because anyone can die; and because we're not specifically trying to make that happen.  The same thing goes for transforming them into monsters or whatever else feels like it would make a recognisably engaging situation ... a "good game," as I discussed in a recent post.

Yet as I said, this relies on the players giving me that right.  Not only by coming to my session, not only by engaging with me willingly, but by regular conversations in which the nature of the game is discussed and complaints are respected.  Not just once in a session zero, not because a complaints opportunity is granted by the DM, but anytime the player wants to begin, "I'm not happy about ..."

If the player feels they can't do that, it's not good.

Now, please understand, I'm not saying I'm going to bend over when a player isn't happy.  I'm just as able to choose my players, and consent to their being my players, as they are in consenting that I'm their DM.  This is not a one-way street.  If I don't like how someone is playing, if I feel they're not adding to the gestalt of my game world, if they've acted in some way that I'm not going to ever allow them in my house again, I'll get quite draconian about that.  But only because I've earned that, by the trust I share with my other players.  The ones who have been made happy because I did change parts of my game on request.  Who have made me happy by cheerfully putting up with scenarios like the proposed aforementioned Watership Down.  A lot of time has passed and my players, the eight people who play in my game, feel that they're respected and I'm not counting on just my privilege as a DM.  I'm striving to earn that privilege with every game.

Absolutely, without question, JB feels that exact same way about it.  He's simply not a bad DM.  No one in his circle of readers remotely thinks so, including me.  His hackles are understandably up because, as I said, someone shoveled some political shit into his "yard," so to speak.  And for a moment or two, screaming at the responsible truck as it drives away, he's temporarily forgotten that of course the players do give their consent for all that happens in a game — for killing characters, for poison, for level drain, for monsters having a surprise round and so on.  Most of the time, players don't think of it that way.  It's pretty inherent in saying, "I want to play D&D."

Only, it feels like that's less the case than it used to be.  It feels like more people don't think that's what they mean when they claim their wanting to play the game.  And it feels, especially to those of us who can remember when this policy pandering to the preservation of practices and proclivities wasn't constantly in our face with regards to everything good in the world.  Because, well, right now, it is.

It feels like we ourselves, and everything we think, and everything we do — in this case, a simple D&D module — is under siege.  And it's hard to know what to do about it.  On the one hand, most of us generally support the things these policies exist to protect; and on the other, the nutjobbery of the other side in opposing the policies, and the things they protect, is damn scary.  It discourages us from taking a stand, in case we're mistaken for the nutjobbers.

We can't argue that it's just "air," that it'll go away or that we can safely ignore it, because we can't.  Recently, in the last month, a playground was built about 300 yards from our place.  It's quite remarkable, with apparatus and equipment that's new to me, including a "glidealong."  It all makes my grandson wild with joy.

But although its so close, and granted he's just shy of 3 so he's too young to go there on his own, according to recent laws he's not allowed to go there on his own until he reaches the age of 12.  That means, when he's 11, one of us still has to attend him there, if we don't want a brutal fine falling on us or the boy's parents.  Like any old person, I have a lot of stories about things I did on playgrounds, unsupervised, before I was 7 ... so we needn't go into all that now.  I'm only using this as an example of how a lot of this feeling of being under siege is justified.

As an experiment, I like to play with concepts like asking chatGPT why it's content policies shouldn't be violated.  The answer is long and goes right up it's own asshole, so I'll just quote the first few bits.  It gives a measure of the issue here.

"Content policies, whether they are set by online platforms, organizations, or governments, exist for various reasons, and violating them can have negative consequences. Many content policies are designed to create safe and inclusive spaces for users. Violating these policies can lead to harassment, discrimination, and bullying, which can harm individuals and communities."

Steadily, one policy at a time, humanity is building a prison for itself around the belief that it's possible, through argument, to create a world in which harm can't happen.  Because of course, as anyone knows, especially a D&D player, the potential for harm is 100% constant, all the time, no matter what we do or believe, or say, or want, or try to restrict others from saying or believing.  Yet it's this low-level threat, that harm "can" happen, that's being imposed as an argument for why we shouldn't say or do things.

Not that it will happen.  We have examples of harm having been done by such and such in the past, to some people, so that's enough.

Sometimes, when that gets in our face, we have to scream.  How can we do otherwise?  For hundreds of thousands of years, finding food has meant risking harm in the form of death throughout the day, as the world was awfully dangerous and we were rather short on many of the tools we have now.  Our whole biology exists to detect possible harm, and to react drastically to that possibility, because over-reacting has a better chance of keeping us safe and alive than under-reacting.

With this present-day world being so much radically safer than the one around, oh say, 100,000 BC, our most recent innovation, beyond cool jungle-gym toys, is our ability to see harm in virtually anything.

Thankfully, climate change is going to become so devastating and harmful that this penny-ante shit won't be worth worrying about.

_____

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.

... And You Thought Hammers were Crazy

 Check this out.

I'm the sort of fellow who likes to throw the ball over the wall and then figure out how the wall's climbed.  I don't have any pages for any of the above links, but of course the concepts all exist in the real world, so it's a matter of applying those concepts to the D&D world.  All of these things existed in the 17th century.  Nearly all of them were present in the 13th.  Most of them are totally ignored where D&D is concerned.  Gygax's understanding of medieval economics has served me well for many years, but it's time to throw out those crutches and examine the higher concepts of gaming.

One thing I like about D&D is that I'm not limited to the game maker's perception of how an object or a social practice functions.  Unlike a video game, where the local inn operates in very specific ways, enabling me to rest before returning to the game's rigid programming, I can take a D&D inn all apart and examine every facet of a truly functional inn from every angle.  There's no game rule that exists saying I can't buy an inn, run it, supply it with liquor, use it as a cover for illicit political activities (a la The Tale of Two Cities) and as much else as I conceive.  It's only blind, unwritten convention that constrains me from breaking free of the frigid game's non-evolution.

Who knows what games might sprout from ideas like accepting state contracts or investing my money in war bonds to support my country of choice?  Only my imagination.

I hear D&D is a game of imagination.

The Minority of Janos

Flying back to Calgary tomorrow evening; we're hunkered down in our hotel room, gathering the last bit of strength we'll need.  Vacations are tiring things ... which should not be taken as a complaint.  The energy a trip costs is well worth the investment.

During our flight out we were seated next to a Romanian from Brasov, the same city that in my game is Kronstadt, the centre-point of the map I've been constructing all this year.   Coincidences.  This fellow, Janos, was a landed immigrant in Canada; during the flight, mask restrictions were in place and this Janos did not like.  Janos was furious.  Through the entire flight.  About two and a half hours in, while shifting seats during a mutual bathroom stop, we chanced to get into a conversation and all of Janos' anger flowed out like a storm day in Halifax.  Janos hated the masks, he hated that the mask mandate was due to end in three days and therefore he had missed by three days not having to wear one, and he hated Canada's stupid rules.  He hated that the noble and righteous truckers that staged a protest last winter were viciously and fascistically put down, and therefore he hated the Canadian government, and by extension Canadians, who were the type, Janos explained, to tell you one thing with a smile before stabbing you in the back.

As I waited for the toilet, letting Janos run on without choosing to interrupt the tirade, which went on without relent for about five minutes (someone was clearly having trouble with the toilet), I marvelled at the perspective Janos had chosen to have.  I didn't speak until he had reached the point where he was slamming every Canadian in the country, whereupon I took the opportunity to poke a hole in his gasbag ... I merely said reassuringly, remembering that we're stuck together in side-by-side seats on a plane, "I promise not to stab you."

This caught Janos by surprise.  I only had the opportunity to speak because he himself had paused upon realising that he'd insulted virtually every traveller on the plane, including me ... but the tactful, moderately jovial response from me succeeded in modestly installing his self-awareness.  I went to the bathroom, he went after me, and when he came back he sat down and said very quietly and humbly, with an embarrassed grin, "I won't stab you either."

He continued to be angry about the masks, but he calmed down quite a lot ... and I finished the flight by writing this post in my head.  It is only now, five days later, that I'm finding the energy to write it.

What infuriates Janos, and all those like him, is the notion that anyone — an airline, a government body, society in general — should dare to infringe upon what he believes is his "perfect freedom" to do whatever he wants.  He has no concept at all that the expression of his perfect freedom infringes upon others, like passengers who have to sit beside him or stewards who must maintain order on the plane.  He has very little outward perception of the presence of other people, or their opinions, unless he's forced by circumstances to realise his vulnerability.  And when he is vulnerable; when he absolutely has no power whatsoever, because he's at the mercy of the airline or the law ... then he responds with unrelenting emotional outrage.  Apparently because the world was not specifically built around his "quite reasonable" needs.  Such as not having to wear a mask.

And this brings us to D&D, which is full of participants like Janos.  Rules and restrictions and limitations, including the "arbitrary" power of the DM, whether the DM is good or bad, simply do not fit into the Janos-universe.  It isn't so much that rules are for other people; there ARE no other people.  There is Janos, and only Janos, and everyone else in existence is defined by their infringement upon Janos's rights.  Rights which, concernedly enough, often revolve around cheering for other groups who bash or insult those bodies of authority which Janos also HATES.

The DM naturally falls into that category of authority, as does anyone who keeps Janos from having what he wants.  I believe this is because Janoses of the world so rarely obtains what they want.  They compare their jobs, their value among others, their wealth or the number of compromises they have to make concerning their perfect freedom and feel they've come up short, every time.  They've never been given a break, they've never been respected as much as they deserve, they've never reached that kind of bliss they're absolutely sure is out there ... and so they drift into things that would seem to enable them to achieve perfect success and power, only to discover that every social group treats them pretty much the same.

My advice about how to be a dungeon master presumes that an agreement has been made between the players and the DM that we're going to observe and respect each other, and the rules, and our comparative importance in respect to others, with the belief that group activities — whether friends playing a game, a group of people boarding an aircraft or a country of citizens working together — depend on giving as much as we get.  It's the simple fact that there are many people, each have their own wants, not everyone can have everything they want and so we'll work towards an agreed-upon mutual well-being, or "welfare," that helps everyone get a reasonable amount.

This doesn't work for Janos.  Janos doesn't want a "reasonable" amount.  Freedom to fly wherever he wishes, or speak openly against the people of a country without expectation of violence, or having the government of a country that was not his own approve of his right to exist and work and enjoy the general experience AREN'T ENOUGH.  For Janos, those things have no value!  Flying is his right; insulting others is his right; living and working wherever he pleases is his RIGHT.  Just as the Janos who plays D&D has a "right" to be 7th level, or possess a +5 sword, or be healed at will, or browbeat the DM or whatever else he needs to do to make sure he gets everything he's owed.  Janos doesn't care that this is a group activity.  This is Janos's activity, and that's the defining line he's drawn.  IF Janos plays, then Janos is OWED what Janos WANTS.  Rules and other people, and the DM too, get in the way of that, so those things must change and shift until the game works according to the laws of Janos.

And because Janos is very loud, and very angry, and very threatening, and can remain so for a four hour flight without relent ... and I mean that very seriously, for he rocked and stiffened his arms and legs in constantly readiness to explode in fury, both before and after our little chat.  I may have eased him off insulting me, but he still had to wear that mask, so Janos did not relax until he actually stepped off the flight ramp, ripping off his mask, in front of me so that I couldn't fail to see it.

Because of his power to be angry, Janos can intimidate everyone in his path.  The Janos that plays D&D can intimidate the company, he can intimidate other players and DMs, he can scare the hell out of people at a game con until he's wrestled out and banned forever ... none of which changes his mind about being right about his rights.  He can mash keys from morning til night until he gets the rule changes he wants, until he rules the board he runs, until he's harassed the company into grab-assing themselves into dumbfuck "20 always succeeds" rule-changes until another pile of Janoses cause the company to back off that three weeks later, demonstrating what a bunch of spineless worms the company employs.

[okay, that part wasn't written on the plane; I saw the take-back of the 20-always-succeeds rule by the company on my google feed Saturday]

If you as a DM allow any Janos the right to sit at your game table, you've demonstrated your lack of authority.  You've demonstrated your disrespect to every other player.  You may feel that you're being inclusive, but "inclusive" depends upon a universal agreement by all those who are included to recognise and respect others.  Those who will not, or cannot, do not deserve to be included.  Ever.  That goes for the D&D game, that goes for passengers aboard an airline, that goes for the whole country.  Our being included has as a price tag the readiness to accept the inclusion of others.  The one who won't pay that price deserves nothing less than to be shown the door.  Not just the door of my game, but all doors, everywhere.

When I play, or give advice about DMing on this blog, I demand this general respect for everyone's welfare, not just our own.  I expect that if the reader is unable to demand this of your players, and yourself, then naturally, the advice I give won't work.  It won't.  Because it presumes people able to adjust, grow, become more able and mature, cheer on their fellow human and generally see themselves as a member of a group, not a member of a minority of one.

The Pragmatist

I have a new scanner ... and I have a lot of very, very old magazines.  On occasion, and perhaps often as I get started with my new toy, I'm going to throw out anything that looks interesting regardless of the content's association with D&D.  All of it is going to be plagiarised, just as everything else on the internet.  Some of these things were intrinsic to my development as a boy.

This image is from June, 1977.  Never mind the source.  I was 13.

Grab-ass

In a total disconnect with previous topics, recently a friend in the U.S. sent me this video about a young fellow who sets up cameras to catch a local thief.  Essentially, this takes place in rural America; the thief is a local farmer who fails to catch a third camera set up by the video maker ... so we get film of the thief painting over the other two cameras, the thief's car and the stolen goods in the back of the thief's car.  Then the video maker tracks the thief to his home, calls the local sheriff, who goes in and confronts the thief, and what ensues.

This is supposed to be a terrific example of justice being done; but the video infuriated the hell out of me.  The maker is clever and all, and he gets compensation ... but the utterly grab-ass approach to justice strikes me as one of the stupidest things about America.

Why is the video maker responsible for catching the fellow?  Why does the video maker think it's his responsibility to chase down the thief?  And why is the video maker even present when the confrontation goes down?  Why would the sheriff even enter the thief's residence without first examining the evidence in TOTO, getting a warrant, and THEN go in and search the place.  They shouldn't need to confront the accused thief.  The agenda should be to get evidence and charge the thief, period.  Perhaps for a dozen crimes the thief has committed, and not just towards the video maker.  Oh, sure, the video maker got his compensation, but what about everyone else?  How the fuck is this a law-abiding country?

In CANADA, I go to the RCMP.  I tell them someone in the neighbourhood is repeatedly robbing me.  THEY set up cameras.  THEY look at the evidence.  Then they enter the thief's residence and, if there's stolen goods there, THEY charge the thief.  "The Crown" does.  I'm not asked to bring charges, or even given the opportunity not to bring charges, because the LAW has been broken.  When the law is broken, people get arrested.  A common citizen's opinion about the law is not asked for.

Seeing Americans crow about how they achieve "justice" ... sickens me.  Daily, I read a blog called electoral-vote.com.  Day after day, I read a systematic accounting of people deliberately breaking laws in America, specifically through incompetence, graft, malfeisance, misappropriation of funds and just plain stupidity.  This parade of shit has been going on six years now.  It is only broken ONE DAY a year.  July 4th.  That's the day when everyone talks about What a Great Country America Is.

Friday, an old bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed, the Fern Hollow Bridge.  It was identified as ready to collapse 10 years ago.  No one will be held accountable, even though obviously every authority in the United States, including every municipal leader, state senate and congress person, governor and national political figure for the last TWENTY years is plainly responsible.  But no "law" has been broken.  So, no consequences will befall anyone.  Not for this collapsed bridge or the hundreds of other infrastructure buildings in America.  And the thousands who will be injured and killed in the future.

No civilised country acts this way, or defends this sort of thing.  One would think that what Americans might try next July 4th is to hang their fucking heads in shame.

Sure Loser

From today's Electoral Vote.com:

"The new Texas law that is going to force all the in-state abortion clinics to close is very unpopular nationally. A clear majority of people want to keep abortion safe and legal. By talking endlessly about women who were raped and then forced to bear their rapist's child, the Democrats have a talking point that could potentially overshadow Afghanistan and everything else and allow them to hold the House and Senate in 2022.

"However, a small group of activists don't like talking about abortions as something only women have. They want to include people who were assigned female at birth and who now identify as male but can still be raped, get pregnant, and want an abortion. So in their view, men can also get pregnant and need abortions. To their way of thinking, talking about the need for women to get abortions marginalizes the need for some men to get abortions as well."

Tap.

I'm out. 

This is What Losing Looks Like

"Canada withdrew the bulk of its troops from Afghanistan in 2011, with the Infantry Battle Group withdrawn by the end of July (handover of battle space completed 6 July around 09:00 Afghanistan Standard Time), and all Canadian Forces personnel and equipment withdrawn from Kandahar by the end of December 2011. In September 2008, Conservative leader Stephen Harper pledged this, saying a decade at war is enough, after having extended the withdrawal deadline twice previously. He acknowledged that neither the Canadian public nor the troops themselves had any appetite to stay longer in the war and said that only a small group of advisers might remain."

— Wikipedia

Canada entered that war in a pique of stupidity following the 9/11 attacks in late 2001.  A considerable portion of the country was against it, but a combination of fear and hot-headedness seized this country just as it did the United States.  We rushed into that war; the first contingents of regular Canadian troops arrived in Afghanistan in January 2002, just four months after the attack.  It didn't matter that Afghanistan itself wasn't the culprit.  It didn't matter that others throughout history had pursued enemies into Afghanistan and discovered to their humiliation that it was a bad idea.  No one in power was thinking, no one was listening and history was set to repeat itself.  It's like the program was written and locked in, then took 20 years to run.

Canada abandoned America.  There's no other way to put it.  We did not stand with our brothers, we choked and ran.  We tried hard to convince the Americans to run with us but they wouldn't do it.  Obama saw the writing on the wall, knew it was going to end like Saigon and calculated he didn't need the bad press.

This isn't going to be an easy post.  Afghanistan at present isn't tea and cupcakes, so if you'd rather skip the abuse and recriminations that are going to follow, then I suggest you stop reading now.  I've struggled for a week on whether or not to write this post.  I'm doing so because it matters more to me that I describe the issues of the day as I see them, exercising my mind, than pleasing my readers or even my patreon supporters.  This is not a time for coddling.  This is a time for plain talk.  So let's have some.

Let me say up front that I understand why America got into this war; I understand why it stayed in this war; I understand the desire to forestall the consequence and I understand the profitability of remaining — which is a helluva motivator for a world market that is heavily centered around weapons manufacture and sales, not to mention the exploitation of weaker, foreign soil by multinational companies supported by first-world technologically superior nations.  Cominco looks at America, points at Bosnia in 1997 and says "Kill!" and American boots are put on the ground.  Shell Oil and British Petroleum don't like how things are going in Egypt in 1956 and the British dogs dutifully do their duty.  Did you know that Vietnam was producing a million barrels of oil a day in the 1950s?  Probably not ... because it is never mentioned.  The less you know.  Saddam Hussein doesn't play ball with the American oil industry after 1988, after he's installed as dictator in 1980, in order to fight Iran, and of course Iraq becomes a thing.  There's money to be made.  Fuck the locals.  We call it history.

When we want to get out of Iraq, however, we withdraw geographically into a friendly country that conveniently borders Iraq.  Things don't work out entirely in Somalia?  No problem, all the surrounding countries are friendly.  Bosnia we handled, so we didn't have to get out.  Korea gave us no trouble, we secured a big safe block with seaports.  But the invaders did have to get out of Vietnam and it was a total shit-show.  Because when it came time to leave, it had to be done by plane.  No friendly surrounding nations, no seaports with big honking ships we could load with thousands of people.  Nope.  Planes.  And as convenient as planes are, they are shit for moving refugees.

So while Afghanistan was a great place to exploit, it is surrounded by non-friendly countries and NO PORTS.  It is the dumbest, shittiest, least-friendly country to invade and yet, we did it anyway.  Out of stupidity and hurt feelings, like a bully that is punched once in the face, screams and goes apeshit, only to run straight into a wall because he isn't looking where he's going.

You know, it another historical time period it was traditional for armies to stand within shouting distance of one another and taunt each other.  This was done because the army that loses its temper and rushes first is the weaker opponent.  It is far, far easier to kill an enraged, out-of-formation army that's rushing at you than it is to rush at a well-formed, calm, ready enemy.  This is a lesson that America absolutely refuses to learn, possibly because it lives out in the boonies where it didn't have a long history of swordfights going back thousands of years.  The collected entities that the Americans call "Al-Queda" (there is no real organization by that name, but it's convenient for PR journalism) provoked America into a war.  They taunted them.  They blasted two ugly buildings that New Yorkers didn't particularly like and killed less people than die in a day's car accidents and as a result, America spent that nearly eight times as many people again (counting suicides) fighting a war they were never, ever going to win.  Not to mention hundreds of thousands of casualties over there, the firming up of anti-American hatred, and the millions worldwide having to cope with the war dead.  All for the sake of some giant, heartless corporations who made a pile of money remorselessly spending both the dead and the living.

This is what LOSING looks like.

Congratulations.

But no, I'm not done.  While watching the news decry the fuck-fest of trying to move people by airplane and rushing about laying the blame on anyone and everyone, as though that's a useful task ... we're also hearing endless tirades about the horrible, awful things the Taliban are going to do to the Afghan people who helped the Americans in their noble quest to steal money from the country through a hate-justified invasion.  Again, let me remind you:  AFGHANISTAN did not attack New York in 2001; some people in Afghanistan did.  Some of those people were Taliban or got help from the Taliban.  But most of the 21 million people living in Afghanistan in 2000, including many, many self-identified Taliban, were utterly innocent.  That didn't matter.  We saw red, we invaded the whole country, we pointed guns at the whole country, we dismantled the whole country's government and installed our own, while forcing the multiple tribal groups of the area to self-identify as "Afghans," again at the point of a gun, while preaching at home that we were making THEIR country better for THEM.  This is called Hubris, with a capital fucking H.  And if we could, just for one gawddamned minute, stop thinking about people falling out of towers and recognize what a FREAKING FUCKING ATROCITY we committed against innocent people, we might realize why the "Afghan Army" folded in two days and why the plan didn't work.  At all.

I know this is hard for Canadians and Americans alike, but even when we think that our political system is Special-F-Great, this really doesn't mean a lot to other people when we go there and point guns at them, telling them where the bears shit in the woods.  ESPECIALLY when they don't know what the metaphorical bear even is ... which these people, with their own culture and their own values, don't.  These people think other things matter ... and even if we think those other things are bad and evil and disrespectful to our culture, that doesn't matter once we've gone that extra step to bring guns with us and wave them around.  We've burned our credibility to the ground with that bonehead play.

We lost.  We invaded and we lost.  This is what happens.  The invaded people take their country back.

And what's next?  What happened when the Cambodians under the villain Pol Pot pushed out the Europeans?  What happened when Mussolini fell in Italy and the Italian people took their country back?  What did the Russians do when they pushed the Nazis out of Russia and Poland?  What happened when the Americans forced the Nazis out of France?

Don't hit this link if you've got a weak stomach, but have you heard of the Ugly Carnival?   Quote,

"Immediately after World War II, the French people cut the hair of French women who had relationships with Nazi soldiers and humiliated them.  Some of these women were raped by Nazis.  These pictures remain from those sad memories."

Point in fact, however; the French men who collaborated with the Germans; the local fascist authorities who ran the small towns throughout Italy; the various entities, such as the Ukrainians, who threw their lot in with the Nazis in their attack on Russia, weren't humiliated by having their hair cut off.  They were executed.  Because when someone invades your country — and let's again be clear about that when we say YOUR country, not Canada's country or America's country — and it takes ANY number of years to win it back, you don't really give a fuck that the collaborators you're killing were just trying to do what they thought was best.  They're COLLABORATORS.  That is a crime.  According to Dante's Inferno, the WORST crime, since it's reserved for the very bottom level of Hell.  It's called Betrayal, people.  Betrayal of your country, betrayal of your belief system, betrayal of everything sacred.  Try to take all your shit-nonsense about the GOP or the Dems stealing the country and multiply it by 20 years of constant factual evidence that Someone NOT from Your Country actually came in, blew up your capitol building, actually killed all your fucking senators and your vice president, then put Donald Trump on the fucking throne and propped him up.  For 20 years.

Picture that.  Then imagine how very, very, very little you care that the invading country's press is whining up a storm about how hard it is getting all the collaborators out by plane.

I don't think you can do it.  It's almost certain, even when it's plain as Blue Jeebus, you can't see yourself as the bad guys.

But we are.  We are the bad guys.  And this is how it plays out when the bad guys get justice.

Enjoy it, Loser.

And think about how, if we had taken other steps, and NOT invaded Afghanistan, there might have been a chance of selling enough ipods and android phones to the Afghans to convince them that western celebrity culture is just more fun than Islamic fundamentalism.  Because that's how the culture war is being won everywhere else.  That's how the Chinese are going to win in Afghanistan over the next 20 years.  That could have been us.

But our dumb, blind rage fucked that up.

Don't Read; Much Bitterness

No question.  Restarting the online campaign after a two-month hiatus is robbing energy going towards this blog.

I haven't anything left to say at present on the subject of NPCs.

I've thought about writing a post regarding the definition of "campaign," but I'm not feeling that would be fruitful.

A few days ago Keltoi posted a comment regarding emergent stories, with this link to an article arguing that emergent experiences just aren't as important as authored stories.  Essentially, this comes down to an argument that says an OUTSIDER gets more out of the latter than the former.  Why I, a gamer, should give a rat's crap about what an outsider feels about my game experiences, isn't really explained.  I suppose it's the perception that "PopMatters" thinks we should have ... and since PopMatters sells advertising to popculture companies, and said advertising pays the author of this garbage's fee, it probably matters to the game company advertiser that word-of-mouth advertising from game users turns out to be more effective if the stories being told are "more exciting" in the retelling.  Ugh.  Not writing a post about this.

JB started a pretty good post, the third in a series he's writing, providing a scathing critique in the first half ... but then he went to this place where he tried to explain away everything he'd just criticized with a cruddy old lampshade I couldn't sell at a flea market in shithole Oklahoma.  I thought about tearing into that and decided it wasn't worth it.  JB has a natural instinct that drives him to habitually defend every tiny piece of the original works of D&D, and since he's one of three D&D bloggers left in the known universe that I waste my time with, it's fair to argue that I'm just being an asshole about it.  Looking for the link just now showed he's written a 4th post today; I'll read it when I'm done here.

I have a slight notion of writing a post about how if we look at D&D as it was first conceived, OD&D as it were, there's really nothing there that needs to be "fixed."  On the level it was intended, it works.  My issues were that it didn't work well enough, or didn't cover enough ground, or that it could be done better ... but if I were to run dungeon encounters with B/X, exactly as written, the concept would work.  This goes against the idea that D&D needs to be drastically rebuilt from some massacre of fundamental rules, like getting rid of experience, combat, races, classes, all gaming that takes place in towns or what else ... which is a little big like saying we could make a better car if we got rid of the wheels, the transport capability, roads, affordability or fueling stations.  Alas, however, I tend to think this point of view is either obvious or hopelessly lost on people who DON'T have campaigns and yet nevertheless dream of starting one of this variety, that no player or designer is asking for.

As you can see, this is a post of posts I didn't write.  I have this vague hope that from sketching these out, something will click in my head and I'll suddenly go off on a tear about the game importance of food and shelter, why players should be occasionally and physically punched in the face (for their own good) or what snacks I will eat while watching the public execution of an ex-president and treasonous halfwit on television.  I admit that the events of the last eight days have convinced me that running on a platform that we should Build a Wall between Canada and the U.S., which the U.S. will pay for, is a credible political strategy just now.

I think this could get me elected as a member of the socialist party up here.  And gawddamned right, we have one in Canada.  Eff you, Oklahoma.

If the geographic center of the contiguous United States is 2.6 miles northwest of Lebanon Kansas, the pinpoint of the intellectual pit of despair in America is 337 ft. due west of the Tulsa Foot & Ankle Clinic on E 47th Place.  Just saying.

All right.  What do I think of the raid on the Capitol Building ... hm.  No, it's not as bad as 9/11.  It just seems comparable because this happened 8 days ago and 9/11 is just shy of 20 years past.  If 9/11 and the raid took place on the same day (whew, what a day that would be), the raid on the Capitol Building would be an afterthought.  And we'd be told that, even though all the people were white, the Arabs were responsible.

One thing I haven't heard pointed out is that during the BLM marches this last summer, a very large proportion of the people marching were NOT black.  Understandably, hundreds of summer campaigners have pointed out the disparity between police responses between the present episode and numerous episodes we saw in 2019.  But while the blue wave attacked crowds demanding action against corrupt police officers during the summer, those cops kicked, beat, hospitalized and drove over protesting white and non-white people indiscriminately.  These crowds in Washington and at State Capitols are almost entirely white.  It really stands out in the photos, along with the total absence of face masks.  For the record, male facial hair also seems to be a prerequisite, while both sexes seem to have an extreme resentment of personal grooming.  This is a crowd where the men really feel they need to broadcast that they're men, while the women need to broadcast any sentiment that they might be mistaken for women.

[go ahead; vilify me; like I care]

The U.S. is now officially a failed state.  It has been a progressively failed state going back to Reagan, whose personnel walked off scot-free or nearly so after questionable activities in Iran and Nicaragua, breaking the law regarding lobbying and the HUD rigging scandal, the EPA and ultimately the S&L crisis.  Anyone alive and paying attention could see the power elite in America had abandoned the high ideals of the 50s and 60s, without any real consequence landing in the laps of the real people in charge.  At worst, a few stooges were allowed to plead guilty and step into low-security prisons for short sentences, or get off with probation or not even that.  The only thing that has changed in the last 35 years is that it has been increasingly difficult to hide the level of bullshit from the American people.  Thankfully, video games and the internet made it possible for most countries in the world to invent "bread & circuses" on a scale that paralleled Rome's ability to keep its people satisfied.  If any of the events of the last four years had happened in 1969, the city of Washington would be smoking now.  If you don't believe me, look up the riots of 1969 and see what those people felt was worth rioting over, and compare it to this bullshit now.

I've been alive for 56 years and I can say without hesitation that I've never experienced a Prime Minister in either Canada or Britain, nor a President in the United States, that I felt deserved their authority.  At best, I've been able to tolerate these leaders.  I'm fundamentally a liberal reactionary; I believe in an unchallenged welfare-support system and severe restraint on business, particularly big business ... but I've worked in enough crooked small businesses to know the social abuse that gets carried on by a tiny-minded shithead with 14 employees can be staggeringly abusive.  However, these petty tyrants are rarely able to turn on spigots that poison rivers, or make phone calls that start wars; so, yes, I'm for watching the big bruisers a little more closely than the little ones.  I don't believe a corporation is a "person."  I believe the owners of the corporation should be held accountable for every death a corporation causes second-hand.  I believe in a staggered tax rate.

I believe that property is sacrosanct.  I believe religious organizations should pay taxes equivalent to any corporation.  I don't believe the government should provide grants for the production of art or the investigation of social science; but pure science will get my support.  I don't support charities.  Any charity.  I've seen their books, I know where the money goes, and it is not where the charity pretends it goes.  I'm opposed to the politicization of personal choices; I'm fine with what individuals do, but when individuals gather in groups to enforce their political will upon outsiders, then no, I'm not aboard.  If the only defense that can be mustered is that there are more of us than there are of you, because alone we're terrified and we feel persecuted, then I am definitely not your ally.  As such, I do not get along with virtually every liberal on the planet.

I say these things to help make clear my perspective on politics.  I'll go further with the next paragraph.

After Joe Clark faceplanted in the early 1980s, and after Pierre Trudeau's anti-capitalist agenda was attacked by his own party, Canada was handed to the Conservatives under Brian Mulroney, who faithfully followed the gutting instincts of Reagan and Thatcher—though more restrained, because the left is more powerful in this country than they are in Britain or America.  Mulroney gave it up for Kim Campbell, whose legacy was the creation of a rightest group of fartheads that you'd recognize as the present Republicans in power in America.  Those fartheads didn't get into power.  Campbell faceplanted after 132 days, followed by Jean Chretien, who—HATED by the right—remained in power for 10 years because, well, Canada.  But then the moderate left turned on Chretien and we got Paul Martin, who accomplished nothing.  He was succeeded by Stephen Harper, who proceeded to lead austerity measures like every other conservative group of hacks intent on gutting the country and handing it over to the highest bidder.  Harper did this for nearly 10 years, until finally he was removed for the sake of Trudeau's son, Justin.  Who is a nice guy.  A really nice guy.  And excepting the response of his government to Covid, which is paying the country to sit on its collective ass and therefore not superspread the disease, I would have called him a "do-nothing."  Because, regarding the way the country was raped under Harper, there's been nothing done.

All right.  America.

Carter was a well-meaning idiot.  Nice enough, and a good man at heart no doubt, but not a leader and not up to scratch as far as foreign or domestic politics were concerned.  Reagan cleaned his bloody clock in 1980.  Reagan was a crook.  He was a smarter crook than Nixon but his agenda was to remove as many restrictions and restraints created by the governments under Roosevelt and Eisenhower as he could, in the time he had.  The elder Bush then went ahead and carried on that good work, silently enabling American business to cement their position against retribution from the courts or future governments.  And then Clinton did absolutely fuck nothing to reverse that clock.  I was there, I watched it.  Eight years of sitting on his fucking hands, except when he let himself get talked into continuing the Republican agenda of removing even more restraints on business.

Then we got the younger bush and 9/11.  What an opportunity that was!  Not only did we continue to gut restraints on business, we invented government institutions that would deliberately oppose any attempts to reverse those restraints for the "Security" of the country.  Good for us!  And after 8 years of austerity and that bullshit, in which the infrastructure of America was allowed to continue rotting, as it had since the 1960s, we got Obama, Mr. Hope Man.  Who then DID NOTHING.  For eight more fucking years.  Except, again, in the interest of "working with the right," carrying out more of the The American Government's Crusade to Make Business Untouchable.

Well, that donut was followed by the biggest hole in the world.  Yay.  Who didn't have the intelligence to hide the agenda, but what the fuck, who cares, too late now to do anything about it.  So we have watched the consequence-free retard strut and retard himself on stage, wondering how a country can function if it can't remove a stain this black from its own bib.  But that's okay, because the answer turned out to be Biden.  Biden who stood next to Obama while they both did nothing.  Biden who says we have to reach out to the right.  Biden who wants things just like they were, when the agenda was to fuck over the American people and support Business ... whom, I might add, have been given the front and center position in Biden's cabinet.  So we know, regardless of anything else, what sort of four years it's going to be.  By 2024, you'll be lucky if you still have the right to quit your job.  The job that will be assigned to you.

So, that said.

If you think the Capitol means jack shit, you're just looking at the man's right hand before he shives you with the left.  You, dear citizen, don't own your failed state.  It was steadily handed over to other people right in front of you, while you continued to think it matter which party you voted for.  I'm not really keen on Canada either, for the present, because it's going on in just the same way here.  My only solace is that I'm going to be an old man when they shove me against a wall to shoot me, because some group of liberty-loving rebels won't give themselves up.  Don't worry.  I'll remember to spit on the guard after he shoves me.

Real

Watching the 2009 movie, The Trotsky.  They're talking about making a change through protesting, and the aged law professor is saying,

"Everytime I would try to pull a demonstration together, it was just a disaster.  Unless we had some fascist on the campus that would yell at us, it would turn into this gigantic sock-hop.  The point is, everybody came just to be 'part of the scene.'  Just to be in the club.  No one there realized that it's never real, until it stops being fun."

If you were part of the Black Lives Matter marches this last summer, then you may have seen that; and wondered why nothing came out of it.

Because this is a D&D blog, let me paint an obvious picture.  Any time you run as a DM, there will be a significant number of players who will show up because what you've created is a "club."  People, especially socially awkward people, will do anything to belong to a club, even investing themselves in something they don't care about.  Part of your role as a DM is to figure out who is there to be in the club, and who is there to play D&D. 

Rambling on a Sunny July Afternoon

July 1st and it is Canada Day.  I have nothing scheduled to write, because June is over.  I'll post a July schedule tomorrow, but for today I'm relaxing.

I wanted to add a bit to yesterday's post.  People noticed P.F.'s fear of confrontation and I concur.  I'm less convinced than some readers that what's depicted arises out of 5th edition, though undoubtedly that shares much of the responsibility.  My take is that the lion's share is related to a politicization of social relationships that 20/30-somethings have embraced through their upbringing with the internet ~ the idea that if anyone likes a thing, then everyone has to tolerate that thing so that the individual doesn't feel misused and isolated.  The absolute worst reference in the whole video is the "rule of cool," which readers did note.

TV Tropes defines Rule of Cool as,

"The limit of the willing suspension of disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its awesomeness.  Stated another way, all but the most pedantic of viewers will forgive liberties with reality as long as the result is wicked sweet or awesome."

This notion is largely meant to apply to film.  The application of it being applied to RPGs is ... troublesome.

Enabling that encourages dysfunctional behaviour, supporting the use of the rule of cool to solve game problems such as defeating enemies or overcoming obstacles, ensures that the players will ramp up the "awesomeness" of that dysfunctionality until it destroys all semblance of the game.  P.F.'s sin is not that he allows it, or that he supports it ... the sin is that clearly, he gives no thought whatsoever as to the origin of the rule of cool or how it became part of the D&D milieu.

This seems to apply to every other statement he makes throughout the video ... and indeed, through all his videos, as I've seen them.  He, and the people who comment beneath the videos, do not question the presence or the relevance of such rules.  They simply accept them, as though the presence of things like advantage and disadvantage, having the players discuss how they feel their characters should be rolled up, point buys, ignoring the DM, letting the players ignore the DM and so on, the rule of cool, are beyond examination or discussion.  These things just Are.

I find this continually jaw-dropping.  It is obviously creating problems.  P.F. repeatedly uses the word "impossible" to describe managing perfectly ordinary parts of the game, such as knowing the rules.  Clearly, the "rules" he refers to are not the sort I had when I started the game; and they're not the sort originating in the 5th edition books.  The rules as P.F. understands them are impossible because they are not rules at all; they are not even guidelines.  "Rule" is weak garbage-speak for "I have to listen to everyone's opinion and make a compromise."

Jeez.

On one hand, I agree that some things should be discussed and negotiated with the players.  How they roll their characters, or how the fundamental system of combat works, or fucking laws of physics (the rule of cool can go piss on itself), are not up for negotiation, period.  Ever.  I don't care who is pissed.  My partner and I have been together for 18 years, and if the die roll came up and killed her 13th level mage permanently, she would be pretty goddamned unhappy.  And given that we live together, and that she's more inventive with her revenge than I am, my standing by that die roll has every potential of a very long period of resentment. 25 years from now, when we're 80+, and sitting on rocking chairs, I'd fully expect her to pronounce bitterly, "You killed my mage, you bastard."  Not the dice.  Not her choices that she made.  Me.

If I'm not going to bend for the sake of Her happiness, the woman I love, the woman I would unhesitatingly take a bullet for, your chances that I'm going to go back on a ruling like that are right between fucking never and you-will-eat-my-shit-first, fucker.

Ah.  Trying to express my level of passion ... and on some level, the disgust I feel for the perpetrated idealism underlying P.F.'s video makes any language I could invent seem to pale in comparison.

People want to see P.F.'s trouble as "his inability to accept the role of DM," as Lance put it.  But I think it goes deeper, to something I see repeatedly on twitter and facebook, as people try to walk the fine line of standing by their principles while tripping over themselves to placate other people, either because they don't want to be hated or, worse, because they don't want to be labeled "The Hater."

See, as I keep pointing out, it isn't just P.F.  Read the commenters under him.  There are thousands of them.

"My rule is what I call Macgyver: if you can reasonably argue something being plausible, and the table agrees, I'll allow it..."

"For the rule of cool situations just say "remember, everything you can do, the monsters can do too" and the laws of physics will suddenly become sacred."

"Recently some of the other players started telling me that I was kind of being a prick for doing so, because I never call myself out for messing up, so lately I've been saying things like "And since I already cast Zephyr Strike, I can't Hide as a bonus action, so I guess I'll just end my turn normally."

"My simple rule when DMing is once the end of the round is reached no backises."

"I realized when I entertained the idea of save scumming, that I was only doing that because I was trying to make the character an extension of myself; I wasn't enjoying how much 'I' was failing. After that realization, I decided to play the character in a way that was vastly different than my real life self, which started to make the game more fun for me."

"It takes too much time and is too annoying to backtrack 4 turns later because someone forgot bonuses or advantage or whatever else. You just have to suck it up when you make a mistake and move on..."

This is just sampling the first 50.  It goes on and on, with garbage human being after garbage human being making arbitrary standards on non-rule based prejudices, smugly, while defacto accepting what P.F. has said as substantially reasonable.  The most profound thing about twitter, and virtually everyone discussing how something "ought to be done," is the inherent sense that the statement that has just been made is a "mic drop."

I've just said "this" in 62 words without examples or evidence.  Of course I'm right.  Of course I am.  I dare you to write something that disagrees with me.

I think my favorite is the guy who decided the solution to not feeling a failure was to distance himself from his own actions through inventing an invisible friend.  Because that is accepting responsibility for your actions.

boom.  mic drop.

Jojodogboy wrote a supportive comment to assure me the world is really a great place and that there are people who play good D&D.  He argued for granularism, which is the process by which we rebuild the mountain one grain at a time, because we're ready to take the time while the rest get bored and find something else to do.  I agree.  I defend granularism and I practice it.  Doing so right now.

But I don't think that the things Jojodogboy mentioned ~ builds and feats, or maximizing, or the need for interacting with the world as a game fiction ~ have anything to do with it.  My sage ability system encourages "builds."  For that matter, so does Monopoly, RISK, creating a baseball team, putting on a play, starting a company or clerking for a political party.  Builds are a good thing.  3e didn't suck because it had "builds."  It sucked because the build system it employed was a really, really shitty build system.

A "feat" is just another word for a skill.  Skills are necessary for game play.  The idea of having skills, and indeed the skills that were called "feats" in various games, is a powerful feature for building character behaviour, opportunity and imagination.  It wasn't the concept of feats that sucked in themselves, it was the compulsion to reduce every skill to a stale, universal rolling system that failed to make allowances for the individualism of the human knowledge being instituted.

If I play again, you can bet I'm going to maximize my strategies for survival.  I do so in real life; and I laugh when people, in real life, say things like, "there's nothing wrong with preparing for survival, but it is important to have fun, too."  Maximizing is a good, solid functional metric for players to follow in aiding their game play and their success at the game.  And games are, whether fun or not, about Success.  The problem with previous game systems isn't "maximizing" per se.  It was the game-breaking shitty design in what maximums were possible that sucked.  Instead of bitching about people who want to maximize, why not make a game where the "maximum" is still inside a rational limitation.  Fuck, brother.  When I play any video game, you can bet I'm "maximizing."  The good games don't make it possible for me to buy something that breaks the game.

You know, I really don't know what the words "within the game fiction" actually mean.  I suspect it is just new jargon for, you know, "playing."  I've been around for a long, long time.  I've heard lots of jargon.  The DM describes a scene; the players decide what to do.  There are all kinds of people on the net who feel the behaviour underlying this interaction needs to conform to some ideal nature of play ... but in the real world, I have tens of thousands of people telling me similar things about what to believe regarding work, religion, politics, artistic expression and on and on.  I am a function guy.  I am not here to tell the players what to do.  I am here to make the world and to present the world, and then have the world unroll and respond to what the player's behaviour is.  That is my form of emergent play.  I have no idea what was meant in the sentence, "I get a lot more..." but that sounds suspiciously like someone is trying to sell me a product.

Thank you for the support, Jojodogboy.  I don't really need it.  I'm pretty well wrapped up in disgust and righteous indignation.  I don't mourn for the game.  I mourn for the fucking idiots playing it.

Going back ... P.F.'s failure, and the failure of those commenters, isn't that he can't accept being the DM, it's that he seems to be unable to accept the nature of being a human being.  Forgive my saying this, but I'm somewhat experienced and I've picked up a few things.

I'm thinking of a movie written by Billy Wilder.  "Why don't you grow up, Baxter?  Be a mensch.  You know what that means?  A human being."

I think the most pathetic behaviour that has come out this last quarter of a century is the sickening effort people will go to not to draw a line in the sand and stand by it, through thick or thin, come hell or high water.  I watch the line of celebrities as they wait to stand in front of a mic and apologize for some frivolous, irrelevant, human statement that some doofus happened to overhear, as though what such-and-such said about A. or B. or C. has any application to their responsibility to a public so endlessly distracted by bullshit that they can be bought by the banning of a flag at Nascar, the pulling down of a few hunks of metal and Mississippi changing their flag.  Covid rages across countries throughout the world, yet we can be certain the news has time to point another camera at another waggish second-rate half-forgotten grammy winner, writer, movie actor or who the fuck knows what, because he said or she said a word that only one race is permitted to use, lost their temper while drunk, failed as a parent or said that a person born with a penis isn't a woman.  My gawd.  At LEAST We're Paying Attention to the Shit that Matters.

P.F. himself parts the curtain on his anxieties at the begining, when he paints his own eyes in huge anime glitziness to indicate his super-innocence in the world of pulling down his own shitty videos, then depicts himself again at the very end as a stuttering, uncertain, "please like me" sook.

He's terrified, as a infant child, that saying what he supposedly believes won't receive approval.  The world is not populated, as we're constantly told, by entitled narcissists.  It is populated by children, whose political battlecry of tolerance is not aimed at other people ... but from a terrible fear that someday, someone will see them for what they really are, and not feel inclined to tolerate them.

Well, not being a baby; and not overly concerned with whether or not people like me; I'll point out that Canada Day is a celebration of how my country came to a reasonable set of terms with it's colonial master, amicably settling our disputes and agreeing that it was best to move forward in the future like adults and not squabbling, grasping, demanding, petulant children, which is how the Continental Congress sounds to me as they debated things like trade and whether or not to keep humans as slaves.  See, when you're an adult, and the goal isn't to be liked, but to stop shitting around and come to an agreement that stands the test of time ~ 153 years and counting ~ things can get done without leaving endless irreconciable bullshit floating around, like who said what to whom about what and why they should be punished for it, or what are we going to do about stopping doing the bad stuff we've been doing for 244 years even though it even came to war over the issue that still didn't fucking settle anything.

Want to be a better DM?

Don't ask to be liked.

Be a mensch.

The Absent Management of Racism

Arguments about racism in fiction and fantasy, and RPGs, say far, far more about the complainant than they say about racism.  Part of the irreconciability with the present society is that while everyone rightfully deserves compensation, they deserve an abolition of racist instincts all the more.  Receiving neither, a substantial portion of the population feels that to get compensation, they must nitpick every moment of racism they are able to find, as though by endlessly pointing a finger and defining something as [accurately] racist, this will somehow be used by the listener to end racism.

This is not how attitudes are changed.

Try it.  Convince your partner that they need to do the dishes more often by highlighting every moment that a dish is set down.  In fact, mention doing the dishes the moment they reach for a glass in the cupboard.  Don't even wait until they've actually touched the glass.  See where that gets you.

The approach people take to racism doesn't make sense.  The approach itself is an act of desperation; and reaching for the depiction of orcs and goblins as objects of racism, doubly so.  Until we sit down as a thinking, biological species and commit ourselves to sense, rather than sensibility, I don't think this world has any chance of stopping racism.

First, maybe we should discuss what would actually work.  As opposed to pretending that sunlight is a disinfectant.

Because it isn't.

South Carolina

Pardon me, as I write another short post about politics and not D&D.  There are things I'm never going to understand about the American electoral system.  There's a Democratic primary in South Carolina on Saturday, and a Democratic debate in South Carolina tonight, and every voice I hear is treating these events like they matter ...

But we know that South Carolina is absolutely going to go red in November, no matter who is running, meaning that every democratic voter's opinion about who should be the Democratic president is utterly meaningless ...

No Democrat in South Carolina at tonight's debate, or voting in Saturday's primary, will have dick to say about the next President of the United States ... so who gives a rat's ass who the fuck South Carolinians pick in the primary?  This week of discourse and babblejazz is a waste of goddamn air ... and I guess I just thought someone should say it out loud.  The candidates aren't going to, the news isn't going to and the internet seems dense as lead on the subject.

I get how the system works and why, historically, it was built this way.  What I don't get is why people are incapable of viewing the inanity of it intelligently.


P.S.
Consistent D&D content available for a $3 donation to my patreon account.

Health Care

In a few days, my partner Tamara is going to be sworn in as a permanent resident in Canada.  On that day she will receive the right to work, to own property, to run a business ... and to bring herself to any doctor in the country receiving patients and receive free healthcare.

Yesterday, because I have been unsatisfied with my doctor over the last six months, due to changes in his attention to his practice, I made a phone call.  My former doctor's office is 700 steps (according to my phone) from my front door.  I called a different doctor's office, in another direction, that is 1,100 steps from my front door.  I made an appointment yesterday for a "meet and greet" at 10:50 AM this morning.  I arrived and waited 2 minutes in the doctor's office.  I waited 1 minute in the examination room.  By 11:05, I had a new doctor, he had complete knowledge of my conditions from the national computer health system, he had addressed the finger I cut a piece out of on Saturday, and I had a prescription in my pocket for the ramapril I've been taking the last five months to lower my blood pressure.

People in America talk about a national single-payer health care system meaning, (a) they won't be allowed to choose their doctor; and (b) it will mean long wait times.

Bullshit.

It stuns me to think that, despite the 15 months of lawyers and jumping through hoops with Immigration Canada, and the money that involved, that suddenly my American partner is able to go to a doctor of her choice, have her eyes examined properly, have an appointment made to address her cataracts, then to have the procedure, with the participation of nurses, doctors, accountants, administrators and so on, without insurance and without it costing any money, simply because now she is not only an American but is also a Canadian resident.  And, point in fact, not a citizen.  She is not a citizen of this country.  Yet because I am a citizen, and because I have stood up for her, my country has agreed that I'm valuable enough to be personally serviced in this way.  My partner, my country says, deserves to be treated for free because she is my partner.  And that is the only reason my country needs.

During my university years, I took several political science courses at the U of C, particularly those relating to the history of Canadian politics and political theory.  One prof I had, Dr. Jacobson, was fond of disparaging John F. Kennedy, whom he saw as a doofus ~ not because he was a Democrat but because ~ as Dr. Jacobson would stress ~ he didn't understand the first thing about what a government is for.  In his opinion, Kennedy was famous for saying the stupidest thing ever said about government:

"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you ~ ask what you can do for your country.  My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

Kennedy in the above pretends to speak for the country; but in reality, he's only able to speak for the country's government.  Americans are fond of saying that the president is the leader of the country, but in reality, the people of the country do not take their orders from the president, or from any other member of the government.  The government establishes laws and the people choose whether or not to abide by those laws.  But no one above the level of a police officer orders you to follow a law; and the officer does not give a good-goddamn what you can do for him.

We elect governments and create a bureaucracy in order that the government will serve US, and OUR needs, not the government's.  Deciding what needs are to be served is and ought to be above the government's pay grade.  When I, as a citizen, cannot go to my government and say, "I love this woman, and I expect you to keep her healthy so that we may be happy and live a long life together," then my government gives no more of a good-goddamn about me than does a policeman pushing me back behind a barricade or ordering me to the side of the road.  When I cannot make a reasonable request of my government and expect to receive it, then I am a slave.

If my American partner was living in America right now, that's what she would be.  But I fell in love with her, and brought her here ... and though I did it all wrong, and feared what my country might say about it, I've learned to my pleasure that, in fact, my country is here to serve me.  Dr. Jacobson was right.

When your American government tells you that you're only entitled to live when you give money to a private corporation, who will then decide whether or not you're healthy enough to insure ... when your American government tells you that you're entitled only to go to certain hospitals according to the private insurance you've had to buy ... and when you're told by your American government that the value of your life, and the life of your partner, and the lives of your children, is subject to the decisions of corporations and hospitals who are motivated by money, and not by your personal well-being, then you are a slave.

And when others rise up, and say, "Let's not be slaves, like other countries, who do not ask their people to subject themselves to the dictates of privately-driven profit," and still others make up lies about not being able to choose your doctor or about how long you'll have to wait before you receive care, and you do not see this as a scheme to ensure that you remain a slave, then you are not only a slave, but you are a fool also.

I, with Tamara, feel sorry for you.

Canada's Approach to Immigrants

Hearing the things coming out of the 'States, it's strange to get this from Canada's nightly news channel on the CBC.  Though the story states that the government is trying to suppress it, the very fact of its existence and the manner in which it is being handled clearly indicates that the government really doesn't have a problem with this.  And neither have I.

It's Visceral

"The thought occurred to me whether most of the folks so keen on 'banning' this person could stand up to the same scrutiny if applied to their sex life, and they have made one's 'sexual relationships' somehow the central part of the hobby of role playing games, are they really prepared for that?"

~comment by Branduan, related to a post on Blood of Prokopius

Forgive me, I feel the need to be political.

It is telling that this notion, that we are all guilty, has become an argument for those opposed to the #MeToo movement and as regards anything that ultimately holds a public person to account for their behaviour.  We're told, just as Zak S., the person in question here, is being vilified on account of details that came out in February 2019, you're not innocent, dear reader.  Why, you're probably just as much a rapist, a liar, a smug shithead, a toxic internet troll and a potential victim as Zak is.  And one day, you too will be caught!  Your name will be dragged in the mud.  And when that day comes, you'll be sorry you didn't stand up for Zak.  You'll be very sorry.

This has been a little pedantic, and the way I would explain it to a child ... but the concept is so bitterly infantile that it seems appropriate.  I've been in two internet conversations in the last month where someone directly attacked me with this argument ~ and of course, without acknowledgement that I might not be the cretinous liar and scumbag under discussed.  It is convenient for the argument that the maker can feel perfectly justified in calling anyone out, since clearly (they would argue) evidence isn't needed to find a person guilty.

Point in fact: Zak's guilt isn't relevant.  I recognize that it seems his guilt should be relevant, given that it would be a tragedy that he lost his reputation, his readership, his design associates and much of the future he had planned over a scheme directed at him by ... hm, how to put this so that it sounds like Zak is innocent ... a group of lying, nasty ex-lovers of his with an axe to grind, for lols.  [sorry, for my money, that sounds fucking ridiculous ~ but for the sake of argument, let that sit].

But it is not relevant because this isn't a court.  And Zak's popularity is not based on his innocence.  Zak invested his popularity whole hog in the very same women who are kneeing him in the balls, whether justifiably or not.  Zak put his head on the chopping block.  And Mandy hit it with her axe.

This doesn't seem to sink in with the apologists.  Frank Mentzer, another recent case, banked all of his credibility on his association with Gary Gygax, his ability to write game content and his friendly association with people in the RPG community.  And then he deliberately, whether or not innocently, went around pissing off people in that same community, swinging the entitlement he felt about the work he'd done, while failing to get a recent kickstarter off the ground and failing to pay people for work they'd done on his projects.

You just don't do that.  His reputation was built on people liking him.  His reputation was built on completing projects.  If you fuck up those two things, while letting yourself get dragged into a dumb bulletin board scrum, making wild threats against non-celebrities, it is going to bite you in the ass.

He didn't mind his business.  His guilt is irrelevant.  His actions suggest that people really shouldn't like him.  Being liked and not being liked are not subject to court cases, innocence before guilt or whether or not the haters are being "fair."

Here's a big fat shock for people who want to argue philosophy about the virtues of forgiveness and charity, or who want to warn us that the terrible Sword of Damocles hangs over all our heads.  We feel entitled to make up our minds about whomever we want, in any way we want.  We don't need a reason. We don't need to explain ourselves.  It isn't logical or rational.  It's visceral.

There are a lot of people on the internet that hate me.  I haven't used any women to make my blog; I haven't threatened people on bulletin boards.  I haven't tried to use my influence to get anyone banned from anything.  I don't have any influence.  Because I'm very much disliked by a great many people.  I don't feel they have a good reason to dislike me.  They don't know me.  They don't know how generous I can be or how quiet and peaceful I am.  Nevertheless, they feel very much, absolutely, that I deserve, truly deserve, the burning fire of their hatred, given that I occasionally crap on 5e or because I write mockingly about storytelling or heroes of theirs like Coleville.  I'm a nutjob.  I'm a fucking asshole.  I'm grouchy and self-centered.  I'm narcissistic.  I'm likely autistic.  I have mental health issues and I'm sociopathic. These are all words that have been used to describe me by people on twitter and elsewhere ... and that is the tip of the iceberg.

If hate is the only criteria, why am I still here, and not being haranged right now, while Zak and Frank are being burned in effigy?

I hitched my wagon to this blog, my work ethic and my philosophy.  I did not hitch my wagon to porn stars.  I did not film myself with porn stars as a means of achieving fame.  And I did not then give those same porn stars a reason to knock off my head.

I presented a philosophy that some readers could appreciate.  I don't exploit these readers.  I try to teach.  That's all.  If someone can somehow expose me to my readers as "not actually being a teacher," I'm in terrible, terrible trouble.

I can't imagine how my sex life would be relevant.  If my partner Tamara starting writing truly awful letters about me, I don't doubt that my readers would have reason to pause.

But here's the thing:  tomorrow, Tamara and I will have been together for 17 years.  It's our anniversary.  We're rather overmuch in love with each other.  Of all the things in the world I have to worry about, being stabbed in the back by my love is not one of them.  I suppose that's very difficult to imagine for a lot of people to imagine ... that two people can be so much in love, that their lives can be so tightly wound together, where the pain one feels is immediate felt, and healed, by the other.  If my "sexual relationship" became a huge thing online, Tamara and I would sit down, turn on a mic and spend quite awhile talking about it, until others would understand exactly where we were with that.

That won't work for #MeToo "victims" like Zak.

Guess why.