Fertile Soil

My Gentle Readers, I am land capable of producing crops in abundance.  That is the meaning of fertile.  And when someone comes along and plants something in me, I write.  I write and I write and I write write write.  I write that I'm right, and put down here put downs against the short and the tall, the fat and the small, in fact for all, for that's what I scrawl.

This row, pronounced row as in boat and not row as in sow, sprouts from recent seeds that have been sown about the overblown rhetoric of grognards that groan that the game has not grown in tone since its becoming known.  "This thing, I say, is, as I say, impossible to stay, because I say, so why do you flay the horse that dead lays, while enterprise pays, so pray, why do you make hay of this way that we play, it's all so cliche, we'll play it our way whatever you say, you'll make no headway with this blogging mainstay." 

And if so that I can't with this descant that I'll grant, for it's a scant rant that could enchant a houseplant, I'll yet slant this decant with a sharp shan't shan't shan't.  I'll write just in spite of the sprite that's too tight for this month's cockfight, and put down in words the slurs for the nerds, absurd as they're blurred by the sounds of my words.  I'll let the queue review the menu of the brew that I spew, however construed is the zoo that ensues, though a new world should be pooh pooh poohed.

For the right that is right is a written screed pittin' a point that's befittin' when the scene's gone to quittin', that the game's not just for sittin' in a dumb corner knittin'.  When the game's made for shills, we won't take to the hills, we'll fight for our thrills and write with our quills that the game's about skills, not anthills with frills, distilled to the gills and choked out of gristmills.

So I'll write and I'll write, I'll write write write write, 'till the trite is put flight.  In truth it's delight, to smite with eyes bright the wights of this blight.

But now though excited, and feeling beknighted, I'll leave off on this height and wish readers goodnight.  Beknownst it's alright, for our way is alight; and when again I'll recite you'll all get an invite.

Enough Junk

I’ve made a terrible, terrible error, and I’ve made it straight out of the gate. In spite of writing at the outset that I wasn’t going to care what other people thought about what I was writing, I began to care about what other people thought. It is an easy trap to fall into.

One of the ways to develop interest in your blog is to go out and leave messages and comments on other people’s blogs; so I put a little effort into doing that. I dug up a number of D&D blogs and I commented. And took a little time to find out what they were talking about - that being fourth edition - and that’s where my problems began.

On some level I’ve been living in a dream world. I’ve felt that, despite being out of the community for twenty years, that there was still some 'connection' I had with others playing D&D. I knew about the changes in the game, but I simply put that down to the rules … I failed to realize how thought processes had transformed.

I won’t say “evolved” because things have, instead, devolved.

I’ve now found that I’m a sort of player who’s become incomprehensible. Which is a mystery to me, as I’ve continued to talk D&D and incorporate new players … it's only that I’ve vastly underestimated what they’ve said about my world being different.

What are the changes? That’s a bit hard to distill into a few hundred words.

First and foremost, it seems to be commitment. The dialogue seems centered around a) not being able to find a campaign; b) not being able to find a committed campaign; c) not being able to find a committed campaign where the players are serious; and d) endless dialogues about what’s wrong with the game.

Apparently my world is different. I’ve been running the same campaign for two years without a break and without resorting to other games. What I should have done by now is come to my players with something like, “Hey people, I was too bored to work on what we’ve been doing. But I wrote up this really neat 12th level dungeon last weekend; since your characters aren’t strong enough for that, let’s roll up some 12th level characters and play this instead.”

Or, “Guys, I’m sick of D&D. But I just bought a complete box set of Hackmaster Space. Let’s start a new campaign!”

Baffling. Like showing up for a baseball game and saying, “I’m sick of baseball… (fill in the rest).”

This is, however, what everyone is doing, according to what I’m reading. And everyone is sick of it, at least in terms of its lack of meaning or purpose. And the just released edition 4 is fully built to make “casual” campaigns easier to start and run.

Bleh.

So I’m out here making arguments about classes vs. non-classes when this is totally yesterday’s news. Classes? What the fuck are classes?

We haven't got a system we can play anymore. What we have is a fucking joke. Is it so impossible to hope for ONE game we could play on a Saturday nights.  Every Saturday night?  Hah!  Are you kidding?

Yeah, I guess so.

Between the people who wish they had that, and those who think it would be boring beyond words, there is no D&D as I understood it. There is no room for the sort of rule changes I’ve made … not for them.

Still, rule changes are all I want to talk about. Not some company’s changes, not another cheap character or town generator … but actual rules. The sort of rules that define the world and how players interact with it. And I will.

But I have to surrender any belief that other people will come on-line, see what I’ve written and incorporate it into their campaigns. They don’t have campaigns. I’m not very clear on what the fuck they do have … weekly random somethings. They tend to post about making their own modules: another fuckwit castle full of whatever the latest monster is. One more Den of Desolation on the Last Outpost of the frigging Desert of Despair. Where a rag-tag party of Indiana Jones’ wannabes can duel it out with traps and Final Fantasy entities to seize the Great Jewel of Arnhem.

Yes, bored they are.

Looking back over this rant, I see it's not that clear. I’m going to let it stand anyway. I’ve been thinking about this since Thursday, and sometimes emotion is not about grammar.