Noodling With Travel

Sorry, but like Brian from The Breakfast Club, I'm going to go ahead and pat myself on the back now.  I've said before that I am always getting new ideas.  Last night, laying in the bathtub (like Archimedes, my electrons fire when wet), I came up with a doozy.  And I think it's slashing brilliant.

A little history, first.  Last week I posted about breaking camp, where Zzarchov produced the astounding idea of travel causing damage.  He did not post his system, but on Sunday Anthony posted a fair effort at stealing it (Anthony's words, not mine).  Once upon a time, that would have been good enough for me, too ... but nowadays I find myself looking at traditional tables and seeing them for the stale systems they are.  This is not to disparage Anthony.  I was thinking, as he posted his format, of drawing up something exactly like it.

Not now, however.  I have something that I am certain goes one step better.  I am hoping even Anthony and Zzarchov will think so.

The two problems I see with the traditional format are these.  1) the very same argument I made about things with one hit point dying in the wilderness; and 2) that very tough, high-level characters are not going to be upset by 1 to 6 hit points damage per day.  Yes, if there are a lot of followers and so on, that could mount up, but the party I run presently can easily heal 60-80 hit points a day.  So as long as they take care to protect the lower levels with vardo and so on, they can mount up for weeks at a time with little trouble.

Now, James said something that got stuck in my head, the finally latched onto my watered skull last night: "Damage could be a % of max hit points with a ceiling instead of an objective value ..."  And suddenly I knew what was needed.

Consider, then, the following table, conjured just a few minutes ago:

Days equals the total number of days the party is travelling.  The Base Damage adds 0.1 damage per day of travel.  The Weather Description can be entered as pleasant, unpleasant, severe or harsh, and each particular description provides a modifier.  The Route can be a road, a carttrack, a trail or none at all.  Again, each sort of route provides a modifier.  Finally, the base damage is multiplied by the Weather Modifier and the Route Modifier, producing a final result.  This result is rounded down, giving the total damage for the journey.

Now, I haven't sat down to calculate out the specifics of what kind of weather applies to what modifier.  Pleasant weather would be fair and clear, 5 degrees (celsius) near body temperature, with a minimum of wind.  A mixed rainy day, or a day colder or warmer, or a stiff wind might be unpleasant.  A steady drizzle or falling rain, a very cold day or a hot day, and a slashing wind, these might be severe.  And a combination of the above, with any of them being pronounced, would be harsh.  Of course, the DM might just use what feels best, or might get definitive.  At the moment, it doesn't matter.

To get a feel for this, let's describe an 8-day journey.  Let's presume a party starts on a road, turns onto a carttrack, then onto a trail, and finally jumps off into the wilderness for a day.  At that point, they turn back and head to town:

Now, here is where things get interesting.  On the first day, its a bit chilly and the party feels stiff and uncomfortable ... but they're on a road, and overall they feel no special effect from the environment.  The second day, the base damage climbs to 0.2 (I'm rounding the figures off, the exact number is actually 0.196), but the weather is pleasant and the carttrack is easygoing.  Again, no appreciable effects.

With the third day, as the party slips off the carttrack and onto the trail, the sky spatters rain and the day is a bit worse.  The trail is slippery and by the end of the day people feel the going has been harder.  But still, there have been no appreciable effects.

So they cut right into the wilderness.  Now here it gets interesting.  It doesn't matter if its a forest, a mountain or brushland.  Some consideration might be made for the plains, treating them as a kind of endless trail.  What's important is that the distance covered per day determines how hard it is to cross a particular hex, not what's in that hex.  A jungle may allow for 2 miles of travel per day.  A mountain highland, 3 miles per day.  A forest, 5 miles per day.  In any case, take note how multiple days can add up.

The fourth day, the weather is pleasant, so even though the route is hard, they don't mount up any appreciable effects.  And let us say they plunder a goblin camp at the end of the day and start back.

The fifth day, things turn sour.  Working their way back through the same trackless environment they fought the day before, the weather turns severe and they begin to feel the effects of five continuous days of journeying.  They all suffer a point of damage, which they deal with fairly quickly.  Things will get better, they think, as soon as we get out of this wilderness.

Unfortunately, the sixth day a major storm grips the land and the weather gets positively icy.  The base damage climbs only a little bit, but the effects of the harsh weather and the trail take their toll.  Everyone takes three damage.

Thankfully, the next day the weather clears and they get onto the carttrack.  But the previous days effects do not magically go away.  The party is exhausted, beaten down from the trip and the weather (it's the seventh day of trekking, after all), so even though now they are getting back into civilization, their bones hurt and its troublesome even to move.  They might even be suffering from mild ailments and sinus symptoms.  They all take another three damage.

Finally, the eighth day, they get back on the road.  The weather is pleasant again, and the road lowers the amount of damage back down to two.  Thank god that night the party will be back in town.

I see a lot of ways this could be mitigated.  Certain characters could be immune to certain weather effects, or the modifiers for them (kept separately, which is easy to do on excel) reduced very slightly.  A particular spell or strategy could reduce the increase in base damage, or the reverse - if the DM really wanted to emphasize how tough the journey was.  By noodling around with the numbers, all sorts of mitigating circumstances could be accounted for.

Most of all - and here is the true genius of the system - the amount of time the party was away from civilization would be critical.  Moreover, since the climb in the system is steady, higher level characters would really feel the effects after three weeks, even if the weather was wonderful.  Mungo Park eventually losing all his men in the African interior, indeed.

And yet, at the same time, any zero level with 1 hit point could safely wander away from home for two or three days, and expect to come back safely.

This is the best idea I've had in ages.

The Squib Was Damp

It was inevitable that - my having a game design - someone would throw the "Rules" of online game design at me.  As it happened, I beat out the inevitability by stumbling upon them, organized and tabulated by Raph Koster, here.  It is a daunting, sobering collection.

However, it is nice to have at least one thing confirmed.  In Raph's words, "It's not just a game ... It's a service, it's a world, it's a community."

Yessiree kiddies, I'm not the only one who takes this seriously.

This last Saturday night, however, I completely crashed on my players.  A collection of circumstances having nothing to do with them left me unfocused, dry as a bone for ideas and utterly unmotivated.  The time came to run D&D, and I could not run D&D.

I've often drawn connections between D&D and stage performances, but there is a crucial area in which they differ.  When the evening comes, and you are expected to perform, you can't go out the audience and say, "Hey, people, I am not up to this today."  You have to go on.  What enables you to go on - even if your drunk, sick, on medication or injured, the lines have been written for you.  If Hamlet breaks a leg, the stage action can be quickly redesigned to enable him to remain centre stage in his cast (or pushed around in a wheelchair).  I've heard of it being done, but I have not personally seen it.

Dungeon mastering can be scripted.  I don't script my games, and 29 times out of 30 that is just fine.  This weekend wasn't.

Seriously, the thing to do in times like this is to be honest, to offer the players whatever side information they need - if they need it - and that failing, to just play poker.  Because if you go on pretending, banging your head against that wall without hope of improvement, you are just going to damage yourself and your campaign.

The fact that it isn't a game - and that it is serious - means that as a DM you have a responsibility.  You have taken it upon yourself to provide a good evening for other people.  You may personally feel that's unfair, that the whole thing shouldn't rest on your shoulders, but you've chosen to DM and that's the price you pay.  Try to shift out from under that responsibility and your players will know it.  And they will not respect you.

So be honest.  If you're not ready right now, but you think you might be able to get your shit together, send everyone - yes, everyone - out to the nearest store and take that time to think clearly.  Silence will work wonders in getting your head together.  With luck, they'll come back, and you'll be ready for them.

But if you're not, or you think that even a little time won't help, be honest about that too.  Just admit that you're in over your head, that you'll be in a better state of mind for the next session and that you are sincerely, honestly sorry.  It will help if you actually are.

I despise myself when I have these moments.  And I immediately make promises to be better prepared, and for the larger part of the next 29 sessions I am better prepared, and the sessions are good.  But things get busy, and the preparation falls off, and my confidence grows that I don't need any preparation, and then that bad session happens again.

Human nature.  What a shit that is.

My players were very forgiving.  We talked for awhile, shared stories, ate and basically had a small party.  And then the ranger pointed out that we hadn't yet really sat down and worked out the background of her sixteen followers (she made 8th level a couple of months ago) and so we did that.  It's a drawn out process, not bad for one player ... but for sixteen it is exhausting.  But two hours later, the matter was solved.  Everyone had a height and weight, an age, a father's profession, a background, a knowledge of any diseases and so on.  Easily the most interesting condition?  One of the women fighters was - is - eight months pregnant at the time of becoming a follower.  Should be interesting to see if the mother dies in childbirth ... and if the baby is adopted by the player.

So all in all, not a bad session.  Some people left with the feeling that something had been accomplished; there was some feeling that its been awhile since a hardcore, stand up fight yielded a lot of treasure; and there was certainly tolerance and good will shown to me.

Damn it, I owe those good people a good time.  I feel it right down deep ... and things that are 'just a game' don't make me feel that way.

About the "rules" ... I suppose I'll have to write about them the next few months, specifically in reference to my efforts with Conflict!  I expect that won't be very easy.

Alchemists Level 3

The third level begins in the center of the map, and drifts in a clockwise spiral until ending at the lake in the upper right corner. There is no connection with this level and the three shafts on the right except back up to the first level and down the shafts; some of what's written on this level should give the reason. Describing it, the players should get the sense that A) some kind of accident occurred; B) the piled furniture in front of the two doors was an attempt to close off the interior; and C) things have been left deliberately behind for reasons that are unclear. It might also occur to players that what was left behind is somewhat more active than might have been expected ... since the 'closing off' effort is fairly weak considering. Ah, but this is human nature.

As before, this can be read more clearly on the wiki, here.

 
These are kind of fun.  I'd like to point out that none of the odd or unusual things described above are rehashes from campaigns I've run in the past.  To the best of my mind they are completely original, being what I thought of to fit the overall concept as I was designing and describing that particular room.  This had a lot of description only because the things I thought of were hard to outline in just a few words.
 
I'm enjoying how well things are coming together.  Of course, there's only a slight chance the party would even come down this way at all ... and I ought to get around to describing the shafts from the beginning.  A few of you might have guessed that those shafts lead to a second attempt at whatever the first attempt failed at.  You'd be right.

Hard Trekking

When I said Monday that this blog would suffer from my not having as much time, I meant that I wouldn't be able to produce as much deeper material ... that is, I'm reduced to commenting on other people's comments, or occasionally on general stuff that just occurs to me.  On the other hand, writing a post on 'great villains' (which would involve gathering a long list of movies and reducing it) or a post on 'paper' (which I need to do more reading in order to tackle) are just out of the question.

Thankfully, I'm getting so many great comments, I'm not short of things to write.  The one below from Zzarchov, that he wrote yesterday in reference to breaking camp.  Zzarchov has apparently taken it upon himself to provide endless material for this blog, both positive and negative.  Keep it up, brother!

Zzarchov says,

"I use more abstracted rules than this, basically boiling down to you take damage as you travel and heal slowly while going through the wilderness without creature comforts ... as well as different terrain types having different "Miles per day" ratings.  This leads to two things: 1) an increase in taking the longer route if it passed through civilization, roads and inns; 2) No more 'rushing through the wilderness', the bean counters came out and 'frontier living' was replaced with carefully planned expeditions."

I really like this idea.  I can't say, of course, how Zzarchov runs it, but I can see heaping up considerable damage for a wide range of vegetation/topographical features, to discourage travel.  An ordinary, open forest might just cause one damage a day, but a deep jungle, such as Laos, filled with toxic plants, leeches, dry rot, malaria-carrying insects, rough up-and-down terrain, heavy rainfalls mixed with high humidity and heat, etc., could cause 7 or 8 hit points per day, depending on which part of the jungle being moved through.

I love the idea of giving each hex a "hp damage" rating ... however much the party might really, really hate it.

Fact is, any high level party is filled with healing ability, and it would do less to wear down the characters actual hit points than it would to wear down their spell-healing potential.  But that, too, leads to a greater chance of death.

If the reader is looking for substantiation for this policy, I would recommend reading about the expeditions into Africa by Mungo Park, Henry Morton Stanley and James Bruce.  Obviously, there's also Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton describing the Antarctic, and Elisha Kent Kane in the Arctic, along with the writings of John Franklin prior to his disappearance and James Clark Ross.  Descriptions of horrid conditions, the destruction of men by the environment, worn down by long winters and the wilderness.

The weather, too, is as justified a damage-causing force as the terrain.  Why shouldn't an ordinary thunderstorm cause 1 damage?  Have you been in a heavy storm for two hours, without shelter, and has that not exhausted you and encouraged you to spend the next day inside and warm, resting?  Maybe it is because I'm old.

I have been caught in a hail storm, however, in countryfied Saskatchewan, where the hail was the size of peas.  If you have been to central south Saskatchewan, you'll know there is no cover.  Where I was, walking back three miles from a service station to my grandparents lakeshore cabin (I was 14), there were no trees within two miles, in any direction.  The storm came up quickly.  My sister and I saw it coming and we counted on getting wet.  We did not count on having to cover our heads with our hands while curled up in a ball, taking the hail on our backs.  Do I believe that was worth 2 hit points damage?  You bet I do.

A great part of the reason we don't have rules like this in D&D is due largely to the insistence on some that human beings and humanoids can realistically have 1 hit point.  Thus, no one wants to make a statement that walking through a forest could kill a kobald, or that getting caught in a hail storm could cause the death of a small orc.  This just seems ridiculous to most people, so the idea can't get off the ground.

I could make an argument that creatures with higher armor classes (and I class most humanoids as having such without needing armor) could be immune from a lot of things that would hurt humans.  Also, rules could be applied that those who grow up in forests are immune to the damage they do - Mungo Park's men died, but the natives did not ... obviously.  And finally, the climatic region one grows up in should apply as well.  Some of my readers down in Florida would certainly be uncomfortable in an ordinary Canadian winter, and I would have trouble with an ordinary Florida summer.  So in many cases, exceptions would help mitigate those unlikely deaths.

And still, why shouldn't it matter that certain persons would have to run for shelter or die?  After all, we're not saying the hit point damage would necessarily be in the moment the rain struck.  History and literature are full of children who were caught in the rain, caught pnemonia and died ... which is really just the one hit point damage extended over a great time period than a sword thrust.  Who is to say that the moment the storm hit, the child was already suffering a minor ailment, but not enough to register on hit points, hm?

No doubt the general section would argue saving throws.  Always, always, it's saving throws.  No doubt, I could walk through an African jungle without shots and just be so lucky that I not only do I avoid malaria, dysentery and diptheria, but also spurred branches, sharp stones, the scraping bark of deadfallen trees and rocks I must cross over and even burrs and thorns.  More than that, I don't lose my footing a single time, and I am utterly ignored by every living creature so that I plunge into ponds and the leeches ignore me, the ants and flies ignore me, etc., etc.

No, sorry, that's not how it works.  Come this summer, take a journey to northern Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Alberta and find how long it is before you start being eaten by the blackflies there.  No one is exempt.  So unless you're going to have saving throws for every possible hazard - which will only mean you'll suffer a certain percentage on average anyway - or you just establish the 'average' as the automatic damage and save yourself a lot of annoying rolling of dice.

For my players, no, I have no plans at this time to implement any of this.  But it is very intriguing.

Breaking Camp - The Best Part of the Day

UPDATE:  This post has been updated under the title, 'Breaking Camp,' and included in the recently released book, How to Play a Character & Other Essays, available for purchase from the Lulu marketplace.


I can remember a fishing trip with my father when I was a young teen into the mountains, a place called Abraham Lake. The lake is really only a wide, deep part of the Athabaska River, the same that flows north through Alberta to join the Peace River, that becomes the Slave river before it flows into Great Slave Lake, and ultimately across the Northwest Territories as the Mackenzie river. But none of that is important right now. I include it only because I’ve always been enamoured with that sort of thing, even when I was very young ... that the water flowing past me at this moment went this far and to this place. But I’ll restrain myself and continue.

Abraham Lake in the late month of May is some 60 miles in length and exists as a ribbon between a solid rock wall and a wide sand flat about a mile in width. The road ends at the edge of the sand flat, and if you don’t want to break the law (my father is a stickler about these things, and so am I) you carry what you need across the sand flat the mile or so to the lake. Except that you expressly do not carry it right up to the banks of the lake, for good reason.

The sand is rippled and hard, and the ridges can be felt even through the soles of hiking boots. The elevation is above 5,000 feet and in May the weather is still cold.

You carry the tent and the stove, your goods and your tools across the sand. To fish the lake, you need a flat bottom boat, and you need to haul this too. You stop and make camp at least two hundred yards from the Lake. This is because, in May, the snow is starting to melt in the mountains above the lake, and the water level of the lake is steadily rising. The sand flat is not quite level ... but it is level enough that the lake swells some 50 to 75 yards every 12 hours.

Thus, the distance you must walk to get water to wash at night is a lot less in the morning.

We were there for the weekend, and we moved our camp three times. The memory of doing that struck me first thing when I hit upon the point of this post – that being, the problems and tribulations of breaking camp, with some notes about how much time it’s likely to take.

Now, most of this is straight off the top of my head. And I haven’t done great amounts of research on every feature, so if I am grossly wrong and the gentle reader thinks so, pipe up. But it seems to me that a lot of things are going to take quite some time ... and that these things are almost always ignored.

For example, horses. I can remember that prior to horseriding lessons – not taken by me, but by a girl I knew – the time that an arriving student was expected to take was 20 minutes before the riding could begin. I can’t say all that this involved; the very least would have to include saddling the animal, arranging the harness, setting the bit in the animal’s mouth, an awareness for any irregularities that might indicate a parasitic infestation or a disease ... which then might mean the animal cannot be ridden at all, or that something should be done at once. When was the last time in your campaign a cleric expended a cure light wounds spell first thing in the morning because a horse's leg was sprained?  Surely the likelihood of this goes up when there's more people in the party, and therefore more horses.

Plus the reference for 20 minutes assumes the horse is in the stable.  What if it has been a windy night and one, or all of the horses have broken free, and must be tracked down?  Ever happen in your campaign?  A horse getting away was not all that uncommon.  Add to it the wear and tear on the saddle, harness and bit - because they aren't hung neatly in a barn somewhere - and the repairs that need to be made that morning because it wasn't noticed the night before, we're talking potentially more time.  It would only take one party member having to jury-rig the bridle one morning to slow up everyone.

Oh, and there's watering and feeding the horses.  If the horse has been kept sheltered all night in an arroyo, it hasn't been out in the field eating, has it?  Seems to me this is going to take time.  Someone has to fetch water ... and no only for the horses, but for anyone in the party who wants to wash, or for cleaning the cooking utensils.

Yes, cooking.  When camping, we used to cook on a Coleman stove; somewhat heavy, but light enough to pack and very effective.  A party doesn't need to cook a breakfast meal, but cold food in the medieval period wasn't especially healthy.  Bread was regularly filled with little nasties, as was the meat, and cooking was a way of keeping a party healthier.

It takes 10 minutes to bring a fire to a place where it will cook food, and during that time preparations can be made.  If you will accept 15 minutes to cook the food (5 or 10 if you're not particular), and 10 minutes to eat the food, wash the dishes in the water someone has fetched, plus another 10 minutes to pack all the cooking equipment up and dig out the fire (depending on what environment you're in), someone in the party is going to spend at least a half an hour doing nothing but being the cook.

And it won't be one of the spellcasters ... at least, not if the day before was spent in battle.  They'll be memorizing.  I have a rule that for each spell used, the caster must - after resting - spend 15 minutes per spell level regaining the use of the spell.  A 5th level spell can therefore take an hour and a quarter.  I recognize that a lot of readers don't use spell memorization; I, however, am a traditional guy.  It is a very effective way to limit the use of magic, particularly in the outdoors, and for playability reasons I'm not likely to toss it and give spellcasters even more influence over my campaign.  They have enough, thank you.  At any rate, while someone else is cooking and getting the water and making small repairs (not just the harnesses, but of anything that might be found to be damaged), the spellcasters will be praying and studying.

Which is okay.  They can do that while the fighters are getting their armor on.  I've seen estimates for putting on full plate that range from 4 to 40 minutes ... with the shorter time presuming that help is provided.  I won't settle on a number - some show-off will jump in and tell me how I'm wrong, so what's the point?  If people want to give a number, I'll sit back and appreciate it.  In any event, we're talking about some time spent here, that isn't spent taking down the tent.

A square tent of the sort typically seen in most cheesy depictions of the middle ages is about 8 feet in diameter and would take at least 15-25 minutes to empty out, pull down, fold and wrap in a manner that it could be easily unwrapped the following night.  it will make a fairly substantial package, since it would be made of canvas, and would possibly fit on someone's horse ... provided that character's other equipment was dispersed on someone else's horse.  Who gets to carry the tent today, and forgo access to their more delicate equipment?

Very well.  Along with ablutions, which are in any case optional (do your disease rates increase without washing, or are they flat numbers based on no one doing so in the medieval period?), there's always the occasional bit of respect/religious action given to the gods.  A quick prayer, a carpet that needs unfolding for said prayer, the rolling up of said carpet again ... yes, perhaps its only 5 minutes, but in most religions its not only the clerics who are expected to pray.  But most players are woeful athiests, like their DM, so there's usually no reprecussions for disrespect.
So, the water has returned and you water the animals and wash down anything that needs to be washed.  All the equipment used for breakfast, sleeping, waking, changing clothes and so on is steadily repacked.  The order inside backpacks is carefully managed, bedrolls are rolled, spellbooks are placed back in their metal boxes under lock and key, weapons are rehung into their places on the mounts and on the character's own bodies.

Getting dressed for me, real world, is a rush whirlwind that lasts 13 minutes every morning.  The actual putting on clothes time, plus gathering things I'll need at the office, is 6 minutes.  Somehow, I think it takes longer if you have to put on three belts, hang weapons all over your body, wrap your clothing around your special parts and tie everything (not just your shoes), prepare for heavy weather, fit your belt pouch carefully into its place and so on.  It must take everyone at least 20 minutes just to get up to the status of formidable destroyer of monsters ... and of course, in D&D, no one ever forgets anything.  The third dagger on the second belt is always in its place, always, without fail, and the DM never says, "Oh, you forgot to put it there today.  Remember, you were using it yesterday to pick the pits out of the plums you were eating, and before you crashed you tossed it in the back pack by your bedroll so it would stay dry.  It's still there, safe and sound, 20 feet from where you're standing right now."

This never happens.

Another consideration, while everyone else is gathering up all the bits and pieces from last night's debauchery (three plums each and chili peppers in the beans, hoo boy, what a party!), someone might want to get the party's bearings, make some notes about where north is and the angle between north and that distant hill top being used as a reference bench, consult a map or two.  This stuff takes time.  Not only that, while we pick up the camp, we don't dare start through this forest or along this mountain track without someone doing a little scouting ahead, to save time.  So that's potentially an hour to start out, ascertain what the best path is from here, and head back - probably best done by the ranger who eschews armor (smart lad!), since he takes less time to get ready.

While he's out in about then, the last note I'll make goes back to the gathering of things together.  There's always one more thing to do.  It may be bottled things sitting in the nearby river so they'll keep cold, or berries and nuts to be gathered for the long day's travel, or herbs that are needed for a poltice or two on a bad scratch (saving the spells - and 15 minutes work memorizing - for worse things), ropes used to tie back inconvenient branches, strings used to wrap together bundles of branches to help form a wind-break, collapsible baskets or sacks filled with dirt to weigh down the tents on a windy night, etcetera.

The process of breaking down a camp - along with putting one up - is an annoying, tedious process, something the characters go through every day and which gets very little recognition as a plot point in the game.  It is as though the world stops for two, two and a half hours, since that is never the moment the monster attacks, nothing ever gets left behind at the previous camp and nothing ever goes wrong.

Comforting to know that as soon as we get up in the morning, we live in a perfect world.  At least, until we start moving again.

And I Will Talk of Being Liked and of Being Loved

For those who may not know, Drance is a commentor from time to time on this blog, though the gentle reader may not have seen his comments.  I find most of the time I have to delete them.  They're not generally relevant and at times they are flatly abusive.  But I'd like to make a point about free speech here ... that while Drance may be deleted from this blog, he's quite free to write what he wants elsewhere.  Case in point, the comments below, which are part of a comment he made on this post, on a blog I rarely read.

"Not to name names, but someone needs to tell some guy named Alexis at Tao of D&D to get over himself. Every time I look at his blog, hoping against hope he’s stopped being an elitist fuck, I’m continually disappointed. I don’t care how well he can write (and it pains me to say that I think he’s pretty good) or how articulate he is or how profound he can be…his delivery fucking stinks. Just because you hand me a gold nugget wrapped in pigshit doesn’t mean I’m going to be grateful!

Alexis, take note: you’re being a know-it-all about a pastime that can, on it’s most basic level, be described as “playing pretend.” Now I don’t say that to belittle the hobby. Read my blog and you’ll see I am in love with RPGs. No, I’m being critical of the killjoys who need to, as the kids say these days, “get all meta” about the hobby. Dude, I don’t care how much you know. If you keep talking to people like we’re fucktards, you will reap nothing but disdain."

Yes, I am quite familiar with this round hole, and with the use of the hammer in Drance's hand.  Let me start by saying that no, I'm not going to go off here.  But I would like to use the above written critique to address some points about this blog, and about my personality in general.

There's a lot of substance here; I think probably I'm not going to try handling it in the order it's written.  I'd like to start with the words, "playing pretend," since that's less a shot against me personally than it is a shot against anybody and everybody who takes D&D seriously.

I have written a post about this.  The game is not only pretending to me, it's an authentic presentation of an artistic design, weaved together in a complex and resolutely considered fashion, constructed both from my imagination and from researched sources.  It is no more "playing pretend" than is writing a novel, where a created character is devised, placed in a given situation and that situation resolved in order to present both entertainment for the reader and a thematic purpose.

It isn't so much that the words 'playing' and 'pretend' are substantially wrong in their description of what D&D is, or what a novel is.  I know, and the reader knows, that the words are put together here in this context in order to denegrate the activity and reduce it to the lowest common denominator.  The words are chosen because of their association with kindergarten and preschool surroundings.  They hurt because as adults we feel our maturity is deserving of recognition - we have lived long, and through a great deal of trouble, to become the age we have reached, and it hurts to have that denied ... even when the denial is the pairing of words which we first learned at that very young age.  We were told to 'grow up' ... and when our effort to do so is challenged, it stabs like a nail.  But the reality is that creativity is a virtue, certainly one of the greatest virtues, and to be labeled with it is no great insult.  We age and the words 'playing' and 'pretend' are replaced with more meaningful words like 'designing' or 'conceptualizing,' but the principles are the same.  At the board meeting your boss does not sit down and say, "Let's pretend that this airplane we're playing with exists," but prior to the actual existence of said airplane it is of this that most design meetings consist.

Drance says he does not mean to belittle the hobby, and that he loves RPGs, as evidenced by his blog.  He has chosen to name his blog from a quote by Shakespeare that denotes a moment of war, wherein Henry V strives to take the city of Harfleur.  Prior to speaking the words of Drance's blog title, Henry has been knocked back and back again, but he is undeterred.  Regarding the substance of Drance's personality, I choose to believe that he identifies with this aspect of Henry, and that - undeterred - he is waging a war against things he does not believe in favor of that which he does.  He will take the city, and therefore he will plow once again into the breach.  I get it.  And I accept that his purpose in this quote is not to rank the hobby, or those who are playing in it.  I am Harfleur in this play, and it is the breach he perceives in my character that he takes arms against.

But he says he cares nothing about what I know.  My personal feeling is that my knowledge of Shakespeare, Henry V and Harfleur ought to be very important to Drance.  I don't believe he threw out the title of his blog in a random fit of disinterest - I'm certain he struggled with the decision.  How much better is the title, then, when those out here in the world who are reading it know the source of the reference?  And how much worse is the title when it is met with ignorance and disinterest?  The title is improved with knowledge ... in this case, my knowledge.  The same knowledge I carry around with me and apply to every creative, pretending effort produced by those who have taken the time to be clever.

Ah, but here the context is not so much that my knowledge is useless, it is that it is clothed in a mass of disapproval, abuse, awful delivery and elitism.  The delivery, Drance says clearly, is a mess of pigshit, so that all that knowledge is worthless when buried in it.

Well yes, I'm not going to deny it.  I have never denied it on this blog.  I am a terrible person.  I am unkind.  I am an asshole.  And I do speak to a great many of my readers as though they are fucktards.  I am on record over, and over again, that I have no use for fucktards.  And I am on record as recognizing that I can't keep fucktards from reading this blog, though I wish it were possible.  I look around the D&D online community and I observe that everywhere message boards and comments sections under brilliant posts are filled with the comments and non-comments which either piss on the material or fail to add anything.  This is not the world as I would want it to be.  This is my Harfleur.  I wage against those who are ignorant and disinterested in things like the title of Drance's blog.  And in fighting my way through that breach I've struck and hacked and cut with my sword, because to battle for anything you believe in is unpleasant, cruel work.  Battles are won with swords.  I cannot win over the fucktards, this I know, but I will not renounce the sword and give them the day.  So I fight.

I can't quite believe that my behavior has caused me to "reap nothing but disdain."  In fact, any quick analysis of the internet (which is how I found Drance's comment in the first place) yields many, many positive, impressed comments, suggestions to others to read my blog, praise for my blog, links to my blog and so on.  There are very, very few statements of disdain ... and those that I do see tend to include phrases such as "I think he's pretty good," occasionally couched in something that says the writer is unhappy that its true.

There is something telling in being dismissed, attacked and hated while at the same time gaining respect for the actual work-slash-writing I'm producing.  I suppose it has something to do with my not being "over myself."  I must tell the reader, I quite like me.  I like the things that I say, I like the life that I have made for myself with my friends, my wife and my daughter, I like the creative road that I'm on and I like the opportunity that exists to make a fair bit of money and be comfortable in my living arrangements.  I have several opportunities to produce good work, I am generally respected both offline and online, and I have few - if any - negative people whom I must tolerate in my daily existence.  For these reasons, no, I'm not really over myself.  I feel I have my feet firmly enough on the ground in that I'm aware I'm not always pleasant to people.  I don't delude myself that I'm well-liked ... I know that I am not.  But I am well respected.  And I know from many years of experience, many of which played out before the Internet, that in the long run it is more important to be respected than to be liked.  People who will like you today may or may not change their minds when the wind changes; but people who respect you today, for something that they themselves cannot do, will respect you tomorrow.

It is that whole process of performing an action that not everyone can do that creates the virtue of elitism.  To make the point, I quite like to watch the Tour de France.  I will never race in the Tour de France.  At no time in my life was there ever a chance that I would.  But I respect the limited number of world competitors who ride those twenty grueling days because they are doing something I cannot do.  They are the elite of the bicycle world.  They know it.  The crowds know it, the reporters know it, and every cyclist in the world from 9 to 90, who ever dreamed of competing, knows it.  Some of those riders are assholes.  Some are very definitely not over themselves.  But no one cares.  It isn't relevant.  The crowds have not come to watch more than a hundred likeable fellows cruise by.
They have come to see gods ride.

I am not a god, no.  But I understand the principle.  And I understand as I work and create and devise and write, the wheels of the universe may turn this way and that, and I may present something to the world that sells this amount and is read by this many.  It is a question of opportunity.  I've had opportunities, and at moments I've felt I've come close to having the wheels align just so, but not yet.  I don't worry about it.  I concentrate on my work, and not on being liked ... and as it happens, I'm liked anyway.

What Drance cannot understand - what many cannot understand - is that all people are either liked or disliked for innumerable reasons.  We either satisfy the requirements of another person, or we do not.  We are either the dinner company that thrills the host, or we are not.  And in the process of discovering which dinner parties we should be attending, we find ourselves having to decide if it is all that important that people who do not like us for who we are like us at all.

That is undoubtedly glib.  I've come to a place where I've reconciled with not being liked.  I'm quite content to know that if I enter a room with a hundred people, perhaps one or two will like me enough to talk to me.  As it happens, those persons will like me A LOT.  They will want to talk to me, and only me, for the course of the evening.  And I will want to talk to them, because I will like them, too.

That's how it goes.  We like whom we like, and we are liked upon the whims of those we meet.  I cannot satisfy Drance's hope that I will somehow cease to be me.  I presume he has located people whom he can like, and who can provide him the gold nuggets he desires.  I cannot be that person.  More to the point, I do not want to be that person.  I am busy being me.

And so we come to the end of this post.  I shall continue to contribute to D&D in the way that best suits me.  I shall rely upon the gentle reader to continue reading here if it suits his or her tastes, and to seek elsewhere if I fail to meet the requirement.  It has always been so.  None of us are so good that we will not be dispised by someone ... and none of us are such failures that we are measured by the number of those who love us.

Love is such a sweet, rich thing that being loved by one person in the world is enough for anyone.

More Dungeon - Alchemists Level 2

Sadly, this blog is going to suffer over the next three months as more and more costs on my time mount up.  I am writing the rule book for Conflict! and moving at the pace of a sluggish, run-down out-of-shape snail with a hangover ... but I made some good speed today and I'm feeling generous towards myself.  I also hammered the below contribution together today and yesterday, in bits and pieces.

I'd like first of all to mention that just about no long-term thought has gone into this ... so if anyone wants to argue that it seems disconnected and trite, they're welcome.  I don't think it is.  I think it drips with originality, and I mostly think that because I don't read modules incessantly so I have no idea what they depict, what they resolve out at or if they have in them the sort of things written below.  I am a virgin soul where it comes to module mechanics, because I just do what works for me and my world.  If you have seen any of the below in another module, I promise, it is an amazing coincidence.  And besides, why should the gentle reader care ... it's free!

There is definitely room for DMs to 'riff' off the material.  I find I'm limited for space here and there, and though I can make extra grey boxes to cover the more complicated circumstances, I've tried not to.  A good DM should be able to fill in the blanks from what's here.

However, as I said in the last post, there is a definite THEME.  Not one element of the dungeon level below is accidental.  There's a reason for the various rooms to exist, there's a reason for the circumstances in the Administration room, there is a reason the whole area is deserted.  The various clues and bits and pieces all fit together, and the player is not meant to understand them at this point.  My players are quite used to me driving them around the bend with this or that little tidbit of data, and are happy in knowing its not just a jumble of disconnected details, like one would get with dungeon dressing tables ... ech.  So if you change anything without seeing the last level (which will take awhile, this is a deep dungeon, with at least five more levels plus any I think of later on that still fit the theme).  I have a tendency to get fertile and what is meant to be one level becomes two - this one, for example, is half my original conception for the second level.

Which was dreamed up the middle of Friday afternoon.

I'll post the level now, which can also be found more clearly here:

I'd like to bitch for a bit about the everlasting need for modules (I have seen one or two, you know) to carefully record all the statistics and details of monsters inside the module.  I've never understood this.  If the monster is a giant rat, and you have a monster manual, what the hell do you need giant rat statistics listed in the module?

I expect more from an experienced DM.  The reader will find unusually sized giant rats with 3 HD on this monster level.  I would think a DM could recognize what the armor class, damage and hit points ought to be for a rat with six times as many hit points as the one listed in the monster manual.  Really, does it really need a whole monster description for something painfully obvious?

I'm not in the pablum business.  If you can't do these things on your own ... meh.

I hope the dungeon is enjoyed.  I hope those just reading it get a feel for running while sitting at the office desks.  I hope to get the next piece of it up sometime before my game Saturday.  I also hope to do something with Level 1, a sort of redux that occurs after the players have come through and spent time there.

The week is shaping up to be a nightmare.

Alchemists of Vereizzit

This would be a first.

I started throwing this together in my head a few weeks ago, and I'm ready to put together a first piece.  I'm not sure if the graphic will appear properly on Blogger ... so if it doesn't, you can find it on the wiki, here.

This is intentionally presented with little preamble. The set up is as follows: the players enter any location, such as a tavern, an inn, a shop or any similar location, and find there several casualties, all badly wounded. One will mistake a random player for a friend, and will begin babbling that the players must "stop the invaders" and that they "went through the downstairs door." If the players go downstairs, they will not find any door in the cellar ... but a search for a hidden door will automatically reveal one. This will lead the players into the top left of the map.

Additional information should be something the DM can add - such as how to close the open gate and so on, which can be done by hand or a lever. The dungeon description is intended as a guideline which the DM can elaborate upon.

Updated First Level

For space, the dungeon material is written in 6 pt. font.  It is completely readable on the wiki.

Comment.  It would be a good encouragement for me taking the time to continue with this idea.

UPDATE:

There's a flaw on this map.  The heavy reinforced door cannot be "locked and barred" from the inside.  There either has to be a secret door among the library, or the door cannot be locked and barred.

My original idea for what was beyond that door changed; that's why the error happened.  I'm going to leave it as it is ... so I am probably going with the secret door idea.

FURTHER UPDATE:

Upon further reflection, and having had an additional idea, I've decided to change the door so that it is unlocked.  I will repost the image when I have the updated areas (inspiration!) added.

Realistic Magic

I wanted to make two points with yesterday's post: 1) that magic would enable other sciences to leapfrog forward; and 2) there would exist other sciences, because human beings are insanely curious and investigate everything.

Yesterday I mentioned Asimov's story Olympics. Curiously, there's another story in the same compendium of Asimov short stories (Nine Tomorrows), called A Feeling of Power.  Zzarchov needs to read it.  I think I may sum up that tale tomorrow (clever punning there, but you need to read the story to know why).

I think where it comes to the troubles of magic actually existing, we are at an impasse. When one fully considers the implications of magic in any world, given the potential of spells such as wish or permanency, Zzarchov is right about the removal of the laws of physics and the creation of a totally alien world.  Or he would be if it weren't for one rather salient point.  That point being, for every magic, there is anti-magic.  For every individual or god that wishes a thing into existence, there is another individual or god that banishes it.  In short order, the most powerful beings in the universe, topped by the DM - who obviously exists and the most powerful being - would gather together to quickly expunge any force or power that moved against the status quo as agreed upon.  It may seem cheap and convenient, but if the world exists at all, it must exist according to the whim of those most powerful beings who posit its existence.

And therefore, the laws of physics, or anything else, must be in accordance with the laws of the most powerful beings.  It must be in accordance with the DM.  A position I will take when I argue, the DM's world must serve the players, at least with regards to enabling the player's conception of the universe to be one which they can predict the results of their own actions.

Every DM - not just me personally, but every person who wishes to run a world that is practical to play - must run according to familiar principles of causality.  We can propose a world where all the effects stemming from actions in that world are random and whimsical - hammers that spontaneously shoot off in random directions when let go, horses and wagons that leave the ground and fly backwards when a trot is increased to a gallop, drink that is alternately poison or nourishing depending on the hour of the day and so on - but that world and running in it gets awfully boring, awfully fast.  A player soon understands that he or she is being fucked with, and the fucking isn't pleasurable or interesting.  I would argue that 19 worlds of 20 fail miserably because the DM is more interested in supposing things to be fanciful than in worrying about causal relationships.  Players soon learn there's no point in making plans - the DM will screw with plans.  The DM will screw with everything, and everything quickly loses its meaning.

You, me, everyone - we exist in a conditional arrangement where we wish to control everything, but in which we control almost nothing.  And still, we are rewarded with seratonin chemical releases when we successfully control some part of the world ... so we keep trying.  As we gain some skill at some particular process - a videogame, say - we gain experience with the observed cause and effect within that process.  We learn that if we do this, that happens.  And if we don't do this, that doesn't happen.

When the effects change without apparent causes, we get angry and unhappy.  We ask, "What the fuck happened?" and we want an answer, right now, explaining it.  From a very early age we learn to hate the answer, "Because I said so," as we realize instinctively that it is not an answer ... or rather, it is a restraint against our control.  If the reason is that I'm not fast enough, or that I'm not strong enough, I can work at being faster and stronger.  But if the reason is that someone else is in control, the answer is no longer self-improvement, it is the elimination of whatever is in control.

The DM and his or her world must not act as a impositional dictator over the player's actions.  The world must be a learning annex, allowing for player improvement and development.  The player must know why things are happening.  The player must be able to apply his or her experience of the real world, and get results back from the fantasy world that make sense.  One can only go so far into the Vale of Weirdness.

However right Zzarchov may be in his arguments about magic and the world, the arguments are immaterial because the world must be THIS world ... it's the only one we're familiar with.  I have no idea the actual effects of magic would be in an actual world - obviously, who does?  But I know what the effects have to be.  The laws of physics must remain intact because ... well, they must.  The game must be playable.  Conjecturing about magic doesn't change that.

I'm satisfied the gods have their reasons to force players to use manual labor where a tidy spell would do.  I'm satisfied that the gods allow only the set standard spells to be in existence, and that the casting of those spells is universal and controlled.  I'm satisfied because I'm not running a simulation here, I'm running a game.

One last point, not really connected to the above.  Why should a player feel somehow that magic missiles and their effects should depend upon the user?  A hammer, a sword, a pitchfork, a car, an airplane or any other tool requires the individual to adapt to the tool's use.  Why should magic be any different?

Magic And Science

I'm glad to see that I've driven some traffic Anthony's way, and that there's a busy little debate going on there.  You can find the link on my previous post, where other's already have.  I haven't seen a word there yet about the history of science, and I think this is the massive elephant in the room.  That is, the furtherance of Science very depends upon a degree of fabrication that doesn't exist prior to the discovery of this or that.

A very simple example?  Galileo's conception of the heavens depends upon the development of the telescope by Hans Lippershey in 1608.  It must be understood that Lippershey's telescope was not the first attempt of the device, but the first success.  If I incorporate the existence of magic, the telescope comes into being as soon as the telescope is conceived ... ie., prior to 1608.  We have evidence of 'reading stones' being employed as early as the 12th century.  Magic, it is fair to say, would have enabled the invention of the telescope nearly five centuries before Galileo ... which presumes also the invention of spectacles before the 15th century, superior investigations into optics long before Newton, the destruction of the Catholic/Ptolemy earth-centered universe before Copernicus would have had a chance to write his textbooks, etc., etc.

This sort of example can be applied to every science.  Magic would, across the board, change the events of history and the distribution of ordinary technologies in literally thousands of ways.  A simple cantrip replaces Louis Pasteur long before the 19th century; healing spells enable medical surgery on the body long, long before the development of anesthetics and Lister's antiseptics; divination spells clarify early on the existence of guessed-at concepts like air pressure, electricity, atomic structure and the existence of gasses; metal and stone transformative and creation spells allow greater superior mechanical engines, alloys and tools; resurrection spells enable explanations for fossil discoveries; mind control spells increase the likely success of early examinations into anthropology and psychology ... there really is no end.

It is the height of absolute stupidity to claim in any way that the existence of magic would not speed the progress of technology, and therefore the understanding of the universe through experimentation and conclusion (which is science, after all), far beyond our present condition.

And so, to avoid sounding like a complete moron, the argument is almost always, "People would lose interest in science if magic existed."

Bullflops.  Utter, unmitigated bullflops.

In the world of magic as presented in D&D (and I don't give a fuck about arguments that there's some flaw in D&D magic that somehow ruins or wrecks the game - more bullflop, that), human beings are still human beings.  Hearts still pump blood, hands still hold weapons in the same way, the mind retains its human characteristics and we are still born, fall in love, give birth to children, grow old and die.  As such, the fundamental problems of the denizens in a D&D world are the same problems that exist in this non-magical environment.  We must clothe ourselves, we must find shelter, we must feed ourselves and we seek comfort.  We continue, as a creature, to succeed in accomplishing these things through experimentation.  We continue to fashion tools.  We continue to seek a means, and therefore knowledge, about how to fashion better tools.  While it may be true that magic will succeed in fashioning some tools for us, magic must be advanced in the same manner as any other technology.  New magical methods do not come into existence spontaneously.  They must be proposed; they must be developed and tested and they must meet certain criteria in order to be useful.  Magic, like science, requires a fertile mind.  And fertile minds are encouraged by need, not abundance.

Magic or science, we would still be the same creative creatures we are now.  The fact that we would be solving problems this way - with magic - would not change our habits in solving problems in any other way.  Let's have it clear that not everyone is able to DO magic ... are people without the necessary wisdom and intelligence supposed to sit around in caves?  And are we to assume that just because people with intelligence were capable of doing magic, they automatically would?  Ridiculous.  I'm not an engineer now, am I?  I refer to the flagrantly stupid argument - that I've heard before, but not with regards to Anthony's site - that people would be compelled do to magic and therefore would not investigate science.  Oh my god that is a fucking dumbass thing to argue!  Just pile up all the parents in the world who want their children to blindly follow in their own religion and see how high a mountain you build.  People can no more force their children to obediently follow the rules than they can force themselves to cease their own stupid assumptions.  Children will grow up and do whatever they please ... it has been true in every era.  It will always be true.

I feel a need to redress the argument from two paragraphs prior by suggesting the gentle reader get off his or her ass and read the short story Olympics by Isaac Asimov.  I should have said so before.

The reality is that magic and science would progress in tandem, just as religion and science progress.  One might as well argue that the existence of science precludes the existence of art, or that the existence of religion precludes the existence of hedonism.  Human beings are plentiful and spectacularly varied.  There is room enough in the world for every kind of behavior.  Practitioners of magic, no matter how many of them there were, would not stop the observation of natural phenomenon.  I have not heard anyone suggest that invention would become impossible.  How then would it become obsolete?

Now, there was one point that richard at Anthony's site touched upon (richard is one of those heightened souls who has explained that I am undeserving of his comments), which was the research of magic.  And there lies an important, and rarely pursued question.  If magic exists, when is it discovered?  I have sat and written numerous posts about the development of technology - which technology inspires the first sentient creature to have the first flash of inspiration that enables the onset of magic?  When does this occur?  Before Christ?  Before the Romans?  Before Ramses and the supposed freeing of the Jews?  Before Abraham?  Precisely when does this occur?

And if this is your world, and the history is one of your own making, how long has magic been in existence?  And how long has it existed at the level it is at now?  Has fireball existed since the very beginning?  Was every spell invented at approximately the same time?  Or has it been only fifty years or so that the really powerful spells have come into continuous use?  Remember, we live in an age where change and development has been mindboggling.  Could not magic have come into existence only fifty, perhaps seventy years ago, like computers ... and could not spells have been developed like the Internet, only to become widespread only 12 or 14 years ago?

Food for thought.  I will consider, and perhaps write further on this tomorrow.

The Ayn Randian Me

Well, I just had a delicious four days off ... and except for playing D&D on Saturday, I didn't do nuthin'.

Truth is, I work just about all the time.  When I am not working at the place that pays me, I work at keeping my partner happy, which is enormously pleasant; I work at D&D of course; I work at writing; and recently, I have been working at the headache of getting into business.  And when I get the opportunity, I do freelance work - which used to be a heavy part of my life, but since the recession, not so much.  But of course, there's the blog here, and writing for this is working too ... a sort of freelance I don't get paid for, but which gives me sincere and abundant compensation.

All of this means that I usually get home and surrender my evening if She wants it, or I move directly to the computer in my room.  My job requires my sitting at a computer for 8 hours, so most days I spend between 11 and 14 hours on the computer all together.

This is the way I like it.  I like working all the time.  I like having something to do, and I like going to bed at night thinking that I have done something.  Usually, if I haven't done something, I feel dissatisfied and depressed, a feeling that lasts until I do something.  And what is 'something' you may ask?  Well, either a thing has been brought into existence, or some kind of maintenance has been done which moves a project forward so that in the nearer future a thing can be brought into existence:  research gathered, numbers crunched, lists organized, etc.  Sometimes, just laying back and thinking for three or four hours and having a clear idea what to do next is a meaningful accomplishment.

But not this weekend.  This weekend I screwed the pooch and let the world go to hell.  My sole contribution to the blogosphere this weekend were two comments on Anthony's blog Of Pedantry, one of which inspired him to write this godawful post.  Off and on for two days I made plans to sit down today and write a scathing attack on the thing, but now that I'm here I don't think I'm going to.  It's a sad world when the principles of science, and the motivations of scientists, have to be explained to a bunch of nerds.  I must assume that either A) the world has come around to where D&D is not being played by nerds; or B) nerds have ceased to read books.  Anyway, read his post and agree with it if you must, and then rush right back here and tell me the subject on this earth that scientists don't investigate, and right after that tell me the tool or the strategy that scientists don't employ in accomplishing their goals.  If magic really existed in the world, do you really think we wouldn't use it to satisfy our curiousity?

For the present my mind is clear and clean and unfilled with the detritus of working on projects all the time.  There comes a point when one is reading so many different texts, and working on so many problems at one time, and chasing so many mental rabbits, everything has to be dumped into a sink and made to swirl down the drain.  This last four days I've done that by reading junk (old Stephen King novellas), watching two complete seasons of Mad Men (3 & 4), having a lot of sex and playing far too much Civilization.  I always wind up playing far too much Civilization, since sincerely two more hours of that game is two hours wasted.  I don't play it to be challenged ... I usually play it on one level lower than would be a challenge (that would be Noble), so I can be assured of winning.  I just like the mental deadness of exploring the land, building up the civilization and the logistics of war.  It's best when the effort is a gentle brain massage.

A while ago ckutalik of Hill Cantons asked 'Why Blog?'  I've been musing about that since.  The bigger question is why write at all ... but asking why write here, specifically, is a reasonable compartmentalization.  The answer for me is, I'm afraid, terribly self-serving ... even Ayn Randian.  I'm not trying to take over the world or anything, or establish a free market (gawd forbid), but this process is a deep, relentless selfish pursuit.

Last week I learned something about this blog that surprised me.  People actually visit here in much larger numbers than I suspected.  A couple of years ago I had a counter on the blog that did not register that much interest, and I took it off because it was becoming an obsession.  But recently Blogger added a counter to their apps and I put it back on.  And the surprising result has been that in the last six days I've had more than 2,000 hits.

And all the more surprising since in the last six days I've had 3 comments.

What a scary motherfucker I must be.  Or, perhaps, what an amazing dancing monkey I am.  See, look at the funny monkey dance.

The reader cannot see, but I have a smile on my face.

One way or the other, it doesn't much matter.  I write to communicate, and I write because I believe (and here's where Ayn Rand fits in) I have things to communicate that are worth hearing.  Nothing brings me more pleasure than seeing that there are many, many people listening ... mass communication is a much bigger rush than communicating person-to-person - with the rare exception of that deeply intense intimate communication that can't be done on a blog.  But I said I had sex twice, so I'm set there.

When the numbers didn't run down with my not posting, I realized that a rant against another blog was not what I should be writing about today.  I realized I had a responsibility to write something personal.  Something about myself.  After all, if people are going to read me, in spite of my being a truly consistent asshole, they might as well have the whole picture.  They might as well have offered to them a bit of the psychology behind the monkey, so they know why the monkey writes, and why the monkey isn't going to stop.

Years and years before I played D&D, I grew up in a house where there were many, many books.  Thousands of books.  And from the beginning, there was one I fell in love with, in one of those 'I-have-no-idea-why' relationships that goes back before memory begins.  That book was 18 x 24 inches in size, dark red in color and weighed about three or four pounds.  That book was a Colliers' Atlas, which my parents had received in 1959 along with their set of Colliers' encyclopedias.  As I grew to be seven years old, I steadfastly memorized every map of that atlas, and the statistics at the front, and the statistics at the back.  I located all the highest waterfalls, and the longest rivers, and the largest lakes and the highest mountains.  I learned all the names of the countries, and the cities, and the states and provinces, and the counties of the United States - as there was a map for every state in the Union.  It was an American atlas, so in spite of my being Canadian I learned the most about American geography.

Most of all, I became enamoured with the largest or the highest or the longest of everything.  Geographical statistics are very - or were very - competitive oriented.  The highest point of elevation was carefully noted in every state.  The largest cities were carefully highlighted.  And at my very young age of seven and eight I painstakingly wrote out lists of these largest things, making lists that weren't in the atlas for my own satisfaction.  It always made me tremendously happy to see a list of the largest cities in Europe, or the longest rivers in Africa.  I have no idea why.  But putting these lists together gave me a sense of accomplishment that I can't explain.

Sadly, however, the atlas, and even the set of encyclopedias that came with it, did not have enough statistics for me.  I found myself always looking for new ones, always unsatisfied with the detail I wasn't able to obtain.

My father was an engineer and worldly enough to know exactly what I wanted.  He didn't worry that I was a young boy in Grade 2.  That Christmas, the Christmas of 1972, and every Christmas thereafter until I was able to start buying my own, I received a World Almanac and Book of Facts.  And oh my god did I love that thing.

I hope the gentle reader knows what it is.  For my own satisfaction, I'll describe is as an incredible block of solid statistics about mostly everything, eight inches by five inches, more than 1000 pages and written mostly in 8-point font.  This book became my bible.  This book went everywhere with me.  I memorized this book ... and for the first three months of every year, my pure and simple joy was to go through the new book covering the new year and find what had changed in the world.  I became fascinated with politics because of the changing national entries; and with science because of new discoveries; and with cities and buildings because of changes there; and with what the census was; and with winners of prizes and awards; and with names of sports figures and statistics surrounding teams and winners; and with flags and with corporations and with death and birth statistics.  I became fascinated with everything.

The almanac wasn't enough, obviously.  There had to be explanations behind everything in the almanac, and I went looking for those.  I was very lucky to be in an elementary school that was possessed of an unusual number of books that were honestly too heavy for an elementary school.  But I learned years later that the school was named after a man who had been a mover and shaker in the educational field, and the school had been given his personal library after his death.  So I had access to these heavy books about human anatomy and geology and astronomy.  And I knew what these things were, and how they related to the real world, through my almanac.

At the beginning of grade four, my mother was asked to come see the principal of my elementary school because my odd behavior had been noted and educators were worried.  They were worried that I never read anything in the library that was fictional.  They were worried that at 10 years old I was reading books which were way over my head.  Apparently, as was told to me by my mother years later, they were worried that somehow reading all this fact-heavy material was going to damage me.  My mother - who I must tell you was no great shakes in the non-fictional department - told the principal that if I was able and willing to read the books they had, then they could shut up about it.  And so they did.  And I went on merrily reading.

But in January of that year, that school burnt down, and the library with it.  There are children in this world who dream about their school burning down as a fantasy, but I had it happen and it was no fantasy for me.  I could have cheerfully had the perpetrators hung on meathooks, ala Valkyrie.  It was learned later that two boys, one from the elementary school and one from the junior high school down the street, started the fire with a blowtorch in the utility room next to the principal's office.  Why?  Oh, for fun.  For revenge too, probably.  The younger boy was my age, and I remember him, but we didn't see him afterwards.  He was the sort of fellow who would think that was fun.  I remember my parents not thinking the boys had done it for fun, but that they were sick - and not in the sympathetic way.

But perhaps upon reading this, the reader can get the mildest sense of my interpretation of people who make arguments about things being 'fun.'  Yes, I understand that they don't mean fun in the sense of burning down schools, but I have a little too much experience with 'fun' trumping just about everything that's good in the world.  I've seen girls tortured for the sake of fun, and friends beat up and beautiful things destroyed.  I'm not an advocate against fun or anything, but neither am I a cheerleader for the glory and self-perpetuating justice of fun either.  People will commit the worst sort of atrocities citing fun as an excuse.  Perhaps to the discomfort of people who read me, I've been scarred in a particular way that connects people who argue the social benefits of fun with the same assholes and fucks that used to play dodgeball viciously and who used to throw empty beer bottles at pedestrians from cars.  I am sorry if you, the gentle reader, dislikes being painted with that brush.  I'm being honest about the gut feeling here, and I can't help it.  I've learned that people who take 'fun' as their god are capable of anything.  I've learned not to trust them.

That's cruel and harsh and I know it's unfair.  But I am a nerd and I will tell you straight up, I have been scarred.  The scars are all healed now and I don't flinch any more ... but the lessons die harder than the scars do.  But let me put that down and get back to what I was saying.

The library disappeared and for quite awhile I and my classmates were shipped around the city to different schools, where they could make room for us.  For the last five months of my Grade Four year, I went to High School.  Literally.  Five rooms were sectioned off the in the same high school where five years later I would actually go to high school, and it was an experience.  At 10 years old I was blessed with seeing kids - big kids - high on drugs, drunk, stupid and making out, on a relatively daily basis.  This was 1974.  It was a little scary.  It was more than a little interesting.  But what I hated the most was that we weren't allowed unbridled access to the high school library, because we weren't supposed to mix with the bigger kids.

Finding a good library was harder than you'd expect.  The public library was very far away - a new one in my neighborhood wouldn't be built for five more years - and when I went to Junior High I found the library there pretty pathetic.  I began reading more fiction, simply because that's what there was ... and so began the infatuation that would make me a fiction writer myself.

I was 12 when I decided to write my own book.  I had been working on things for school and I liked writing little stories, but the change that came around my 13th birthday was when I realized I liked writing more than I liked geography.  I was always certain I'd be a cartographer or something like that ... which my father was disappointed with, since to him cartographers were glorified draftsmen, and both were far beneath the worthy profession of engineer.  He was convinced that with my fascination and ability to understand things, my being an engineer like him was a done deal.

He was not happy when I told him I was going to be a writer.  It took him 30 years to accept it, in fact ... and ultimately he only did when I started to earn more than a passing income.  I think now he's beginning to realize I'm too old to go back to school and become an engineer.  But I don't speak to my father that much anyway.

For the three years of Junior High School I worked painstakingly at the one book I wanted to write, fighting uphill against the fact that I had no ability to write whatsoever.  I will tell the reader honestly, I could not write a decent sentence, much less a paragraph.  That didn't matter much.  What mattered was not how I was conveying the material, but the material itself.  The communicated idea.  But of course I had to learn how to master the technique to succeed in the communication.  I felt I would, eventually.  That was not how my teachers, my parents or pretty much anyone else saw it.  I had no talent at writing, therefore I should stop doing it.

So again, perhaps the reader can understand from that from overcoming a one-time universal sentiment, how I feel when someone tells me a thing can't be, or shouldn't be done.  When I was 13, I could not turn around to my father and say 'fuck you.'  There's little joy in getting the shit beaten out of you every day, as George Carlin used to say.  But I thought the words, every time.  And because I thought the words, and because I lived by them, I'm writing this now.

I could not go to my teachers for advice.  I could not go to my parents.  But I could go to books.  I already had hundreds of examples of scientists and sports figures who had been told they couldn't or shouldn't do things, so I knew what a pile of shit that argument was - and is.  I have always known that.  And that is why you have before you this resistant fucking monkey who just doesn't care what people say can't or shouldn't be done.  That's why you hear fuck you, and that's why you hear bullshit.  Because it CAN be done.  It can all be done.  Everything.  And if you're not doing it, or won't do it, or can't do it, well ...

All this stuff above, then, is what I was and what my brain was doing the day some fool introduced D&D to me.  The composite of extreme granulated examination of the world and a sense of entitlement in the creation of unrestrained fictional storytelling - and I mean unrestrained (I was writing violence and sexual porn as a young boy).  Imagine that released upon a game system that had no stated rules, and which had as a potential the creation of an entire world.

My gawd.  How could I ever run out of things to say?

Sorting Algorithm of Evil

"Local Control Rule:"  Although the boss monster terrorizing the first city in the game is less powerful than the non-boss monsters that are only casual nuisances to cities later in the game, nobody from the first city every thinks of hiring a few mercenaries from the later cities to kill the monster (unless it's you).

Sometimes these posts are like macing toads in a beer stein.  Every long-term player is perfectly familiar with class and level-based monster assignment ... some DMs spend months or even years carefully working out with an eyedropper just how many monsters to throw at a party whatever their given level, number, distribution of magic items, etcetera, etcetera.  I was one of them.

Problem is, the logic is sound and compelling - for the same reason the algorithm occurs in so many films and film sequels.  Equally matched opponents produce a more interesting dynamic.  Even better is the situation being unequally matched by a marginal amount - with the players in the deficient position.  Dickens knew that overcoming odds that are not in your favor wins over an audience.  It also wins over a party.  There's little pleasure in crushing fourteen orcs when you're 6th level.  And 14 orcs are too many when you're first.

For all the hue and cry about how worlds need to be potentially dangerous, and how encounters shouldn't be tailored to parties, actually carrying through with that philosophy doesn't make a very good fit in a campaign.  Running away gets awfully dull awfully fast.  True, I wish now and then my players would have the good sense to back off ... but as things happen they tend to be pretty resilient.  They're able to raise or replace their dead as necessary, as they wisely keep a war chest handy.

It brings me immense pleasure in the first few rounds of a battle to hear the party gnash their teeth in panic, saying "We're all dead!" and "Let's get the hell out of here."  But then two or three members of the party will advance, and then the magic will come out and the party will discover they have a great deal more strength and power than they really know.  Recently I tossed 45 flesh golems at them, manufactured in a steam punk contraption and released all at once.  After the initial terror, the druid formed a wall of fire, hemming them in, and the 9th level mage got off a fireball.  The player rolled unusually high, reducing a large number of the golems' hit points down into the teens, making them manageable for the fighters.  Yes, I knocked them around some, but the party handled the matter just fine.

What's important is that they didn't think they would, at first.  Their first reaction - dead wrong by the evidence - was that they were all going to die.  Back when they were 4th level, I threw one flesh golem at them that rattled them pretty good.  They still had that memory.  So when they overcame the far, far greater number, it surprised them.

Now, would it have been a better encounter if I had made it 450 golems?  Or if I had rolled a d100 and come up with 7?  No.  In fact, it wouldn't have been better or worse.  It would have been merely what it was.  Except ...

If the number had been 450, I would have had to run it differently in order to retain the drama of the situation.  Of the 45 that I created, the party in fact only killed approximately 4/5ths of them.  The others walked off into the woods, in different directions ... because my intention was to force the party to go looking for them before they could find civilization.  If I had started with 450, I would have increased this number of disappearing golems, and more than the party would have had to be involved with hunting them down.

On the other hand, if I had thrown only 7, that wouldn't have been enough to make things very interesting.  I would have had to create some other 'effect' to keep the party's interest.  Such as having the golems' bodies inexplicably, upon death, increase in temperature - invoking some greater and less tangible danger.  This was, in fact, where I left the party.  That is precisely what is happening to the golems they killed.  They don't know why.

My point is that DMs, to retain a sense of tension, MUST increase the algorithm progressively.  The party can feel success, they can feel they are getting on top of the problem - but if you want them to keep coming back session after session, there's nothing better than the Perils of Pauline.  One more seemingly insurmountable cliff-hanger, one more very slightly mis-matched situation, one greater non-boss monster to be overcome. 

Don't let the party know it, however.  They don't need to know they're being jerked around. 

It is our nature to be bored with things we can already master.  And disinterested in things that can never be mastered.  But something right in the middle ... that's the holy grail, my friends.  It may be disingenious, but as people keep telling me, the game is about fun.

Or at least it's about as many life-threatening circumstances as possible.