Combined Balkans

Last map for today.  Here is the combined political map of all the areas I've posted in the last few weeks.

I have, of course, posted larger areas of my world, but these maps represent the newest incarnation of mapmaking.  I've explained before that the former version of Publisher that I had, and the computer it was on, both died about 9 months ago.  Since, I have been experimenting with different areas, finally deciding to start on a circle beginning in Greece.

Mouth of the Danube

These are the maps appearing on the video regarding Garalzapan's Land:

The elevation map:

The political map:

Ottoman Empire (pale yellow); Poland (lime green);
Transylvania (brown); Kiyev (pink); Hungary (aqua);
Zaporozhian Cossacks (orange); Cumana (dark green)

Finally, the infrastructure map:

This map is also contorted 60-degrees, just as the Anatolian map before ... but it is less evident, because it is all land.  Once again, the 30th meridian can be see as an orange line at the bottom middle and the top right.  The Danube is the river on the left; the large river on the top right is the Dneiper.

Anatolia

Why don't we make this a map day?

Western Turkey, or Anatolia ... elevations:

And political:

Ottoman Empire (pale yellow); Venetian Republic (purple);
Genoan Republic (green)

And finally, infrastructure:

These maps are distorted intentionally.  You can read about the reason for the distortion here.   The 30th Meridian can be dimly seen at the centre bottom and the top right of the map, where the shapes of the regions are forced into a 60-degree turn.

Italia Updated

I never did post a map of Southern Italy.

I've added in the corner of Tunisia that I hadn't done up until this last weekend.  Rounds out the map rather nicely, doesn't it?



Kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia (all part of Spain - Brown);
Papal States (pink); Tuscany (bright yellow); Genoa (bright green);
The Ottoman Empire (pale yellow - top and bottom of page);
Other assorted small states in varying colors

And just for fun, let me throw in a map showing elevations:

Lulls

Wherever you happen to be right now, ask yourself how much attention you're really paying to your environment.  Yes, you know there's a street outside the cafe, or outside your front door; there are things on your desk, or beside your lap top.  There are people  behind you on the bus.  You can hear the wind blowing, or perhaps its raining where you are and everything is damp.  Perhaps its still cold, or its sweltering hot ... but ask yourself anyway, how much attention have you paid to it in the last five minutes.

And that's not a problem.  In fact, while the environment is very important to us, it rates second below what we're doing, doesn't it?  What we do - and our reason for doing it - is far more important than where we happen to be doing it.  Our response to a crisis is much more meaningful to us than the crisis is, nyet?  The fact that there's a flood descending towards the town where you live is an issue, yes ... but seriously, it is more important because YOU live there.

So where is the DM in the game, when things are happening.

Generally, its believed that the DM is the center of attention, and most DMs I think really play it that way.  Most DMs, I believe, are very easily bored - and all the more easily when whatever is happening is not about them.

Here and there, in answer to the post I put up about opening a game, I found people saying, "And after four or five hours, the party still has no idea what to do."

Well.

Let's put aside the simple fact that I have my grave doubts that I would have any social contact with people this passive.  Let's also put aside the reality that IF a DM can't get a response from a party, that there's clearly a lot more going on in the game-master-to-player dynamic than that the players are lacking in imagination, will or possible sentience.

Let me say instead, then,

So the fuck what?

Listen, you sit four people down at a table.  You have them roll characters.  You drop them in an inn, in a town, you tell them what they can see and answer their questions ... and they are so lazy, so fucked up, they can't get up from the inn table and do something?

Guess what: Your players are roleplaying.

See, what they're actually doing is pretending to be a bunch of losers sitting in a bar drinking, making jokes, riffing off each other, mocking, arguing, talking about things in their past and so on.  This is what people do in a bar before they actually go out and DO something.  Even if they're making plans to play baseball, go camping on the weekend, swap wives because that's what they're into, etc., they are probably sitting around in a bar swilling drinks.  Your players are doing exactly that.  They have drinks in hand, they're eating the bar cheezies off the table, they're dipping their bread in bacon grease (chips in dip) and so on, and if that's enough to make a couple hours pass for them, then that's fine.

If, as a DM, that doesn't seem 'fine' to you, then that, buddy (or chickie, if you're a girl), is your tough fucking luck.  The players ain't there to fill your dance card.  Because - and here's what you don't understand if you're another run-of-the-mill railroddin' bastard - YOU, dear reader, are the environment.  You're the rain.  You're the two people chattering away making a pain of themselves on the bus.  You're the sweltering heat.  You ... don't ... matter.

That is pretty near impossible for virtually every DM on the planet to comprehend.  After all, we're the ones the industry sells to, we're the ones the industry asks for our input, we're the ones everyone admires.  We are the GODS of the game, aren't we, since we have all the power.

Only thing is ... you're not a player.  What that means is, you're not there to play.  You're there to manage play.

Wow.  Sucktitude, huh?

Every once in a while, I'm sitting at the table having explained a given situation.  The room is this big, the door is this heavy, the monster's dead body is pouring this much blood onto the floor ... etcetera.  And the party gets involved with what they want to do next.  They start talking to each other.  Sometimes, for five to twenty minutes at a time, no one talks to me.

And I don't talk to them.

Back in the day, I used to use these lulls to slap together the next encounter, pick out the miniatures I was going to need, maybe draw out a few lines, look up shit in the books and so on ... but I'm better connected to everything now and I've found that these little moments are really a good time to relax.  That's why the last thing the Opening Module says is that I'm getting a cup of coffee.  That's because, whatever the party decides to do, even if the party decides to do nothing, it doesn't fucking matter.  I've done my bit.  I've given my speech.  I'm here for questions, if there are any.  But I don't have to take part in the discussion, any more than the table does or even the bar wench schlepping drinks.  I'm out of it ... and I like it that way.

If you give yourself a chance to shut up as a DM, and take stock of what's actually happening with the party, you might discover they're not as 'bored' as you are.  One or two of them might feel they're not involved in the general rancor; they might look to you for some kind of support, to "move the game along" as it were ... but what you really need to do is make sure these people realize that your contribution is as much as that wall they can see from where they're sitting in the bar.  You are not a cruise director.  It is up to them to get themselves motivated.

Now, obviously, you can get everyone going if you do something simple like have a loud BANG! occur in the street.  You can have the bar suddenly attacked by the halfling goodwives' guild, armed with rolling pins and apron strings.  You can do anything.  You're the DM.  And because you can do anything, and because you've been pumped full of The-DM-Rules-Juice, you probably will do something to drive the game into some direction that gives you something to do.  That is probably what you've always done.

Which is why your players - without your help - sit around with thumbs up butts.  They're waiting for something to go bang.  They're waiting for you to announce what's on this morning's itenerary.  They're waiting for you to get out your big bottle of pablum and announce it's feeding time.

You'll never make your players grow up that way.

That Which Is Not That Which Is

It's funny how language works.  Even where it deliberately includes certain words intended to convey specific meanings, if the listener (or reader) simply refuses to acknowledge those words, then language fails.  As a writer, and as someone who tries hard to insert those little specific words into a sentence, it can be very frustrating.

For instance, let's look at this expurgated definition of Narrative (see the link for the missing bits that are not relevant to this discussion):

"A narrative (or story) is any account that presents connected events ... Narrative is found in all forms of human creativity and art, including speech, writing, songs, film, television, video games, photography, theatre and visual arts ... The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, 'to tell,' and is related to the adjective gnarus, 'knowing' or "skilled.'  The word 'story' may be used as a synonym of 'narrative.'  It can also be used to refer to the sequence of events described in a narrative."

And so on.

Here is the thing about language.  The presentation of a sequence of events IS NOT a sequence of events.  Let me try that again.  A presentation of a thing is not the thing itself.  The 'presentation' and the 'thing' are different.

One might think that's obvious.  Strangely, it is not.

If you ask around, or look around, online, I'm sure that you will find many people describing a roleplaying game as a group of people conjointly "telling a story" as a function of the game.  I myself used the word 'narrative' to describe the process of delivering the sequence of events in the game to the players in my DM's 10,000 word post.  And since that time, I have had a series of arguments regarding the use of that word, and the word 'story.'  People are very much locked into the use of either word, and it is used far too casually and interchangeably with a sequence of events (as I say, I'm no better than anyone else).  But the story is not actually the sequence of events, and it shouldn't be understood that way.

If I tell you what happened at my table Saturday night, then yes, it is a story.  If I describe something to my players at the table that isn't happening, but describes some event that happened before the party arrived at the town, then that is a story too.  But the actual game play is not a story.  The actual game play IS the sequence of events, and not the presentation of those events.

Even as I say that, however, in language careful to use all the defined bits, I know that people still won't get it.  We have grown so comfortable identifying the one with the other, the line between has blurred ... and that as made it woefully hard to talk about the actual sequence, when the sense of it being a 'story' in progress is slapped onto the sequence as necessary packaging.

My life, your life, the actual business of living, as I type this and breath and hear the sounds of vents above my head, with the cold air of the over-zealous May air condition freezes me, is not a story in progress.  It is the actual living.  There is no fellow standing next to me narrating the events of the story like a Spitting Image Jeffrey Archer puppet.  Most of the actual events of my life will be lost, irrevocably, since I will not relate of those events, nor will anyone else - and even if I did, the relation of the events is merely more time spent in the sequence; the story I would tell of writing this post would itself vanish moments after its telling ... were it not that I were posting it right now.

This business of posting is the story.  But the actual posting is a series of events, absent of import ... and so too go the runnings you put together for game nights.  In the moment, no one is telling a story.

Or, at least, no one ought to be.  See, where there are issues to be discussed regarding the implementation of stories into the roleplaying campaign, what tales are told AFTER the running are irrelevant to the game.  Even the sequence of events itself during the game are not at issue.

What is at issue is the manipulation of that sequence of events - from the perspective of someone who has concocted a prefabricated story, which has not actually happened, with the expectation that the party will then play out that story.  All other deliberations on the subject of story, or on the interpretation of the sequence of play AS story, are deliberate obfuscations to the actual issue.

The difficulty arises, of course, where individuals who read refuse utterly to attach specific definitions to specific words as they read.  Last week, I was told I had finally started making sense when I used the words 'free will' to describe a player's involvement in the game, though I had been using 'agency' in the sense of a goal-directed activity for two days.  It is most frustrating to be misunderstood in this fashion.  It is most frustrating to have to say again, for at least the fourth time, that the telling of the events and the events themselves are not the same thing.

No real discussion can be had regarding the compulsion of a DM to force the players to adhere to his or her prefabricated story - to thus channel them into a sequence of events which are necessarily predetermined, for no other sequence of events can possibly result in the expected achievement, which is also set by the DM - until this ridiculous failure to read the sentences as written ends.  Yes, this is the internet.  Yes, people are ridiculous.  Yes, words often mean more than one thing.  That is why the language is so dependent on more than the individual words, it is also dependent on context.  Within the context of the game, forcing people to adhere to your story has nothing whatsoever to do with the irrational decision to assign the term "story-telling" to the sequence of events that actually occurs spontaneously during game play, as though telling the story and playing the game were in fact the same thing.

They're not.  They really are not.  But a substantial portion of people reading this still think they are, because in fact they have not read this post.  They've read some of the words of this post, just enough to woefully misunderstand what the post is saying.

Now watch them comment.

More Game

I only run one kind of game setting.  I only run one gaming system.  I'm not interested in running other settings.  I'm not interested in running other gaming systems.  Nor do I identify with the desire to do either.

If the gentle reader and I and our friends were to get together to play baseball, and if we could count enough people to play two teams - not necessarily nine each, but enough to cover the field - then I would not be interested in playing any other kind of baseball except baseball.  I would not be interested in a variant whereby the batters ran to third base, then second, then first and home.  I would not be interested in a variant where second base was skipped, or where two batters were allowed to bat at one time, or where the batter was entitled to five balls instead of four and four strikes instead of three.  I wouldn't be interested in any variant at all, really, except perhaps some contingency plan to cover the fact that we had ten people in the field instead of nine, because there were twenty people playing altogether and no one wanted to sit on the bench.

But I would accept if others felt that one person ought to sit on the bench, because those are the rules.

At the beginning, baseball, town ball, rounders and a lot of other similar games had many differing rules.  In my youth, I played scrub baseball and of course T-ball was forced on us in elementary school.  I liked scrub; if I could get together eight people this afternoon I'd be happy to play scrub.  It's not that I don't appreciate that there are other ways to play baseball.  It's only that, having played a lot of other ways, I have found that where it comes down to choices, I would rather just play baseball.

The process of creating baseball as we understand it took a long time, and involved a lot of different groups of people playing in a lot of ways.  Ultimately, however, the formulation of consistent rules for baseball began as a means to have different people from different parts of the country be able to agree on playing according to the same rules ... because arguing over rules is stupid, tiresome and doesn't get the game played.

Obviously, I don't think my particular way of playing D&D is going to surpass all other variants and become the way to play.  I don't have any such hopes.  But at my table, after 30+ years of turning over the rules, considering them, tweaking them, tossing them out or honing them down to a sharp edge, why would I ever be interested in tossing them all out in favor of other rules that other people have created, that have been in existence for a few months?  Particularly rules that haven't been game-tested at my table?

The argument goes, "variety."  New rules equals new game.

I don't want "variety."  No variants, remember?  Changing the rules isn't what incorporates the excitement - the excitement is in yourself, and what your capable of, and learning to rely upon the capabilities of others. 

Every game of baseball is different.  People make surprising plays, people miss balls, people get beaned and so on.  You never know what is going to happen.  The fact that we are playing according to rules that have been in existence for more than a century doesn't change that.  Baseball does not cease to be exciting because the rules are old and established.

That is because they are good rules.  They are rules that allow maximum effort and maximum risk.  Modifying the rules does not improve those conditions - in fact they devalue those conditions.  Those who want to change the rules do so for their own benefit.  Ninety feet between the bases is too far for them to run.  A hardball or a softball are too difficult to hit with the bat.  They're not able to throw or catch.  They want to level the field, not in the way of making it flat, but in the way of reducing the superiority of people who can catch, throw, hit and run.

The rules developed as they have not because they favored any person's ability, but because they favored no one's ability.  They are simple, direct rules which do their best to eliminate anyone's feelings or emotional identification with the game.  The opposing team does not care how much it hurts that you struck out.  They do not care that you didn't reach the base.  There's no emotional appeal in the game for your failure to match the requirements of the game.  You just have to suck it up and keep playing.

D&D needs to remain that way.  It can't be diceless, because the diceless game fails to hold everyone to the same standard.  It can't be sympathetic, because we can't sympathize with everyone according to the same standard.  The rules have to be indifferent, heartless and blind.  They have to exist in a manner that makes everything hard, so that everyone who succeeds or fails does so according to their own maximum effort.  The easier the rules are, the less effort is required in the game, and the less game there is.

It is said that the hardest thing to do in sports is to hit a fast ball.  But of course people do it.  It has to be equally said that the hardest thing to do in D&D is to survive from first to ninth level.  This does not say people won't do it ... but it has to be ungodly hard, or else there's no game there.  There's no point in coming to play.

I've worked hard to make the rules in my world live up to every point I've made in this post.  I've worked hard to create an environment, a world, where the rules best apply, where they're bloody hard to apply, and where the players have the highest possible identification with the environment - because one consistent environment (with the real world) gives them one consistent playing field.

Why would I want to fuck with that?

Living In The Real World

Some of the strangest criticisms I receive comes from those who feel that I don't respect the "great fantasy novelists" ... the names of which range widely, of course, since most can't agree, but which I would assume includes Tolkein, Leiber, Moorcock, Lovecraft, Anthony, Howard, Burroughs, Bradley, Zelazny,  Lewis, Baum and Carroll.  Frankly, I am driven to belly laugh when I hear others thrown in there, like Rowling, Eddings, Brooks, Asprin, Vance or Prachett.  Nice little fantasy churners, but "great" writers?

Hah.

Hey, I've had a long and serious experience with writing all my life, and with people who actually can write ... particularly people who have been considered great writers for a century or two.  Rowling famous in two centuries?  Yeah, that's going to happen.  I don't know any serious reader anywhere who thinks Tolkein is a good writer; Burroughs, Howard and Leiber are fun, but we're not talking literature here.  The best writer in the above group, in my opinion, is undoubtedly Lewis Carroll, followed by Frank Baum, C.S. Lewis and Michael Moorcock.  I mean, right down to the nap as it were - the thing that makes or breaks a book for me.

I'm a writer.  I'm unquestionably as good as a lot of these guys (but I write non-fantasy, so I'm not going to get praised in those parts) ... and the way I can tell that is that I find myself needing to edit their sentence structure.  I mean, seriously.  It sounds, most of the time, hackneyed and clumsy.  Burroughs is ungodly purple, Leiber writes like a painter whitewashing a house (all at once and without emotion) and Lovecraft suffers from the same adverbitis I fight like hell to destroy in my own writing when I'm editing (remember, I generally don't edit my blog posts, so many adverbs creep in here).  Not to mention he shares Burrough's ridiculous where it comes to the vocabulary.  I mean, look at this paragraph from Lovecraft.

"in the third round the fight grew really rough; several ears and other appurtenances being wholly or partially detached from the frontier battler by the Shokan Shocker.  Somewhat irritated, Two-Gun countered with some exceptionally sharp blows; severing many fragments from his aggressor, who continued to fight with his remaining members.  (At this stage the audience gave signs of much nervous excitement - instances of trampling and goring being frequent.  The more enthusiastic members were placed in the custody of Mr. Harry Brobst of the Butler Hospital for Mental Diseases."

Oh, I know ... [he said, his face sardonic and disgusted] ... this is just 'brilliant!'  What a writer this is!  Wow!  It's like you're there.

I'm sorry ... ears and "appurtenances" having been removed, Two-Gun is "somewhat irritated"?  This is the way you write when you want your audience to laugh.  And I love the journalistic note about Mr. Harry Brobst ... is this a story or a newspaper article?

Now, I know the fan boys out there are getting worked up now ... but I'm sorry to tell you guys, this stuff - as literature - is just shit.  It's read by boys in grade school because in grade school you haven't read enough to know this is shit.  Sure, Lovecraft is creative, he's got some interesting turns in his material and I used to really like him ... when I was in grade school.  But you grow up, eh?  You read better stuff.  You get a sense of what can be done with language and buddy, it's better than this.

Of course, many a gentle reader will disagree.  I'm sorry.  Life is really rough that way.  Not everyone can bow to the gods you bow to.

Now, I will say a few words about those writers who ARE better - Lewis Carroll, Moorcock and Frank Baum and so on.  Here, its true, I can't complain about the writing style.  The writing style is marvelous.  But ... I just don't care about the content.  I mean, I've read those books; Narnia was all right, the Wizard of Oz and the other three Baum wrote about Oz were better when I was a kid; I never liked Elric of Melnibone but Jerry Cornelius was interesting from a post-70's perspective.  They don't speak to me now, however.  They simply don't.  My mind is in a different place, it finds different things important, and those perspectives don't apply to those priorities.  Such is the way with human beings.  Fantasy just doesn't interest me any more.

Oh, I incorporate fantasy into my D&D campaigns ... but I see that as a game feature, not as something that makes my skin vibrate.  That's the facts of it.  It's sort of like how some people think that seeing a dismembered leg is unbelievably horrible - and then you meet someone who works in a surgery and sees that sort of thing every day.  Meh, no big deal.

And I suppose I must say a word about Tolkein.  Once again, an altar I just can't worship at.  Sorry.  Nice and creative, but overall just second-rate writing.  He holds it together for passages like explaining the Hobbits and what Hobbits do, and then just freaking loses it where it comes to long, meandering preposition-enriched passages where we're walking ... and we're walking ... and we're walking.

I simply don't see how my playing D&D has anything to do with either reading fantasy or kowtowing to it.  My imagination is as rich and varied as any of these people, no matter what I write like - and frankly, whatever they had to say to me, they said it to me thirty years ago.  I've had time to grow and expand and read other books ... books about family, tragedy, bloody-mindedness and ignorance; books about war and devastation, sacrifice, loyalty, brutality and indifference.  Books that cover a lot more ground than bravery and wonder.  I mean, bravery and wonder are interesting themes, but they're not every theme that's ever been advanced.  May I also add, I'm not terribly interested in the sorts of themes that are expressly popular today in fantasy, which can only be described as emo and angst.  Angst is naturally very popular among young, dissatisfied, largely unambitious people who feel the world is not awarding them their due ... but overall, it's a crapfest if you're actually in charge of your life, and you don't personally feel shortchanged.  When you feel as I do, that you're getting exactly your due, then angst is, well, either laughable or thoroughly repulsive.  It does not offer a good weekend with a book.

I'm not going to pitch those books I think everyone should read.  Those books are obvious to anyone and everyone.  They are the same books that people who are aware of the length and breadth of literature have tried to levy on the gentle reader, and which many gentle readers will have ignored.  It's very interesting that those people who scream and stamp for fantasy to have the respect it's due (sounds very much like the angst perspective) so very rarely read the books which have that respect already.

It's not enough to read just one or two of those books.  It's not enough to read ten of them.  It takes years of constant growth to comprehend, fully, what's in those books, and that can't be done with dabbling.  If you have read some of those books - and didn't get what all the fuss was about - then you didn't read enough of those books.

Fantasy is juvenile fiction.  Read by juveniles.  Who defend it, expectantly, with the pouting squalling of children.  It's limited thematically to juvenile themes because it is about things that are not real.  At best, it can reflect things that are real ... which is yet one step removed from writing about real things.  That is why the literates don't respect it.  It's escapist, which makes it fun and that has its own satisfaction ... but it isn't relevant to that thing which literature does best of all the arts.

Literature tells us how to live here, in the real world.  In the now.  Without all the decoration, and without all the frivolity.  It's the dismembered limb in your hand, not the dismembered limb in the horror novel.

It takes a long time for some people to learn that.  Some people will never learn.

Burke's Connections

I am not a fan of documentaries which involve a lot of talking heads repeating the phrases or points that other talking heads have just made, which is the recent pattern of most documentaries.  Nor I'm I a fan of films that try to make history "exciting" or some other nonsense, with excessive dramatization and the like.  I don't mind a little set design, but it shouldn't venture into the ridiculous, with actors portraying people in bad form.  I've seen too much of that, too.

I like a  doc where one person presents one flow of narrative, particularly if that flow is intended to make a point.  An early master of this was James Burke.

In the 70s, conveying scale was everything.

His first major series was Connections, a ten-episode series accounting for development of major technologies through history.  It's getting a bit dated now, since it was done in '78, and occasionally Burke is clearly trying to get his point across to the stupid people (particularly in the tenth episode), but overall its very accessible and interesting.  The fact that Burke goes hither and yon to present the show is a huge selling feature, as is his journalistic sense of timing (particularly evident at the end of episode 8).  But James Burke began as a science reporter, so it falls into line he would know how to communicate ideas.

You can find all ten episodes of Connections on youtube, starting here.

Salmon!

I have no words.

Where I Stand

If you want to know all the reasons I'm wrong about a sandbox campaign, you should first read this, and then you should read this.  I include these links in the interest of providing fair and equal consideration to all sides of this debate.

You may have some trouble understanding what's written there.  Except for the stream of statements that I'm wrong, I did.

Here's the thing about definitions.  If something is not defined, it is very hard to argue about it.  My sincerest desire where it comes to understanding something begins with having that thing defined, and in a manner absolutely clear to everyone involved.  I am less concerned about who is, and who is not, hurt by the definition or by the labels that definition provides than I am that everyone understands what word means what thing.

The links above provide an alternate definition for a sandbox.  It isn't very clearly defined.  It seems to be very convenient for the author's self-aggrandizement.  Extrapolated, it would seem to allow virtually any action to be interpreted in any manner that the author might wish.  As a definition, it simply isn't one.

It is, however, a very emotional appeal towards a label dearly wished for, for reasons that should seem clear:

Sandboxes have more credibility than railroads.

The gentle reader will take note.  This argument has been going on a long time, and in that time a definite connotation has been obtained for the two words themselves.  Regardless of what they mean, everyone has more or less come to accept that a "sandbox" campaign is "good," while a "railroad" campaign is "bad."

This is in some ways an achievement.

It is not, however, indicative of a general desire to surrender the railroading of players.  No, far from it.  The connotation has only encouraged a desire to stop being identified as railroaders.

To this end, any amount of bullshit is acceptable.  To this end, justifications and obfuscations, appeals to emotion, the need to repeatedly define one's world as alive or vibrant (actually the same thing, but still, nuance & nuance), etcetera.

I am fine with this.  No one wants the railroad label.  But please, dear gentle reader, take note.  It remains the case that IF you attempt a definition, and if that definition clearly delineates a certain number of people as being part of the connotatively undesirable camp, there will always arise a minority who will suddenly, earnestly, argue that they are NOT of that camp, that they are bitter about being thrown into that camp, and that clearly the definition is wrong by virtue of this utter certainty that they have.

This will happen in every case, even if you make no mention of any person by name.

Which demonstrates, of course, the hateful connotation of the word in question.  Railroader.

"I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not ..."

And so on.

Well, here's where I stand.  I am concerned about my players.  I am anxious not to use my power as a DM to make my players feel beholden to me.  I seek to control my natural, human tendencies to see an opportunity to guide my players and to resist - to the best of my abilities - that opportunity.  I am human and I often fail.  However, I know that to take any step to guide, ordain, channel or restrict a player's free and total agency is a wrongdoing.  Not only in the game of D&D, but in any social situation.  Expecting other people to play my game, or to play the game my way, or to use my position to manipulate their play in any way, ever, is wrong.

Even if I do this with the best of intentions.  Even if I do this expecting that they will have a good time.  Manipulation is wrong.  Period.  I will eschew it to the best of my ability in every game I manage.

I am sorry that others feel that certain expectations of what a DM is or what authorities a DM is granted gives them leave to act in any other way.

Definitions

I don't know how many are familiar with this picture.  Certainly, reading the blog, you know the part of the image in the bottom right.  The painting's name is The Adoration of the Magi ... and you can find more material written on it than that which briefly occurs on the wikipedia page.  I want to say that I love Botticelli - because he's a marvelous artist, yes, but also because of his appearance in this picture.  The Virgin and Child are clearly the center of interest, and most of the people in the picture are enamoured with the site.  There are three people looking elsewhere - at you - and the expression on Botticelli's self-portrait is priceless.  It says to me, "Are you buying this shit?"

And that is me where most of D&D is concerned.  All weekend long I had an argument with ravencrowking on the last post, who feels I've got my head up my ass (my words, he's much more polite than that).  At the same time, Yagami has been fighting the same fight on this thread here, though I suppose from the other side, defending his world and the post I wrote last Wednesday.  I think overall he's doing a better job of it.

Here's what I've learned:  1) people think dungeons are necessary to the game; 2) people feel they have "to play a more active role than just being the manager of a sandbox" (as stated by a fellow with the unfortunate name of 'snot-elemental' ... obviously he's proud of his creativity); and 3) people don't have a fucking clue what a 'sandbox' is.

The argument has been drifting around long enough that there's now plenty of effort to argue that neither the railroaded nor the sandbox game actually exist - a good example of that kind of thinking to be found here (sorry JD).  And that's only natural.  The lines blur, people redefine the terms to fit their conceptions of either narrative or sandbox, until the definitions grow bloated and ill-defined, and then anyone can call their campaign anything they want, throwing all the terms around at random to describe this or that momentary event.

We've seen this done culturally a thousand times.  Redefinitions of republicanism, democracy, libertarianism and so on abound.  Whenever someone wants to create a new controversy, it always begins with a hugely vague re-definition:  the rape debate was a sensational example of that, where rape was alternately defined as anytime a man had sex with a woman, or anytime a woman didn't definitively use the word "yes," or even any time that a man thought about a woman.  Other favorites for ridiculously redefined concepts include science, religion, literature, 'small-business' and so on and so forth.

When you feel pressured by a word that describes you in  away you do not like, redefine that word.  Don't change your behavior.  Redefine the word.  And watching that happen over and over, we're all standing there at some point watching a mass crowd fawn over the new concept, thinking, "wow, are they really buying this shit?"

And the shit I'm not buying at the moment is that the sandbox is the narrative is the sandbox is the narrative.  I am not buying the argument that at this moment in the campaign, I'm playing in a sandbox, and at this moment in the campaign, I'm being railroaded.  And neither exist.

It's all terribly convenient naval-gazing.

The whole issue comes down to a question of causality, "the relation between an event and a second event, where the second event is understood to be the consequence of the first."

Where the cause begins with the player making a statement, "I wish to do this," then it is a sandbox.  It is a sandbox even if there's a cave and a dungeon below that cave, that at every point the party agrees to keep going further.  It is still a sandbox if the party goes into the cave and the door of the cave snaps shut, locking the party inside.  That's not railroading, because the party made the decision to enter the cave.  And if the dungeon has walls and and rooms and a final big bad that has to be gotten over before the exit can be found again, that's still a sandbox, because the cause of being in the cave is still the player.

But if the DM continues to make it impossible for the players to leave the cave for session after session; if the DM uses that justification to rule the players, then the DM is a fucktard.  Intrinsic in the sandbox is a stipulation that the players should be allowed further opportunities to consent.  That if the door snaps shut, and they fight their way for three hours, then the trap should end in a reasonable amount of time, preferably that game night, so that the players can decide again, to leave the cave or dungeon, or to go deeper.  Over and over they should be allowed to either pull away, or venture forward.

The game ceases to be a sandbox when the DM denies this.  And the game never was a sandbox when, from out of the blue, the DM deliberately places the party in a position where they must do something because the DM has "prepared" an adventure, or has "created a story" where something must be obtained, returned, fixed, enhanced, stopped or otherwise altered in order to satisfy the requirements of the DM's story.

If the DM has conceived of a series of events - any series of events - which have not been directly brought into play by virtue of the players initiating action, then that game is NOT a sandbox, it is a railroad.  If the DM has been anything except the "manager of the sandbox" ... if the DM has determined that a given set of events ought to occur because that DM wishes to be creative, or wishes to act as a "player" of the game, because that DM wants to insert his or her own ideas, then that game is NOT a sandbox.

It does not matter how good these ideas are, or how original, or what the DM's motivations are; it does not matter if those motivations are for the good of the game, or the party, or for the purpose of presenting something really interesting - it is still NOT a sandbox.  It is NOT a sandbox because the DM is creating events, and not responding to player actions.

The DM's role is to interpret the player's decisions, to place the logical obstacles between the player and the player's goals, and to describe the world and the inhabitants of that world to the player.  Any other action is a deliberate misuse of the DM's power, to selfishly direct other persons, friends and families, to enact out the DM's fantasies in a situation where the DM has all the power and the players have none.

It must be understood that the DM at no time, in the game, can "lose."  No die roll, no game structure, no counterbalance exists to the DM's authority or the DM's will - so the DM must manage his or her own power by denying it 100% in every possible instance.  Anything else is an abuse of that power.

The referee does not stand in the huddle and make plays.  The referee does not bet on the game.  The referee cannot, must not, ever, have any stake in the play or deliberation of the game, not even to the point where the referee might want it to be a really good game.  Referees are expected, universally, to have neither an emotional nor an intellectual stake in any game which they ejudicate, because it is universally understood that that would ruin the game.

A DM who creates his or her own story; or who takes either intellectual or emotional action to ensure for the sake of that story, or the presentation of that story, or the presentation of any series of events, an action which is not a reaction directly resulting from the player's action, is a BAD DM.  He or she has been corrupted by the power of their position and that should be made clear to them.

This is not negotiable.