Funk

Having gotten my first full-on review from a reader, namely Jeremiah Scott, I've added some links on the sidebar for reviews for the book, should anyone wish to write another (at Lulu also, as of now).  As I want to add another post today, I don't want that Reviews post to disappear.

Throughout my experience as a DM, I have often stumbled into periods where I 'go dry' on the detailing or design of my world.  Sometimes, these periods have something to do with troubles in life, sometimes they're just a reflection of having given too much for too long.  Just now, the latter case seems to have taken hold of me.

Just after finishing the Guide, I still had a charge of creativity in me, so I happily reapplied myself to my world and worked on a series of pages for the Sage Abilities - fully expecting that I would finish druid in another week and thus move on to fighter.  And then . . . I completely crashed.

And here I have been now for more than a week.  I get my head together to write a post here and there, but working on D&D?  Blah.  Nothing.  I am just dead in the water.

It's the drop, I know.  Towards the end I was working from six to ten hours a day on my book, ten to fourteen a day on the weekends, as well as holding down a full-time job, writing on the blog, carrying out day-to-day responsibilities and thoroughly going out of my head.  Then, like with the end of all projects, kerblooey.  End of project.

I remember back in October, when I was talking about taking off the month of November entirely, writing nothing on the blog and not running the online campaign, I had been so rushed with creative energy that it was going in 18 directions at once.  I wanted to get off the blog and focus that energy on projects I hadn't had the time to address - never knowing that with the first of the month I would become focused on the one project I carried through to fruition.  Today, nine months later, I feel as though I've just stepped out of a time machine.  Summer is already swinging past the zenith and I'm wondering where the hell 2014 went.  I was here, yes, but it doesn't quite feel like I had time to look around.

But now that I've got time, I'm just, well, depressed.  I've toured around, seen some films, done a bit of acting, collected the printed book, organized for the next adventure and so on (setting out to buy a lot of clothes and other things this week) . . . and I've gone out drinking with friends I haven't seen in awhile.  Yet I don't seem to be having any fun.

Correction.  Moment-by-moment, it's been good.  But when the moments end, here I am again, feeling hollow.  I felt stressed and frustrated and momentarily inspired, but most of all I'd felt fulfilled, working at a project that plumbed my soul.  Now I just feel grouchy.

In that grouchiness, I've been trying to think of another project that would apply to D&D.  I've been half-heartedly been working on a personal memoir of experiences I had as a boy at my parent's cabin, where I spent many summers and where I most acutely feel the effects of social change and nostalgia, but that is mostly to be written for my family and a small audience that likes that sort of book.  Another D&D book would be a different matter.

I would like to write some setting think pieces - organizational frameworks for 'domains' describing the functions and structures of people, places, things, animals, vegetables and minerals, relationships therein and adventuring possibilities, using real Earth places as templates and then allowing the readers to change the names and possibly the geography to fit their needs.  I know there's a dearth in making places feel 'real' for players, while avoiding the standard tropes for character and state motivations, and I think I could be useful there as a writer.

The main thing, however, is that I'm not sure how such a book could conceivably fly without art.  I think illustration would be a necessity.  As such, I'm looking for an artist and any work along those lines will have to wait until I can scare one up.

It has occurred to me that players and DM's alike might be interested in a series of backstories.  I'd have to experiment with that, write a dozen back stories on the blog and see what sort of response I got.  I know that many people seem to have found the player psychological breakdown in the Guide to have been most interesting, so I assume there's room there to encourage imaginations.  I would like to think that the standard tale of 'my parents died and I'm seeking revenge' is more the result of players not having a better idea of motivation rather than a deliberate will to repeat the same old story a hundred times.

The only other idea I have at the moment would be to take a series of standard fairy tales and break them down into their constituent parts, then suggest various ways in which they might be incorporated into a campaign.  For example, there is a common legend about a king in the mountain, in which a legendary hero or some other powerful being lies asleep in a hidden cave, waiting to be discovered. They might be discovered by a peasant, who tells the party, or by the party themselves, or by a Rube Goldberg that makes awaking inevitable.  The king/hero may return to sleep, may rise to change the status quo, may simply rise to seek a quiet life, yet possessing vast knowledge about a time eons ago to which the party may now have access.  The king/hero may be good or evil, may be pursuing or fleeing a cause, may in fact be merely a stepping stone to a greater conflict or may be set up to end a conflict that has brought the party to this final solution.  There are many ways in which the one fairy tale may be implemented, all of which could be investigated and deconstructed in a manner that would help inspire many different adventures, while at the same time aiding DMs in understanding the process of breaking down stories into their constituent parts.  A book comprising of eight to ten such breakdowns might have some real use.

I'm still trying to have other ideas - yet inspiration seems thin on the ground.  I will continue to think about it.  Perhaps this funk will be lifted once I've managed the FanExpo in Toronto at the end of the month.

How to Run Reviews

Feel free to write your review on How to Run, good or bad, here.  Feel free to write multiple comments.

Guardians of the Shitpile

Sigh.

Against my better judgement, I spent money today to see the movie Guardians of the Galaxy.  And, well . . . my reaction should surprise no one.  The film is a paper cutout of cliche heaped upon cliche, wrapped in a cliche, acted out by cliches and served on a cliche platter at the Diner, Cliche Manufique.  The film is a masterpiece of stock set-design, stock extras standing in stock positions on filthy stock dystopian starships, prisons and huge city concrete motifs, filmed with stock camera angles showing stock pyrotechnics spaced apart by stopwatches, to make possible the stock speeches, stock twists, stock conflicts and stock hand waves for moments of stock impossibility.

I don't see any reason in saying any more.  IF you've never watched a film before, or IF you have the memory of a goldfish, or IF explosive orange combustibles and camera filters changing the color of blue water to yellow mollifies you with its shininess, then there's nothing I can say on any level that will make the least bit of sense to you.

Having wandered at bit to see what IMDb is saying, or the various critics and the responses to those critics, the defense of the film is invariably that it is a big, dumb, fun film.  Dumb.  The film is 'dumb' and this word is used specifically in defense of the film.  To state clearly and in direct English that 'dumb' is a good thing.  I want to emphasize that.  Dumb is a good thing.  I have to keep writing that down because I am somewhat mystified by the dissonance of that particular argument.

Yes.  Dumb things are good.  For, indicatively, dumb people.  The proof of dumbness is right there in the defense of it.

The plan to degrade the educational system to the level where the population becomes so stupid that it will willingly defend fervently a film put together by committee, complete with Event #112 perfectly timed to occur on the third line from the bottom of Script Page #51 on the basis of the script's cheery and happy dumbness, is working.

It is working in spades.

I'm Ready to Sell

Very wise words coming from Tim of Maðelode yesterday:

"It [role-playing] really is an activity of isolation. The gaming clubs should be encouraging mixers! The conventions should have discussion panels on social interaction! There should be a dialogue, not a dogma!"

It is this sentiment that fires up my anger at entities like the WOTC or against individuals like Gygax and the rest.  The opportunity was there in the 1980s to set the tone for what conventions would be about and why people would attend them.  We needed a practical solution to the problem of not enough DMs for players who were dependent upon them for playing the game.  What we got instead were make-shift 'tournaments' that encouraged mediocrity and the blandest of adventuring models.  Instead of voices encouraging a unification between role-playing and other performance arts, we got pompous Jabba the Huts sitting at tables scribing out their signatures for sycophants.  We needed imagination - what we got was marketing.

From the moment the game became popular, the only people that mattered were the DMs, whose sole purpose in the social construct surrounding role-playing was as customers for the monopolistic market place.  And now that the market place has ceased to be monopolistic, we call this 'progress.'

Heh heh, I'm one to talk.  I've officially become one of the enemy.

Well, what the hell.  I would have much preferred a TED Talks venue.  Instead we get NASCAR.  It just fills my heart with pride.

I can't wait for FanExpo.  I've got my soul all neatly stuffed in a bottle and I'll be sitting at my table, waiting for Satan to show up. 

How to Play, 2nd Edition

Prior to printing a copy of the small book, How to Play a Character & Other Essays, I reformatted the book.  Revising the size of the text and the quality, I've unfortunately forced the price of the '2nd edition' up to $13.

Those of you who purchased early have gotten a break.  I'm afraid that the book is now somewhat more expensive.  This shouldn't affect sales at the Expo, but I realize this may make some of the people online unhappy.

Two Girls

There's a little Japanese-Korean place just a few blocks from home. Every time I order from there, two young Korean girls in their late teens break into my place, subdue me and keep me pinned until I eat everything.

But the kimche is amazing.

Bad Cops in L.A.

There is probably some argument to be made about my stepping on the success of my own posts by putting another post in front of them within a few hours . . . but I can't help it.  I get an idea stuck in my head and I want to write it out.  Still, the blogging gurus say don't do it, wait for the next day to write your next post.  Ah well.  Do read this post, The Wind, if you can - I think it's brilliant.

Charles Angus of Spells & Steel made a good, solid argument last night regarding a much-abused subject from a couple weeks ago.  Here is his comment in part (be sure to read the whole comment):

"Let's look at that 300-strong orc tribe attacking the town. How many of those orcs have been in deadly combat, mano-a-mano with a trained and armed combatant? All of them? Some of them?  An argument could be made that very few of them have. So the 300 orcs raid a village of 150 people. If this is like a medieval English village, perhaps 20 men are of fighting age, and of them, probably 5 are armed. (Very rough numbers, obviously). Let's be generous and say that the knight of the manor is present with his retinue - so add a leveled fighter and a few men-at-arms.  How many orcs would be involved in deadly combat during this raid? Seems like only a few - probably no more than 30 or so. So maybe 10%, if the orcs are too dumb to wait a week for the knight to move on to one of his other manors ..."

An example power-law graph, where a high number
of incidents occur among a small number of
participants

Unfortunately, I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, What the Dog Saw (which can be purchased from Amazon Books along with this nice little ebook) - and so I have something called power law distribution at the forefront of my imagination.  Basically, this is the principle that has begun to be the default for social behaviour, much more than the previously conceived 'bell curve' that was all the rage in the 1960s forward.

For the purpose of this post, my reference to power law is to describe the distribution of costs or behaviours among a certain segment of the population, say the number of complaints received by the city of Los Angeles against its police officers (as described in Gladwell's book) or the number of orcs that have fighting ability - and fighting experience - as compared with orcs that do not.

Power law distribution shows, at least with regards to the police, that the greatest mass of complaints are, in fact, directed at a comparatively few officers (who each receive many, many complaints), rather than the majority, who receive only one complaint or none at all.  What this means is that the vast majority of police officers in L.A. are pretty decent people who are good to the people, while a very small number are consistently abusive, engendering anger.

Within the same sort of distribution, it stands to reason that a group of orcs, 10% of the tribe as Angus describes, do not only the represent those orcs with combat experience, but also those orcs most likely to pursue combat and thus seek more conflict!  Therefore, if the party encounters a group of orcs that are ready and willing to fight the party, it does not matter that the orcs represent only 10% of their tribe - those orcs will be the toughest, meanest and the most able.  If the party were to encounter a party of orcs without 7 or 8 hit points, those orcs should immediately be willing to parley and discuss matters - in fact, they should want NOT to fight at all.

And just as peaceful police officers are not the sort to approve of or support the actions of officers who are abusive to the constituency, orcs with low hit points should be equally non-supportive of their meaner orc kin.  Of course, this means granting orcs the ability to think and have the average intelligence they've been said to have, the equal of humans, and therefore behave in a manner unlike remorseless targets for player aggression.

In fact, we could argue that only 8 point hit point orcs would want to be in combat, comparatively to the entire tribe.  They would probably prefer to hang out together, like jocks among the lesser, weaker members of the tribe.

And, like bad cops in L.A., it would be the jocks' behaviour that outsiders would remember, and use to define orcs as a group.  Nyet?

The Wind

In my place of work, a primary concern for the technical staff is the client's 'experience.'  Since we sell a product that is at its heart an electronic tool, and as that product is entertainment-based, the product itself is the biggest factor in how much enjoyment the client is bound to have.  To use the product requires some effort.  The client is compelled to train themselves in the use of the product, so it's critical that the product be user-friendly and consistent.  Moreover, since 99% of the training the client must undergo is self-motivated, the function of the product must make sense.  For it to convey a good experience the product must act predictably.

Thus, there's a lot of chatter that surrounds the subject of experience - and a lot of concern when the call centres light up with complaints about the friendliness of the product.

This brings to mind parts of the Guide, as I speak about function and user friendliness for players in the game world.  On the blog, I have earnestly spoken about the importance of the world to make sense, fundamentally as the real world does, so that the player - or client - is able to make rational choices about what he or she does next.

So we don't need to cover that ground again.

Our motivation for giving the client a good experience is obvious - it is critical to our bottom line.  A widespread poor experience would result in loss of our clients to our competition, which in the long run would damage our viability as a company, reduce the amount of money and resources we had towards further R&D and ultimately the company would die a slow death in a competitive market. From that, it can be guessed how customer response is viewed.

It is everything.  Not only for us, but for everyone in the same business.

This makes me think that where quality is concerned - quality of experience - the role-playing game's chief problem may demand an American solution:  more competition.

Theoretically, a DM would be more invested in a player's complaints about their world if that player had an alternative - another world where they could play.  Unfortunately, there are some problems with that model, which we can run down as follows:

Games happen in isolated conditions.  Most players, if they're lucky, might know one DM, perhaps two.  There are many players - and readers of this blog - who have never had a chance to play simply because they've never met enough people to get together a foursome for a game.  How sad is that?  If you're living in a small town, if you're a solitary individual living outside your culture, if you're young and your parents still have a lot of mastery over your life, then finding a game may be an impossibility. At best, you might be able to take the DM's role yourself and educate a set of complete noobs into your world, but that doesn't enable you to play and it doesn't solve the problem of offering competition for user experience to the player.

Reversing this point of view, DMs know very well that their players have nowhere to go.  A problem player, one that makes trouble, one that challenges the DM's authority or fails to show respect can be turfed knowing that player has limited options.  Chances are the player will either give up the game and turn to other activities or be forced to return, tail between their legs, to dance to the DM's tune.

If it happens that the DM is personally a moral vacuum, this means suffering mental and emotional abuse for the opportunity to play.  It means swallowing your own sense of justice to obtain a poor experience - a good experience is out of the question because it isn't available.

Gaming Clubs despise competition.  I am basing this upon those gaming clubs that I've viewed from the inside, as well as the mutual admiration society that seems to compose the internet community.  To see a gaming club's typical response to innovation, the gentle reader need only examine the patterns shown upon a typical, administrated, online gaming forum.  Very quickly the 'rules' cease to be about the game and more directly geared towards ensuring 'everyone' has a good gaming experience.  The result, of course, is that everyone has a mediocre gaming experience.  Change inevitably disturbs someone in the group, who then complains to the administrator, who then slaps down the instigator of change for the 'general good,' ensuring that change never happens.  Carthago delendum est.

The issue with gaming clubs is that they have to be administered by someone, since the money must be collected for the space and someone must be held accountable if players begin punching each other in the aisles.  Not that I've ever actually seen that at a gaming club, but I've heard the phrase "someone needs to keep order!" said dozens of different ways hundreds of times.

All the DMs within the space are judged to have the 'right' to run their campaign and this is fine in terms of rhetoric.  It becomes a problem, however, if players in the club decide they'd rather not play with this DM and rather with that one - so that the best DMs in the club inevitably gather eight or ten people at their table while the poor DM gets one or two.  Administrators can't abide that sort of thing, so table limits are imposed and people are forced to play with bad DMs on principle - meaning that there are always a set of people at one or two of the tables that are now going through the motions, knowing there's a better game just feet away.

Luckily, this sorts itself out - the good DMs are forced out of the club because they refuse to run their games according to the principles of the club (which often include everyone running the same system, making no changes to that system, everyone running the same adventure so that everyone in the room will ultimately be sharing the same 'experience' and so on).  A good DM doesn't need a club.  They're never short of players.  Clubs are created by bad DMs for players who can't find a good one - specifically by bad DMs who like the political 'feel' of being among the elite four or six persons in a room of thirty or forty.

Single games can only handle woefully small numbers.  For the sake of argument, let's say that I'm a good DM.  I won't say that I am, truly, but I've been doing this for 35 years and therefore it's at least believable that I might be, so let's just stretch the imagination far enough to make that possible.  Now, how many players can I reasonably run in a given campaign?  Six?  Eight?  Fourteen?

Fourteen is the highest number of players I have run for three sessions in succession.  I was 22 at the time, full of piss and vinegar, running a game in which the combat map was x's and o's scratched out on paper like a complicated four-endzone football schematic.  In effect, combat was me pointing at a player, stating how many enemies were in front of that player and then indicating it was time for that player to swing.  That's about as complicated as combat got - and even on that level a battle between fourteen players and enough enemies to threaten them was a logistical laugh-riot.

There is no way I could run that many people using the system I employ now, not without at least one other person coordinating movement or providing raw data for player use.  Realistically, operating alone, I can say with confidence that my outside limit for a gaming group is eight - and I wouldn't want to run that many people all the time.

For most of us, we know that four players is realistic.  Where the game as a culture is concerned, a 4:1 ratio for player to DM is a disaster.  It means that even if the word gets out that a particular DM has talent, and even if that DM is in the neighborhood, chances are that DM is full up and can't take any more players.  Whatever we may want or need for the culture as a whole, a good DM's world fills up fast - what with word of mouth and all - and very quickly, for the player, the opportunity to play with a good DM is snatched away.

Which is all the more frustrating, because -

DMs won't learn from other DM's.  These past 35 years I must have spoken to thousands of other DMs in one capacity or another.  In all that time, I've discovered that one thing is absolutely true - the personality of a DM is not conducive to outside criticism.  We go our own way.  We have our own philosophy.  We all think we're right to run the game our way.  Etcetera.

Just look at the flame wars that go on when the subject of managing some small, insignificant element of the game arises.  The endless bullshit explanations for hit points.  The endless hair splitting over what exactly and precisely defines the line dividing a railroad from a sandbox.  GNS theory.  Things that matter greatly to DMs but upon which player opinion matters very little.  A DM cares what the hit points stand for; the player is mostly concerned with how many they still have and what they're able to still do as the number dwindles.  Players are concerned most with mechanics and how best to exploit them, or with the personality they wish to play and how best to play it.  DMs are mostly concerned with the dimensions, suck-power, ejection rates and frequency culminating around their own assholes.

What is missing from the community is a player complaint department.  A forum could easily be set up to manage that, so it isn't a mechanical problem.  Different threads could handle the endless questions that begin with, "I really fucking hate it when a DM does/thinks this . . ."

The problem would be making any DM listen.  I said my corporation listens to feedback.  That's because we service hundreds of thousands of clients in a given day.  We have a lot to lose.  But why should a DM care what some player says about some other DM about a subject the DM already smugly believes they know everything about?

Nope.  Ain't gonna happen.


The internet is the only saving grace in all this.  The internet has the potential to make a DM feel ashamed for their world and what they're doing to players.  The internet has the power to raise bad DM's to quality status through education, demonstration and anecdotal evidence.  If more DMs see good games, more DMs are going to want to run good games.  More DMs will be concerned with players having a good experience.  More DMs will speak out, raising talent and commitment as arguments against those promoting mediocrity or emotional privilege.  More DMs, raised into a culture where ability means more than selfish desire, will hammer the role-playing community into a better culture than it is today.

Some are going to suffer that change.  Some will shout against it.  Some will scream that no change is needed.  None of that matters, because it isn't up to them.  The decision to change is never left to the status quo - it is taken up by those for whom the status quo has failed.  They are the wind.  The stupid will stand up to it and be broken, while the weak will bend.

What People Hate

Earlier today Dave made an astute observation:  "People hate being wrong."

I certainly do.   Being wrong is embarrassing and from the standpoint of writing a book, ego-crushing.  It is all the more unpleasant when we're talking about something that I've been wrong about for years, even decades, all the while believing that I knew the truth.  Being wrong just plain sucks.

I must hate it more than most, however.  I'll explain why.

Most people who are wrong about something will flat out disbelieve it.  Now, here I don't talk about someone saying the shop is on 17th Avenue when it's on 16th, or making a mistake in thinking that Cheryl's husband is named Brandon when his name is actually Braden.  This sort of thing is usually accepted by people once they've met Braden.  I'm not even talking about people who still sing "wrapped up like a douche when you're rollin’ in the night" even when they know those can't be the lyrics.  Sometimes we get things stuck in our heads that are tough to shove out.  That's how the brain works.

I am talking about people who, for example, absolutely will not accept something like evolution or statistically verifiable climate change.  Things are are, first of all, difficult to understand if someone hasn't sat down patiently with us and explained, and secondly, much more easily misunderstood than song lyrics once we've gotten it into your head that such things work in a way that's completely different from your interpretation.  We're so used to interpreting things based on our gut instincts that once we find ourselves dealing with something really big, it is easier to keep with the gut rather than apply ourselves to a lot of initially incoherent facts.

So we develop prejudices.  And we develop a defense mechanism against anyone who challenges our prejudices, because we're certain that we know and that they don't.

The problem with prejudice - beyond other, obvious reasons - is that they mean we're going to be wrong forever.  Every time we find ourselves in an argument with someone who does have knowledge about that thing, it's going to be an argument where we have to defend our inaccurate 'knowledge' against a person who won't bend because they actually are right.  And they're going to make us feel stupid, because they're going to pull arguments from every quarter that makes us seem stupid while we're stubbornly insisting on our position without any facts to back us up.

That's going to make us angry every time someone mentions the subject.  We're going to be pissed the instant we meet anyone vaguely connected with that whole thing.  Because we don't want to talk about it, we don't want anyone to talk about it.

I said, I hate being wrong.  The best way to stop being wrong is to be informed.  So all my life, when I've found myself in an argument that's over my head, I've tried to change.  Oh, often not right away - initially I can be as stubborn as anyone.  But I am listening while I'm arguing and if good points are made, I'll follow up on those points the next day or the next week.  And I'll find myself looking at the hard data and thinking, "Fuck.  They were right."  It did turn out that that thing's name was Braden after all.

What this means is that I'm wrong about this thing today, but not tomorrow and not any time in the future. Next time I'm in that argument, I'm the asshole that's actually right - because I'm the asshole that did my homework.

Yes, that does make people mad.

It's particularly galling for certain 'smart' people in the world.  'Smart' is relative.  We can seem very smart when we're 20 and surrounded by people who haven't been through college yet and therefore haven't learned how full of shit we are.  We can apply ourselves to a game that has no verifiable truths to it, so that when talking about that game we are able to be louder and more definite and more popular in our opinions than others, so that we are definitely 'smarter' by reputation.  There is no right answer - at least we're free enough in the context to claim there isn't - so we shout 'IMHO' and 'YMMV' because those are terms that codify deliberate will-to-ignorance.  We think in our heart of hearts, "It's a game and its my table and what the hell, everyone does it their way, don't they?"

The less knowledge we have about something, the less certain we should be, nyet?  Yet that is not how humans tackle uncertainty.  Religion, where every tradition-established opinion becomes fact, flourishes where no knowledge exists.  A lack of knowledge enables intimidation, resistance against universality and all the benefits that come with the fragmentation of community - the power to influence those nearest to us by sheer strength of our personality.  We push others around because we are the loudest, the most arcane, the most elaborate in our 'logical constructions' and our innovation.

In the community, I am most justly proud of those things that I've proposed that others have chosen to embrace.  What I do with my world is irrelevant where the game is concerned.  I make nice maps and explore things that others would never explore for my own sake - but where the reader is concerned, those things are at best interesting.  They aren't 'right' because they're not applicable to the reader's framework.

The best things in life are universal.  These are things upon which we all agree - even when we're not certain of the exact details.  Democracy is better than tyranny, however that democracy may manifest locally.  Love is better than hate.  Evolution provides better answers for keeping us alive and staving off death than religion, which is only interested in comforting us.  If you're Braden, you're much more positive about all the people you know who remember your name than about that one dork who still calls you 'Brandon.'

I used to preach that we need role-playing to be more universal, to have rules upon which we can agree.  At the very least, we ought to adopt practices that are of the greatest benefit to 'fun' and 'comaraderie.'  I stopped making those arguments because of the push-back I received.  People shouted that 'fun' did not require their obedience to a group-think model.  The truth is, of course, that they have no idea what that model entails - except that it almost certainly says that what they're doing now is probably the wrong way to do it.

Deep in their hearts, the majority of players are dead-certain they're playing the game wrong.  They don't like it.  They're divided into two groups, however - those actively seeking answers about what to do and those furiously insisting that they're not wrong, there are no right answers, everyone has to do it their own way and fuck off.

Some people would rather be wrong forever than to change.

There are right answers.  We study psychology because it has been proven to us that even though humans are complex, difficult and unique, we still do things that have predictable, verifiable results.  These behaviours apply to the playing of role-playing games just as well as they apply to any other context in which humans interact.  To cry that there are no definable right or wrong approaches to the game is to deny all of human knowledge about ourselves to date.  That's not opinion.  Your mileage cannot vary.  You sit down with your players and you act in a particular way, we have the experts who can watch your behaviour and point out chapter and verse where you're fucking up.  More importantly, we can universally march experts into the room to watch you play, and they'll all come to the same conclusions.

That is damn hard to accept.  People hate being wrong.

Nasty

I haven't pitched at a trade show since my 20s, and I must admit I have some reservations.  By my count, the Fan Expo is 23 days away, but already I have had it demonstrated to me what the biggest problem is going to be.

War stories.

I'm going to be sitting at a table selling a book about role-playing, but there are going to be far too many RPGamers who will see that as an opportunity to spill their guts about their worlds, their game design, their personal insights and gawd knows what other crap encircling their lonely, unsupported viewpoint of the hobby.

Twice in the last week I have had someone launch into a theoretical rant about what role-playing games are and what DMs need to do - despite their knowing that I've just finished a researched book on the subject.  One very well meaning friend did it just a couple hours after purchasing the Guide . . . but I don't fault him.  People love to talk about role-playing.  So as long as I'm selling the book, I'm not going to be an 'expert,' I'm going to be a confessor.

That is more than clear.

I have met this one type, however, that confounds me.  This is the fellow (I haven't met the girl version yet) who sees the book as a challenge - perhaps a threat.  They want to come over and let me know very clearly that they're a great DM, they know everything they need to know, they certainly don't need a book . . . and somehow it is very, very important that I know all this.

Any time that I have pitched, it has been for other people.  I did sell advertising for a small zine I ran during the 90s but that's not the same as hitting random people in a crowd.  As I've gotten older, I've come to understand a bit better why some of those guys I worked for years ago were such pricks. They had to be deluded about their products.  They had invested heavily - usually too heavily - in product they had to move and they weren't able to view the process from any position except with mixed ambition and desperation.

I am pleased that I am not in a place where I'm desperate.  There's no question I need to sell, but since I find the aspect of pitching the Guide as helpful and positive for the reader, I am not thinking 100% about me and my bottom line.  My bottom line is in a good, comfortable place right now.  People seem to like the book, the content, the look and the ideal.  That's a sound, reassuring mental viewpoint to start from.  I feel confident, I feel ready.

But I am going to have to move those challengers off the reservation when the time comes, because I know they're not going to buy the book.  It's going to be a matter of principle with them.  In the bigger picture, even if they were to buy, after much work, they're going to be a wet blanket for everyone else. For that challenger, the conflict is going to exist between him and me.  He's going to push that conflict, because what he's selling is intimidation, conceit and very much repressed fear.

For me, there is no conflict. I'm right, I did the research, I worked like hell on the book and I can't help everyone.  I don't care if this guy 'gets it.'  I don't care if he buys.  I only care that he takes his conceit on the road.  I've paid for the table; I have to be here.  As he's paid for the privilege of walking through the Expo, I want him to keep walking.

I'm still working on how to make him do that.  I'd like to kick him in both shins, then have a private security guard drag him off and explain life to him somewhere private connected to the loading dock, but that's not realistic.  It will be going through my mind, however.  Any lesser confrontational stance is only going to encourage the guy, so I'll have to be polite.  The right words, however, haven't leapt into my mind yet.  I'm sure I'll get some practice.  I'll figure it out.

It's a pity that the hobby contains so many people who have adopted a "me me, me me me, me me me me me me me" perspective on things.  Were the gentle reader and I to meet at the Expo, the reader would find I'm not prepared to talk about my world.  I'm not prepared to talk about the system I'm using or the recent events that happened in my campaign or even what rules/structure I'm working on at the moment.  I will talk about the Guide.  I'm obviously there to sell that.  But in true form, I will be interested in describing the Guide to the reader from the perspective of what the Guide will do for the reader, not what it has done for me.

The reason salespeople do that is because they understand the buyer isn't interested in anything except the buyer.  It is all about the listener.  Why should you give a shit about my book if there's nothing in it about you?  You shouldn't.  I have to convince you that the book was written with you in mind - and then the book has to make good on that promise, or else you'll have nothing good to say about it.

Good writing is a self-less act.  Very few writers understand that; thus, there are very few good writers.

The fellow who collars you to tell you about what happened to him and his last session is the worst storyteller imaginable.  His story is all "me me me."  It has nothing to do with you or me, the listeners - because in no way can we relate to whatever the hell he's saying.  Almost immediately, he's describing some rule the story turns on that we think is dumb or with which we don't play, or which we find makes the story obvious and pedantic - as in, "Well of course, you idiot, did you never have that rule play out before?"  We have nothing invested in his story.  We want him to just stop.

To tell a story, you must begin from the premise, "What does the listener wish to hear?"  To do that, you must have some understanding of why the listener is here, what the listener's agenda is, what the listener is looking for, who the listener is and how the listener wishes to be addressed.  All of that demands subverting the self.

Someone will say, "Alexis, you are the biggest asshole in the RPG community. You're a conceited fraud!"

Am I?  Or have you read this far because you haven't been able to help yourself.  Because this has all been about you, or people you've met.  Has it angered you because I'm selfishly speaking about myself, or has it angered you because you're the subject?  And isn't that what I've been saying?  To make the story about the reader?

I haven't said, be kind to the reader.  I've proposed that one must be aware of, and directed towards, the reader.  And I am.  On the blog, I'm abusive because that's what this community needs.  A good shaking.  A bit of life explained on a loading dock.

But only a fool thinks this is the only way I can write, or the only subject I can write about.  The Guide is about improving your game.  That's all the Guide is about.  The blog, on the other hand, is about improving the world.  Demands a completely different writing style.  The Guide will only be bought by the curious, the affluent, the connoisseur.  The blog is read by anyone whose bored.  Completely different audience.  A completely different approach is needed.

Ah, well.  I was talking about people telling war stories.  And how annoying that is.  And how in 23 days I'm going to be standing in front of a table full of my books and listening to some boring, narcissistic fellow prattle on and on about how his world is a mixture of four different systems I consider to all be shit.  And I will look at him, and do my very best to point out that the book is non-genre and non-system specific.  And that as long as he's here at the Expo, he really should consider picking up a copy.  Then I will push a passage or section on him, and then when it's clear he's totally ignoring me so he can talk more about his world, I will pitch at a random stranger walking by or turn and ask an unrelated question of my daughter, to make it clear to this schnook that I'm not his utility. With luck, he will get the hint.

I wouldn't want having to get nasty.


UPDATE:

Hm.  I have just had a moment of clarity, thinking upon what I wrote earlier this morning.

I know, gentle reader, how volatile I am.  I know how hard I can be.  How rigid.  How unpleasantly certain.

I was only just thinking that the number one complaint about this blog, if one will go read condemnation of me elsewhere, is the accusation that I don't allow disagreement from commenters. That isn't true, as the comment field attests, but that is nevertheless the accusation - and the accusation, I believe, says something about the accuser.

Why, precisely, is it that people become so irate when they perceive they are not allowed to enter into someone else's space in order to disagree with them.  I'm not disallowing anyone to disagree with me; I'm only disallowing them to do it here in a particular way that I find reprehensible.  I disagree with people all the time, I write it quite openly, I don't feel any limitations on my freedom of speech and I'm certainly heard when I attack others - because they come HERE and read me.

Is it, perhaps, that they don't feel as certain that I will go THERE and read their anger?  Is it that they need reassurance that they can control the dialogue on this space, specifically, in a negative way?  That is, after all, their stated agenda: they wish to disagree.  They demand to disagree and to be allowed to disagree where they will!  Damn it, nothing less will satisfy them.

I find that intriguing.  Why should they care?  Why does it matter to them?  Why is it that their 'freedom' hinges upon their right to be negative?

Well, I think I know.  I think the reader knows, too.

Unfriending Strangers

Late last night, just before diving into bed (I have had a board built for the purpose), I received the strangest contention about my book, How to Run.  The fellow told me that he refused to buy my book because I had chosen Lulu as a platform - even though he really wanted to support me and buy a copy.

Apparently, there are people who have problems with Lulu, who spend time harping about the company and who cry out for some sort of class action suit against them.  I was directed to one of these sights by the commenter, just so I could see how 'evil' a platform Lulu is.

I won't link one of these sights, however, because I saw nothing on those sights that remotely meshed with my experience.  By this, I mean that the accusations and complaints did not make any sense.  For one thing, several people claimed that Lulu was charging them for an ISBN number.  I could, if I wished, walk the reader through the Lulu process and demonstrate that they'll give an ISBN number for the 500-word paper you wrote in Grade Five, if you were willing to type it into MS-Word and desired to publish it.  Free.  There were several such examples I saw.

This is the sort of thing I must write off to the Internet.  No matter what the platform or the product, I'm sure we can find hundreds of people with a gripe and a will to bitch openly about their gripe - even if the error in some way resulted from their own misunderstanding, irrationality or lack of experience. I believe we've all seen such things.

Naturally, I tried to convince the commenter, first, that I've never had any problems with Lulu.  No good.  By this point we were in facebook chat. Thinking the commenter truly wanted a copy of the book, I assured the commenter that Lulu has always treated me well, that no one has ever complained to me about the quality of the product they've received and that perhaps he could overlook the troubles of others in buying the book.

Whereupon, things got weird.

First off, I was attacked vigorously for performing a "hard sell" of the book.  Now, this was coming from someone who had already said he wanted to buy the book, so long as he didn't have to buy it through Lulu.  It felt strange being accused of pushing a book that, as far as I knew, was already wanted.

From the negativity I suddenly received (apparently because I wasn't willing to condemn Lulu along with the commenter), I guessed that the fellow hadn't ever read my blog - so I suggested, for the sake of understanding the quality of my writing, that he should check the blog out.  At this point, I was attacked for trying to push the blog on the fellow when he hadn't ever asked for such a suggestion.

I'm staring at my computer screen and I'm pretty confused.  I'm thinking, is this a spammer who attacks people who use Lulu?  Does he work for Amazon?  From the things he's saying now, I'm pretty sure he's never heard of me before.  I'm guessing his 'support' for me, the one he's supposedly giving me by buying my book, is based upon a desire to support anyone writing a book about role-playing.  He just happened to stumble across mine.

And . . . then it got weirder.

If you're going to sell a book, you can't be shy about it.  You can't think to yourself, "This person will have no interest in buying my book, I really shouldn't bother them with it."  That is a great way to fail. Truth is, it's like the old joke: a man is standing at the bus stop when a stranger rushes up to him, seizes him by the lapel and says, "I've gotta tell you this!  I've just slept with four women at the same time!  It was amazing!"  Where upon the man says to the stranger, "That's uh, great.  Why are you telling me?"

And he gets the answer, "Are you kidding?  I'm telling everybody!"

That's sales.  You tell everyone, you ask for the money, and if they make it clear to you that they're not going to buy, you keep pushing.

This guy, though, I had begun thinking was a whack job.  Still, I decided to make one more pitch.  I told him that it was a book like no other in the hobby and that he was really missing out simply because he wouldn't buy from Lulu.

At which point he scoffed, saying, "Do you know who I am?"  Well obviously, some guy who had somehow gotten friended on facebook, the answer was no.  I had no idea who he was, beyond a name, a rather piss-poor website that showed he was an obscure game designer I'd never heard of and a whole lot of conflicting interests.

"I've written six books about how to be a DM," he says.  "And 150 other books."  From there he begins to disparage me, my book, my existence in this world and my apparent inability to recognize him instantly from his use of text.  I'm thinking, "Six books?  Did he fail utterly with the first five?"  Then I'm thinking, "Does he sell a lot of books by forcing random people on line to guess who he is?"

See, speaking for me personally, in writing a book I'm a big fan of putting my name, my real name, right there on the jacket.  You know, so people know who wrote the book.  I don't see hiding my name as being a strong sales technique.  Apparently, however, this 'great' writer does, because I never did learn who the hell he was.

I'm a pretty strange fellow, that I'll grant.  And my temper does put me into places I shouldn't go.  But I don't believe I've ever praised someone's work, only to then tell them I don't give a shit about their blog or anything about them, while then getting irate when they encouraged me to buy the book I just praised.

Ah, the internet.  I'm quite certain last night I was dealing with some fellow who missed his meds or has decided to stop taking them to enjoy a fuller life.  All I could really do was unfriend him.

In the meantime, have you heard that I'm selling a book?  How to Run: an Advanced Guide to Managing Role-playing Games.  Yes, I use Lulu.  Great platform.  They've always treated me well, these past three years.  Check it out, have a look at the preview, please 'like' the page and if you could, buy a copy.  It's a book about role-playing that I've never seen written by anyone else.  I confess, it isn't my sixth attempt, but then I thought I would research the text and produce quality the first time.

Retrospective, August 2010

I had it suggested to me by my partner Tamara that I should 'recover' some of the posts I wrote in years past, in some manner that highlights not just that they were written, but how I feel about them now. I suggested that on the first day of every month I could highlight those posts that had been written throughout the month four years previously. Thus, as it is August 1st, I should write about those posts I wrote in August, 2010. Well, why not?

That month I wrote a 4,000 word post on Theology that is certainly among my longest at the time. This was part of the Civilization Posts that I was still writing.  Naturally, I overwhelmed the reader with anything so long and so involved, but the three comments I received were supportive. I haven't much to add; the article needs more examples and needs to quote its source material and would probably be ten times as long if I sat down and rewrote it a thesis.  It also needs references to D&D throughout the post, not just at the end; but then, how interested are people in truly understanding what is behind the religions they invoke in their worlds.

I'm sure I just read this post from Caffeinated Symposium a couple days ago about how religions need to be more about knowledge and community structure than one-paragraph descriptions of gods.  Dave Cesarano makes a good point and it's definitely worth reading the article.

August 2010 was the month those Chilean miners were trapped underground, and I wrote a post about playing in pitch darkness, Gaming Under Duress.  The comments seemed to suggest that I am not alone in thinking of ways to play in order to pass the time.  I have led people through spontaneous games during camping trips, long-distance drives and occasionally while working with them at less-than-interesting jobs.  Imagination is a game that can be played anywhere.

I wrote some of my reasons for why I don't let people buy or sell magic in my post, Ewoks with Napalm, forever a contentious issue.  One of my offline players, upon hearing the possibility of making a vintage wine in large quantities that could heal hit points, immediately annoyed me by exclaiming, "Imagine what I could sell that for!"

This brings to mind three scenarios.  The first, if the wine can be sold very easily, then there ought to be tons of it at the market, depreciating the price and more or less making it worthless to sell, or even to bother making.  Why would a player make magic wine if magic wine is available cheap at the grocery store?

Secondly, if its not easy to sell, because its expensive, then why would a grocer buy it to sit on his shelf where it's not going to easily find a buyer, while at the same time is a screaming sign for thieves to break in and rob the place?  It's always interesting to me that the players walk into a perfectly ordinary shop, drop 5,000 gold for a magic ring and the proprietor is like, "Sure, I keep it right here next to the hair gel," because obviously there's no need for a place like this to have the sort of security Tiffany's jewelry possesses.  There are only about a dozen non sequiturs there.  Does the state really sanction this shop to sell off magic potions and swords and wands without feeling any compulsion to control the distribution of magic for the sake of retaining authority?  I guess not.

Finally, how exactly does the shop keeper ensure that every bottle of 200 is in fact 'magical'?  How does the buyer ensure quality control?  Even if we assume everyone in the kingdom is born with a magic tooth that let's them detect magic at will, how do we know that THIS bottle's magic actually heals hit point and doesn't just make hair a little softer and bouncier?  We surely can't count on identify magic, because even if you have the spell you need to above 4th level before it gets to be reliable.

I'm not going to pay 40 g.p. for a 'magical' bottle of wine when I don't know if it works or not.  Sure, the store owners in video games may be perfectly honest, all the time, but my world just doesn't work that way.  If there's a way to scam someone, a scam will be managed - and a whole population will have experience with the scam, meaning they won't trust anyone when it comes to buying magic.

So why do I sell healing salves at the apothecaries if all of the above is true?  Pity.  I sympathize with a party's desire to stay alive.  I'm not going to let a party manipulate that sympathy into easy bucks, though.  Push too hard on my good nature and that good nature evaporates.

In August I wrote four posts on Duty - Intro, Society, Self and what I called 'The Flow.'  Pretty heady stuff, a bit preachy, all on role-playing and interaction between the DM and the Player.  Funny, I don't find it much reflects the content of the Advanced Guide I've just released; the last one does, however, make allusions to recent events.  Curious how that always seems to happen.

Those posts didn't get much attention - or rather, they didn't receive much feedback.  I've read through them and I find the thinking a bit scattered.  I was struggling to nail down where the responsibility in gaming lies, towards others, towards ourselves, in our behaviour and in what we deserve to respect or the respect we deserve to be given.  It's a difficult subject.  I handled it better in How to Run, albeit very differently, as I approached the subject more from the point of view that we're not in as much control over our actions as we'd like to me.  Research done since those duty articles has taught me that I'm fighting uphill against issues that are hard to isolate and manage even as they're happening.  In 2010, I gave no attention at all to stress.

And, too, those were coming after an abusive and unforgiving post I wrote, one that still gets a bit of attention, Creativity and Breast Feeding.  Ah, Alexis.  Will you never change?

That's one of those posts that probably lost me the approval that I've gained with posts like The Great RPG, where the comments call me 'sensei' and 'fucking brilliant.'  There's no question in my mind that the hardest, most galling thing about me as a writer is that I will, one moment, shake a person down to their core with something they wholly agree with, then piss on all their loves and dearly held beliefs the next gawddamned day.  Most of the time, I don't do this intentionally, though that only makes it worse. It helps feed the theory that I must be psychotically unaware that I've only just made someone like me, and now I'm making someone hate me.  Jeez, don't I get that?

I suppose I do.  Thing is, I'm not your sensei or your worst critic - I'm just a guy who is taking the data and compiling it as I see it.  Then I'm writing it down in the way that makes the most sense to me, at the time.  Like a scientist, the last thing I'm concerned about is the 'comfort' level of the material. No matter what I write, some people are going to really like it and some people are not.  Sometimes, two days apart, these two extremes will be felt by the same people.

We're all pretending to understand this game - and in a wider sense, the whole system.  We're all doing our best with the material.  I happen to be in love with the material, more in love with it than I am with myself.  This has made me into a sort of dangerous, thought-spewing robot without any morality or sensibility to the sufferings or emotional dogma of others.  Made worse by my willingness to abuse the shit out of the reader in order to make my point.  Which I will do because if I make my point lightly, it will be viewed lightly.

Looking back at the August posts, I see I had readers who commented then but who never comment now.  So it goes.  I know you're still reading me.  I know you're there, I know you're grinding your teeth and I know you won't comment now because, well, it's personal, isn't it?  That's fine.  My numbers go up.  My books apparently sell, much to my appreciation for those of you who are willing to let me in yet again.  I'm grateful for that.

Still a lot left to write yet, however.  There always is.