Time Wasted?

Throughout this year, I have been reconsidering my original stand on Extra Credits.  A large contributory factor to that has been the well-researched historical presentations they've done.  That aside, however, I keep bumping into them.  I'm digging around for a discussion about something I want to write about and there they are.  Usually, saying the most pedantic and obvious things possible; usually carrying the great PC or SJW signboard . . . but there.  So in my head I've had to back off a bit.  Despite my feelings on their politics, I have to admit - reluctantly - that some of the stuff they pull up is worth discussing.

So I confess.  This post was inspired by this Extra Credits video, which asks the question, "Have you ever finished a game and then looked back a few weeks later and thought, what the hell was I doing putting 80 hours of my life into that?"

In the video, the question is rhetorical; they're using it to support their argument that a better game uses techniques other than operant conditioning to promote interest.  I want to examine the question differently, in relation to role-playing, since I'm not sure that, for RPGs, the rhetorical answer 'yes' is one that the reader is having.

Considering the question above, do you find this happens after role-playing?

I could set the question up as a poll, but polls are limited in how much reliable information they provide.  In any case, this is a subjective issue.  Does the 'bad' you feel from having played a long, repetitive video game until you've beaten the thing compare remotely to the feeling you have playing a character in anyone's world?  If RPGs do occasionally make you feel bad, is it guilt from time wasted?  I've heard people say that they came to understand that they were getting too old for this, that they had to leave off and move on.  I've also heard the story from others that it was interferring with their career or their schooling, that they didn't have time to invest in anything, much less a role-playing game.

I have felt bad after a game, but that's a feeling that comes from letting down the players, whether I have or not.  It is hard to have any perspective on whether or not I've delivered a 'good running' in a particular night.  I wasn't playing.  I felt a bit mushy about details or that the scene on the meadow, between the party and the spirits of the dead, felt a little flat.  When I'm told it wasn't, I still have my perspective and my memories of the moment, so I don't know one way or the other.

I can recall days when getting worked up to run was a BIG effort.  And I can recall days when I just didn't make it, when we talked or gave in after an hour, playing poker instead or picking up a movie.  Sometimes, the energy it takes to make the game happen just isn't there.

But I can't ever recall thinking back a few days to a game and thinking, "Shit, I really shouldn't have blown my Saturday doing that.  What a waste of time.

Hell, as long as the audience is going to keep showing up, I'm not wasting my time performing, am I? Which is why this is a question for players.  I've had a few chances to play this past year, but not many.  That's why I have to let others answer.

There must be something that stops a long-time player from getting out to a game.  Some of these players who quit must come to feel it's time wasted.  They must walk away from some sessions, thinking, "Shit, well, that makes another one.  Why the hell do I keep going?  What's left that appeals to me?"

I've made the argument that players keep coming because the game is their social network.  This is what their friends do Saturday.  That's all the game is for those players.  I suppose they must also feel it's been a horrible waste of time, just repetitive die-rolling, another damn dungeon door and another 435 experience.

I'd like to hear from someone who can tell me if they feel they should have done something else.

Three-Dimensional Characters

We've all seen it.  The player that decides, "My character is an asshole," then sets out to justify every bad thing they do from the perspective of a character that is bad.  "Why does every character have to be a goody-goody," they argue.  "My character was the product of a broken home, a dead father, an evil uncle that beat him every day, etcetera, etcetera."

I thought I might write a post today about characterization and developing character, on a subject not covered in my How to Play a Character book.  Specifically, what makes a good character?  What makes a character that is three-dimensional and therefore alive, rather than two dimensional and wooden.

Part of the misconception in creating characters comes from the Second-Rate-Writer's Character Development Handbook, which says that to create a more developed, interesting character, what that character needs is a back story.  The back story, the argument goes, provides motivation for the character's present behaviour, thus offering reasons why the character acts in a certain way.  For example, if Jim's uncle hits him every day, then we can expect Jim to grow up distrustful and mean. Therefore, when the character Jim does something aggressive or self-interestedly, it's only a reaction to his upbringing - Q.E.D.

The player who proposes this sort of logic deserves a good slap up the back side of the head. Alternatively, you could keep a stack of hard cover psychology books on hand so, when the player makes an argument along these lines, you could pick the book of the appropriate size and weight for the given moment and hurl it at the player.

We are NOT the product of our back story.  The idea that we might be was an attempt by various criminal lawyers in the 1950s and 60s to take the new psychology of the time and develop it into a legal defense:  "Your Honor, my client Jim could not help killing those three people, cutting up their bodies and disposing of them in the East River because Jim is the product of a broken home.  He was beaten every day by his uncle, so that today Jim is a victim, not a criminal.  He deserves our pity, not our condemnation."

Guess what?  It fucking did not work.  While Hollywood writers thought the idea was brilliant and ran with it, producing a mess-load of mastubatory, self-congratulating movies in the 60s and 70s about woebegone criminals smashing up cars at high speed (a trend that goes on and on), the courts decided that - upon hearing evidence, something movies don't have to provide - that people are responsible for their actions.

That is because we are NOT robots.  Jim, it turns out, eventually grows up and becomes aware of why he is being beaten.  He sees plenty of examples of other people who are not being beaten and knows perfectly well that once he is free of his uncle, there are endless different lives that Jim can lead.  Even as a child, Jim learns all the places he can go to escape these beatings.  He has memories of thinking that it's wrong and why it shouldn't happen - he can reason, he can see the right path and he can take it if he chooses to do so.

Jim is not an automaton.  Humans do not work by the rule, plug coin with beating uncle into machine, machine becomes a raging bastard.

When your player says, "The back story gives my character dimension!", your player has chosen to conveniently forget the tens of thousands of other events, experiences, moments of time, people and lessons the character has learned.  In other words, your player has deliberately chosen the most wooden and two dimensional justification possible for their crappy, 2-D character.

3-D characters are created not with justifications or motivations, but with uncertainty.  Note that I don't mean indecision, where the pathetic Peter Parker cannot make up his mind between two alternatives, neither of which add up to a whole personality.  I mean uncertainty, the condition in which real people live every day, not being certain of what its all leading to or where this existence is going.  Except for the very old, who are bedridden and left without alternatives, we all live our lives in the future, not the past.  Even those who claim to live in the past are really just bitching about their fear that the future is never going to get better than what's going on right now.  Such people always have one other fear, the fear we all share:  that life is going to get worse.

Jim's third dimension comes from Jim's uncertainty that he's made the right choices about his reactions to his uncle.  It results from his hesitation is behaving this way or that, the uncertainty that this really is a good moment to behave as an asshole . . . followed, as all uncertainty is, by guilt feelings and regret that we did not make the right decision.  It is regret, doubt, denial and so on that causes us to behave erratically, all the time, even when we are trying so damn hard to retain a sense of proportion or reason.

The key here is that there is no precise way that any 3-D character will respond to any given stimulus.  If we already know before it happens how the character will respond, then what we have is a WOODEN, lifeless character.  The reason why film directors are always getting on the wrong side of fanboys is that the fanboys LOVE the wooden character and want the character to stay as wooden as possible, forever . . . whereas the director is trying to make the character human, which means there's no such thing as an action the character cannot, under certain circumstances, perform.  Thus Superman can kill.  The Empire can resort to using Black Stormtroopers.  James Bond can cry.

Your player's desperate, sad attempt to create a character via back story only serves to create a character that supposedly has a blank cheque to perform the same miserable, shit-justified action over and over - without doubt, without reason, without hesitation and without humanity.  Don't rubber stamp that shit.  Call that shit out.  Point out that if the character really had been beaten by the uncle, the character should feel deep, unimaginable remorse, on a level that would threaten the character's will to go on.

In other words, institute a suicide saving throw . . . and every time the player has the character act like a total fucking prick, roll a d4 - and that number of days later, the player has to roll 9 or over on a d20 or wander off and kill themselves.

Backstage

Anytime a known writer speaks in public, at a library or a university, and the field is open to questions, there's always one adventurer who will rise from the audience and ask, "Where do you get your ideas?"

I have seen a number of answers to this question: polite answers, vague answers and academic answers.  I remember seeing Mordecai Richler speak (for non-Canadians, this is a 'famous Canadian writer' whom every body praises but nobody reads).  When the question came up, he became quickly incensed.  "From my BRAIN" he bellowed, having obviously answered the question a thousand times already.  Then he added, "Sit down, you stupid girl!"

On some levels, I think that may have been the best answer.

There's little difference between the question above and those who cannot help but ask, "How do you come up with hooks for a campaign?"  Or, "How do you make adventures the players will want to play?"  Every composer (for that is a nice generic term for everyone who designs or envisions something from scratch) will cast about - especially at the beginning of their careers - for a methodology or an approach that's better than the one they're using.

This is born out of a belief that some people find composing easy.  I reach for a book when I'm twenty and find myself mystified by the author's ability to create these profound characters, fill their mouths with dialogue and pull them together in these marvellous ways in order to bring the story to a conclusion that knocks me for six.  At twenty, it is impossible to imagine how this is done.

We presume that the composer's mind must somehow work differently that our own does.  We look at our own work and compare it to the composer and suppose that it must have something to do with their biology or intelligence or a special sort of damage that was done to their brain at an early age. Or we suppose that the composer must have discovered a trick, some magic formula that lets them organize their minds in such a way that we cannot.

In truth, it is all perception.

Compare writing to the way you see Christmas now - an example I'm choosing because the reality behind Christmas starts to hit home just before you reach the age of twenty.  This way, the metaphor should reach most of the readers here.

At six, everything about Christmas is magical.  You may have figured out that Santa isn't real, but you're not sure enough about the world yet to feel that is completely confirmed, especially as everyone insists on talking about him.  The lights, the stories about elves and reindeer and so on that you watch, the excitement of being given things by your family - particularly after that long drum roll for weeks before you open the presents - come together in a time of wonder.  All around you are cookies and sweets, things you eat until you're physically restrained from eating more, you get full or they run out.  You're not able to see these things with a jaundiced eye because you're young and easily amused - and you don't really understand how or why any of this happens.

As you age, however, you are slowly and steadily separated from the magic.  You begin to see the process from a wider perspective.  You see how the cookies and things come together.  Santa evaporates into a well-meaning lie.  The presents get worse and worse - and you recognize they are things that are actually available for purchase all year round.  Bit by bit the pretty decorations become paper and tacks; the ornaments on the tree grow tacky and worn.  You think less and less about Christmas, except for the chore of shopping, until the last moment.  In your late teens, you find yourself working on Christmas Eve, Christmas or Boxing Day, shortening the 'holiday' to just a few hours.

Yes, you'll find other things about Christmas that you'll appreciate.  As your kids grow, you'll enjoy Christmas through their eyes.  But Christmas will never be the same again, because you understand all about Christmas now.

Composing is the same way.  As you read or write more, as you plumb through more role-playing material and design more campaigns, bit by bit the bloom will rub from the rose.  If you return to read the books you read with eyes wide open as a child, you'll recognize where the characters are weak, now.  You'll see where the author took short-cuts.  Instead of elegant nuance, you'll begin to see how and where the composer hammered things together.

You may go too far and find yourself losing a taste for everything.  You may become so wrapped up with how obviously crappy everything is - especially your own work - that you quit composing altogether.  You may go one step further from there and take it upon yourself to keep everyone else in the world from composing, from the bitterness you feel that the world isn't the wonderful, beautiful place you were so falsely told existed when you were a little child.

Or you may recognize that composing requires a bit of knocking together to make it work.  You may begin to understand that success isn't getting it perfect (since no one does), but in managing the best you can.  Steadily, you may begin to realize that you can see things that others can't, because you've been walking around backstage all this time and they've been out in the audience.

This is what composers mean when they say, "Keep writing, keep working, keep composing."  They mean, "Keep walking around backstage.  Get into the habit of watching how it's done.  Don't worry that its all fake and pasteboard, that its wood knocked together to make it seem like it's beautiful - that's just how we do it here.  No, there's no trick.  No one back here is special.  It's only that we've been doing it for a long time."

I should add that there are some who will tell you otherwise - but believe me, they are trading on their time and your ignorance.  They're counting on you to think they're geniuses - they may even be deluded enough to think that they are.  It's all crap.  Everyone fucks up.  It doesn't matter.  We keep at it, we keep learning, we accept that it isn't magic and that we do it because it has become a vocation. We knock it together, slap some plaster and paint over the nails, cock our heads and call it, "Good enough."  Then we move on.

Don't

Okay, seriously.  Don't quit.  I know that feeling is on your back and that you're thinking about it all the time, but don't do it.  Believe me, that moment of relief you get and the time afterwards when you tell yourself that you're glad, that passes.  In the long run, it just becomes regret.

Yes, I know, it seems pointless to go on.  You're just rehashing old stuff and you've done everything.  I get that.  Only, that's just the way it feels.  That isn't the reality.  Right now, you're just burned out and because of that you can't think of anything good.  It happens to everyone.

All you need is distance.  You've been spending too much time on this lately and you've put off a lot of things.  That's probably true.  But you don't have to quit this to do those things.  You just need to let this rest for a bit, so you can regain your perspective and remember why you got into this in the first place.  In a few months, you'll feel better.  You'll be able to look at this with a clear head again.

I've gone through this too.  You feel like you're butting your head against the wall and no one seems to care.  This is the best work you've ever done, yet no one seems to care.  You've been pouring your whole heart into this and yet no one seems to give a gawddamn.

It's an illusion.  People do care.  They have noticed.  But it's hard for them to express what they're feeling and their praise seems inadequate when they think of telling you outright.  It's a communication problem, one brought about by embarrassment and uncertainty.  It isn't that they don't think you've done great things, it's that they don't want to diminish those things with a few clumsy phrases.

So don't quit.  Keep the work you've done and put it on a shelf until you feel better.  It doesn't have to be all or nothing.  When the cloud has passed and you're on your feet again, you'll begin to realize you never wanted to quit.  You were just under pressure.  It was stress.  And you'll be glad you didn't make a hasty decision.

Then, when you start again, it can be just a little at a time.  Bits and pieces.  Nothing that's going to compromise whatever else you've started.  You'll feel better, too, because you'll be fresh.  You'll have gotten out from these frustrated corners you've driven yourself into.  You'll see.

Give it a while.  Don't force this into a decision.  You're only tired.

The Day Before Yule

Twas the day before Yule, when all through the town
An orc tribe was pillaging, with dire wolf hounds.
The inn was ablaze ‘neath the high chimney there,
From the staff of the wizard on watch in the square.

The townspeople were frightened, for many were dead,
While ten hung from high poles, missing their heads.
And mamma with her khopesh and I with my axe
Had just come around to pay the year’s tax.

When off to our left there screamed a mad hatter,
“Kill them both!” he ordered, “And leave them in tatters!”
So that mob turned about, and rushed us in a flash
With spears used for rending and whips made to lash.

The blood on the armor of our new rushing foes
Fed a lust that we’d gained to lay a few blows.
When at once with my wandering eyes I saw clear,
That wizard was readying a spell to be feared.

With the face of a weasel, so pale and so sick,
I knew in a moment it must be Quaint Slick.
More terrible than weapons his casting became
While he danced and cavorted and called each demon’s name,

Now Juiblex! Now Orcus! Now Hezrou and Vrock!
On Yeenog, On Balor, Glabrezu and Plock!
Sour their blood and make their hearts stall!
Now slaughter them, slaughter them, slaughter them all!

As thought follows action when death threatens by
I had thrown my war axe without knowing why.
It had hit that mean wizard and ruined his cried hew –
His spell it fell flat - and Quaint Slick he did too!

And then, in a twinkling, I heard Mamma give proof,
That she could handle every ruffian, head, hide and hoof.
Though I raised my axe and I turned fast around,
Not an orc was left standing, nor a dog to be found.

Then I saw Quaint rise and limp off on foot,
“Hurry on,” I cried, “It’s no time to stay put.”
So we chased him through town ‘till we came to a shack
The hut of a peddlar, at the end of the track.

The place it was shambled and a little bit scary,
We knew to approach it, we had to be wary.
I felt a cold sweat arise on my brow
And heard Mamma say, “What do we do now?”

I took in a sharp breath between gritted teeth;
I slid out my runesword from inside its sheath.
The wizard’s hut shook as if made of jelly,
Then the ground all around grew terribly smelly.

“Gawd that’s awful!” said Mamma to herself,
“It’s as bad as a bath house run by an elf!”
I had to agree, as the stench hurt my head,
Much more of this and we’d both soon be dead.

Then I remembered, trying to think through the murk,
I had an old item that just had to work!
It was down in my pack beneath my clean clothes,
I fought with the straps (‘cause that’s how it goes).

I pulled it out and blew it, that sacred old whistle,
The fat woman said it would cast magic missile.
Then I heard the sky clap and saw with delight,
A hundred magic darts, ending the fight!

(And as Quaint died, there in the shed

We celebrated the season asleep in our beds)


P.S.

This was not copied from elsewhere; I wrote this original version yesterday.

B&B

Fantasies are fun.

There's one that my Tamara and I have talked about now and then that is unquestionably a fantasy - and not one that is so very different from what I hear from co-workers who dream of getting out of the office and into a vocation that offers 'freedom.'

Throughout the Maritimes of this country, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, there are little harbour towns that grew up around the timber industry.  Nowadays, the locals thrive a bit on the tourist trade, transforming grand old houses (that are fairly cheap, given that there's no work to be had and therefore no demand) on the water into bed & breakfasts.  A three-thousand square foot house can be gotten (by a savvy agent) for less than $200K, potentially with a dozen acres or more of untamed land.

Together, Tamara and I have worked in both food service and housekeeping.  We have a clear idea what sort of work is involved and how it certainly wouldn't be freedom - hotel work is slavery, as some neophytes discover to their sorrow.  It has two saving graces, however - the first being, if the people know what they're doing, a smart income can be made.  The second is that tourism is a seasonal activity.

For six months, your life outside work ends.  You begin as the sun rises and you are still at it long after the sun sets.  You suffer guests, you suffer things that break and deliveries that don't arrive. You suffer from inadequate staff and disgruntled staff and no staff at all.  People steal from you, people deface or destroy your property, people break into fights and ruin everyone's night.  For months on end, you're tired.  You are the dead walking.  For months, everything that you've been doing is done on fumes, mild drugs and auto-pilot.  Then it all stops and you rest . . . forgetting to give the attention your property needs, something that will bite you in the ass next Spring.

Why would anyone do this?  Pride of ownership.  Pride of service.  A sense that the world is working according to your timepiece, if the reader can make sense of that.

My own notion about this arrangement would be to run D&D for guests seven nights a week. Sessions would begin at seven and end after ten - during which time the kitchen would be largely closed, since I wouldn't be working there.  I imagine a selection of soups and a cold table would be made available, rich with pasta and potato salad, cold cuts and breads for sandwiches, that sort of thing.  But hot service would end at seven (my kitchen helper would manage for the last half hour while I prepared for play, before putting out the cold table, cleaning the kitchen and getting off shift around nine.

Obviously, the D&D games would have to be tailored into one night sessions - though I can think of ways to make it fun for someone to step into an ongoing campaign and enjoy some interaction before we stopped.  The hard-core people would arrange to be there a week, where they could wander the surrounding villages during the day, antiquing, fishing, enjoying a nearby beach, before heading back for a dinner meal and game play.

In the off-season, I would work on my world, write and adventure outwards myself, perhaps south into America or over to Europe.  If our income proved sufficient, I could give myself a half-day off now and then during the season - though I'd probably want that for sleep.

Realistically, I haven't stood in a kitchen for years - but I worked with plenty of fellows who were the age I am now.  Like anything, it's all in training yourself.  Tamara and I have often talked about the menu we would put together.  I suppose in that part of the world it would be much seafood, mixed with significant Italian and Greek entrees.  I make a very satisfying tandoori, every kind of stir fry imaginable and with a little practice I could certainly improve my butter chicken.  I spent a decade cooking breakfasts, so without question the morning menu would be thoroughly refreshing.  I've always thought a short, steady menu of solid food complimented by at least sixty to a hundred potential specials offers the best fare.

But this is a fantasy.  Because in the end, I'm never going to sacrifice that much of my time for something that isn't writing.  Still, nice to think about once in awhile.

A Word From Your Parents

Hah. This guy:

"Over the last few months I've been noticing an incredibly stupid trend developing where people are actively arguing that having fun isn't all that important in playing a game."

Damn. I sure hope I'm responsible for this.

Maybe I've been wrong about this whole thing.  Maybe the reason why so many people write about RPGs being 'fun' is because none of them are having any.  Perhaps their campaigns are so bereft of fun that a few words written by random people on a variety of web sites threatens to crush the last vestige of non-misery lingering around their gaming tables.

Frankly, as the loudest voice preaching that the game isn't about fun, my games seem to be full of happy, excited, laughing people, taking a ride on the tension and having a hell of a good time.  That's because, as I wrote, fun is easy.

If you don't believe me, perform an experiment.  Gather as many people as you can, bring plenty of food and drink, then take them all out to the park for a picnic.  Period.  That's it.  Make no plans.  Prepare no events.  Do not give away prizes.

Magically, fun will happen.

If it doesn't, you clearly have not brought enough drink.

Every year, regardless of the temperature, there's a little suburb outside Calgary that puts up christmas lights, sells hot chocolate and prepares their little pond into a giant skating rink.  That is the entirety of the preparations.  Lights.  Hot chocolate.  Free skating.  Every year, thousands show up. Even when it is 40 below.  I have been there when it is that blistering cold, complete with a 20 mph windchill.  Makes no difference.  Everyone enjoys themselves - except, of course, for the few teenagers who will, in 30 years, drag along teenagers of their own.  The only thing fun requires is willingness and freedom.

People who write posts about how the game should be fun can't possibly be having any.  Otherwise, why the hell would they care?  How the hell does it make a difference at their table?  What is it, exactly, that bothers them?  The danger that they'll have a player that shows up at their game, saying, "Is that all you did to prepare?  This game is shit.  I'm leaving."

That's the only reason I can suppose.  Makes no sense, otherwise.

Now, I know why I preach, "Don't make fun your message."  The reason is simple.  The worst fucking picnics in the world are when some group of assholes come along and say, "Hey, you people all here drinking, eating and talking?  We want you to have fun!  Everyone wants to have fun!  Let's play some games!  Let's give away some prizes!  Let's treat you free, willing people like fucking ten-year-olds!"

Fuck those people.  Fuck them.  We were all having fun until they showed up with their fucking control issues.

I preach, "Make tension your message.  Make purpose your message.  Make the game your message."  In other words, build the fucking park.  Build the benches to sit on and the gawddamn bridges and lay the fucking grass and fire those dumb motherfucking part-time workers who don't do their jobs.  Because building a park is hard fucking work, it's labour, it's time spent sweating and getting dirty and being miserable until the job is done.  And when the job is done, get the hell out.  Go home.  Put on some comfortable clothes, get your kids, then come back and enjoy the park.

Those people pissing and moaning and crying that the game should be about fun?  They want you to have fun their way.  Or they want you to go out into the street and find some place to play on your own, because fuck you, they're not building a fucking park for you to play in.  "Go have fun you little pissants, don't expect me to do fuck all for you.  I'm a fun person.  I'm about people having fun.  On their own.  Without bothering me.  You little fuckers."

Remember?  Like your parents used to fucking tell you.

Jeez.  I have GOT to stop listening to Lewis Black.

Transacting

Part of selling my book involves - unfortunately - taking a step into the bulletin board environment.  So I've been getting my toes wet lately.  I've put that off for far too long, but only because in days gone by I learned what it's like to write anything on a bulletin board.

For example, lately I wrote,

"Is there anything wrong with a DM making a vocation of their work - of treating the game as something that's done not out of light-hearted entertainment, but from a powerful desire to invest all one's nature and effort into producing a better world and a better experience for the player.

Does this make a better DM?"

This is the first thread I've started on any board in nearly two years.  Naturally, the first answer I got completely rewrote the question and then condemned it.

"A good DM is one that is always focused on maximizing the fun for his players. No DM can force his players to be super serious, when they are looking for light-hearted fun. That is the sign of a bad DM."  - Imaculata

Naturally, any sane person knows not to challenge an answer like this.  Any sane person recognizes that "producing a better world" means the same thing as "maximizing the fun for his players."  But pointing this out is a good way to get a flame war started.

The English language is a mutable thing on bulletin boards.  Every word means precisely what the writer wants it to mean, regardless of any meaning that might exist outside the writer's perception, and that meaning is free to change from sentence to sentence, as the writer likes.  As such, most of the dialogue on any bulletin board is mostly about what words mean, defining them, redefining them, debating the definition and so on until all reason and purpose is completely submerged.  There's a good reason that bulletin board posts are called 'threads.'  They unravel the moment they're written.

We should give consideration to how much influence such boards have had over the perception of many a new, young player.  It takes only a minute or two to find a post by such a player, asking a perfectly innocent question about classes or alignment or some other such subject - only to be immediately indoctrinated - and let's face it, that is the word here - into the endless shredding of the subject by whichever two diametrically opposed pundits happen to get ahold of the subject.  I envision thousands of young, ten year old boys and girls staring agape at the screen as they watch some minor question spiral into the realm of the ridiculous, fighting over whether or not a railroad has to have 'tracks' or if it can be built in the air - and whether or not that makes for a good game.

Me, well, I just want to get the words, Author of How to Run: An Advanced Guide to Managing Role-playing Games in front of as many eyeballs as possible.  If they were stacking eyeballs ten bucks to the dozen at the local supermarket, I'd be standing next to it with a poster-board.

As such, I'm willing to write a bit here and there - but unlike this blog, I have very little hope of changing the mind of anyone who has taken time to write there.  No question that there are viewers, still, in possession of their mental faculties, but . . . well, there's been something of a weeding-out process these last fifteen years.  If you're still writing arguments on bulletin boards after all this time, it's official.  You're incapable of listening.

Writing is all about listening.  That's what they say about actors, too, because if you're not listening to what the others actors are saying, you sound false and discordant.  People in written plays are expected to react to one another as if they've never heard the words before, even though the scene has been rehearsed a hundred times or more.  Reacting is a difficult thing to achieve, but when it is done right, it is brilliant.  The audience believes that the people actually are arguing with each other; they're convinced that if they were to go back stage after the performance, the argument would still be going on, about the same things.  It is what great acting is all about.

[It's also what drives me batshit crazy about Johnny Depp; he never listens to anyone.  He lives in his own little fabricated Johnny Depp space, speaking lines to himself, making it look for all the world like he's waited for everyone else in the film to shut the fuck up so he can metaphorically step two paces forward and deliver the 'Johnny Depp Special Dialogue' written expressly for him]

Arguing on a bulletin board is nothing like writing to anyone listening.  Words are secondary to the process.  The process is to produce a flame war so that the pundit with the whole day at their disposal can feel the adrenaline rush their ancestors' biological processes developed in order to hunt and run from water buffalo - only that rush is being applied to screaming stupidly, "This word means what I think it means" over and over . . . and over.

But if you are wondering what I'm doing there, I'm selling.  I don't mind saying so.  Sometimes, in order to sell to the listeners, we have to ignore the rude, silly people who are wandering around our store because they have nothing better to do.

The Blue Pill

Discussions about railroading seem to go on and on.  Not content with defining a railroad as an adventure without choices, we worry that we might be manipulating the players too much, engineering our own agendas under the guise of playing a sandbox campaign.  After all, just because the players can't see the wires pulling their actions does not mean the wires aren't there.

Ah, paranoia.  I'd say you're safe if you're worried about your power to influence your players in a certain direction, but I know that's not going to be enough for those who want clearly defined boundaries for how or when they're allowed to finesse the players in their campaign.

With this in mind, allow me to make use of a moment of decision in a movie with which most of us are familiar - the moment when Morpheus offers Neo the red and blue pills.  Even if you have never seen the film (I suppose that is possible) you must be genre savvy enough to know what the choice meant and how it played out.

The question is this:  could Neo have taken the blue pill?

The easy answer is yes.  True, the rest of the film relied upon his taking the red pill, but since role-playing isn't a movie and doesn't need a shooting schedule, what might have happened to Neo doesn't actually matter.  If Neo had been a player, it appears from the film that Morpheus was completely sincere in the blue pill being an option.

Still, the answer yes is meaningless until we decide what effects the blue pill would have caused.  It probably wasn't this.  From Morpheus dialogue, all we truly know is this: "The story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe."  A good discussion about that consequence can be read on this page. Quote:

"Does this mean that the blue pill acts as a selective amnesiac? A program to make Neo feel as though he dreamed the meeting, similar to his experience of having a bug implanted by the Agents? Would it include something that makes him no longer of interest to the Agents? Since, technically, all that Neo has to do, if he refuses Morpheus' offer, is get up and leave the room, why have a blue pill at all?"

Within a campaign, the red pill is the most obvious or the most desirable choice.  It may be the choice that the DM clearly wants or the choice that seems to bring the most treasure or promise of other reward.  The blue pill, conversely, becomes the lesser choice - the choice that appears to offer nothing of interest.  The choice that only a party unwilling to adventure would take.

As a DM, deciding what it is the blue pill does is all important.  The less valuable or meaningful the blue pill appears when presented, the greater the feeling the players will have of being railroaded. Having given them a truly distasteful looking blue pill, you have done the same as saying, "What would you like for dinner?  Steak and crab with cubed red peppers? Or this lovely soybean paste mixed with overcooked beets?"

(there will always be those who choose the soybean paste - frikkin' vegans)

Sitting at your table four days before designing a red pill is challenging.  So challenging, in fact, that very few DMs give a moment's thought to the blue pill.  "No, of course you're not being railroaded.  Yes, I have made this temple and dungeon, followed by a set of paths into the Tomb of Raschkammen the Dwarf's Head Collector, but if you're not interested in that, well . . . I guess you could hang around town awhile and see if there's some kind of trouble that emerges.  A few tradesmen did rough up the tavern last night.  Maybe you could go find them?"

The larger reality will quickly reveal that it isn't enough just to have a blue pill at the outset of the adventure.  Every moment within the adventure must include a blue pill also!  That means meaningful choice following meaningful choice, without let up, if you expect the players to feel that they're really in control of their destinies.

None of this says that the blue pill's appeal must be exactly equal with the red pill's appeal.  It only means that the blue pill must at least suggest an alternative, productive course that could, later on,
provide adventures equal to the one we're on now.  The blue pill should incorporate elements that the party could reasonably prefer to the elements offered by the red pill.  Not everyone likes steak and crab.  Perhaps lobster or pollo parmesan or even a spicy vegetarian chimichanga.  In short, a reasonable alternative, taking advantage of the fact that even a hard-core adventuring party may not want steak every day.

Two final points, for the record.  The first is that producing a blue pill equal to the red pill is a triumph.  Any time the party is driven to conniption fits over being unable to decide between two perfect choices is a field day for me.  Good times.

Secondly, I personally feel that a red pill and a blue pill are too limiting.  There ought to also be an orange pill, a yellow pill, a purple pill, a green pill, a turquoise pill with pink spots, an oscillating brown-and-chanteuse pill, a mauve pill that spontaneously becomes black and vice-versa - and naturally a white pill that turns deathly grey whenever orcs approach.

In short, variety.  Variety, variety, variety.  Your fears of railroading your players stem from your failure to provide them with a suitable variety.  Life is a smorgasbord, not a lunch special.

The Honey Trap

Rarely does wikipedia fail me.  This is one of those times.

As such, I'm going to have to explain this one before I can move forward on it.  For those who don't know, "a honey trap" is a con game in which an attractive woman is used to lure a fellow into a private location where he can be threatened, robbed or killed, depending upon the variant played. Sometimes, a single man - usually very large but sometimes just extraordinarily dangerous - appears at the right moment (preferably when the dupe has removed most of his clothes) and claims to be the woman's husband.  In addition to robbing the dupe, the 'husband' and the woman may work together to blackmail the victim after initially robbing him.  Alternately, the woman may be part of a gang that turns up in order to viciously beat or kill the dupe.

Either way, the woman's part in this is clear - she needs to appear both desirable and willing.  After doing her part, her male counterparts will mop up the mess and she gets her cut of the take.  Women do it because it is comparably easy work if they have the attributes to pull it off.

It is interesting to note that, although the woman will usually not take part in physically hurting the male, she is often the only one blamed.  The victim - for reasons that will seem obvious to many males - has a sort of grudging respect for the men, who are at least 'honest' in their criminality.  The woman, however, is the worst sort of harlot imaginable.  That is because the woman has been able to hurt the man straight to the heart of his ego - he really did think she wanted him because he was just so desirable.

The reason wikipedia does not include this definition is likely due to an intense hatred that feminists have acquired for the honey trapping stereotype.  Because the honey trap has appeared so often in fiction, a belief has grown that there is a conspiracy among male writers to depict women as evil, conniving, selfish, horrible sub-humans.  It is almost impossible at present to write any story about a strong, capable woman that takes shit from no one without that character somehow being subverted into proof of the author's hatred for women.  She's no darker than any of the characters played by male anti-heroes . . . except that because she's a woman, the character has 'obviously' be created to emphasize how much she threatens men.

Some of you may have felt a little of this heat with regards to the succubus, the female demon based upon Christian mythology.  The succubus is proof positive that men hate women - otherwise, why would we create a monster that looked like a beautiful woman, whose sole purpose is to entrance men and then kill them?  In short, the honey pot all in one character - proof positive that men hate women.

As such, there has always been pressure to remove succubus from the lexicon, as well as any similar female-based monsters.  In part, because female-based monsters are often sexually designed or based. Since corporation-marketed gaming must include children as potential buyers, we must downplay sex . . . and what the hell, most players of any age aren't that comfortable with sex.  I've written about that before.  Also here.

There is something particularly harrowing about the honey trap - and the accompanying succubus - that cuts deep into a man's perception of himself.  The anger he feels for the woman afterwards (assuming he lives) and his consummate association with the woman as demon (as a succubus) is a displacement of that self-understanding.  He knows, inherently, that there was always the possibility of his showing fortitude and resolve by saying to the woman, 'no.'  She does not physically force him into the alley way or into the darkness - it is his weakness in character that drags him there, for a number of reasons.  First, because the possibility of sex seems easy and available - but deeper than that, because he has that knowledge about himself that sex usually isn't easy and available.  In short, he knows he must grab it when it arrives or else he will get nothing.  He understands, even as his feet drift in the woman's direction of their own accord, that he has already lost this game between men and women.  If he could have sex whenever he wished, and knew it, the trap wouldn't work.

The succubus is the intensified manifestation of this internal struggle - for the demon represents the projection of man's wish to possess that which is perfect.  The demon, of course, cannot be obtained . . . yet there remains the terror is in the knowledge that the demon is also beyond denial.  The demon is the male's fantasy and at the same time proof of the male's vulnerability.

The intense hatred of the woman following the honey trap is in the male's complete and devastating comprehension that her sexuality bested him.  As he thinks of her, he understands his inferiority, and in that inferiority is the intense hatred he feels for her.  He knows that if he'd had any strength at all, he'd have walked away at the beginning.

That is a profoundly difficult concept to understand if you don't happen to be a man; and a profoundly difficult realization to incorporate if you happen to be one.  It's easy to see how women relate to the surface perception.  Bad woman = depiction of all women as evil and therefore disposable.  That is then exacerbated by the male point of view . . . Bad woman = fucking goddamned evil bitch, ought to kill them all.

Truth be told, perhaps it is better to remove the succubus from the game.  It's presence in our culture has long represented a difficult evaluation of ourselves as persons of two different sexes, with remarkably two different viewpoints, continously subverted by propaganda that continues to insist that there is no difference.  Presenting the succubus into the game properly - in the sense that it subverts pompous narcissism - requires a measure of maturity that is short in supply.

JB's Review of How to Run: An Advanced Guide to Role-playing Games

Keeping with the policy of posting reviews for my book, whenever I find them, I'd like to link a three-part review produced by JB of B/X Blackrazor:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Thank you, JB, for the time taken.

Tricksterism

Rules are made by the powerful.  In most games, if the DM has all the power, then the DM decides what all the rules are and those are the breaks.  From my own past, I know this is the way most games work.  Hell, I've said as much about my world since initiating this blog - so it would be hypocrisy to claim that I don't, in the final analysis, make the rules.

Of course, I've argued many times in the past that the rules I make are intended to produce the best experience for the most players, but that's not relevant to this post.  Where it comes to authority, the DM has to step up and take responsibility for the game.  I've played in games where the DM did not and I suspect many readers have also had that experience.  A weak, spineless DM that makes too many concessions to players that wheedle or fabricate their way through situations is a bad scene.  I took part in a game last year with a DM like this and I did not return to play another night.

Conversely, there are many games where the DM grabs too much authority.  Hell, the authority is there for the taking.  It doesn't take long for a good DM to realize the players are so enjoying the game that they'll submit to greater control.  This can get out of hand, but most of the time DMs inherently understand that there's just so far they can go before the players start quitting.  The balance between 'fair' and 'insulting' usually translates as a DM that plays with an 'iron fist,' something that isn't expressly enjoyed by the players but at the same time tolerated.

Because role-playing experience begins for most participants during late adolescence, the patterns for what will be tolerated are firmly in place before the players reach adulthood.  Since control is harder for a teenage DM, who has little other experience with authority except in submission towards it, that young pattern that is set tends to be on the side of tyrannical.  This is, after all, the sort of relationship teens have with their parents and teachers - that is naturally reflected in the DM wielding dominion over their players.

By the times a player or a DM has ten years of experience, the theory of the iron hand is fixed.  Generally, it's supposed you have to have one.  That in turn produces a response that is also presumed to be fundamentally part of role-play.

Tricksterism has long been a tool used by the weak or the vulnerable to oppose authority through means of connivance, charlatanism or even feigned ignorance, any or all of which serves to disrupt authority or privilege when encountered.  Within literature, the servant character (Iago in Shakespeare's Othello or Strobilus from Plautus' Aulularia) is depicted as both servile to the master and at the same time far more clever, turning the situation either for evil or for good in the servant's favour.  In Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, the black slaves feign stupidity and ignorance in order to disrupt the pursuit of Eliza after she's escaped, knowing they will suffer little punishment as the white slaver's belief system expects black slaves to be ignorant.

Tricksterism works.  It is difficult for authority to manage a situation if the participants refuse to participate in anything but the most passing manner - actors that willfully forget their lines in order to confuse or humiliate their peers, cooks who reduce the quality of food in order to encourage hated servers to quit, workers who put off something that should have been done today for contrived reasons, players who deliberately tell jokes in order to suspend play another few seconds . . . these are all methods of undermining authority.

The key to tricksterism's success is that it is easily denied.  "No, I didn't mean to forget."  "I'm just tired."  "I'm sorry, I just had the joke in my head and I couldn't resist telling it."  Etcetera.  Moreover, much tricksterism originates on a subconscious level. We naturally resist situations or instances that bring us discomfort, so that the uniform we forgot to bring to our hated job wasn't forgotten 'deliberately.'  This psychological reality has compelled many a boss to point out that the uniform wasn't remembered deliberately either, so that we are judged not for what we have done, but for what we did not plan to do.

The greater the authority at the gaming table, the more likely there will be a certain degree of tricksterism present.  Some of this, yes, will lack malevolence - but a great deal of it will be habitual, in that it was a standard behaviour developed by the player in their youth when dealing with overly authoritarian teenage DMs.  We must remember that tricksterism RULES the average high school class, to the point where teachers sit through endless classroom management training sessions in order to master it.  We all learn to avoid, undermine and derail authority long before we reach 13.  Tricksterism is the primarily curriculum of the modern education system.

Thus we get the myth that part of the game's structure is to 'play the DM' - words I have preached myself in the past.  Bigger than that, however, are players who feel the goal is to 'break the DM' - by a number of means that I identify with 'acting out'  - as a 10-year-old deciding to wake up the class with a fake epileptic seizure in the aisle on their first day in a new school.

The greater your perceived authority as a DM, the more likely you will find your game disrupted by a trickster.  'Perceived' because it does not matter if you are an iron fisted DM, so long as the player thinks you are one.  This is why some players will really try to push the envelope in their first few sessions with you - particularly if you're seen as serious or preoccupied with the game rather than with socializing.  The more serious you are, the bigger the target you present.

You should, therefore, be aware of some things.  If you're encountering a great deal of tricksterism from your players, it may be that your game has become too authoritarian.  If you are a player noting this behaviour in someone else, it may be that they're not willing to put up with the sort of tyranny that you're willing to accept from your DM.  It may happen that the player has already learned the habit of tricksterism from some other DM or campaign where this was part and parcel with the way that game was run.  Some DMs see tricksterism as a two-way street, so that all the participants approach the campaign with a continuous attitude of one-upmanship, derailment or obfuscation.

There are some who will willfully condone tricksterism, will even say that this is how the game ought to be player.  Remember that this is an attitude these people learned while they were quite young - that they haven't yet lost as they've matured.

As a DM, you need to recognize tricksterism for what it is - and reduce your authority while encouraging the player to feel safe in communicating their feelings in words rather than in actions.  As a player, you need to recognize these behaviours in yourself - and relate them honestly to how your DM is treating you or how you perceive that you are being treated.

Most of all, everyone needs to realize that tricksterism is a reaction to a problem - not the problem itself.  Participants get used to applying to tricksterism as a technique to manage feelings of oppression.  The oppression is the problem - even when the feeling is brought from someone else's campaign to this one.  Very often, even when freed from oppression, oppressed people will continue to behave as though the oppression is ongoing.  Those feelings need to be rooted out, discussed openly and resolved, if a good campaign is to be enjoyed by all.