Characteristics for Player Characters

The purpose of D&D is to enable persons to transfer themselves through time and space, so they can personally experience the fantasy of living in an alternate universe.  By directly experiencing the game through their characters — who need no personality except that of the players — participants can viscerally experience the dangers, excitement and fright inherent in D&D's setting ... without the inconvenience of being injured or killed.

Some will shy from this direct, no-emotional-holds-barred, hands-on exposure to a world challenging their intellect and resolve.  They will seek to protect their fragile egos by fabricating poorly-imagined caricature figures — inserting false personas between themselves and the upfront game.  These mawkish automatons with have a smattering of traits and hastily constructed habits, but nothing like the raw individuality of a Real Person.  But what the robots will have is the ability to protect the players from taking responsibility for their actions, since each player-cartoon characters can easily be blamed for failing in a hundred ways, no matter what happens.  For some, the need to hold game-play at arm's length is a tacit reminder — that when it comes to pursuing guts and glory, some are heroes, while others are mere armchair supervisors who can't invest.

Naturally, it's not the DM's function to tell players how to play.  Yet it will be noticed, particularly in long campaigns, where years pass and the players show increasingly greater skill, which players can truly play.  Some will never tire of adventure ... and some will punk out, unable to stay the course. 

The more passionate we are about living, the greater commitment we make to real things.  This will always be seen by those paying attention.

The Effect of Wishes on Character Ability Scores

[Before writing my own version, I just want to say that this really is a heading on page 11 of the DMG.  Why Gygax and the editor Mike Carr felt this needed to be here, under the greater heading of "Creating the Player Character," I couldn't say.  A new character in my world would probably play a year or more before they had any chance at making a "wish," if ever they had any chance at all.  I play wishes straight, and as such I don't dare make them a common thing.]

Wishes in the game ought to be extremely rare, and we should hope that players would find something better to wish for than to increase their ability scores.  However, players are entitled to spend their windfalls as they please, without our intervening for personal reasons.  I feel strongly that DMs should not restrict players from making wishes to be stronger, more intelligent, more charismatic or what have you, even unto saying that the wish to be as "wise as a being can possibly be."  My only stipulation would be that the player character could not state their wish as the desire to have an "18" of something, since the characters themselves cannot perceive their own strength in metagame terms.

We need to remember, always, that a wish is a means of weaponizing language.  Some DMs may fear that a character may wish to be "the most intelligent being in the world," and thus rush to create boundaries and limitations that abilities can only be increased to 18, or even 16 or 17, even arguing that it should take multiple wishes for a character to achieve a greater strength.  But such concerns indicate a very limited imagination where it comes to the verbalization the player might choose.  Suppose the player doesn't ask to be the most intelligent being, but rather wishes that every one else be dumber than the player's intelligence at present!  Suppose the player says, "I wish for everyone in the party to be as strong as a giant."  For that matter, why not wish for everyone in this town, or everyone in the world?  The player might say, "I wish everyone in the party to have their beloved personal characteristic heightened a dozen times over."  The words that might come of a player's mouth could be anything.

Naturally, this is a reason why DMs will reach for The Monkey's Paw method of retribution, to punish the hubris of a player who would dare show innovation or imagination in creating a wish.  This is the reason why DMs create arbitrary limits to the abuse players who are creative, resourceful, enterprising or who show a flair for getting the most from a game metric.  Wishes bring out the prohibitional spirit in DMs, causing us to wonder why they let wishes appear in the game at all, being that wishes break games when put in the hands of a capable genius.

Therefore, let the player boost their ability stat to the top of their ceiling.  It is hardly a game-breaking ask, and much less damaging than the player striving to get the best of the DM, while the DM cracks down on the player's ingenuity.

Creating the Non-player Character

When considering the ability stats of non-player characters, we would do well to remember that NPCs are not participants in the campaign.  They are a part of the setting, there to act as aids and obstacles, a means of delivering exposition or to impose an authority the players dare not confront as yet.  NPCs may be stock figures in the campaign when they're not needed to fuel the adventure's momentum; or they can be central figures that the players will know and interact with for a long time.  Therefore, the NPC's abilities should be based on what they're bringing to the campaign, and not necessarily upon a die roll.

If the NPC is of not importance, then we need not roll the die at all ... but if the NPC is an heroic fighter, then assigning a high strength that fits the campaign's needs.  Do not roll.  There is no "game" in the creation of an NPC.  Some are window dressing, some are key tools in structuring the campaign's feel, or atmosphere.  Obviously, a DM needs to give careful thought to how strong or intelligent or high level an NPC is; but this thinking process is not improved by handing the problem over to a non-thinking die roll.

Now and then, particularly with associates of the players, where we want to be fair in giving them support troops in the campaign, it is well that we roll 3d6 for their stats, or even a bit better.  Such NPCs, embroiled in the fight side-by-side with the players, can be said to "play the game" in an ersatz manner.  However, apart from such conditions, there are really few times when the DM should be concerned with rolling.  This doesn't mean every powerful and competent NPC has an 18 wisdom or dexterity!  But it does mean a DM shouldn't be wasting their time rolling up long strings of secondary game persons who can be assigned abilities on the spot, saving preparation time by recognizing that exactness is not always a virtue.

Generation of Ability Scores

There are six ability scores for each character which limit physical, mental and social limitations of the character: strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity & charisma.

These abilities are determined through rolling six-sided dice.  The simplest way of doing this is to throw 3 six-sided dice, abbreviated "3d6."  Since each die has a minimum number of 1, and a maximum number of 6, the result allows us to produce a number between 3 and 18.  Overall, there are 216 possible combinations of dice; only 1 combination out of 216, three rolled ones, is able to produce a total of 3.  Therefore, 3s are quite rare.  Only one combination exists that will produce an 18, also (three sixes), so 18s are also rare.

Here are the number of combinations that will produce each possible result:

As we can see, chances are we're going to roll a result between 8 and 13, with 48% of rolling a result between 9 and 12.  Rolling 3d6 six times, we have no better than a 56% chance of getting any roll above 14.  These results are unfortunate, as most of the real benefits to ability scores only apply when those scores are 15 or better.

To get better results, one favoured method is to roll 3d6 twelve times, keeping the six highest rolls.  This gives us a better average of getting 15 or better ability, but unfortunately this only increases the chance of one ability above 14 to 69%.  This still isn't very good.

A third method is to roll 3d6 six times for strength, then for intelligence, then for wisdom and so on, and then keeping the highest roll of each grouping.  This would mean that each ability would have a 44% chance of being above 14; the odds are slightly less than even that the character would end up with a 69% chance of at least one ability stats of 15 or better.  That's fair.  The chances of rolling a "natural" 18 on 3d6, rolled 36 times, is 15%.

Of course, this method takes a lot of time, and some have argued that this is something of an overkill where it comes to dishing out ability stats.  That is why a quite different method is popular, one in which 4d6 are rolled only six times (reducing the amount of rolling), and the lowest die of the four rolled is discarded (not actually thrown away, just not counted).

This skews the random odds somewhat.  First of all, there are now 1296 possible combinations of die rolls, with the odds of rolling four ones only 1 in 1296.  Here below is a list of possible combinations for each result, with one table showing how they compare to rolling 3d6, and one showing the combinations out of 1296 (shown in comparison with the 3d6 table):

It isn't surprising that this is by far the most popular method of rolling ability stats ... or rather, it was, until the world changed.

See, here in 1979, hardly anyone feels concern that the random generation of ability stats will create envy and discord between players.  We all know that every game with dice tends to favour some players over others, and that some characters will be generated with a bunch of high results, while other characters will be less lucky.  In general, since the game is a joint effort between the players, logic dictates that if any character has a lot of high scores, this will benefit the whole group.  After all, not every member of a sports team has the same level of proficiency ... yet everyone on the winning team is grateful for one or two players who have really spectacular skills.  It means, we all win.

Having looked into our crystal ball, we've seen that in the future, this randomness in ability generation scores has produced a great deal of pettiness and one-upmanship, not to mention swaggering and lording one's ability scores over the other players.  We've seen that our future company has been forced to get rid of the randomness altogether, in favour of "balancing" the fragile emotional states of the participants, who aren't able to recognize that not everyone is equal.  We're somewhat distressed here in 1979, and don't know what to think.  Clearly, it's very important that people enjoy the game, and that no one feels left out, or made to feel small and unimportant because they don't have high ability scores.  On the other hand, we also feel that having high ability scores is in no way proof of a character's survivability.  Any character who does not pay attention to what's going on, or runs into bad luck in a hundred other ways throughout game play, or ultimately does something stupid, will absolutely die no matter what their ability scores are.  We can't figure out here, why the people in 2021 don't seem to know this.

Similarly, a good player, one who can figure things out or who knows best how to work with what they have, ought to be able to circumvent a set of low ability scores, so that far from being a short-lived character, they should survive through caution.  The game ought to be run so as to let players live based on how well they play, rather than the numbers they play with.

Oh well.  It is a simpler time where we are.

Aids to Playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

This is a sharp deviation from the original material (p.11), as I'm not using this section to sell something.

Comprehending history, studying maps and floor plans and obtaining some artistic ability or skill will be most helpful in establishing and maintaining an interesting and exciting campaign.  There are so many good books and stories that have been written, adapting both fantasy and non-fantasy themes, that is it not possible to give a complete list here — but in truth, it does not matter what is read, it matters that the language and characters depicted have depth, nuance and details necessary to render an excellent climax and resolution.  There is so much free content in the world, that will not cost a dime, but some guidance can be given here.

First and foremost, begin with simple and straightforward world histories that have been written for a juvenile audience.  These works are disinterested in providing detailed information, but are there to give you what you need at the outset: a clear, plain overview of human history, so that you can understand what got us from the distant past to here.  This is only the beginning, obviously — but it will enable you to separate the times and events of human history so that when reading stronger material, you're not left confused about where the Romans, the Arabs, the Mongols, the Catholic Church, the rise of monarchies or the happenstance of wars fit into the milieu.  This doesn't mean you need base your game world specifically upon the Earth, but understand why the Romans fell will help provide the background for a stagnating or deteriorating culture.  History will explain how a new idea can sweep the world and radically change everything, or how a new technology can allow a backward people to slaughter and conquer more sophisticated cultures.  Through studying history, we can learn how vast organizations are built, and how political systems create their own problems, or why wars happen and how they are won or lost.  All these things can help a DM see how grand events moving beyond the party's reach can create eddies of excitement and interest, forming episodes that can sweep the players into action and adventure.

With a modicrum of history under our belts, we can plunge into numerous books describing what everyday life was like during the middle ages, the Roman period, in ancient China, or any place in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.  Many of these details will seem trivial or mundane, but reading about ordinary places and ordinary lives will help in describing the scenery behind the adventure.  If we can imagine the busy streets in our minds, the washer women hanging sheets out of windows, the teamsters fighting with one another as they try to get around, the hawkers with their wares, the beggars, the wealthy and their retinues, the smells and the sounds, as well as water splashing from the rooftops and running like rivers down the streets when it rains, or avoiding the baking sun under awnings in the height of summer, we can help the players feel like they are really there.  How the people interact, what's important to them, who respects whom, who fears whom, how food is grown, what sacrifices have to be made in the winter or how grateful people are for the spring, we can feel more viscerally what it must be like to be an independent adventurer walking about in such a place.  The less we make these people like a modern shop owner, and more like a medieval shop owner, the greater the feeling of being out of place, out of time and out of water.

Finding simple books on sociology or anthropology can help as well, particularly when deciding how intelligent peoples would act and function outside the normal social system.  It will help us understant what a hundred orcs spend their time doing in the wilderness, when there is no one to raid and no player characters to kill.  By understanding the societies of human beings, we can extrapolate how the societies of other groups might function, what they might treasure, how they might practice religion or reward important persons inside their ranks.  Through understanding interpersonal heirarchies, group behaviour, habits and traditions, we can make things in the hinterland come alive for the players, so they are not merely fighting stick figures, but beings with motivations, desires, fears, troubles and ambitions.  Coupled with what we know of history, we can find empathy for their conflicts, their lack of resources or their willingness to cooperate and show kindness.  Implementing these ideas into our game world produces shading and refinement, so that not every encounter and parley says the same things and ends in the same fights.

Biology, too, digs into the weirdness of life, of things that exist as parasites or huge non-thinking colonies, so that we can understand monsters without intelligence.  Understanding how creatures like mollusks, insects and other animals obey the rhythms and vicissitudes of survival, eating, migrating and giving birth can give fresh life to how any monster is motivated.  Tapping into this resource of knowledge is another means of expanding our understanding behind what's actually happening when a party is attacked by a "wandering monster."

With this much under our belts, we can begin to investigate into more specific subjects, like siege, shipbuilding, administration, religious ritual, craftsmanship, armour & weapons, falconry, estate economics, alchemy, medicine ... anything, really, for once we have a grounding in liberal education, we can apply ourselves to any subject that appeals to our fancy.  And with every investigation into these things, we will breed new ideas, new possibilities for invented adventures, new designs and endless reasons for the people in our game world to BE.  It is very important to keep abreast of the tsunami of human knowledge, for in that knowledge are the tools to make anything we want made for the game, ourselves, freeing ourselves from the dependency of other people's prejudices about what makes a good campaign.

Further research beyond this will only be more empowering.  Developing artistic skill will allow the DM to create their own maps, images and atmosphere; a truly dedicated aspirant may set out to make their own miniatures, their own model sets, their own published books and personalized designs.  It is all a matter of beginning with simple overview materials, and simple easy-to-read literature, until more and more complex materials becomes a daily reading habit.  Imagination is a monster than needs to be fed everyday, or else it withers.  It cannot thrive on cold beans and water.  It needs the very best fare we can contrive to support it.

Use of Miniature Figures with the Game

Although D&D is a game of imagination, occasionally it is necessary for clarification reasons to clearly define the player characters' positions with relation to each other and the physical scope of the game world.  Therefore, a diagram of some kind or a reusable map grid, in either squares or hexes, can be used to demonstrate the distances between characters and other combatants: their location, facing and line-of-sight, depending on represented obstructions and other details.  For some, this may make certain parts of the game, particularly combat, a little too much like a war-game ... but without a visual aid, players will become hopelessly confused about who is on which side of whom or the distance between themselves or the enemy or even simple things such as who is nearest the trouble at hand.

By having the players establish concretely where they are when something happens, such as opening a door, walking along the edge of a pit, inside or outside a building and so on, we resolve game-challenging arguments about which player characters can see, reach for or take a desired action with respect to the game's physical space.  Once the player points to a precise location, identifying that as the place where their character stands, there can be no further argument that the player wanted to be further away or was misunderstood when all havoc breaks loose.

The use of a physical "map" made up of squares, approximately 5 feet in diameter, laid out on a table between the players, can be accompanied by the use of inch-high miniatures, to give flavour and personality to the positions of the players.  Of course, any object or cardboard chit can serve, if all we want to know is location, but miniatures have a certain personal flair for players.  They can be lavishly, lovingly painted and personalized, to help the player feel a sense of immersion in the game's setting.

However, beware that some players will become overly attached to a miniature of their creation, such that they will resist the game reality that sometimes characters die — whether or not a miniature exists that represents that character.  Players too much in love with a miniature can sometimes find the wrenching shock of a character dying is deepened ... such players need to be reminded at the appropriate moment that this gives them the opportunity to seek out a NEW miniature, which can be freshly designed for the new character (presuming there's time to paint the miniature before the new character also dies).

An option to physical maps and miniatures is to implement a visual computerized representation of player characters (plus NPCs and Monsters) as well.  D&D need not be limited to physical apparati — a clever designer can invent a personalized top-down figure (or even one that is three-dimensional) that can be moved about on an intuitive interface.  This can do more than depict the character - it can change the objects in the character's hands, the colour of clothes worn, the presence of wounds and injuries, etcetera, depending on how elaborate the artistic player chooses to become.  Combats can then be rendered on easy to see large monitors, which sit conveniently on one or two nearby walls, or be viewed on the personal devices of every player.  We don't live in 1979 any more, so we are free to update the idea of miniatures whenever we're inspired to do so.

Dice

Skipping over excessive detail about how dice work ...

In D&D, dice exist to resolve any circumstance that might turn out in any number of ways.  For example, reaching out in a split-second to catch a falling object might result in our catching it or missing it.  More importantly, even though we might have caught an object like it in the past, doesn't mean we'll catch this object in this circumstance.  To settle these "maybe" situations, we use dice.

The example I've just given describes a "pass/fail" result; the game is full of them.  However, dice can also be used as a selection device, such as determining randomly which kind of animal appears in our line-of-sight, what sort of weapon a combatant is using or how much of something we find.  In each case, a single dice gives a plain, linear result, with each number on the die having an equal chance of occurring as any other number.

If we use more than one die, we produce what is called a bell curve.  Most people are familiar with rolling 2d6, and recognize that the result of "12" will occur less often than the result of "7."  That's because many combinations of two dice thrown will result in a 7, whereas only one possible combination can result in a 12.  By rolling various combinations of dice, we can produce all sorts of bell curves, which we can assign to either pass/fail or selection results.  Understanding how bell curves work is a deep, profound and interested science, and one that's necessary if attempting to create your own dice charts.

Dice work best when applied to objective circumstances, such as the examples we've given, where no personal biases, emotions or beliefs are part of the determination.  Succeeding or failing at catching a cup is a physical determination, as is the physical animal that has stepped out of the trees, or the physical weapon in an enemy's hand or how many physical objects exist in a treasure chest.  So long as the subject being described is a question of physical success or tactile presence, the use of dice to determine happenstances during the game works quite well.

The failure of dice as a game tool begins when dice are applied to subjective results — such as how the enemy feels about the player characters, or what individuals, specifically non-player characters, value with regards to their choices, goals, interpretations or motivations.  On the surface, it would seem to make sense to determine if a met individual "likes" or "dislikes" the player characters, and roll a die to determine which is so.  However, this grossly simplifies the reality of either of those terms, which drastically reducing everything of nuance in the game to a black-or-white context.  This is bad, since nuance — with its concommitant opportunities for doubt, confusion, trustworthiness, lying and in general the uncertain impressions the players have of things that leads to hope, charity, tension and triumph — is reduced unspectacularly to a coin-flip.  This removes the "guts" of the campaign and ends up sorting important characterisations into toothpicks of varying colour, a quite dull result.

Worse, because subjective rolls are random, they aren't reflective of earlier roles.  In a real conversation, my listener's viewpoint of me is a growing complexity, where each thing heard builds in some complex way upon what was heard before.  If a die roll is used, however, the toothpicks can like, then dislike, then like, then dislike randomly whatever I might happen to say, without any structure.  Someone who was "trustworthy" can, completely randomly, suddenly cease to be trustworthy for no reason except the pips on the dice.  This is worse than making every NPC a sociopath; it makes the world utterly unpredictable, ensuring that the players never trust anyone for any reason — or anything else that's subjective, thus radically limiting the possibilities the game world can deliver.

The dungeon master cannot rely upon dice to determine the predilictions of imagined people, nor of reason, truth or any other thing that does not occur randomly!  Hammers will always fall, unless there is a reason they do not.  It cannot be a die roll!  Dice are a wonderful tool; but they are not a wonderful tool for everything.

The Game

[page 9]

In approaching the game of D&D, the subjects of "realism" and "simulation" are sure to arise again and again. Whereas some believe these two camps are clearly defined, this has never been the case — though certain individuals have advanced published works attempting to make capital out of settling the argument once and for all.  It is barely understood, in this author's opinion, by most persons that real people sit at the gaming table, in the real world, with experiences and familiarity with many things directly associated with that world.  Because of this standard (i.e., people know what's "real"), that any level of simulation will succeed to some extent, while necessarily failing once that extent is passed.

Take in case an old Spike Milligan sketch, in which a secret plan was hatched during the 2nd World War to make a life-size to scale model of Britain out of cardboard, mooring it off the coast of Scilly, so that the Germans would bomb the model and not the real country ... and to believe the scheme was working as the Germans flew over the false island — until it was learned the Germans dropped cardboard bombs.

The goal of D&D is not to simulate reality, but to make fantasy believable enough that we can forget it's not real.  This is not so hard as we might think; humans want to pretend.  They learned to do so as children, turning cardboard boxes into spaceships, logs into horses, sticks into swords and towels into capes.  Growing up, we still love to do this; we only need an excuse that enables us to not feel too silly.  The trappings of dice, paper and pencils lets us take D&D just as seriously as we took make-believe when we were young.

Without question, the game's goal is to have fun and be entertained.  This sounds cut-and-dried, and is often presented that way, as though all the world seeks the same sort of fun in the same sort of ways, for the same reasons.  For some people, "fun" means to take nothing seriously, to mock and joke, and to deride those who show a "long face."  For some, banging the books out of a fellow student's hands,  painting huge self-aggrandizing logos on public property, waiting to the last moment to dodge a train or pushing around a scared, frightened boy or girl between them represents "fun."  For these people, D&D will work as a game.  It offers lots of opportunities to be silly, to ridicule and sneer, to use the DM pulpit as a means to humiliate and shame others, or feel a sense of power.  Many, many people will have fun in just this way, and argue that the game's point is to act out without restraint.

Others find fun in more sober activities.  Two silent, serious, immobile persons staring hours at a wargame, painstakingly moving scores of hundreds of little pieces and chits are having fun, though who would know it to look at them?  Some rush from their jobs to their basement work benches to stare all evening through a magnifying glass, using tiny paintbrushes to highlight tiny details on tiny figures, which they will store like precious jewels on dozens of shelves.  Some want to argue in excess whether an electrical-based spell being cast by a magician waist deep in water ought to electrocute the source, and whether it matters that the target is also standing in waist deep water.  For some people, these things are outrageously "fun."  Fun comes in all sorts of forms.

The realm of invention needs to have room for all sorts, so that everyone recognizes that the sort of fun that goes on at one game table need not reflect what goes on elsewhere.  We also need to recognize, however, that some kinds of fun are sustainable in the long term, whereas some are not.  Triviality can be loads of fun in the short term, but runs out awfully fast, so that individuals who crave giddy, rash, hairbrained runnings will soon tire of this fare and seek their fun elsewhere ... while grim, stony-faced analysts will dig deeply into an activity they like for a lifetime.

Given this reality, when settling in to decide "Who is the game for?", we should ask ourselves, who will be here to appreciate the game today, versus who will be here to appreciate the game ten years from now?  Which of these groups promises a better field in which to plant our crops?

It is not for us to say how others should play the game described in this book.  But it is for us to say how we should go about providing more game for them to play.

Introduction

Tackling this again.

Gygax's introduction on page 9 of the original DMG is an interesting document.  It is different in character and intent from the introductions in later editions, as it does not try to cheerlead for the notion of fantasy:  "Isn't fantasy cool?  It's really cool!"  Sorry, JB, if they don't say "cool" any more.

I'm not going to deconstruct the piece, however, except as a guideline to write my own.  I won't go where Gygax goes, but I'd like to capture the flavour of his intent meshed with my own.

 

The format of this book is, unfortunately, anything but straight-forward.  An attempt has been made to create sections dealing with players, combat, the campaign and magic items, with useful appendices, but the reality is that there are so many subjects relating to D&D, of such widely varied scope and usefulness, that "organization" is somewhat less than ideal. In truth, this book is no better organized than an encyclopedia — but pragmatically, this is to the book's credit.  Without our deliberately making it so, elements of the game being mixed together suggest relationships and parallels that we have not imagined ourselves, so that a reader flipping randomly through the book is sure to find themselves engrossed in one diverse subject after another ... which is necessarily the experience of every DM during the game's running.

The tables and lists contained herein should be considered "incomplete," in that there will always be the possibility of adding more possible results, more items, more monsters, more strategies in combat, more forms of political structure, more types of gems and treasure, more dungeon room ideas and so on than we could hope to imagine.  Such things are easily added in side notes, using the templates we've created here.  It is the structure of the table that is more important then the actual results; for the parsimonius DM, elements can be removed and cut out of the game altogether, leaving what remains relatively unaffected.  The evaporation of a single monster or feature will have no effect at all upon the substance of the game, which is to empower the players to act, while calculating the results of those actions.

This is the entire substance of the combat rules, which are necessarily simplified in order to allow quick and easy game play.  We could have created detailed, complex rules intended to simulate real combat; the various contributors to the volume in your hands have all had extensive experience in wargames and systems of every kind.  Instead, however, we felt that what really mattered was player agency, and the thrill of jumping into a fray and attacking wildly, hoping things will come out for the best.  The exact details of how a sword is swung or what it hits didn't seem important.  We concerned ourselves with the bare minimum, offering a die roll for the sword being swung and another for the "damage" it did ... and did not take the time to detail the specifications of either.  Like any game, the substance is in how the game is played, not in what the game's actions metaphysical "mean."  We did our best to respect that.

So, if a part of the game does not meet your expectations, throw it away.  If it is sometimes useful, and sometimes not, then discriminate as you please.  And if you believe there is some part of the game that isn't there, and ought to be there, then do rush forward and invent that thing.  We cannot possibly account for everything in human experience, certainly not in the time we've had to pull this book together.  You, the DM of your campaign, will find in here a corresponding example of any game rule you may ever hope to invent, with suggestions on how to lay it out as a table, describe it as a detail or measure it with dice.  Once you understand how the game system works as written here, you should have the tools you need to extend that game system to the end of the universe, if you have the required dedication and, dare I say, nerve ... since everything you design, along with everything you cut out of the game, will have to be explained to your players.  Take note, they will always be your jurors, no matter what choices you make.  Therefore, always make choices that you can defend, if you wish to win them over.

Remember, it is never easy to be a dungeon master.  You are neither the enemy of the players nor their friend.  Your rewards from the game will never be their rewards; while their trials and terrors will never be something you will experience.  Yes, you will work the late hour to get your game ready, but you will never be the player laying away in the late hour, wondering what you have laying in store for them.  Every participant has a cross to bear, and yours is different from theirs.  Remember that you accepted this responsibility; that you enjoy the gifts that is gives in the moments of enormous power and respect that you momentarily achieve, before returning to your ordinary life.  You have no reason to complain.  Remember, too, that your responsibility is to be a fair, decent and supportive entity where your players are concerned: a parental figure, if you will, even if some of them are older than you.

Until the day comes when you really do know best, always keep this book nearby — and remember that the more you adhere to the content of this book, the more legitimacy it can provide you, when you drive back the crying hordes by lifting this book over their heads and proclaiming, "It's in the rules!"  This book is your best friend once the running starts; be true to this book and it will be defend you when you need it.

Preface

If you haven't read Gary Gygax's Preface for the original DMG, you can read it here.  I'm not going to comment on it, except to say that it's ... inflated.

Using the same general theme, I'll take my own swing at it:

The content in this book is for everyone, DMs and players alike.  The game's rules should always be transparent to all, with an understanding that any rules that work only when held in secret must be flawed in their design.  It should not matter that the players know what the tables contain or what special details are attributed to magic items, monsters or any other game element — players have a right to exploit the rules of D&D to their own ends, just as they can in any other game.  In any case, we should expect that ambitious players will simply buy their own copies of this book, so we might just as well give our permission.

The rules and substance of this book is a work in progress.  They say that a written novel is never finished, only abandoned.  What you have here is the design content we've been able to compose and bring together prior to this book's publication — given another year or two, rest assured this book would be much larger.  However, what's presented here can be looked at as a starting point for any diligent dungeon master ready to either use material as is or build upon it to add more grit or nuance to their campaign.

One caveat, however: be careful.  No game world needs to adhere to the standards of any other; D&D should be as personalized a creation for the DM as any work of art.  But the dungeon master should nevertheless be cautious in changing rules that would grant the players more power for their characters, while minimizing the character's risk.  It is in the DM's power to do anything, literally granting wishes like a genie, since there are no systemic limitations on the DM in the rules.  However, things that are gotten too easy are also unappreciated; and players who become used to getting something for nothing will only want more, once they know they must only wheedle the DM.

Therefore, the DM must always be a gatekeeper.  Play must be challenging, if we hope the players will be innovative and imaginative in their strategies and ambitions.  At the same time, play must be rewarding, or else the players will find something else to do.  This is a fine and difficult line, for too much of one or the other will cripple or end the DM's aspirations to present a good game.  Yet, without a great deal of experience, what might be said at this time, in this preface, to educate the reader sufficiently to prepare his or her self, would hardly be of much use.  Instead, we will simply say that a great deal of thought and effort has gone into the creation of this book, by people who have spent much time playing the game and trying new ideas.  It is better, then, to try the rules as written first; and then, once those rules are understood fully, to take the next step into experimentation, adjustment and bold new designs, expanding the possibilities of the game just as we have tried to expand them.

As a teacher, it is my goal to bring you to the same level of education and understanding that I have, so that we can work together in advancing the game's design.  Until you're ready, however, I ask only that you understand what you're changing, before you set out to change it.  It will be up to you to decide when you're "ready," of course.  You will learn from your own mistakes, in any case.  That is how learning works.

The content herein has been aimed at producing a "game-world," or setting that the players can run around in.  The complexity and depth of this game-world is limited only by your imagination, and readiness to work at its design.  A truly complicated design, with millions of details, may take years to realize.  In that time, don't be afraid to present your world as a work in progress, just as I've described this book.  As artists, we are never really finished anything!  Even if the boundaries of your game world are fuzzy and indistinct as a blank sheet of paper, because you haven't designed those parts yet, your players will understand!  They will learn to play inside the boundaries of what you have created; and will eagerly wait for the day when the boundaries expand, and new realms and places come into existence, as the Artist's finger moves before them.

Do what you can, with what you have, and rest assured that with time you will learn to be a better dungeon master than you can possibly imagine today.

Foreword

It should be no secret that I consider Dungeon Mastering to be an art.  The underlying creative process described on this late post fits perfectly into writing, composition or design, occupations that are unquestionably "artistic."  Yet even in 1979, the editor of the original DMG, Mike Carr, resisted the notion, writing,

"If you consider the aspect of experimentation, the painstaking effort of preparation and attention to detail, and the continuing search for new ideas and approaches, then Dungeon Mastering is perhaps more like a science — not always exacting in a literal sense, but exacting in terms of what is required to do the job well."

This is a familiar, criminal misinterpretation of "science," one we see everyday in the media and online.  Science is a systemic exercise that gathers and organizes knowledge from existing conditions.  Science studies things that already exist; please name the pre-existing phenomenon that role-playing "studies."  There isn't one.  With the statement above, Carr does nothing more than emphasize that he is an uneducated, ignorant hack, purporting to create a controversy where none exists.  D&D is not preparing for an experiment — it is creating something out of thin air so it can be presented in the game.  We're not searching for a new game approach that already exists in the physical world, or questioning the fundamental nature of knowledge or reality; we are creating game rules and narratives.  And please don't get me started on the semantic disaster perpetrated by Carr's need to cram "exacting" into the argument, manufacturing a dualism between "science" and "D&D."

A better foreword could read,

Dungeon Mastering challenges the individual to take what they know of human activity and literature, coupled with their ability to conceptualize a fantastical, fictional space, and convey that an imaginary yet tangible setting, so that others are able to see and imagine themselves functioning practically within that setting.  The dungeon master's presentational skill at conveying this setting is of highest importance.  The DM must be able to inspire others, through description, gesture and passion, to envision the same game world the DM imagines.  Given the awareness this requires — insight into how something needs to be described, resourcefulness in creating further details spontaneously, discernment between what is important and what's not, ingenuity, wisdom of one's fellow human beings and good horse sense about what will and will not motivate players — it is impossible not to view dungeon mastering as an Art.

DMing is a labour, not only of love, but in the tenacity needed to assimilate tens of thousands of details and principles well enough that they can be disgorged and argued when the moment demands.  This book alone contains 239 pages of description, tables, tools and details that would swamp a 3rd year humanities student if the final exam demanded a thorough knowledge of all that has been included.  The good DM needs to know this material cold; this means long afternoons of reading, and long nights of burning the midnight oil in order to assemble the ingredients that will make the next day's running memorable. 

Yet whatever the effort, the reward is worth ten times the cost.  This is an opportunity that few persons will ever obtain — the chance to earn tremendous respect from one's peers; to become the source of both enjoyment and opportunity; and to bestow experiences that both friends and strangers may remember all of their lives.  We will find ourselves in a position of judgment; but through fairness, reason and empathy, it is ours not only to settle disputes and bring tolerance, but to show others how to do this both in the game and in their everyday lives.  As we teach ourselves to manage our players, we teach ourselves how to be better people, with forbearance, kindness and self-sacrifice.

It is not easy to be more creative; or commit ourselves to an effort that may cause us to fall flat on our face.  It is no mean feat to run a game world every weekend, so that every Friday evening and every Saturday afternoon is spent pouring over pencil scratchings and books rather than partying or lounging in the sun.  We may question time and again why we do it; we may feel from time to time that the task is thankless; but when the players appear like clockwork, week in and week out, talking animatedly, spreading out their papers and dice, waiting for the moment when we will give our word that the running is about to start, we will know why we dungeon master.

Because it rocks our worlds.

The Shipbuilder

Such fun.

Working on this list for the poster yesterday.  All the prices were generated from my trading tables, based on so much cedarwood, pinewood, oakwood and chestnut wood for exterior hull, planking, spars & ribs, and wooden fixtures, plus metal pieces and pitch to build the size of ship in question.  Final totals were calculated according to the volume of ship based on keel, beam and height; the cargo capacity was then determined afterwards.  Everything from the rowboat to the Indiaman was calculated using the same ratios.

Accurate to history?  Probably not.  What matters to me is that the players can design their own ship, identify the size and the type of ship (carrack, ketch, yawl, whatever), and I can give a price and details to match.  I like that the list gives dimensions & construction time; and I like that after you buy the ship, you have to outfit it with sheets and extra spars.

If some of the numbers seem off, I rush to remind the reader that these are based on 17th century designs, not the more familiar Napoleanic-period designs that impress themselves on our consciousness, about how a ship is rigged and how many sails it carries.  The development of jib sails from every mast took time, and was hardly there in the 1600s.  But, as always, I'm not trying to be accurate.  I'm trying to run a game, with just enough grittiness but not too much.  For example, before Sterling corrects me (and he'll be dead right, he always is), I'm not saying that a mainmast accurately needs two mainsails, a top sail and a luff.  Chances are, it's called a "jib" and not a luff, or some other thing, and they're all different sizes, as is the topsail or mainsails for different masts, and so on.  BUT, there's only so much grittiness I need to put into this and what I've got above is enough.  I'm happy to simplify by saying a mainmast needs 4 sails, while a foremast and a mizzen-mast each need two, of different types.  I'm happy to average out how much rigging the ship needs, regardless of the actual type of sail.  What I want for the game is stuff on a ship that can break, tear or blow away, so it will need replacing; I don't need this to be historically or even practically accurate for game purposes.  Given how these things are usually glossed over in game terms, I'm doing very well.

I also like that while the Indiaman is very expensive (my offline party could put up that much), the caravel is completely in range for a party of 3rd-5th level, in my game at least.  Missing, of course, is the cost for the crew; I'm was in the middle of cracking that problem when the poster idea emerged, so that's been shelved.  I'm not ready to include wages on the poster; I don't think there will be room for them anyway.

I love ships in the game, though somehow I seem to be the only one that does.  People worry way too much about drowning.

This is not the complete shipbuilder list, by the way; not yet.  I haven't added any metalworking into the poster.  I'm working on wooden goods just now; then it is chemicals (paint, lamp oil, dyestuffs, perfume, etc.), then ceramics and clay, and THEN metals.  Got a long way to go, and the poster is filling up.  Have to see what I have space for in the end.