Don't Ask Me About Books

Stepping out of this series for a moment, I want to make a point about reading.

For the record, I think "Appendix N" is unmitigated garbage.  I always have.  As literature, it barely passes the smell test; much of the writing in it is juvenile and overwritten.  It's a collection of works that adult children nostalgically cling to, full of thin plotting and barely serviceable craft.  I do not believe it has any valuable things to teach a dungeon master... and if someone were to tell me that the list DID inform them on being a dungeon master, my kneejerk opinion would be to believe they weren't very much of a dungeon master.

Of course, saying this begs the question, "If not Appendix N, what should I read to be a better dungeon master?"

And here is where I and apparently the entire world differ.  Because as I see it, when people want a list of books, what they want is a "build," a short-cut that says, "If I do this, then I'll get that."  And when they ask me personally what I'd suggest, I can hear the addition, "I want to have what you have, so tell me the books that will get me there."

I don't consider the reading of a special set of books is what makes a person "intellectual," or "well-read," or even wise.  I used to believe that, but I've aged out of it.  My depth of knowledge was not the result of some transformation I had after reading certain books that made me wiser or smarter.  My knowledge has occurred from a long, non-linear process of synthesis, mistakes, corrections, bad experiences and a life-long concoction of pleasure and despair.  Every book that I ever loved is now rich and full of flaws.  I now see those books as an experienced writer does, not as a new reader does.  Every new book I read is measured against the thousands of books I've read, so that I can no longer separate the intrinsic value of this or that book from any other.  So if I am asked, "what should I read," my answer has to be, "It doesn't matter.  Put down what's boring."  That's the most useful, effective advice there is to offer, because I'm not here performing the "academic who gets off on having read great books that the hoi polloi haven't read."  I have a secret for everyone here.

A great book is any book you don't want to put down.  And if you read enough of them, later in life, you'll find that you can no longer read books at 60 that you couldn't put down at 22.  Because that's how it works.

But one last point. You won't find me on this blog crying that I don't know where to go when I want to know something. You won't hear that I'm waiting anxiously for a book to come out that will give me information I want to have right now... because if I want it, I'll go do the research myself, I won't wait. The material is everywhere: in libraries, at bookstores, in search engines... literally absolutely everywhere. If the reader of this CAN read, then stop asking me where to find it and use a search engine. That's why they exist.

2b: Setting Player Boundaries

Part 2a: The DM's Mental Toolbox
Part 1: Introduction to Session Management

In any organised game structure, there exists a "governing body" whose role is to define the rules of participation that sets out the manner in which the game is played. The purpose of this body is to regulate activity by defining, maintaining and enforcing the conditions under which participation takes place. This includes rule-making, boundary-setting, eligibility and scope. Every organised competitive activity incorporates in some manner a governing body to retain the identity of the activity, ensuring it remains integral and functional. Otherwise, the activity collapses into improvisation, conversation or performance... things that would not be acceptable in a tennis match, a board game, a corporate training exercise... or a table-top role-playing game. Theoretically.

In the absence of a responsible, centralised and external authority, integrity and functionality can easily be discarded in favour of improvisation and performance. It falls to each individual DM to be the governing body of the campaign. This puts us in a position where we must construct a framework that provides boundaries whose purpose is to overrule, redirect or silence attempts that oppose the game's intended purpose and organised manner of play. For this, then, we have to decide, for ourselves, what that intended purpose is, and what defines "organised," while maintaining the game's honesty, coherence, purpose and operation as we, "the governing body," expressed as "dungeon master," define how the game is meant to be played. Our judgement in this is incontrovertible, just as the governing body would be for any official activity.

This principle has to be explained to the players. And will be, at a later time. But before that's possible, we must explain it to ourselves.

Our role surpasses the immediate demands of play, but also exists as an institutional safeguard of the game's function, purpose and internal reality. That authority is a structural necessity; until a dungeon master is able to comprehend this part of their role, then they are bound to face chaos, inconsistency and circumvention at the table. Yet while we might pause here and choose to discuss what that function ought to be, as well as the rest, we must instead acknowledge that this cannot be the same for everyone. Therefore, when we speak of defending this "institution," we mean a body of one table. And only one table. The immediate demands of play at my table would not and could not be imposed by another DM at another table, because any other DM cannot — by virtue of the game never having been properly defined — understand how any given role-playing game should function as I would understand it.

There is no higher authority that can be rationally appealed to, and that includes the rulebooks, because the rulebooks are in toto conflicting, ill-defined and insufficient for play. We are the highest authority that can exist at THIS table. The only reason our game doesn't collapse is because our definition is enforced. In effect, we are a jurist of a private domain.

Doing so is also part of our mental toolkit, as something we must cognitively invent prior to play. We must have a clear idea, before the players sit, of what we think governance of the game ought to be. It is a frame that we can test through play, by imagining that our governance will hold up in this or that situation, only to learn that we're wrong. This can be corrected in the future, if need be. But the frame has to be imposed first.

To have that frame we must begin somewhere. To begin with, we can reason that because we are the dungeon master, and it is our vision of the setting that contrives the players' location and actions, that this is our table to govern. The role demands it. We possess knowledge within the game's structure the players cannot have, by definition. And further, we're not playing the game; like the dealer of a blackjack table, we're turning cards according to a fixed and pre-designated rule-set, whether or not we wish to do so. The players, on the other hand, are choosing whether or not to press their luck or to walk away — presumably in this metaphor to retreat from the task at hand, regroup and reapply themselves at a better time, rather than actually quitting the game. Because our role is fixed — give information, interpret player action — we're not coherently invested in success or failure.

This is where our detachment, gained through practice, is put in place. Like the dealer, we're not here to compel, coach or shield the player. Our role is neutral; indifferent in game play, though occasionally empathic where the player's failure occurs. But this does not mean we can avoid laying the ace on top of the king which then takes the players' money. Where game play is concerned, we must be detached, we must be indifferent. Otherwise, the players are not playing the game as a game; and we are not enacting the role as it's plainly defined. We have far too much power as a dungeon master to be allowed to impose our will, either for or against the players. If that power is used in kindness, it bends the game into a theatre of partiality, where it ceases to be a game. Instead, it becomes caretaking, performance, wish fulfillment; and the moment that shift occurs, the players are no longer participating in something that tests their ability or reveals their limitations; they're being exploited as puppets.

In looking for premises for what boundaries and permissions we should impose, facets we must consider include tempo; the encouragement of action; player risk; appropriate behaviour; individual player experience; the creation of new rules; and attendance. Briefly, let's discuss these subjects. Tempo sets the rhythm of interaction — how quickly the game moves, how long players are allowed to think, how much time is permitted for planning and purchasing. Individuals who hold up the game by consistently requiring more time to perform actions are made to pay a price for that. Players are encouraged to act either by imposed adventures or on their own, whichever seems most effective where player engagement is concerned. Players must act, and in an appropriate matter with regards to the purpose of the role-playing game at hand. Ineffectual, performative or derailing actions must be addressed according to the benefits or depreciations they impose. Something must be risked, sufficient to produce an emotional response. Players who avoid risk to the point where action does not occur need our attendance.

Behaviour at the table must be in accordance with a group activity; it must focus upon the game; it must not be condescending or abusive. It must encourage the agency of all participants. Every individual is entitled to a positive game experience. New rules should be introduced with the understanding that if they don't improve player experience, in the player's view, they must be discarded after testing. Players who don't attend games, or who attend by don't prioritise play over personal need, must also be addressed.

In each case, we should use our own perception of "correct" as a guideline. And this is a mental exercise that we deliberately employ, step by step, making decisions about each answer we give ourselves, before ever sitting down to run. We ask ourselves, "If I were a player, how much time would I want to make a decision? How long might it take if I were in a real conundrum? How long would I be willing to wait for another player who was not as decisive as me? As the perpetrator of a very difficult dilemma, should I create one, how much longer should I grant myself, were I personally faced with that dilemma? How often in the course of a running do real dilemmas occur? And how often is it that I would resist making a decision not because the decision wasn't obvious, but because I didn't like the decision itself?"

We ask ourselves, "If I were a player, would I resist engaging with a dungeon master's assigned adventure product? Would I have problems with the structure of a module? Would I prefer to decide my own course of action (a) never, (b) rarely, (c) now and then or (d) exclusively? Would it be all right for me to drag my feet if the rest of the players were keen on the adventure? Would I argue my right to take actions which were physically unlikely or impossible, for the sake of their unusualness? Do I have a problem with the way combat works? Do I enjoy combat? Is combat acceptable as a way to obstruct player intentions? Do I believe in role-playing as an alternative to direct action-driven play? Do I want to role-play? Do I find puzzle-solving an activity that I want to pursue? Or is it that I just like imposing puzzles I don't have to personally solve?"

We ask ourselves, "What is the purpose of dice in my game? How much importance should they have? Am I all right with my character failing and suffering the loss of (a) all my wealth; (b) some of my abilities; (c) my life? Is it okay that this might mean a permanent death of some kind? Is it okay if I enter a combat and lose that combat, so long as I don't die? Do I see the acquisition of power and wealth as something that should only occur with risk, or is it sometimes acceptable to get either without having to take a risk? Should a die roll ever be the sole arbiter of a character receiving either a good or bad result? Do I expect bad things to happen to me? Am I allowed to avoid risk altogether if I feel the potential loss is too much?"

We ask ourselves, "How do I expect others to speak to me? Am I responsible for the game experience that my fellow players have? Do I want to share? Am I prepared to sacrifice myself for them? Do I expect them to sacrifice themselves for me? Do I have things I don't want them to say or refer to, or things I don't want their characters to do in game? What things, exactly? Do I think it's okay to fight my fellow players? How would I feel about a non-player vs. player rule? Do I think that so long as I get mine, others must get on as they can?"

We ask ourselves, "Am I fundamentally opposed to new rules? Am I willing to test them. If a new rule adds to the game's culture or experience, but reduces my advantage, is that acceptable? How do I feel about rules? What do I think their intended purpose is? Do I accept that rules, when imposed, should rightly stop me from doing things outside those rules, or not?"

We ask ourselves, "If I fail to appear at a game as a player, is that acceptable? Do I see my attendance as optional? How many games would be inappropriate for me to miss? Would I automatically supply an excuse, or an explanation, or do I not think this is necessary? What are my feelings when I 'commit' myself to a campaign — how do I fundamentally interpret that?"

There are these and many other questions besides that we should ask ourselves, and in each and every case, without exception, we need to have a clear, defensible answer, one that we can express in depth for players who either adhere to those things we expect of ourselves, or do not. Because we are the governing body, we have every right to impose the same restrictions we might upon tennis players arriving for a match, the behaviour of members in an audience or the right of a chess player to touch an opponent's clock. Major League Baseball has rules that define exactly where the pitcher's feet must be placed when the ball is thrown; comparatively, it is obviously acceptable for a DM to decide how dice must be thrown, and what counts as a "land." Every human activity that is taken serious has long lists of expectations for the participants, which the participants must adhere to if they wish to continue their involvement. We have every right as dungeon masters to expect the same.

But the way in which we answer these questions, the positions we take, will have their effect on would-be participants. In those cases where our choices veer towards condoning selfishness, personal over group achievement, casual over responsible engagement, arbitrary vs. fixed results, dependency over independency, we risk driving away persons of integrity, education, generosity, patience, a sense of duty and an expectation of fairness. In return, we'll find our table populated by cutthroats, liars, cheats, bullies and chronic obstructors, whose behaviour will hinge upon resistance and a willingness to shift blame onto others. Such persons, given licence, won't hesitate to use that licence to enrich themselves; and if at any time we think they may have gone too far, further than we ourselves would, they won't appreciate the nuance of this, but will instead vilify us and quit our game. Seek to reward selfishness and loyalty won't result as a consequence, even if those people are just like us. There is no honour among thieves.

We may imagine that as players, we'd prefer a little permissiveness; that some permissiveness is even necessary to good play. But permissiveness always ends in wanting more... it's not a boundary, but an invitation. So when answering the questions above, and deciding what we'd do vs. what a DM should allow, don't be surprised if some of the things we won't allow as a DM are the same things we wouldn't have hesitated to do ourselves.

The consequences of those opportunistic things we did as a player lacked punch; we might have annoyed another player, we might have incurred the DM's scolding — but because the degree of responsibility a player carries is negligible, it feels acceptable to keep pushing that envelope for all it offers. But once we change our seat at the table and set up as a DM, the role carries a lot of responsibility. Now, if we want the game to continue, we always want the support of the largest number of participants possible. Preferably all the participants, or at least a changing set of them so that everyone is happy some of the time, if not always. To achieve this, our noses have to be a little more clean; and considerably less indulgent, given all the yards the players can take in exchange for the inches we give. That would overwhelm us, and make DMing impossible.

Therefore, we must be careful not to be too glib in our answers. Really consider why some things look good coming from a single player, but not from the lot of them. Nor should we jump to the conclusion that we're a "hypocrite" because we run the game differently than we play it. No one makes a more honest police officer than a former thief, who can see both sides of the question and judge the right side correctly.

Better that we examine and suss out these issues before the fact, rather than be surprised by them in game. It's why governance of the players starts with governing our former bad habits first; who better than we to know what they are, and the damage they might cause? Who better than we to have the jump on those who might feel they're able to pull the wool over the silly ol' DM's eyes? And since we have the time to consider each of these things — really consider them, rather than just believe we have the right answers — we can feel far more confident as we face the players and say honestly, "There won't be any of doing this. I know this is something I myself did once, which is exactly why I'm in a position to know that I should have been stopped from doing that. I'm a DM now, I have responsibilities now I didn't have yesterday, and I lacked problems yesterday that I do have now. So no, this is out. Let's move on. Regarding such-and-such..."

It is in this way that we manage the players going forward: fairly, admitting our own faults, confessing them without seeking forgiveness, and expecting the same of others who may also have formerly had those ideas. It helps them change and adapt to our rules, and helps establish the understanding that because this is our table, our rules, firmly considered and not arbitrary, are going to stand because they are. Because we have a good reason why they should, and later, after the game, we'll be happy to explain.

2a: The DM's Mental Toolbox

Part 1: Introduction to Session Management


This class explores those mental tools which we establish in ourselves that permits control over a session, as well as methods by which we can train ourselves to excel in these techniques. Loosely, the tools may be grouped into three categories, each a necessary part of the game's ongoing structure: governance of ourselves, governance of the players and governance of the game. In practical terms, we should view "governance" as disciplined oversight, a drawing of lines that establishes our behaviour, the player's engagement and the game's functional progress.

We shouldn't imagine that the proficiencies discussed here can be acquired through a few practice efforts, or indeed in any period short of actual years of effort. Nor is it necessary that they be practiced with expertise... in fact, if they are practiced at all, even in the smallest degree, then the DM is well ahead of the structure of nearly every other table that exists — because, in fact, none of this is ever addressed in a practical, constructive way. More usually, the toolkit explained here is vaguely indicated, perhaps remotely conceded as a "good idea," but never actually discussed. That is because the cognitive load that role-playing requires complicates the marketable TTRPG product itself; if a role-playing game demands a layered, complex mental framework, then it cannot be described as a "casual, pick-up-and-play experience." It can't be encouraged with the flexible, lighthearted approach of "just have fun, tell a story, and the rest will follow." Dungeon mastering can't be acknowledged as "hard," and therefore time cannot be spent explaining precisely the steps one must take to do this "hard" thing.

Yet the "kit" need not be something we already have. It can be genuinely learned. Nothing here is presented as a "trick" or a "short-cut"... but rather as proficiencies that can be gained and applied to hundreds of human activities beyond RPGs — so long as readers are truly prepared to stretch themselves and risk momentary embarrassment or uneasiness. Nothing of value is obtained without risk or without discomfort.

We begin with governing ourselves, through equanimity, mindfulness and pre-cognition. Together, these three things make us more confident, but this last is not something that can be simply willed into existence. It must arise because we DO feel confident, not through wishing to feel it.

The first of these describes the structural mental boundary between our perspective vs. that of the players. "Equanimity" isn't an inner calm we feel, but our understanding that the players' perspectives, needs and intended outcome is detached and separate from our own. We are not required to puzzle out what's happening, nor to survive, and not to work with others in order to provide the game. The back-and-forth may be collaborative, but our presentation of the setting is not: it is solely our vision, transmitted to the players, who must accept it as given. In some ways, this "detachment" is unemotional. When the players are threatened, excitable, in a panic... we are not. When we are stressed, struggling to manage multiple details as rapidly as possible, the players are often in a state of suspension, perhaps apprehensive, perhaps even bored. There is an internal insulation between their experience and our own, with which the DM must learn to be comfortable.

This equanimity is most important of all in maintaining an emotional mask, allowing us to present danger, humour, surprise, even behaviour, without conveying how the players should feel about it or whether or not they're on track. Let's say that a group has entered into what appears to be a simple, unthreatening domestic space, with furnishings, tableware, cupboards — which contain some hint about their danger. There is, we might say, a bowl on the table; closer inspection reveals it is partially filled with soup; and further inspection indicates the soup is warm, thus recently heated. Outside the room, a pile of humanoids are quietly girding themselves to burst into the room, but this is not in evidence. As the DM, we define a moment for the warparty to enter; we allow time for the players to discover the soup as a clue, to guess that until a minute ago, someone was here, eating. And as we describe the scene, we give no clue through our tone or facial expression that there is anything special about the bowl, its contents or their nature when describing them. We give no clue that we know there is a warparty about to burst in. We are stonefaced, not just in this moment, but in every moment, so that as the game progresses, we never give away any intention through our behaviour being different now than it is at any other time.

Thus, if the player makes a joke about there probably being a warparty behind the door, we can say "maybe" in the same atonal fashion, whether the warparty exists or not. The bowl is described in the same manner as the table leg, the size and shape of the room, the colour of the walls. Our neutrality becomes a kind of suspense in itself; the players learn they can't "read" our intention unless we wish it so; and it builds the world's credibility, in that no moment is special until the players make it so. We don't break character, so that the world itself is the character the players investigate.

To gain this equanimity is to obtain one's detachment regardless of the situation. Practice by searching out the most chaotic circumstances possible — a busy commuter train, an ongoing sports event, a loud and boisterous night club, a festival — any situation that is loud, thick with people, where the crowd presses together for conviviality and connection. Then, don't engage. Adopt an observational, disengaged mindset. Don't ignore; watch. We inspect the faces of those around us, we practise at reading their emotions, their cues with regards to each other, the waves of their emotions rising and descending... while we recognise the similarities between our being present here and our being present before our players, whom we are also not a part of. It is the separation itself that we practice, but not as a matter of disinterest or disengagement, but as a matter of inspecting them closely, in detail, in order to determine their nature and condition.

The temptation will be to join in, to embrace the experience like everyone else there; resist that. Alternately, because we're not engaged, habitually we'll "zone out," drifting into our own thoughts, keeping ourselves company as it were. Resist this also. We want to see the micro-expressions of the people, maintaining our connection with them, yet without becoming a part of them. It's a knife edge of disassociated participation. It takes practice; it requires a clear, unjudging awareness, remembering always that we're here to learn, to recognise, to accept without needing to be accepted. The process is anti-tribal. Yet it's also the member of the tribe, the shaman, who was nominally part of the tribe but necessarily divorced from it.

Compare this to the DM's game mindset. Throwing ourselves into the players' fun, we lose our standing as the game-runner. Mentally checking out while the players talk, we miss the cues that might shape our next communication. The goal is to listen and not seem to be listening; to play with the players while inwardly separating ourselves from them. The skill is acquired through conscious effort, an understanding of what's gained and through practice, practice, practice, as are all the skills to be discussed here. The approach suggested here can't be done a few times, but repeatedly and often, at scattered times over a period of two or three years, until we're quite certain we've acquired the observational-detachment instinct.

Contrary is the alternate technique of mindfulness, which is practiced in those hours outside the game, so that in-game we cease to be aware of it altogether. Traditionally, "mindfulness" is seen as being conscious or aware of something, typically what's going on in the immediate moment with ourselves, that we are able to focus better on it, comprehending our thoughts, feelings and sensations about that thing accordingly. The mindfulness we want to rehearse for role-playing is mental cognition of the game's setting, as something that is real, that we may be fully fluent in it, in the manner of a memory we have of some real event or place we've actually been.

This requires a mental leap, one that first allows our consciousness to ascribe to the setting we've conceived all the characteristics of the actual world. This is a part of the human condition — the fabrication of heroes, mythological structures, fictional events, outcomes and inherent messaging related thereto — only in this case, because role-playing is a GAME, we must concretely structure more than a message, but all the aspects that underlie the structure of that message. The shape of the land, the people on it, their history, their motives, the manner in which things are accomplished, ongoing conflicts, belief systems, morality, philosophy and the day to day mechanics of living within said premise. And all this must be done so thoroughly that we're reflexively able to reveal it as though we were describing, habitually, the manner in which we get from our house to our workplace.

Just as we adore characters in a story that moves us, or we imagine inhabiting a fictional setting, we must give in to accepting that fiction — yet in a far more ontological manner than with an ordinary story. We must go beyond story or narrative, beyond theme or character design, we must reach into the WHOLE of the setting's systematisation, its social mechanics, its full structural design, right down to the smallest pebble we might feel deserves mention, at the foot of a post that has a sign that points down a road to a place where the players might want to go. No detail can be discarded, or in the very least we must be able to construct details of any size, at will, that fit the motif, so comfortably that this accurate presentation requires little to no mental effort. Once we do so, we shift from improvisation to "recollection," as though we're remembering the place rather than inventing it.

This is accomplished by taking the time, in meditation, whether in the shower, on the bus, sitting at a park bench, walking to work or wherever we may happen to be, to simply think about the setting. To wander through it, puzzling out details as we go. There is no "preparation" to meditate involved. We know the meditation has happened, in our considering the setting, when we've achieved flow. An example of this would be climbing aboard a bus for a half-hour journey, choosing to think about the customs or politics of a given region, only to realise that we've arrived at our destination without the comprehension of time having passed. When this is the case, we've successfully immersed ourselves into our setting. It is something we must practice at, until we can take a comfortable walk for an hour and find ourselves unable to remember having seen anything, so deep were we in another world of our own making. Obviously, without being hit by a car.

Success isn't achieved by our taking notes or sketching maps, but in BEING there. To some extent it's escapist, to some extent indulgence, but importantly it's a rehearsal for game play. For setting fluency. So that later, when a player asks a question about the two factions we've just described, we already know their answer because we predicted it months before. We already know how a merchant in this city will react to this sort of player question, because the answer is obvious, as though we ourselves were the merchant, on this street, with goods to sell. The improvisation part was done while we were meditating; in-game, it's memory retrieval.

As with equanimity, the habit is acquired through time and hundreds of incidents, where we feel perfectly free to self-review our fictional vision without inhibition or a sense of guilt. The setting is ours, after all, and serves a purpose; it is not wool-gathering. It is constructivist in function and therefore necessary for providing a good game in real life terms.

This "knowing what the answer is" provides us the third mental tool in our kit, pre-cognition. We may think of it as forward patterning, or "running a movie" before the movie has been made, as a metaphor for game play. We know we're going to place the players in certain places and situations as we initiate play. This room already exists in our mind and is part of the performance we're going to give; but in this performance, the "struggle" we perceive with the players is really a struggle with ourselves. In sports, this is called an intrinsic locus of control: when we perceive that the struggle is internal, we engage it differently: with agency, with flexibility and with far less fear of failure.

In dungeon mastering, this is done by realising that the DM could easily be a player in the DM's own game. From this premise, we can understand that the questions the players ask, and the decisions they make, are precisely those we might make ourselves, with their knowledge instead of our own. Seeing this clearly, we can predict that the players aren't behaving against us, but in fact are behaving in a manner that our instruction has directed them to act. We say A and B, knowing that C is almost certain to result, and possibly D, E or F as well, all in accordance with our having put the boat in the water, so to speak. Everything that happens after that, to the boat, the water or anything else affected, we caused. Therefore, the response is not only predictable, but intentional and desirable. This removes nearly all the sense a DM feels for the game being competitive.

This isn't omniscience, but preparation yielding predictability. To stress the metaphor, if we launch the boat from a certain point, into a current we understand, we can predict where it will be pulled. We may not know precisely how it will move, but we shouldn't be surprised to find it moving downstream or out into the lake, where the current takes it. IF, therefore, the players respond to a cue in a particular way, we should recognise that their response doesn't occur in a vacuum — we ourselves have imposed that response, even when we didn't know what the response would be, through our choice of scene, our choice of words, and our inflections and stresses as those words were spoken.

Knowing this can be arresting; a DM might feel overly concerned about saying everything correctly in order to achieve the "right" response; but the DM must comprehend that no "right" response need exist. The DM's focus is upon the setting, which will always be the setting; the players' responses to that setting are not ours to be concerned with — they are only ours to inspire. Thus, ANY response is sufficiently "right," all the time, even the most self-destructive responses imaginable. The players, interacting with the setting, are responsible for the consequences of their responses, not us. But knowing there will be responses, and over time and through play becoming comprehensive of what those responses are likely to be, gives us enormous power in knowing how to respond to the players' responses, when they occur.

Let's just stick a pin in this to be addressed later: the DM's responsibility stops at the setting's edge.

Our capacity to "run a movie," something else we learn to do while enacting mindfulness, described above, allows for situations where we can see several steps ahead, so that as the players push here and pull there, we can build if-then structures in our heads that again provide considerable cognitive leaps forward during game play. When the players arrive in the room, we know they'll find the soup, either before or after the door bursts open; if not before, then the door bursting open solves the equation; we know the fight will occur and that they'll win or lose, continuing afterwards or retreating, knowing if they continue they'll find what's in the next room and so on. All this can be played out in various ways before the game is played... even weeks or months before a certain part of the setting is finally reached after much effort is made to get there. We're not stipulating what the players would do once they get there; only what we would do, if we had the information they'll have. We're not competing against their knowledge or problem solving, but our own. Can we solve the problems the players will solve... in all the ways... the players solve those same problems? We have days, weeks, months to do so; the players will have perhaps an hour. This puts us well ahead of their game, without our ever having to tell them how to play their game.

We don't have to railroad. We have the time to build all the alternative tracks the players might want to invent, so that we know where that track goes before the players climb onboard. We can then stock them with all the necessary logistics, drama and meaning beforehand, mentally, without doing physical work, discarding everything that's irrelevant the moment it becomes so.

This is a good place to stop. Let's pick up governing the players with the next post.

1: Introduction to Session Management

As dungeon masters, we're often told that our role is to "guide" the game's narrative, traditionally by describing scenes and presenting challenges. But this word is perpetually left vague, so that we're never quite sure what "guidance" is being provided or what it's meant to achieve. The squidgynous of the word is the point: it leaves open the question in such a manner that no purchaser of the game ever needs to feel they're doing it the "wrong way," while never quite giving an assurance of what the "right way" would look like. The word is meant to soothe, to keep the product approachable, while sidestepping the messier truth of what the DM is actually doing.

Dungeon mastering is teaching.

As the source of game knowledge, the DM shows and explains what is present, what is happening, what objects and structures are accessible, and what visible action is taking place, in a manner that communicates this knowledge in a manner that can be made sense of by the players. Before the DM speaks, the players are wholly ignorant; but after the situation is presented, the players are then asked to "make meaning" from this assemblance of "facts," for that is what they are within the game's structure. If the DM says that there is a tavern here, such-and-such a distance from the players, of such-and-such a size, then this must be accepted as a fact of the game world until something else contravenes it. The players can't, by virtue of play, oppose the presence of the tavern. To act, think and feel in the setting, therefore, the players are engaged to accept what the DM says as a sort of "truth," though one that is always subject to new as-yet-unattained information, that may indicate the apparent truth is a lie.

It is not in the players' interests to assume anything is a lie. The game itself requires they interact with these "facts" as though they are absolutely true. If they are told that a figure is moving out of the darkness, they must assume — for the sake of their survival in the game that this is really happening. Failing to respond within a given time frame permits consequences ranging from humiliation to death. This places the DM in an enormous position of power, since the "figure" may emerge from any light or dark frame at any time, there being no restraint on the DM's freedom to send figures at the party. It is, in fact, this potential that causes many to doubt the practicality of role-playing as an activity.

This control of all player information, coupled with an unlimited ability to impose threats, dictates that some other limitation must exist on the DM. Otherwise, the "game" would merely be the DM throwing monsters at a party until they are all dead.

There is no rule that restrains the DM from sending monsters every round, from creating unwinnable situations, from lying about the world's appearance. The only thing that does restrain the DM is disinterest: at least, in the player's success or fail. The DM's interest must be in something else.

That is presumed to be the coherence, believability, even the beauty, of the game setting itself, for its own sake. In many cases, lesser dungeon masters consign this "structure" to another, a product-maker, which the DM self-agrees to obey, running the "adventure" as the designer intended, doing little more than adding a few details here or there to personalise the experience. But this is not the path of an experienced, self-directed DM.

For such persons, it's not enough to execute the game world, they must "author" it also. This authorship allows them a more thorough potential to bring their personal vision alive, often presenting situations that are too complex to "sell" to a lesser DM. Larger and more complex setting visions, in fact, often strain the author-DM's capacity to fully commit to paper, so that much of the setting resides wholly in the author-DM's mind, perhaps forever, since its codification may not occur before the individual's death.

The facilitation of this private, living artform within the DM's mind is sufficient, entirely, to permit the DM to remain comfortably indifferent to the players' survival. The DM may, in fact, retain a respect for the setting vision that refuses to permit players to survive certain facets of it, unless the players actively prove their worthiness to do so. This is a complex back-and-forth — where the DM imagines a land like Mordor, which would be almost certain death should the players enter, only to concede that when the players act in a way that surprises the DM and exceeds expectations, it seems appropropriate that the players should survive, in the DM's now-adjusted vision, achieved through game play. Game-engagement at this level, where both the DM and the players change through game-play, is considered the most elegant.

The manufacture of this setting/vision/artform (hereafter shortened to "setting"), its presentation to the players, the players interpretation of it, and the players subsequent responses to it, make up the substance of "session management."

From the start of the game, the DM begins the slow, steady revealing of the setting as the players begin as some physical point within it and move forward. Each tiny segment of the setting is conveyed: a street, a field, a line of hills, a valley, a manse, a realm. The players can then associate and familiarise themselves with each piece. Depending on the consistency of the DM's efforts, the players accumulate a feel for where they are, how they fit into the setting, and how to make sense of it.

This is not achieved by fragments of "lore," but by a mental map of the DM's cognition being steadily transferred into the players' cognition. IF the dungeon master cannot concretely envision the setting, either through mind or physical works, then this transference CANNOT take place; and the players never can truly feel that they have "arrived" anywhere. In their minds, the setting remains an incomprehensible slurry — lacking meaning and lacking any reason to commit to game play.

D&D cannot be played like a game of telephone, where what the dungeon master says can be freely misinterpreted by the players, with no expectation that the message will be sent AND received. On the contrary, the DM must be ready to repeat the message as often as necessary until it is received accurately. With the further understanding that the message must be rich and vibrant enough to enlighten, excite and instensively motivate the listener. Otherwise, it is not a message worth sending.

Both of these efforts — accurate, reinforced verification of message reception; and that the message must have a presence that shifts the temperature of the players' internal states... these are session management also.

These two things, coupled with presentation and interpretation, are not isolated, but overlapping, feeding each other constantly. The dungeon master is ALSO reacting, interpreting, adjusting and rethinking assumed events based on the changes the players are making in what their characters say, do or achieve. In this way, the players are "teaching" the DM, because while the whole game world is a fact for the players, the players' choices and achievements are facts the DM must adhere to. And this adherence is, again, session management.

Fully understood, session management is a two-way process of communication in internal mental adjustments and changes occurring in real time to given and received information. It is a live exchange. The highest expression of the game in motion.

A great part of this would appear to be subjective. In a fluid, human context, where meaning is constantly being invented, revised and layered through language, tone and judgment, all the participant's perception of what's being understood, what's resonating, what needs reinforcing and adjusting... these are all necessarily subjective conditions. But "subjective" isn't arbitrary; it doesn't mean undisciplined. It means situationally governed by human inference... an inference that is accumulated not only through the progress of D&D, but from a lifetime of experiences that causes us to subjectively decide what is important, what we wish to invest in, what interests us, and what we won't adapt to because we do not wish to do so.

Value, then, does not lie in the setting having merely a substance; that substance must adhere to the expectation of those players it is conveyed to. The dungeon master and the players must be compatible. If they are, then subjectivity is nominal; even irrelevant, so long as "subjectively" everyone present agrees upon what matters and what ought to matter.

For this reason, the "level" of game can vary without changing the principles of session management. If all the participants are fine with an outsourced author's setting, delivered by the DM, the problem remains the same: that setting still has to be effectively conveyed and understood, still in real time, and still in a manner that excites. Those players who cannot be excited by this sort of game must seek a more complex game elsewhere. But the principles of session management are what they are.

A "better" world may not achieve its aims with all potential players. A "lesser" world need not fail those participants who right now take part. This must be clearly understood.

An effort will be made here, as this series proceeds, to describe a setting that is complex, simply because this requires MORE effort to grasp than a simpler setting. But structure itself is not as important here as the moment-to-moment process of communication, understanding and response, which we must sustain to keep play active. It is this communication that makes role-playing such an interesting activity, and one that challenges our mental acuity rather than our physical skill.

Part 2a: The DM's Mental Toolbox
Part 2b: Setting Player Boundaries

Part 2c: Governing the Game
Part 3: Cognitive Load & Information Filtering

Part 4: Projecting Engagement

Part 5: Managing Cognitive Load

Part 6a: Setting Composition

Part 6b: Known and Unknown Setting Composition

Blunder

 

Is There a Yet?

This is the last of these.

By pursuing self-education, we can fill ourselves with a lot of knowledge and a skill-set that will serve us very well as a dungeon master, unquestionably.  And if we adopt a ideal of service towards our players, not only will we benefit from the sense of value that installs in ourselves and others, but our efforts will lend an appreciation for the game and the dynamic that weren't there before.  And if we commit to improvement, both by these two previous strategies but also as a matter of wanting to be competent, the motives for being so will gather and accumulate, urging us onwards.  For what hasn't been said to this point is the trajectory these three approaches provide, turning "working on the campaign" from something we do for others into something we do for ourselves.  One of the weaknesses of DMing as a pursuit is that too often we frame the work in terms of, "I have to prepare for the upcoming game, so I don't fail the players."  That sounds like service, and it sounds like something we should be doing... but in fact, it's a tether around our throats until we gain sufficient competence to be able to say, "I'm running on the weekend and it's no issue.  I already have tons of stuff I can use, because I haven't stopped working."

Unquestionably, these things together will make a fine DM.  Any sustained effort, where we lift ourselves above a place where we're moving from episode to episode, trying to keep up, allows us to feel an internal shift, from acting out of duty to acting out of love. Few comprehend this psychological transition — but when it happens, the feeling dwarfs every other sentiment we once had.  We realise, in a rush, that D&D isn't a game we play, or enact, or build so that it's functional... but rather, a calling, a thing that we do because of the creative vitality it grants.  We cease to be insecure. We cease to search endlessly for "advice" on how to play, because we know and because the advice is so obviously being given by those without competency.  They don't understand where we are, because they've never been here.

Detached from the endless quest for guidance and approval, or even for the recognition that we've done something "amazing" that we must rush to the internet to describe, which in itself is a kind of validation, the process becomes more "what can I do?" than "what do others think of it?" This redirection can be seen as arrogance — I've been accused of that enough, both justifiably and not — but in reality it is something higher.  It is a lack of dependency.  We don't "need" players, because we know that when we want them, they won't be hard to find.

I was not surprised to find myself on the list of "100 Best D&D Blogs"... after all, I can read as well as anyone, and given the shit that exists on blogs the length and the breadth of the internet, I hardly need to be told my worth.  Especially by an entity whose merely striving to obtain self-promotion by giving "awards" that are wholly performative and basically useless, which itself has zero credibility and zero recognition anywhere, even on the internet.  I did not report it here when it happened. I'm not proud of it. I view it as as spam, a con, a joke. Because I do not define myself according to what powerless strangers think, but by what I provide.

If I'm there, given my volatility and refusal to engage with the empty economy of mutual status signalling, it's because I shoved my relevance down their throats. I'm sure they resented having to include me.  But if they hadn't, their credibility would have suffered.  And this is where real achievement rests.  Not built through consensus or marketing, but through the accumulation of substance, consistency and challenge over time.

Now, my apologies for making this personal, but to move past these points so far to the next point, I must speak of my own experiences.  I have long been a point of contention.  I have, many times, had others attempt to use inclusion as a weapon against me, in the sense of declaring, to hurt me, "No one likes you. No one cares about you. You could die tomorrow and no one would care." It's a scathing attack — and one that a certain kind of person employs, because it's effective. Most of us are alone in the world, we are unfortunately subject to the condemnation of the tribe, and there are many who will assume the authority of the tribe, putting on its coat as it were, in order to avail themselves of that power.  Anyone whose found themselves at odds with even a small community, half-a-dozen persons in a workplace, for example, has experienced this weapon employed against them.

This expresses a fear that many dungeon masters have. Not that one player will rise against them, but that every player will. That we'll criticise one, only to have an insurrection on our hands, with everyone walking out together. In fact, this happened to me this last year, about eight months ago. Not that it meant much of anything. Nothing has changed about my game world, except that I'm not running it presently... and as it happened, there were extenuating circumstances that were in place before the event occurred. But putting that aside, as its not relevant.

The fear of it happening ties the hands of many a DM, especially those who have begun to question the specifics of the surface-game... which we must do, once we begin to understand that vast swaths of the game either don't make sense or are just poorly designed.  Taking a stand on this, though, relates to the fear that a DM will be ostracised... and that alone is sufficient to tie many a DM's hands, even when they know they're right.

For myself, the "exclusion weapon" ceased to have power over me following two events, one that took place in November of 1986 and one in September of 1988.  The first was the day of my marriage to my first wife, and the second was the birth of my daughter.  And it was sometime after that some fool pointed a finger at me, shouting, "No one cares about you!"  Which enabled me to answer, "My wife does.  My daughter does."

And the look on that accusing person's face, as they realised, suddenly, that not only did they have no power over me... but realised, knowing already that I was a husband and a father... that they had named their own fear out loud, not mine.

To be able to say, without bravado but with quiet certainty, "my wife does, my daughter does," is not an act of defiance... it's the declaration of unshakable placement in the world, which the world in turn must respect, because of what those relationships genuinely mean.  It says that because I am not divorced, because my marriage is working, because I have spent those thousands of hours changing diapers, cooking, cleaning, walking nights patiently with a crying baby on my shoulder out of love, not performance, I'm due a respect that comes from what I've done, not from how I act or the entity whose criteria of approval I need have. Standing up and getting married is just a tiny part of the whole — the rest is staying married, until the bitter end if need be.  If we never quit on our partners and our children, and if we feel certain they love us, then the rest of the world's opinion matters such a tiny amount that it can't be measured.  And this, unquestionably, is something the popular internet, largely made up of single young man-boys, cannot comprehend.

I'm not an individual because of what I say here, or what I believe about D&D, or how I run a game.  But because, as I sit here, I'm conscious of the wife of 23 years that I'm with now, whose just 40 feet away at the other end of the house, whom I can go to right now and say, "I love you," without self-consciousness, because I do.  This is an experience that the internet has chosen to discard, because it doesn't fit the minimalist, dependency-driven criteria by which it seeks to score others.  It's why I can say what I like here, boldly, fearlessly, because I don't need to be loved.  I am loved.

In an online culture — not the authentic culture, made of those who are at work today, striving to do more than earn money to support their internet presence, but to support their actual families — that is increasingly shaped by immediacy, self-curation and a hunger for external affirmation, what I say here isn't just a rejection of those values, but an indictment of them.  It exposes how fragile and performative so much of that online life has become, especially in the realm of creativity, criticism or personal expression, where the unspoken rule is: say what will be received, or risk erasure.

The parents who are waking early today to parent children, shoulder long shifts, build and repair and nurture, aren't optimising for engagement.  They're living.  They're not curating their brands.  They're not posturing or editing for applause.  They aren't crafting narratives to be consumed.  They're too busy showing up, working, addressing real problems and defending the things they believe in to worry what someone else thinks about it.  And when they run D&D for their children, they are concerned about their children's responses as parents do, recognising when bad behaviour shouldn't be promoted, for reasons that any responsible person understands intuitively.  Because, in the end, it's less important that my son Billy gets his +5 sword than that my son Billy understands that the real world does not reward temper tantrums.

The missing factor in the previous three posts is responsibility.  Not only to ourselves, and not only to our players, but to the sacrifice, effort, building and loving that others before us tried to instill in our persons... only to so often fail with those who have drifted into online culture.  This is why, when I was able to go to game cons, and meet people who played D&D and talk to them, I found a completely different class of participants than the squalling children I found generally online.  Because these adults were using their weekends to engage with D&D as an activity they found the time to involve themselves with between their other responsibilities. Whereas those online are either bored because they have no responsibilities, or they're businesspeople trying to cheat their way into a business model with a game they didn't write, don't play well and barely understand, even in surface terms.

Am I saying, get married and have children?

Yes. Yes I am saying that.

Because D&D, and online, and streaming services, and serving yourself, aren't enough.  I said that we should be a part of something larger than ourselves. This is the ultimate form of that. It is the ultimate form of self-education, and the point where the rubber of competency meets the road.  Because we're not just talking about doing well, or being responsible, but the gut instinct that reminds you that your partner and your children are fragile, and rely on you, and that half of what you've taught yourself at this point needs to be thrown out with the trash as you address this.

It's admirable that you want to make something of yourself and be better.  But it's not respectable. Not to those who have a right to define that term, because of what we've done, and you haven't.  You have to decide if there's a "yet" that belongs on the end of that sentence.

The Refuge of the Incompetent

One of the best tools for teaching competency to the young is a traditional board game, particularly those with limited choices and strategy. The boundaries of a game like Monopoly, Life or even Candyland are clear, the stakes are low and feedback is immediate. Repetition is built in: every game is a cycle, with a beginning, middle and end, which can be revisited again and again. Mistakes, or a bad roll, merely lose us time... and this loss is rarely our responsibility, and more commonly the luck of the die, by which we watch ourselves move ahead or fall behind, in a manner having little to do with an inability to play. We may become inordinately invested in our progress, even maddened when we don't win, in truth our bad luck is not emblematic of our personal failings or lack of character.

By such games, however, we learn rules, we learn how to accept setbacks and how to handle the excitement of competition. We learn that we can always play again and that eventually we will have our day in the sun when we win.

But, when we play a game with even a moderate level of strategy, ranging from the comparative simplicity of RISK to Settlers of Catan, we notice a change. Suddenly, there are players who never seem to win, however close they might come. As the importance of the die roll subsides, the game for some becomes more and more difficult, particularly when played against someone who clearly has a greater skill where it comes to understanding cause-and-effect, which is all that "strategy" is at this level. IF I concentrate on seizing Australia, and succeed, I have only one point of entry to defend, so that I'm in a better place of security than if I concentrate on seizing South America, where I must defend two points. On the other hand, Africa is a practical continent in which to advance, to expand my power, while Asia isn't, so that in that way, South America is superior. These points, understood by some players and not by others, is what lends strategical games a benefit to learning that die-rolling games, such as Monopoly, don't offer.

We might recognise that St. James, Tennessee and New York are the best properties to own, but we still have to land there, which we might not, in which case we're behind the game through no fault of our own. At the same time, we might not have a chance to seize either South America or Australia, so that we're likely to lose for that reason alone — in any case, we need more LUCK to win if we start in Europe than if we start in Australia.
The moment a player realises they've chosen wrong, not because the dice were cruel but because they misunderstood the game or the "system" it imposes, is a critical developmental crisis. For some, the response is to think, "I must grab Australia," while others will think, "I never get Australia." The thinking process of the former vs. the latter defines, in great degree, the manner in which people view games of strategy.

The latter player is one who externalises their fate, who feels that despite the evidence, their success depends on chance. This reveals how they interpret their role in systems at large: in classrooms, workplaces and society. It expresses a feeling they have against competency of every kind. The guitar player is able to play because they possess "talent." The driver of a lambourgini was "lucky" in some way, either from being born into money or by chancing upon a great idea, which anyone might have had except this individual had it first. The CEO got there through connections, or glad-handing... certainly not through effort or hard work. This sort of thinking does more than discount an individual's personal sense of failure — it also shields them against any responsibility for confronting their own choice, and therefore their own lack of progress.

It is a mindset that is earned in the first few years of schooling, when we move from a five year period of progressing upwards from spud-like existence though family-oriented development, into a realm where we're measured against scores of other children like ourselves for the first time. These other children are complete strangers for the most part, quickly forming themselves into proto-cliques based on appearance, size, gender, clothing and social skills, into which we either belong or we don't. The whole process is spontaneous, instinctual and comparatively rapid compared to the slow measured pace of our pre-school childhood. And our placement in the heirarchy that forms, compensated by what we've been taught beforehand, defines not only our popularity, but also how we view the correctness of those "privileged" to be popular, which might include ourselves, and those not so privileged.

It's the first time we experience what it's like to be "ranked." How we interpret this ranking matters immensely. The logic, what there is of it, lies outside the capacity of a 5 y.o. to grasp. If we are "chosen," the arrangement seems eminently "fair." If we're not, we see it as the reverse. And as the years pass, and we intuitively come to grasp that there are pathways into "acceptance" that can be taken — competency at sports, competency at schoolwork, competency at amusing others, competency at forcing our will on others — we are further subdivided into those who may have these competencies and those who have none. Yet with each year, additional ways in which we might reveal a competency, as music, performance, new sports, prowess in trivia and such come to light, we continue to sort ourselves into more and more specific cliques, until nearly all of us belong somewhere. But not all, as it unfortunately happens.

We may think of these competencies as having various sized doors, permitting the entry of a few or a lot of people. Team sports allow for a wide range of competency, as we have room for a lot of players and not all of them have to be "good." Sufficient works, so long as the tertiary player can focus on the group win, and so long as the primary player does as well, so that a dozen individuals on the same team, having different competency, can enjoy their combined skills in a shared victory. There is less of this shared concept within individual-minded sports such as track, where we're a "team" when we go to the meet but the actual importance of lesser persons, who don't excel in their particular event, simply don't get the attention awarded to those that do. But the individually-minded activity, whether this is running, playing chess, winning at a game, playing an instrument, teaches us something completely different from the mere recognition of competency that a sports team can provide.

That there are degrees of competency.

The star player, for the most part, is compared against others. Even if that star player rises to the competency of professional sports, everything about the activity exists to reduce our competency to numbers, which exist so that we directly measured against how others in our sport perform. Success is measured in the most brutal fashion: one must be first. We appreciate the second and third podiums in an olympic events, but we rarely mention their names, and unless we're deeply invested into the sport, we're oblivious to those who do not reach the podium at all. I tell people, however, that the compensation for entering the Olympics and losing is that, if we're even remotely personable, the rest of our life is assured because we'll be well-paid somewhere for teaching our sport to younger others, well up into our sixties, seventies and even our eighties. It really doesn't matter if we win. If we can say on our resume, yes, we competed in the biathalon in the 2002 Olympics, it doesn't matter if we came in 22nd. This school will want us, badly, for their students who want to train in that sport. Because, in fact, we're only 22nd with respect to the rest of the world. In this university, we're so much better than anyone here, we're practically a god.

As an aside, this is why it's important to be both competitive and personable. Competitive is great when being measured as an athlete against everyone else, and when winning matters, but sports end at age 40... whereupon, the other skill one needs to survive is to be self-deprecating, pleasant, patient and giving. None of which are supported by the gritted-teeth attitude that coaches want; but then, coaches don't care what we do when you're 40. This is their time to exploit us, and that's all they care about; and if we're that type, when we're a coach, that might be what we do also. The field is certainly built for that approach.

But separating ourselves from what others want — and some of my teachers were certainly viperous monsters where it came to even debate events and Reach for the Top (with which my participation once in brings me much amusement) — and what we want brings us to this other sort of competency, one that is separated altogether from "competition."  At least, with others.  As my skill as a writer is indifferent to the skill of other writers, even in terms of how many books we sell or how much money we make.  My skill is entirely measured against one thing: what my skill used to be.

This is something a small number of persons begin to grasp at a young age, largely within the indifference of others, and often in conflict with their agendas.  I have no idea why so many teachers felt the need to take me aside and explain in depth that I would never be a writer... I suppose it mattered a great deal to them that I understood this, no doubt so that I would cease putting energy into something I cared about and into something they cared about.  What's interesting isn't that this happened to me, its the near universality I've encountered with every writer, artist, musician, and so on... we all have these stories.  Why, in particular?  Writing certainly didn't hurt my studies, it didn't keep me from eventually finding work, it didn't get in the way of my getting married and raising a family, it didn't confront my social responsibilities with regards to politics or giving assistance to my neighbour.  I wasn't taken aside and told to waste less time in sports, which I also wasn't going to excel in, or time I spent watching television or films, or Dungeons and Dragons, which certainly also weren't contributing to my education or future... so why, in particular, this?  It remains something of a mystery.

But it must be said — before others weigh in to tell me those authority figures felt threatened or unnerved, or were carrying their self-resentment for not following through with their writer dreams — that in school, I was a terrible writer.  Oh, gawd, simply awful.  Most of what I wrote before grade 11 was simply egregious; some might have been vaguely clever in a way, and at least by grade 12 I had improved my grammar and scansion, but even then, when I looked back on that work in my 20s, I always had to shudder.  So, in reality, I'd have to say their judgment was fair.  I hope that if I found a writer that bad, who wanted my opinion, I wouldn't say, "Quit, you'll never be a writer;" but I'd have to say, "Oh, oh... I'm sorry; you've got a long, long... long way to go."

It is in all of this, if the reader is still with me, that we find the third thing we need if we're going to be a better dungeon master, and run a better game.  It's that we must learn that the mastery of things isn't magic.  We're not, like our faces, our size or those other things that made others align with us in grade five, instantly blessed with an ability to run D&D or do anything likewise difficult.  D&D is not a board game, it can't be "won" with die rolls.  It can't be succeeded at just because a player has all 18 stats (or whatever the damn measurement is these days), nor is a player a failure if their stats are all crummy.  Stats don't matter.  Class, race, builds... they don't matter, not if the game is run at the capacity that it allows.  The "optimised" character only works in a campaign that is itself designed to make this sort of optimisation relevant.  If the player is stupid enough to evoke the ire of an entire town by their stupid play, they're going to die or be helplessly imprisoned no matter what their optimisation.  It really depends on how soft-hearted the dungeon master is... which can be extended just as easily to players with bad builds as with good ones.

D&D is a game of choices made and actions taken, and does not function like a video game.  In a video game, it's possible to power up the character to make it undefeatable; but in D&D, the most powerful combat-ready character can be undone by circumstance, in a twink, because unlike a video game, the question can be asked, "How would you beat him?" "With a stick, when he slept."

The "build" relies on me playing the player's game, and that's not what I play.  The player plays my game.

But competency in D&D is seen as something anathema to the game, because it's a "collaborative" game, which has come to mean that if some force is to bend, it must be the DM, as the DM is the enforcer of competency by assigning the world's parameters.  We define how the world breaths, changes and responds, and how predictable that is... and if this definition sets a standard upon play, demanding that we're not all playing Candyland, that some of us aren't going to cross the finish line, because there are no rolls, there's just good choices — then the modern implied contract of "collaborative" play is contravened.

This version of "collaboration," however, as I explained with my last post, is based on the premise that "everyone gets to play," not on the premise of "I am taking part in something larger than myself."  The latter is unselfish. The former, selfish.  I am not the arbiter of individual selfishness, but the rewarder of cooperation.  I was raised on Sesame Street, not Wall Street.

The proper view of collaboration, the one learned through sports, the education of sports, drama, camping trips, kitchen lines and so on, is one of service.  The service to others.  Not the hanging of ornaments on ourselves, but the process of designing ourselves better to SERVE OTHER PEOPLE.  D&D, run by a company, a selfish, obnoxious company so toxic that when other toy companies speak of it, the acidicity is rampant, has done all it can to obliterate this.  As such, competency has evaporated.

If the reader can remember, from this post, back when dinosaurs walked the earth, when I said that as children we began to sort ourselves out through those various activities that we found we wanted to become competent in, I did not say at that time that D&D has become the very last stop on that road.  That was not always the case.  Once upon a time, when I was a boy, and my pet dunkleostus used to sit at my feet while I ran, one had to know things to play.  Things like physics, reason, problem solving, a bit of history, strategy and such.  Not with intense, adult-like capacity, but some knowledge had to be had.  This is no longer the case.

Presently, D&D has become the last refuge for the incompetent.  Those who, as said before, resent any expectation of having to improve any part of themselves, who feel that success ought not to rest upon ability, and not even upon luck, but upon a sort of self-assured guarantee that it's the DM's responsibility to provide — in part because the player has had the graciousness to show up, like a monarch entering the squalid hovel of the DM's world, but in much larger part because nowadays the whole thing has been washed with social responsibility and tolerance.  How dare I, as a scum DM, deign to say a halfling can't climb up a 6 ft. man and stab him in the neck with impunity?  What sort of anti-social monster am I, if I don't just accept that as a FACT, as something short people are OBVIOUSLY unable to do, despite the fact that it's never been done, not even in a faked wrestling match between a short person and Andre the fucking Giant.  Wait, I'm wrong.  It's been done with computer imaging.

As such, to be a dungeon master, competence isn't necessary either.  I need only enable my players in whatever they want to do.  The difficulty, though, lies in that it's not very much fun to be a DM these days.  Which leads them to ask on Reddit and elsewhere, "I don't understand what a story is, or how I'm supposed to present one, but it hasn't occurred to me to learn anything about anything yet, so I'm asking the internet for answers."

That's the problem.  What's the solution?

One thing that makes going back to original D&D is simply the breathable air it offers, in how it defines the DM's role vs. that of the players.  It's described as a game, not as a social responsibility.  The language assumes the DM's assumption of responsibility, not as an arbiter of the player's dreams, but as a gatekeeper of competence and success.  The language defacto states that if the players cannot act effectively in accordance with the rules, the rules dictate that the player's character should die, then and there, as a matter of course.  This is the same game structure that says, if you run out of money in Monopoly, you lose.  There's no system for taking another $1,500 of the bank so you can keep going (though there were those who tried it), there's no system for cheating (and yet, again, there were always those ready to slip a $500 bill when no one was watching — and whoa, didn't that end in violence?).

D&D was meant to act likewise.  Because it was a game.  And all games function this way.

We called it cheating, but in modern parlance, and to better define the problem, we can call it the removal of unearned outcomes.  Where the rules serve the integrity of the game world rather than the emotional validation of the player.  This soccer game does not exist to emotionally validate you, Jeremy.  Please leave.  That's not the language we use, but that's what we say.  This isn't about YOU.  This is about us.  Modern D&D has lost that, utterly.  Old school D&D still has it.

But the flip side of this is more important.  We don't pay to see a musician who is playing their instrument becuase it emotionally validates them, but because they've earned competency through sweat, tedium, repetition and discipline, and we recognise that when we see it.  We call it talent, but at some point, talent was only enough to get them started.  It wasn't talent that gave the lyrics of Jackson Browne or Billy Joel an insight that we continue to carry with us.  It's not talent that invests some performers with the capacity to keep playing and touring decade after decade, letting us see them now though they had their hey-day in a world two generations ago.  It's not our tolerance, our open-mindedness, that gives their work teeth.  It is that they humbled themselves before something they did not know how to do once upon a time, only to crawl forward in pain learning how to master it.  They didn't expect instant results, they didn't expect others to forgive them incompetency, they knew it would cost and they paid the price.  And for that, they've earned our respect in a way that doesn't require our concession of it.

Even when we hate them, we can't deny this of them.

I am not a fan of Lady Gaga.  I hate the fucking pretense of the name, I hate her politics, I hate the performative way she had of getting herself into the spotlight, I hate the smug shittiness of her face, I'm not particularly moved my her music and I'd rather not be in a room with her.

But if I was, she'd know none of this, because I wouldn't say it.  Because despite the rest, I respect her.

There are many people who can't carry those two thoughts in their head. They dream of the day when they'll see the famous person they hate in person and have the opportunity to scream hatred at them.  It's that sense of "I never get Australia" that pervades their thinking and makes them what they are. They don't respect investment because they don't know what investment is.  They never commit it.  And I'm choosing that word because "commit" is the key.  My teachers tried to correct me because they saw writing as something I "did."  They didn't see it as something I committed to; that I wasn't going to quit at just because I was bad at it.  And this is key to being a dungeon master.  Because if we can't commit do it, even when we're bad at it, we shouldn't be doing it.

To "fail" doesn't make us "failures."  The latter are those who cease to commit.  And as I've written a post about why failing doesn't teach us anything, I'm avoid saying that we should just keep trying.  Instead, I'll argue that what we should do is to commit ourselves to learning what's wrong with our style and ideals of the game, and ask questions about what do to about it.  We have to be able to look inwardly and ask, "what isn't working," so we can ask others, or seek material knowledge, with the intent of "what would make this thing that isn't working work?"

That's all I've ever done with this blog.  Right now, I'm saying that if you're emotionally validating their players, if you're giving them anything, and I mean a single die roll in their favour, that is unearned, then your game isn't working because your precepts of commitment, competency and value are all wrong.  You've convinced yourself, somewhere down the line, that everyone deserves to succeed, even just a little bit, and you've placed yourself as an arbiter of that success.

But for everything you're giving them that's unearned, you are stealing their soul.  No, that's not pithy. That's the fact of it.  You're stealing their chance to make themselves better, by lowering the bar they have to cross to make them BE better.  You're arbitrarily contributing to the ruination of your life as you cripple their ability to rise to a challenge, whether that challenge is in this game, their work life, their personal relationships, even the way they eventually face their old age.  And you're patting yourself on the back as you weaken them as people.

And as you smugly laugh this accusation off, stop for a moment and ask, who weakened you?  Which uncle, parent, older sibling, friend in school, teacher, coach, you name it, gave you a free pass in whatever institutionalised setting you were a prisoner in, that lowered your standards of behaviour, who made the success a dirty word for you, that crippled your ability to improve yourself, thus investing you with this fucking need to play fucking god with someone else's fucking emotional state?  Take a moment and find the answer to that question.  Because that answer will tell you who exactly it was that made you an asshole.

I'm guessing you already know.

How to Not Be You

The circumstance of giving advice to people carries with it a rather obvious constraint — that being, the advice won't be taken. Some see this as a "problem," for they see it as trying to help, only to have help rebuffed, since it's not wanted. But this is only the case if the help-giver is invested, for whatever reason, in the help-refuser acting in a manner that improves the lives of both, and others besides, in an effort to belay the unpleasant alternative.

For example, I want my brother to stop drinking, because it's causing issues for his children, me, my wife, my children and who knows how many others besides — so it would be really great if he could just shape up, take some good advice, adjust himself and save everyone a lot of grief. Or else some of us are going to have to stop allowing him to come around, we're going to stop taking his calls, and in essence, my brother must become dead to us. Which we don't want. This is a very common situation for millions of people, particularly with family members, but it reaches to other things besides.

Thankfully, it's not what's happening here.  I am not invested in anyone taking my advice here.  I am invested in writing it out as wisdom, first that those who already agree with me will have better language in describing it to others and to themselves, and in being responsible to the race, as I see it, where it comes to expanding the general knowledge of the zeitgeist.  I'm not going to say anything that hasn't been said before, but perhaps I might say it better, cleaner, without much of the politicisation that tends to pollute these things.  I won't use jargon.  I won't say that someone who wants to be a better player needs to decolonise their thinking or adopt a stronger personalised hierarchy or think with a greater critical intersectionality.  My approach, to discuss these things in plain English, because I don't care about anyone's feelings, seems more practical to me in achieving this communicative goal.

If we choose to categorise people, there are thousands of models we might employ, but here I wish to subdivide people usefully into three groups.  There are those, like me, who are willing to accept that striving to learn is an obvious, effective, responsible life choice, one that increases one's potential, one's usefulness to society, one's income, one's capacity to care and look after others, and a host of other self-evident benefits.  Unlike some who might respond negatively to the last post, which argues nothing more strenuous than getting off your ass and suggesting you might read books, those in the "yes, of course we want to learn" group merely smile and note in their minds how stupid it would be to do otherwise.  This group, incidentally, includes all the doctors, lawyers, researchers, engineers and developers in the world, that being all the people who make the world, the value of which would seem to be self-evident... though it isn't to some fucking people.  Plain language.

The second group includes most of those who have stopped reading at the above paragraph, who are disgruntled or angered by the above, who hate it when people say things like, "if you don't read, you're not relevant."  This second group of people divide into those who are lucky enough right now to have good paying jobs, thus justifying their privilege to be ignorant, and those not so lucky, who use their misfortune as a crutch and an argument to say, "I'm not a doctor because no one ever gave me a chance," despite the presence of free-for-use public libraries and a legal system that disallows their employment lasting longer than 8 hours a day.  Of course, many of these people rush out and get a second job, arguing that one job won't cover their rent and all the other things they need to purchase, in part because they want too many things and in part because they don't or won't pay for birth control, or were even more unlucky in that they USED birth control and still found themselves in their dire circumstance.  I do feel for such people, because, as they argue, they're too tired to get an education.  I for one don't want to blame anyone for their exhaustion, if that exhaustion really is the reason they won't read a book.  But there remains one way out of their hell, and that is an education, so that a better job ceases to be a matter of luck and becomes instead a matter of inevitability.

All the other people in the second group, who don't have four children or more to look after, who have reliable family members, who have a reliable life partner, who spend your evenings at the bar, who purchase drugs, who spend money on miniatures instead of books, or on splatbooks instead of educational books, I have no pity.  You have disposable income, you have free time, and you're choosing to be ignorant.  That's on you, not on your lack of opportunity.

The third group, not reading this now because they're too busy, are those that prey on the second group.  They prey on you because you're easy pickings.  You're not educated enough to protect yourself and you're convinced there's a short cut. You're own sense of victimhood, that you're not a professional earning in the high five figures or low six is the fault of society, your upbringing, your situation, your whatever, makes you easy pickings for this third group.  And they are more than willing to sell your victimhood, something you already have, at a price that you'll pay in the hopes they're selling something else.  That's just how ignorant you are.  And maybe, if you don't want to learn how to do something useful, you might learn how to be a predator yourself; but I don't it.  You haven't the sand for that.  You might think I'm the asshole here... but your kind, the second kind here, you're far more likely to suffer at the hands of these predators than you ever would at my hands.  Because I'm not a predator.  You can tell, because this attack is free.  You can see my jaws and they're way over here.  With the kind of predators hunting your type?  You'll feel the jaws before you see them.

My kind of person... we know what they are before they open their mouths.  It's in their faces.  Just look at that shit-fuck Tim Robbins.  Why would you ever trust someone like that?

Well... if you're still with me... 

This post is still fundamentally about being a better dungeon master, but there's no way to divide that ideal from a hundred other better things you'll become in the process.  Inevitably, being a better dungeon master is a by-product, and for many, the other things you should do in order to become better at managing people and a game table might be the impetus that makes you drop role-playing altogether... which I see as perfectly natural and even laudable.  Not because D&D isn't a bad game, or that people shouldn't play it, but because in the grand scheme of things it really isn't as important as what else we might do with our time.

At the end of the last post, I suggested that there were three other things necessary to lift yourself as a DM other than addressing your self-education.  The first of these is, as Lucy puts in, involvement. I say that with the sharp, impatient clarity that Lucy is known for — part scolding, part selfless — as she barks the truth at people not ready for it.  And like Charlie Brown, it's time you hauled your ass off your sofa and became part of something that isn't about you.

This demands that you remove yourself from what are primarily just your goals and act in tandem with others to achieve goals that everyone in the group seeks.  Play sports, where everyone, not just you, wants to win.  Volunteer, where the people at the centre are those being helped or supported, not you.  Run, hike, travel with other people, where the well-being of every person is at stake, not just your well-being.  Look after children, where their needs matter more than yours.  Help someone else get elected.  Learn how to function around others who won't see your personal contribution as the end-all and be-all of their goals.  Others who won't hesitate to toss you on your ear if you're selfish, uncommitted, discordant or unhelpful.  Learn how not to derail, how not to be performative, how not to assume that the reason for your being here is to satisfy your personal need for attention.  Join, shut the fuck up, and when work is wanted, do that work silently, cheerfully and in the same way as the others around you.

This is your only chance at becoming a better person.   Because if you only know how to read books, you'll never know how to apply what you've learned, without this.  Yes, I'm saying, join the human race.

And what will happen?

To begin with, you'll learn when to hold yourself back and not act until the right moment.  You'll find that your impulses are disruptive and inappropriate, whereas you need to be aware of the rhythm, needs and direction of the group.  You may know what's needed or what to say, but if it's not said at the right time, then you won't be heard and your great insight won't be appreciated.  In D&D, this is the space between knowing something and choosing when to say it; as a DM, this is a constant.  You may have prepared a rich detail in a setting, or a context twist, but if you deliver it too early, at the wrong time, or because you can't restrain yourself, then the effectiveness of your idea is going to face-plant; and if you don't realise why, because you have no comprehension of your impulses, then you'll assume it's because you're a bad DM, not because you fucked up a perfectly excellent moment because you have no self-control.  This sort of timing also separates someone who participates from the player that disrupts constantly.  Players who speak entirely from impulse, who don't wait and listen, who aren't aware of other players, are the plague of D&D campaigns.  They can't be restrained because they never learned how to function around others.  They don't participate in any group activity, and never have, except D&D, which only enables their selfish, reflexive impulses.

Group activities, particularly those that aren't recreational in function, underscore the importance of listening when it's not our turn to speak.  If we're participating in a soup kitchen, if we're a counsellor at a kid's camp, if we're an assistant coach for a hockey team, learning to comprehend the emotional shifts, listening is necessary to understand the reasoning of others, especially in interpreting their emotional state, their priorities and their intentions.  As a group, these things have to be in alignment; we must all have the SAME priorities and the SAME interpretations, or else its chaos, the food is late, the kids learn things they shouldn't and the team loses, not just all the time but badly.  Not every team is great, but if the kids pull together, if they get a chance to comprehend nature, if the visitors arrive and find the food hot and waiting for them, it provides a sense of accomplishment and the value of things that sustains them all their lives.

Applying this to D&D, it's easy to see why it matters if the players help each other, and are concerned for each other's welfare, and agree on the rules, and perceive the alignment of their goals as something they all want, together.  Again and again, disasterously, D&D players who fail to grasp these concepts ruin game play, they participate in time-wasting performative role-play that accomplishes nothing for others, they don't care what others feel and they don't sense the loss that others experience.  Seven supportive, team-minded players working together is easy to run as a DM.  Three self-minded validation-seeking monsters can successfully accomplish absolutely nothing in four hours of play.

From this, we can see the problem at once.  Not having learned to "play well with others," or even work together, something that many of us learned playing baseball, hockey or football; or which we learned on long canoe trips through semi-wild areas, where actual drowning and other injuries was completely possible; or which we learned through contributing our time to voluntary activities like church choirs, scouts, group fishing trips, debate clubs, drama... whatever... we don't know how to play D&D together and we don't know how to care about others while we're doing it.  And this is fundamentally the problem with the way this game is played, because it's not a video game where a computer keeps track of our performance, it's a social activity where human perception and human response matter more than how many experience we get or how many times we can invoke the rule of cool.  D&D does not function well in the spirit of "what can I get away with," because that fucks over the ability of others to get away with things.  In any group activity, volunteer or paid, "what can I get away with" is what gets us turfed and fired.  It is not, as in the case of D&D, the thing that gets canonised IN THE FUCKING RULE BOOK of how to play.

I have a lot of ground to cover, so I'm going to cease connecting this with D&D and just outline what we learn from participating in group activities... not because the point hasn't been made, but because I feel that we really should know what we're not obtaining when we play D&D in the way that's become normalised.

When we participate in a group activity — and here I'll use a soup kitchen as an example because I worked in one for a time, associated with paid-for cooking work that I did off-and-on for twenty years — we learn how labour is divided.  We learn where to stand, how to carry our end, how to watch others in a state of hurry so as to know when to move and how to do so safely, in an environment filled with sharp knives, vats of literally boiling oil, very hot surfaces and a slippery floor.  And fire.  Let's not forget that there's fire.  All this is done while dishing out food for people down on their luck, who need more than the food, they need patience and good will and kindness and reassurance that we are glad to be doing this FOR THEM, which is something that can't be faked.  Anyone who tries to fake it, for whatever reason because they want to be there for some other reason, is easily detected by those who are down on their luck; they can see, plainly, the little bit of contempt in the eye, the tone of reluctance to talk, the dismissiveness as a server slops soup into their bowl — and because the down and out are often at the end of their rope, and in a state of stress, they won't hesitate to say, "What the fuck is your problem" loud enough for the whole kitchen and dining hall to hear.

The key is to see the patron being as much a part of the team as those that make the food, so that when one of them cuts into us, we can absorb their bitterness and impatience not as a personal attack, but as a response to something that is larger than all of us — the plain, fundamental cruelty of life.  I've seen the server who shot right back, starting the war of words, accomplishing nothing; and I've seen the server who wilted, retreating from the line, letting someone else take over.  Me, ever the pit bull, I don't wilt; but I have starved, I have in my youth visited a soup line on the other side, and I'm more apt to make a joke, to self-deprecate, because what's going on here is more important than, say, this post being misunderstood, which would cause me to wage a blistering war against the misunderstander.  It's a question of what matters vs. what really matters.  If a player repeatedly disrupts a campaign, I'll storm about that.  But if a player loses a treasured character and responds with anger and fury, I'll feel none of that pitbull, because through group activities and through seeing people under stress, it's understandable that sometimes, we have to blow.  Working in a soup kitchen has it's upside; if you turn to one of the nuns — I worked at St. Anne's Catholic Church in the 1990s, here in Calgary — and say, "I'm going to go sit down with that guy for a bit," they won't care that you walk away from your "duties," because there's a higher duty.  And that, too, is something that the D&D community has totally failed to uncover.

We have, for years, completely failed to understand the meaning of "collaborative" where it comes to this sort of activity.  It doesn't mean either that we're "doing" or "making" things together, it's that we don't see ourselves as the end-all and be-all of the moment-to-moment participation as it's ongoing.  We're not concerned with our personal failure, our choosing the wrong spell, our attacking the wrong enemy... or even messing up and losing the respect of our friends or letting them down.  Because it's not about OUR performance, where what WE do, and what WE lose or gain, that matters here.  It's that others in our team comprehend that we've done the best we could, and that whether or not we fucked up, it won't change their opinion of us.  If our largest concern is what others think of us, then it's still ourselves that we're concerned with; it's still a perception of ME and THEM.  Which is not the ideal. The ideal is that we can say, "Sorry guys, wrong spell," and know before they do that everyone around the table will smile and say, "Fuhgeddaboudit."

There's a pervasive belief in the community that others shouldn't tell you how to run your character... and this, too, is a ME and THEM position.  As though the mere fact of someone saying "do that spell" is the same as "I am running Jim's character and he's using this spell," and the DM automatically saying, "Right.  Jim, your character is using this spell."

Nothing like that is happening.  Dave is saying, "Jim, do that spell" and Jim is absolutely, unquestionably free to say, "nah, I don't think so."  But more importantly, a collaborative ideal is for Jim to think, "Hm, maybe that's a good idea," and give credence to Dave's suggestion, and treat it as what it ought to be... a collaborative effort of players working together to make the most of their opportunities.  It's not personal, unless we're so wrapped up in our person that we can't bear the idea that someone else at the table thought of it before we did.

If the leader in a soup kitchen says, "give them a little less than you are," it's not her personal opinion, nor is it an attack on your judgment. It's a recognition that we have only so much soup, and there are this number of people it must be shared around, and your awareness of this, being here just a few times, doesn't match hers, because she's been doing this for ten years.  But people will take it as a judgment.  They will swear under their breath, they will miss the point, they will make it about themselves and they will make themselves untenable as a volunteer.  There's just nothing like watching a volunteer being fired... it is the strangest scene there is, to think that there are others who won't let you work there for FREE, because you're not worth the wage they're paying.

Effective collaboration means picking up the rhythm, not because there's a profit to be made, but because other people want to move faster than you do.  Collaboration under pressure means that no, there isn't time for you to waffle on about your family in Volhynia while we're buying equipment for the dungeon, because the rest of us want to get at it.  At the same time, it sometimes means sitting and waiting for the others to get done, because they're doing something important, and just because you're surer or more definite about what you want doesn't give you a special license to bark at others to hurry up.  Collaboration means spending a lot of time showing up when you don't want to.  It means finishing things we didn't start, we don't understand, we don't agree with and which we don't want to finish.  It means stepping aside, not being the first person in, when the best first person is someone else; and not griping about it, not saying a word, just shoving that doubt or dissatisfaction down your own throat, because it shouldn't be said in this context.  Save it for when you go home and tell your fridge.

These are all a part of the human group experience... and like book larnin', if you can't get on board this train, you haven't any right to get to this destination.  Oh, you can play D&D, in the shitty way it's usually played, but if you want to be any good at it, if you want to pick up your game, if you want to acquire the skills that will make you a really terrific DM, then you've got to immerse yourself in cultures where your importance and your feelings don't matter more than those of everyone else.  And you've got to do it in a way where others want you there; it's not enough if they just tolerate you.  A lot of people in the world, those who are happy for at least another body they don't have to pay for, will put up with some of your shit... but if that's what you're counting on, you're not learning anything, are you?

If you want to advance past this milestone, you have to learn how to not be you.