Dungeons & Dragons White Box 09

Capture of Non-Player Monsters: Morale dice can cause a man or intelligent monster to attempt to surrender or become subdued. When this happens an offer of service can be made (assuming that communication is possible) as outlined above. Subdued monsters will obey for a time without need to check their reactions, and such monsters are salable (see Vol. II).

It's relevant how so little time was taken with large concepts like alignment or changing character class, but this framing of monsters working with players obtains so much attention. I do not wish to speculate further as to why. While the rule above is clear, I know of very few examples from human history in which foreign human soldiers, surrendering themselves, would be asked, "Hey, would you like to join our army?"

Or, if you prefer, to put that in D&D terms, having slaughtered the orc's friends and family, when he attempts to surrender the party says, "Hey, you have two options: we can either kill you now, but we're rather give you an opportunity to kill all of us in our sleep — we're offering 100 g.p. if you take the latter. What'ya say?"

But the logic of the wargame context is self-evident: we've cornered the monster, reduced it, and now, rather than die, it agrees to join our side... like a sort of RPG dodgeball. Where, in the fashion of none of these creatures having a mind, works fine, because it doesn't matter. But when we impose a psychological presence, one that can make up its mind to surrender or die, the structure reads like a bad farce.

As a set of rules for this new game they're excited about, they can't pick a lane. The result isn't just clumsy on both accounts, now and then it produces situations like the above.

Loyalty of Non-Player Characters (Including Monsters): Men, dwarves and elves will serve as retainers with relative loyalty so long as they receive their pay regularly, are treated fairly, are not continually exposed to extra-hazardous duty, and receive bonuses when they are taking part in some dangerous venture. Judgement (sic) of this matter is perforce subjective on the part of the campaign referee, but there is a simple guideline: When one or more of such characters are taken into service a loyalty check is made by rolling three-six-sided dice. Adjustments are made for charisma and initial payments for service, and the loyalty of the character(s) noted by the referee. (The player will not have any knowledge of what it is without some method of reading minds).

I certainly played this table for some years, because it reappears in the original DMG; in every way it looks like a practical, reasonable, even doable method of managing the effective loyalty of those under your command. It made sense that ideas like this would obtain some fruition and even some durability, because it does address a problem that is more or less insolvable at the game level: how much can you really trust characters who have both personalities and opportunity to abandon you, stab you in the back or otherwise fail to carry out your orders? We know with certainty that not every hireling will be steadfastly loyal, respectful and competent, so... that has to be managed somehow.

It's a crossroads between the two schizophrenic elements of the game's design: it manages the movement of multiple troops and it burshes up against the uncertainties of narrative instability, assuring the players that no matter how well they organise themselves, they cannot control every part of the world. The fear of being stabbed in the night is real, and any one of our subordinates might have that in their dark little hearts. It's a fear that every monarch and quite a few lovers have had. So, do we just call it a "good rule" and move on?  Is that what we have here?

To begin with, it is "perforce subjective," meaning that none of this is actually defined in any objective or mechanical way... which is why I had to give it up for my game. It's just too darned random. After a while, I saw it as an unnecessary and distracting way of creating "drama" for the players that really amounted to nothing good in game terms, so I dropped it. Think of it like instituting a rule in Monopoly where you roll a d20 with the 2d6, and the d20 does nothing unless you roll a "1."  If you do roll a 1, your piece "gets the flu." Nothing really happens, you still collect rent, you just don't "go out" for that turn. You stay where you are and maybe have to pay rent in that same spot again, because you're "staying another night."

At first, that seems like, "Hey, kinda cool, mixes things up." But after awhile it's more like, "This keeps happening. Can we stop using this rule now?"

The friction of disloyalty created here has no solution, no way to fence it off, and as a campaign addition, it's just unwanted noise. Friendly tip: if a rule does little other than make the players groan and say, "Not again," get rid of it. It's not carrying the water you think it is. But that's not the fault of the designers in this case. It's just not that great an idea for something I've never seen a good idea for. It's a phantom of realism that I don't think a random die roll can deliver.

Wouldn't it be interesting if you could just decide in Monopoly to stop on any property square and then just "live there" as long as you want, without being required to leave, as long as you paid rent every turn, or as long as it was your property? Obviously, the game would stop when everyone stopped on their own property and refused to move. I also always thought it would be interesting to play Monopoly with 100 "NPCs" who move around the board and pay rent to the "owners," pretty much assuring the owners never run out of money. More real that way. Just a thought.

I bring it up because it exposes the underlying absurdity of how a lot of games have to abstract reality in order to make them into "games." Monopoly works only because everyone's forced to keep moving — its economy depends on circulation, not realism. The moment players are allowed to behave like real landlords or tenants, the system collapses into stasis. "NPC Monopoly" makes the collapse visible: a world that looks more realistic but immediately stops being a game. The dice and the rules are there to force artificial scarcity and risk, otherwise the loop of rent and ownership just perpetuates itself indefinitely.

It's the same tension D&D never resolved. The game keeps pretending its simulated world has natural rules and realism, but what keeps it alive isn’t realism — it's the arbitrary mechanics that keep players moving, questing, rolling. The moment you actually model how life or economics really works, the game stops being a game and becomes sociology. Or a way to organise improvisational theatrical performance.

Non-player characters and men-at-arms will have to make morale checks (using the above reaction table or "Chainmail") whenever a highly dangerous or unnerving situation arises. Poor morale will mean that those in question will not perform as expected.

Periodic re-checks of loyalty should be made. Length of service, rewards, etc. will bring additional pluses. Poor treatment will bring minuses.

I wanted to separate this from the above because although the "periodic re-checks" are something I've just deconstructed, it's worth noting that length of service IS a way to mitigate the irritation of the loyalty table. I do feel it should be compressed, however — that a successful roll should effective double or triple the degree of loyalty the NPC gives. And this shouldn't be kept secret: it should be expressed to the player honestly, with the recognition that we can tell, quite a lot of the time, from the way people act, look, speak to us, perform their work, arrive on time, remain with us in times of trouble and so on, whether or not they're loyal.

Moreover, while we live in the 21st century, with its multiplicity of distractions and opportunities, "loyalty" for us is a very different kettle of fish for what it was in medieval times. We can quit a job and get another within a week. We can journey across the country to where there are jobs. We don't sleep in the boss's company, we're not with the boss 80 hours a week. We can talk to friends on the phone to release stress or bitch about our boss. NONE of those options is available to the 14th century hireling. There's nowhere to go, there's no means to get there, we live cheek and jowl with others who also work for our boss and there's literally no way for us to eat if we lose this job. Under these conditions, "loyalty" holds a far greater importance than our present day experience. IF an employee lasts for three months, and IF they're fed and not ill-treated, there's no rational reason why they should ever want to leave. It's not like "desertion," the threat on the table, carries the practicality for them that it does for us.

The exception is the "highly dangerous or unnerving situation" described above. It makes sense that during an actual confrontation with death, a legitimate fear will probably manifest — that's hormonal, however, not intellectual. We don't desert in the moment of making a morale check because we suddenly lose faith in the commander. If we didn't have faith in the commander, we leave the night before, the week before, even the month before the battle. Not "in" the situation, when it's too late to measure our loyalty, but when the situation gives a whiff that it might happen. The morale check "in" the situation is one of two types: a lack of personal belief in one's competence, or if you prefer, cowardice, where you go to the battle thinking you'll handle it and then you can't. That's pretty much a first-time thing. After that, cowards know they're cowards and after that they run before the battle starts.

The other is a crisis of faith, and I don't mean in the commander. Persons of that day and age really did believe they were going to heaven. It wasn't something they question. Death, for many, really was a release, one that gave them the temper to go ahead and fight, because it was essentially a win-win situation for them. Succeed or get release. Comforting.

But if the coward on your left or the one on your right suddenly breaks and runs for the hills, then another does, you don't know they're a "coward." You might think, "they know something I don't." Whereupon your faith is tested. And maybe you hear your commander shout to stand fast, but maybe you don't... battlefields are very loud. Worse, at the moment just before the hit happens, when two forces collide, there's a moment of doubt that occurs that tells you, "this is it, we're going to die"... which is fine if you're ready to die, if you believe in the win-win. If you don't, and you do break, that won't just get you killed (you're easier to bring down if you're back is to us) but it gets your mates killed to, because now the enemy can pour through your line like a seive. Picture that scene from Gondor in Lord of the Rings, when the Rohan cavalry hits, and orcs break before the hit happens. In melee, that's death for the side that breaks first. That first two seconds of a battle can win or lose the whole thing in one fell swoop.

None of this has anything to do with the liege, not in that moment. The contrary is marketing: Napoleon's men held them off at Borodino because of Napoleon. In reality, they held them off at Borodino because things just happened that way. Which makes a much less interesting story. Better to tell the one about the guard being thrown in and Napoleon asking who'll he'll fight with tomorrow. Stories make these things less like what a battle is really like — a chaotic, irrational mess, where the technology didn't permit the instant communication we have now, which still doesn't fully work to keep the pervasive bedlam, madness and confusion that IS taking place. To imagine that anyone inside that loves anyone except the one next to them is absurd... yet we've been told that by newspapers for 400 years and people want to believe it.

Morale makes complete sense for role-playing. A morale modifier based on someone not present doesn't. 'Course, we have to ask ourselves... is this a rule to be gotten rid of because it aspires to be realistic?  Or should it be embraced because it isn't real, like the discussion about Monopoly above? Which one, in your opinion, makes a better game?

Relatives: The referee may allow players to designate one relative of his character to inherit his possessions if for any reason the participant unexpectedly disappears, with or without "death" being positively established, for a period of one game month, let us say. At this time the relative would inherit the estate of the character, paying a 10% tax on all goods and monies. The relative must start at the lowest level of the class he opts for, but he will have the advantage of the inheritance.

IF the character returns, he takes possession of his estate once more (referee's option as to willingness of the relative to give it up) but must pay an additional 10% tax in order to regain his own. Optionally the relative may be allowed to stay on as a non-player character in the service of the player-character. Loyalty of the relative in such a circumstance would be at a penalty of from 0 to -6, and he would possibly intrigue to regain control.

Characters without a relative will lose all their possessions should they disappear and not return before whatever period is designated as establishing death.

I must admit, it's an interesting concept. I have had parties divide up the goods of dead party members who actually died during the campaign, but never for a player who simply didn't show up to play again. Presumably, they're not present to hand their things over, they're somewhere in the game world, who knows where... so how would a present player inherit?

But, let's overlook that. I can see this working as a solution for some DMs who have trouble keeping players. We have four people start our campaign; they roll up their characters, buy their equipment, participate. I have a scanner now, so I could simply scan in their characters at the end of the night before they went home. And I could tell them, whoever doesn't show up at the next running, half your cash on hand and your gear will be divided among the players who do show up, unless you designate one player who will get the whole half-share.

Miss two sessions, and the players — or the inheriting character — receive the rest. It is punitive, yes, but give me a moment and I'll explain the deeper logic.

If you put up a sign in a hospital that says, "Wash your hands," you'll get some compliance, but for the most part it ends up being around 60%. But when experiments were done that included a motion sensor that triggered a cheerful voice for those entering the bathroom that said, "Don’t forget to wash your hands!" compliance jumped to above 90%. And even stranger... when the cheerful voice was replaced with Elmo's voice? Compliance jumped still higher.

If your players know that not showing up for a game will mean more than just missing a session, but actual consequences that are, in fact, entirely punitive but NOT real (it's imaginary goods and money, yes?), they'll actually think twice before not showing up. It will be in their heads, "I'm doing more than skipping... I'm making a decision that means I can't go back, right now, when really I'm not sure about that." The willingness to avoid the decision will help bring people to your campaign a second day, because they'd rather commit than lose something. It won't work with everyone, but it will increase your repeat players. Which gives more time for them to consider seriously committing to your game. Creepy, huh?

The rule as written above is, for all that, pretty clumsy. Why, exactly, does a receiving relative have to start at the lowest level of the class opted for? Are we talking about a given player running Charlie, then having Charlie designate Rick as the relative... so that when Charlie retires, Rick can get Charlie's stuff? But if that's the case, then why the line, "if the participant unexpectedly disappears?" I can't make those two things line up. If Alexis, Me, is designated the relative, and I already have a 5th level fighter, Zortan, and I get Charlie's stuff... why does my Zortan have to restart at the lowest level? Or are we saying that the relative has to be a new character... and if so, why?

I'm guessing that the authors are trying to fix a meta-problem — players vanishing without warning — by treating it like an in-world event. They reach for the only structure that exists for absence: death and inheritance. But because they don’t distinguish player absence from character death, they end up writing a legal clause for a metaphysical paradox. The rule reads like someone tried to make a "save file" system before computers existed, and then buried it under pseudo-medieval succession law.

BASIC EQUIPMENT AND COSTS:

It will be necessary for players to equip their characters with various basic items of equipment. Selection of items is strictly up to the players, and Gold Pieces are taken away accordingly (players may sell to one another, of course, and then Gold Pieces would be transferred).

That's... a really strange way to introduce an equipment list, which is what follows. It's like someone narrating capitalism to Martians. Like we don't do that. Just put it in a day to day context: "Selection of things you want is up to you, and money is taken away (from you) accordingly. Your friends may sell you stuff, and then money would be transferred."

Yeah. That's how money works. Did they think we didn't know?

It is the tone of people writing rules who don't know what they're doing, and are grossly overcompensating. Which is why a copyreader might have been a really good idea... again.

In any case, players spend gold (not capitalised, it's not a proper noun) from their starting funds to buy equipment, animals, goods, services and other items.

I'd like to limit my comments on this. There are numerous egregious issues that aren't worth harping upon — how, for example, do I calculate the cost of a pair of shoes from the above, made of calfskin leather and reaching knee high? Or the price of a single-bed room on the waterfront of a second-rate city off the beaten trade routes? Or how much it costs to replace the capstan, the tiller or the main mast of my large merchant ship?

The schizophrenia is back. If the game is a wargame battle simulation, what do I need a large galley for? Where do I store it when we're not using it? If it's a role-playing game, how come I know how much two different holy symbols cost, but there are no clothes or building materials on this list? Why can I buy a merchant ship but not a house? What food am I buying when I buy rations? And how much does food that is not rations cost?

This is almost exactly the same list that's used four years later with the Players Handbook, the list that first inspired these rules of me and my mates back 45 years ago. The priorities are largely dungeon based, but even there... how long is the stake or the spikes? What fibre is the rope made from? How much does a sword weigh? How much is a belt and a scabbard? What is the effective difference between a steel and a silver mirror, and how does that play in the game? Does the lantern incorporate glass? Why is it "chain-type" mail but not "plate-type" mail? These questions came easily to our lips and we weren't university students. I understand why these got a pass in 1974, with the game having no footprint. Why weren't they resolved in 1978?

This is a sore spot with me, and it's enough for this post.

Dungeons & Dragons White Box 08

Before getting into another one of these posts, let me take a moment and explain my agenda. From the beginning it has been my desire to be as positive as possible with these books. To acknowledge that something phenomenal was conceived here, that it was brave to publish it to an unknowing world, that the work itself awoke a gigantic wave of reconsidered game development and to provide some explanation of how or why D&D's gestation matters in the grand scheme of things.

That said, it would be dishonest to grant more value to these works than they actually deserve. I do not feel that Gygax and Arneson were "geniuses," or that they knew thing one about game design, or even that they had the foresight to seek out people — editors, game designers, persons with some publishing experience or even a credible outsider who could read this content and simply say, "what are you trying to say here?" It's more than clear they did not consider any of that to be needful. It is equally clear that they were confused about what the game they were designing was supposed to be. While plainly designing aspects of a tabletop wargame of organised units opposing one another, they confusedly and repeatedly depart from the model to talk about "character roles" without delineating what these are, how they're supposed to be employed in game, how the characteristics of these roles apply to game play and so on. Thus the content that sparks what I consider to be "the greatest game ever" is a disastrous misdirected hodge-podge of hastily collected half-described rules and, in many cases, complete nonsense, masquerading as a "game product." It's clear the idea itself was so brilliant that it was able to overcome these shortcomings... but these same shortcomings continue to saddle this brilliant idea with detritus that has, now in 2025, practically made the game unplayable for most people, even as they're trying to play it.

No, these guys were not geniuses. They were people of above-average intelligence, around 12, whom fortune favoured.

This not true because I say it is. This is true because any educated adult who does not self identify as a "game lover," who had never heard of D&D, who was asked to judge the practical value of this writing on its merits alone, would throw it in the trash before getting as far as we have with this post. And that is something that is not only true, but such a sore point with the "community" that they refuse to acknowledge the reality of it.

I'm not, however, trying to burn this text down. I am a "game lover" and I have heard of D&D, and as the tag line of this blog says, I love it. So I'm able to keep going. But I am not blind, I'm not a fool, I'm not ignorant, I am educated, and I've worked in the publishing industry for a long, long time. The writing of this material is bad. Not marginally bad, not sort of bad, not bad-but-fine, but just plain excrementally bad.

So let's talk some over.

What's funny is that I actually remember this table. I did play this version of this game for about 6 weeks, perhaps a little more, as I can't remember when exactly in the Fall that Shane moved us to AD&D. It looks cluttered but it's actually pretty simple; there's really only two lines that are likely to count for most players: that constitution gives you +1 per hit die, and a dex about 12 gives you +1 to hit. Those aren't really clear in the text, but my DM explained them to me so I never really needed the above. It's funny that strength isn't here; or that the bonuses are assigned for lower numbers than AD&D.

I'll be honest, I don't have a clue what "adversity" or "survival" means here. I don't remember it coming up in game; it's not described here. A search of all three books (I have a pdf copy) shows that the word "adversity" appears no where else in any book other than here. "Survival" is explained on page 6 of the third book, under "Tricks and Traps," where it functions as a saving throw. All other references to survival occur in relationship to the Outdoor Survival game and board, which we can leave aside for the present.

LANGUAGES: The "common tongue" spoken throughout the "continent" is known by most humans. All other creatures and monsters which can speak have their own language, although some (20%) also know the common one. Law, Chaos and Neutrality also have common languages spoken by each respectively. One can attempt to communicate through the common tongue, language particular to a creature class, or one of the divisional languages (law, etc.). While not understanding the language, creatures who speak a divisional tongue will recognize a hostile one and attack. Characters with an Intelligence above 10 may learn additional languages, one language for every point above 10 intelligence factors. Thus, a man with an intelligence level of 15 could speak 7 languages, i.e. the common tongue, his divisional language, and 5 creature languages. Of course, Magic-Users' spells and some magic items will enable the speaking and understanding of languages.

A fairly decent rundown on the languages that are used, can be used and can be had by members of the party. The use of language has been a central part of D&D rulemaking since, usually managed through credible tables that give the characters plenty of options, while provides a worldbuilding structure that addresses the probability that not everyone in the game world would speak the same language.

One little thing. How exactly does a DM incorporate a language that the actual human players at the table don't speak, in such a manner that some of the players, say those who speak "elvish," are able to communicate and learn things from the DM, or each other, without those members of the party who do not speak elvish not also learning those things?

Perhaps some truly dedicated party actually has three or four players who can speak the elvish language that's available for learning online. That is, however, just one language. The DM can't really run conversations in the multiplicity of available languages the players have... which means, essentially, we have to say something like, "The orcs, speaking in orcish, convey such and such and tell you these things." Which, now, everyone at the game table knows, whether or not their characters can speak orcish. We just told them.

We can ask the players to leave the room who don't speak orcish, but then when they re-enter, unless members of the party are simply dicks, the first thing they'll say is, "The orcs told us this" and give an accurate account. Thus obliviating the need to have the other players leave. If they don't give an accurate account, then the value of the rule is to drive wedges between the party, which is really what the whole language-communication disability does for the real planet Earth, and not in a good way.

So the game rule here is either pointless or it institutes the very worst qualities of language, in that it contributes to disagreement and misunderstandings. Not great for a group-based activity.

The irony is that it's meant to be a worldbuilding tool. In reality, its best use is when none of the party speak orcish, which ensures no communication is possible at all, so there's every justification to kill them regardless. Which, again, was the historic rationalisation adopted by every adventurer that ventured to every continent or who became a stranger in a strange land. It's why in books, "enlightened people," such as the residents of Shangri-la, which is found in the high Himalayas, of course speak English... because there's no adventure if there's no communication. There's just enter, kill, leave. Because without a universal language, that's really all you can do.

In the present, we have a perception of language as a cultural identity; that existed in 1973-4 as well, for these writers. This was the age when Esperanto was a course in universities, when the U.N. experiment with hundreds and hundreds of translators between foreigners seemed a really cool thing. We have the perception that of course people should be allowed to retain their language, that other languages should be protected, that the manner in which we communicate in other languages is enlightening and therefore deserves to be protected. But D&D does not take place in this world. It takes place in the medieval world, one which these books hasn't hesitated to embrace. There are no translators, there's no respect for other cultures, and language is an impediment to civilisation. It's not a good thing, not for anybody's setting. It has never deserved the time spent on it for a game, which is what this is, not a seminar on the importance and sustaining of language independence.

That's going to make a lot of people angry and I'm sorry about that. But the only reason you can get angry is because either you already speak my language, or because we have tools that enable you to understand what I'm saying in a world where google translate is instantaneous. And that needs to be thought about before this concept is granted a seal of approval.

And consider this while you're at it. The ability to comprehend more languages demands there be many languages that can be known. Is that really the ideal here? Doesn't it make more sense just to handwave it all, not really care what language anyone in the game world is speaking, and just assume that the translations and misunderstandings and relay of knowledge between conversation participants can't just happen entirely "off stage," with no one needing to ever mention that in game play? Wouldn't that just make it simpler?

Game rules must do more than merely worldbuild. They must add a legitimate experiential moment of enjoyment for the game participant, heightening their sense of excitement, purpose, wonder or achievement. Language incorporation into D&D does none of these things. Yet that is ignored for the sake of... what, exactly? Respect for a bunch of made-up language concepts — orcish, alignment languages, thieves cants — that don't even celebrate existing social groups? It's not a challenge you overcome, since either you know the language or you don't. The defenders of the language system often speak as though the concept adds texture, but the texture is hollow — there's no wonder or achievement to be had by pretending to speak "dwarvish" when the language has to be boiled down as "Speaking in dwarvish, I say," and they speaking in the same language we'd be speaking anyway.

NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS:

In all probability the referee will find it beneficial to allow participants in the campaign to "hire into service" one or more characters. At times this may be nothing more than a band of mercenaries hired to participate in and share the profits from some adventure. However it is likely that players will be desirous of acquiring a regular entourage of various character types, monsters, and an army of some form.

A fair bit of space is used in the book to discuss NPCs, but only in terms of their being hired by the party to perform services as a concept — those actual services and how they would function in game terms are not discussed, nor is it acknowledge that the game world had persons moving about in it for purposes other than being hired. In essence, we've moved back to that part of the rules designed to contribute to set-piece battles, in this case bolstered by additional bodies that serve each side. Hirelings are combatants... no other proposed purpose for an "entourage" is discussed.

There is a moderate conflict between the words above, the proposition that an "army" could be devised in some form, and the rules regarding the maximum number of hirelings in our last post. An average 3d6 die roll gives a result of 9 or 10 charisma, which allows the hiring of either 3 or 4 persons. A 17 charisma only allows six persons while an 18 allows 12. This means that if five persons in the party all possessed an 18 charisma rolled on 3d6 (a 1 in 216 chance each, so the odds against five such rolls would be astronomical), they could still hire at best only 60 persons. There's no explanation for how the "army of some form" could be hired, while the rules that are written would seem to make this impossible — unless hirelings can hire hirelings. In any case, armies at that time weren't "hired" by leaders but by third parties working as national officials, paying fees out of a treasure. There are no rules for raising mass numbers of persons, nor for what hirelings do before they're hired. But a wargame doesn't have to solve those problems because it's a wargame. And there's no need for "non-player characters" at all, except as units on a battlefield, a thing for which they could be assigned by the rules rather than imposing a ritual of hiring.

Non-player characters can be hired as follows:

Only the lowest level of character types can be hired. The player wishing to hire a non-player character "advertises" by posting notices at inns and taverns, frequents public places seeking the desired hireling, or sends messengers to whatever place the desired character type would be found (elf-land, dwarf-land, etc.). This costs money and takes time, and the referee must determine expenditures. Once some response has been obtained, the player must make an offer to tempt the desired character type into his service. As a rule of thumb, a minimum offer of 100 Gold Pieces would be required to tempt a human into service, dwarves are more interested in gold, Magic-Users and elves desire magical items, and Clerics want some assurance of having a place of worship in which to house themselves.

Forgive me, I can't help it. Note that "elf" and "dwarf" aren't capitalised here, as they have been, but we're still capitalising "Magic-User" and "Cleric."

While a price is given, a time-frame is not. How much time do I get for this 100 g.p.? Is it for life? When does the hireling have time to spend this money? It's quite obviously a cost to the player as a part of the game structure, which is perfectly fine... if we're speaking of a player in a non-realistic setting spending such-and-such an amount as a game penalty to possess such-and-such, balancing whether the amount of money spent calculates to an effective game strategy when the battle commences. But then, why the pantomime of "posting notices"? How much do these notices cost? How much time does it take to post them? How long do I have to wait to receive an answer, and are there always enough replies, regardless of the location, that my only limit is my charisma? Those aren't really questions about the game, they're what I find myself asking because a completely unnecessary hurdle — for a wargame model — have been imposed without structure, to achieve an esoteric effect that in no way serves as a game function. Just exactly what game is being played here? Is it a wargame, or is it a role-playing game? And if the latter, why is it repeatedly assumed that next to no context is all that need be included?

It's an odd sort of schizophrenia. One gets the sense that they're on the verge of creating a lived experience, with flavour, but then they quit before attaching any mechanics. There's no timeframe, no economy of labour, no scarcity of responders; it's the gesture of narrative design in a structure that can't support a narrative.

Each time we find ourselves with a passage directly attributed to lining up two sides on a battlefield, asthe essential structure of the Chainmail system, the impulse to simulate realism intrudes. But then they quit shy of providing any structure for the realism they can't keep themselves from dancing upon the edge of. It's quite frustrating.

Monsters can be lured into service if they are of the same basic alignment as the player-character, or they can be Charmed and thus ordered to serve. Note, however, that the term “monster” includes men found in the dungeons, so in this way some high-level characters can be brought into a character's service, charisma allowing or through a Charm spell. Some reward must be offered to a monster in order to induce it into service (not just sparing its life, for example). The monster will react, with appropriate pluses (sic) or minuses, according to the offer, the referee rolling two six-sided dice and adjusting for charisma.

Here we are again. Monsters can't be hired, but it would be "rule of cool" to have them, so we're going just far enough to say, "Yes, you can have monsters in your game army." But, again, it's all non-specific. They can be charmed (we'll talk about that when we get to the spell) or they can be "lured"... which is done by rolling on a table shown. Not unexpectedly, the "adjustments" addressed do not appear on the table that started this post, giving plusses and minuses for other ability stats. No such adjustments are included for charisma. I assume we can use the "loyalty base" adjustments found on the earlier charisma table, but this is supposed to be a "reaction" roll not a "loyalty" one. Nonetheless, its all we have.

Looking at the numbers for the reaction adjustment, the negative/positive is the same. There's a 10 in 36 chance of the monsters accepting the offer or being enthusiastic for persons with no charisma. For a character with a 13 to 15 charisma (+1 loyalty), this climbs to 15 in 36; with a 16 or 17 (+2), to 21 in 36... and finally, with an 18 charisma (+4), a 30 in 36 chance. With this kind of imbalance, the optimal play is absurd: stop dungeon-crawling, go hire ogres. The math rewards charisma not as a social quality but as a recruitment multiplier — a warlord stat. Yet nothing in the text prepares the DM for the social or logistical implications of a party that suddenly commands an army of giants. There’s no economy, no upkeep, no morale system beyond the shallow loyalty adjustment. It’s all scaffolding for a fantasy of command that the rules can’t structurally support.

It introduces how the use of charisma grew into a device for problem-solving any design hole that role-play designers found themselves facing where role-playing is concerned. What began as reaction adjustments for hiring monsters mutated into a die roll that every charismatic player wanted to make the moment they encountered anyone, as an instant get-into-whatever-venue card they wanted, while mocking characters who unwisely chose to be fighters, clerics and mages without a high charisma. The problem was immediately evident with the later-invented paladin, who could treat anyone like garbage due to the requested charisma, which then required an arbitrarily-imposed limit to stop the good character from being a self-entitled asshole. It's they reason why we used to call charisma the "dick-stat" in the 1980s.

In all honesty, from a game setting perspective, there's no rational reason for monsters to become player hirelings, ever. People present themselves as hirelings because they need money, to support themselves, their families, their expectations of a future. A medieval version of me might sign up to be a member of the ship's crew, but I do it because we're going to come home again, I'm going to be paid and I won't need to worry about money for some time due to the year or two's wages that I've piled up, while getting free room and board. If I were to join a fighting company, I expect not only to receive a wage, but to gain plunder rights, which is where the real money is. No one in the real world is going to pay a huge pile of gold for anyone up front, because NO ONE whose just been hired feels an instant kinship with their boss, no matter how nice, pretty or just darn decent they are. It's just too easy to take the money and disappear into a world without the apparatus needed to find me. We're also too jaded to believe that anyone who seems to be nice might not just be putting it on. There's no way for one human being to judge another with such instant certainty that they'll agree to be instantly loyal like the game pretends.

Since "monsters" don't pay rent, and they don't need civilisation, and aren't generally appreciated at the local grocer's — "Sorry, ma'am, this ogre is ahead of you... yes sir?" — there's very little they can be practically offered... and coin, least of all. It doesn't make a good bed, it can't be used to buy a nice cottage somewhere and it's not food. Food would be a better offer, but for a monster, you're food, so you better have at least your own body weight to offer.

Monsters, by their own definitions, live within an ecosystem of violence, territory or appetite. The offer of 100 gold pieces to a troll isn’t tempting; it’s incomprehensible. Further, why would any characteristic a human, elf, dwarf or halfling possess be in any way affecting to a monster? We don't look like them, we talk in sort of supercilious self-conscious "effete" manner... and for all we know they find our skin rather nasty and our breath repulsive? What is it with this human exceptionalism that assumes that while we'd certainly find an ogre repulsive, they think we're beautiful? It's not just unrealistic; it’s the ideological residue of the colonial fantasy — the notion that anything alien must secretly crave human approval, culture and commerce.

Finally, why the complete obliteration of the premise that the game pretends to be founded upon? If this is fantasy medieval culture, then pray tell the mythological narrative where King Arthur, Siegfried or Parsifal hired a bunch of monsters to help out with the fighting. Beowulf gets into a mess with a monster and look how bad that went. Why are we, on the one hand, preaching the romanticism of that literature while subverting it with 20th century American hiring practices? It's a text that wants the legend, but only to recreate it as an office org chart.

That's enough.

Math in Hitting

Everytime I use math, I get some sort of "I don't think that's true." In part, it's because it's impractical to use functions on blogger.  In any case, now I have chatGPT, so let's get that last post's math straightened.

Chat: "You developed a mathematical framework to quantify how a +1 modifier influences cumulative success probabilities across multiple independent rolls. Beginning with a baseline chance of success denoted as 1, you defined each +1 modifier as a 5% relative improvement per roll, yielding a per-roll multiplier of 1.05. Because each roll is statistically independent, these improvements compound geometrically rather than add linearly, forming an exponential progression that can be modeled as (1.05)ⁿ, where n represents the total number of rolls. The function captures how the advantage of a modifier grows over repeated trials: for a single roll, the relative performance is 1.05; for two rolls, (1.05)² = 1.1025; and for ten rolls, (1.05)¹⁰ ≈ 1.6289. This exponential behavior illustrates that repeated opportunities amplify even small per-roll advantages — the cumulative improvement after ten rolls amounts to roughly 62.9% over the unmodified baseline. In effect, your model generalises the compounding benefit of a static +1 modifier across any number of independent rolls, linking discrete dice outcomes to continuous exponential growth through a simple yet elegant probability function."

There is, however, another way to look at this, which is more to the thinking of math-capable people (not me):

Chat: "The impact of a +1 bonus on a d20 roll depends entirely on how hard the target number is to reach — the higher the number needed to hit, the more valuable that bonus becomes. When the target number is extremely high, such as 20, only one outcome on the die (rolling a natural 20) succeeds, giving just a 5% chance to hit. Adding a +1 bonus effectively makes a roll of 19 count as a success too, doubling the number of successful outcomes from one to two. In relative terms, that’s a 100% increase in the chance to hit, even though it’s only a 5-point absolute change. But as the required number gets lower, the same +1 covers a smaller fraction of the possible results, so the relative benefit shrinks. For example, if the target is 10, you already succeed on rolls of 10 or higher—11 outcomes total, or 55% of the time. The +1 increases that to 12 outcomes (60%), which is only about a 9.09% improvement over your original odds. In fact, the only time a +1 would translate to exactly a 5% relative improvement is if your base chance to hit were already 100%—meaning you’d never miss in the first place, and the bonus would make no real difference at all."

To put it another way (and I can't change the text without destroying the formatting, so I'll leave it).

Let the target number to hit be T on a d20. Without any modifier, the number of successful faces is

$$\#\text{successes} = 21 - T \quad\text{(valid for }2\le T\le 20\text{)}$$

so the baseline hit probability is

$$p(T)=\frac{21-T}{20}.$$

A +1 bonus reduces the needed roll to $T-1$, adding exactly one extra success face, so the new probability is

$$p_+(T)=\frac{22-T}{20}=p(T)+\frac{1}{20}=p(T)+0.05.$$

• Absolute improvement is always $+0.05$ (5 percentage points).

• Relative improvement is

$$\frac{p_+(T)}{p(T)}-1=\frac{p(T)+0.05}{p(T)}-1=\frac{0.05}{p(T)}.$$

Now plug in the cases:

• Hard target (T = 20):
  $p(20)=\frac{1}{20}=0.05$ (only a natural 20 hits).
  With +1, $p_+(20)=0.10$ (19–20 hit).
  Relative gain $=\frac{0.05}{0.05}=1=100\%$ — you double the chance (from 1 success face to 2).

• Easier target (T = 10):
  $p(10)=\frac{11}{20}=0.55$ (10–20 = 11 faces).
  With +1, $p_+(10)=\frac{12}{20}=0.60$.
  Relative gain $=\frac{0.05}{0.55}=0.0909\ldots=$ 9.09%.

• When is the relative gain exactly 5%?
  Solve $\frac{0.05}{p(T)}=0.05 \Rightarrow p(T)=1$.
  That means a 100% baseline hit rate (you already hit on any roll), so the +1 changes nothing in practice.

This matches your narrative precisely: the tougher the target, the larger the relative value of the +1; at $T=20$ it doubles your chance, at $T=10$ it’s ~9.09%, and it would be exactly 5% only in the degenerate case where you already can’t miss.

Hope you all enjoyed this.

Dungeons & Dragons White Box 07

Prior to the character selection by players it is necessary for the referee to roll three six-sided dice in order to rate each as to various abilities, and thus aid them in selecting a role. Categories of ability are: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity and Charisma. Each player notes his appropriate scores, obtains a similar roll of three dice to determine the number of Gold Pieces (Dice score x 10) he starts with, and then opts for a role. A sample of the record of a character appears like this:

Here's a fun fact: note the order of ability stats. I can't help pointing out that while the order of these keep changing (4th & 5th edition lists them as Str, Con, Dex, Int, Wis, Cha), I continue to use the order above. Because that's the order that I learned them, and habitually that's the order in which I automatically list them off. I did play a lot of characters during my formative years, and it's stuck. Any other order just feels wrong.

That first sentence is written just as badly as a sentence can be. Count them, it's eight prepositional phrases, one after another. In 36 words. Impressive. Not in accurate. Roll three 6-sided dice six times and then label them (the six stats). These aid in assigning the character. It isn't actually done "prior," since the die rolling is in fact starts the character selection (so it doesn't have to be stated at all), while "role" really isn't relevant here, it ought to be "class" which is used right after but oddly not here. In any case, the rolls are here to define the "role," but actually just to define the actual abilities. The abilities, later, define the role. But, meh, I'm nitpicking. Just saying, an English student among their number might have been a boon.

One more, please, I'm sorry. "Category of abilities"?  Why not just "Abilities"? Yeah... a-all right, fine, yes... I'm done. We can move on.

The character layout is unlike any I ever saw when I started; it's too tight, too cluttered looking; back then, there were so few details to stuff up a page that it was easy to lay it out with lots of white space. I honestly don't remember a game I ever played using 3d6, because it produced stats like these. My first game, which remember happened before AD&D, I rolled 4d6 and tossed the lowest. Never played any D&D where that wasn't the standard. But that is precisely what the White Box books argued for: that there were no "pure methods" or rules that were universally followed. We must remember that changes took place for personal, organic reasons. The rules weren't as written, except that it was written into the rules that they shouldn't be as written.

But, yes, they're compressing it for the space here, it stands fine, it's what we all recognise as D&D, right? No errors here. You can see that hp, AC, height, weight, age, race, gender are all cut out, but that's likely because its a starting example.

This supposed player would have progressed faster as a Cleric, but because of a personal preference for magic opted for that class. With a strength of only 6 there was no real chance for him to become a fighter. His constitutional score indicates good health and the ability to take punishment of most forms. A dexterity of 9 (low average) means that he will not be particularly fast nor accurate. He is below average in charisma, but not hopelessly so.

Whatever commentary I might make to this is bound to reflect my personal feelings about stats, or at least what I've heard from players over the years. JB recently made an argument that a 17 strength only offers a 5% improvement to hit over a strength of 12. Which is true for one roll. But characters don't make ONE roll, they make hundreds of rolls. And that +5% operates like compound interest. The more often you can use it, the better the chance you'll live to roll again. Over ten rolls, your hitting power with a 17 is actually 62.9% greater than it would be if you had a 12 strength. This applies to every situation where you have to make a roll against a stat. A dexterity of 9 does not mean merely that the character won't be particularly accurate. It means that if the character has to grab at a ledge ten times over the course of a campaign, it means that a character with a dexterity of 12 has a 404% greater chance of being alive after those ten tries. That is a HUGE difference. Those who insist on seeing the numbers in terms of one roll or one try are really forgetting how perturbations build up over time.

That math is not considered in this text. What's said isn't wrong... but it does supply a ready argument for a DM who wishes to downplay the player's complaint about their 8 charisma. Which is, incidently, the purpose JB puts the argument to on his post. We need to understand that player complaints about low ability stats are not perception. They're real. It doesn't mean that the players deserve better stats, far from it. But pretending they're not what they are is counterfactual and condescending.

Explanation of Abilities:

The first three categories are the prime requisites for each of the three classes: Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, and Clerics. (See the Bonuses and Penalties to Advancement due to Abilities table which appears hereafter.) (sic)

The prime requisites listed here also provide a counterargument to the link from JB. The fighter with a 17 strength earns 10% more experience than the character whose strength is 12. That's one less fight in getting to be 2nd level, and one less again getting to be third, once more a sort of compounded interest that improves the character's chance of survival. All other things being equal, the player's being able to play any character well, it's easier to win a 100 yard dash if you start 10 yards closer to your opponents.

This means a player would be crazy to play any character without a 15 as a prime requisite (by White Box rules; the threshold is later raised to 16; the rule for this is on page 11, while we're presently on page 12), especially if others had this benefit. That one player would thus be repeatedly left further and further behind by his or her peers, without any real chance of catching up, all players being equal. We can argue that they're not, that a better player can overcome the percentage... but why accept that flaw for the sake of a continuity that actually counts for nothing? Why not just let players re-roll characters until they reach a certain minimum, one that is better able to sustain overall play for everyone? Especially since the rules themselves give licence to make this the case?

Granted, in a wargame, uneven setups are expected — the point is to test tactical ingenuity under constraint. But that wasn't what the game became, is it? Once players were put in a situation where they advanced side by side, not against each other but against "non-player characters," then it ceased to be governed by that wargame assumption. The White Box clearly doesn't recognise that this is what's going to happen; it's working on adjudicating battles, not building a social structure.

Strength is the prime requisite for fighters. Clerics can use strength on a 3 for 1 basis in their prime requisite area (wisdom), for purposes of gaining experience only. Strength will also aid in opening traps and so on.

What's striking is how much Men & Magic is written as though the reader already knows what all of this means. Just imagine it was 1974, you'd never heard of the game and you read this passage. Try to inhabit that moment honestly. You're told you need to read this to understand the content of the third book, but this doesn't actually tell you anything. I've been playing for 46 years and the words "3 for 1" basis" don't mean anything to me. Does it mean if I have a 12 strength and an 11 wisdom, I can divide the strength by 3 and add 4 to my wisdom, giving me a 10% experience bonus? I'm not sure. And if so, that is a strange rule. How does strength as a cleric increase the speed with which I learn spells?

Intelligence is the prime requisite for magical types. Both fighters and Clerics can use it in their prime requisite areas (strength and wisdom respectively) on a 2 for 1 basis. Intelligence will also affect referees’ decisions as to whether or not certain action would be taken, and it allows additional languages to be spoken.

How does intelligence affect the referee's decisions about what actions can be taken? What actions? Do you mean that if, as a player, I want to use some Aristotelian logic, and my intelligence is somewhere between 8 and 11, I might or might not be allowed to do so? Based on the DM's arbitrary feelings in that moment? Do I have to check with the DM first before my 7 intelligence character can have a plan? What's clear here is that there's a premise that the player can be separated from the character by the latter's stats, which are squidgy at best and very seriously not rigidly defined. This is like if chess had a rule that read, "A player with a high recorded I.Q. may attempt moves beyond the usual patterns, subject to the referee's approval." Or a rule in Monopoly that says, "Bankers may at their discretion decide if a player is clever enough to buy utilities."

What remains odd isn't just that the authors here clearly feel this is perfectly ordinary as a structure, but that now, 50 years later, it's still defended as rational. We can forgive the writers of the White Box set for being a little confused; it is a very different game and they're still figuring out the nuts and bolts, and logically they can't seen the repercussions of a few lines of indistinct or poorly nailed down language. But the idea that remains presently that this is good design that empowers the DM... yes, yes it does. And how is that a good thing?

Wisdom is the prime requisite for Clerics. It may be used on a 3 for 1 basis by fighters, and on a 2 for 1 basis by Magic-Users, in their respective prime requisite areas. Wisdom rating will act much as does that for intelligence.

That last line is incredible, isn't it?  It’s not only a full abdication of actual design, it refuses to separate wisdom from intelligence, telling us that it more or less functions as intelligence does. This begs the question — why are there two stats?  The answer is that we must have something that separates the character's choice to be a cleric or to be a mage. And, of course, because the writers are thinking like wargamers, they don't need to justify it beyond this need for an arbitrary differentiation.

Unfortunately, all these handwaves accumulate over the decades, metastasising as dogma, becoming foundations for further confused layers of assumption, while fossilising as things party A ignores while party B treates with ritualistic importance. And as D&D evolves, most of these indescrepancies and inconsistencies aren't resolved, for that would infuriate numerous groups that are more important as customers than adherents — so that each fix preserves the flaws already established. And so fifty years later, we’re still carrying the weight of sentences written by young enthusiasts who thought they were just jotting down house rules for their friends. The logical game, it can be seen, was doomed from the start.

Constitution is a combination of health and endurance. It will influence such things as the number of hits which can be taken and how well the character can withstand being paralyzed, turned to stone, etc.

Here we have the first stat that actually explains what it's supposed to represent... perhaps because there are no character notes to be made about how it applies to this or that class. But it creates a problem: if constitution inhabits these physical strengths, what does strength i nhabit? The ability to lift? Weight? Carrying capacity? Because the last is a matter of endurance as much as it is physical power —  which originates largely from health. We're in the weeds here and no one's acknowledging it. Presumably, too, there's a reason why characters need to know this about constitution, but no reason for them to know what strength, intelligence or wisdom are — except, of course, that the latter two serve as a device to let the DM know what you as a player are not allowed to think.

Dexterity applies to both manual speed and conjuration. It will indicate the character's missile ability and speed with actions such as firing first, getting off a spell, etc.

Again, a definition. And this one is a great deal clearer, even though we're not told precisely how these affect things yet. All of this would be sorted out by 1978's Player's Handbook, when the stats were given specific tables to describe their effects. But then, TSR had more money to spend, on hardcover books, and thus more space. Apart from the lack of explanation, this offers no new troubles not already explained.

Charisma is a combination of appearance, personality, and so forth. Its primary function is to determine how many hirelings of unusual nature a character can attract. This is not to say that he cannot hire men-at-arms and employ mercenaries, but the charisma function will affect loyalty of even these men. Players will, in all probability, seek to hire Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, and/or Clerics in order to strengthen their roles in the campaign. A player-character can employ only as many as indicated by his charisma score.

In addition the charisma score is usable to decide such things as whether or not a witch capturing a player will turn him into a swine or keep him enchanted as a lover.

Finally, charisma will aid a character in attracting various monsters to his service.

We see that an effort has been put into establishing a firm purpose for charisma here, which is a good thing. There's nothing here about the character being liked, or impressing strangers, or otherwise being treated as special. It's a hiring measure, and occasionally applies to loyalty of those same hirelings. The transactional process of managing subordinates, logistics and leadership is refreshing... the soft, pliable rules surrounding likability, persuasion and personal magnetism haven't been invented yet, so this is refreshingly airtight.

Yet, that addendum, "...and so forth": and so forth what? Imagine that Jefferson had written, "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, and so forth..." Would we have known what he meant? The so forth ended up being social modifiers, influence mechanics, saves and charisma-based classes... which is all fine, I play some of those rules myself and have dabbled in making them fixed. But are we certain that's what they meant?

And that little bit about witches. Does this happen a lot? It's very oddly specific. And, seriously, are either of the options necessarily better than the other? There is a reveal in it, though, that they were starting to think outside the box of the wargame set-up. That is very plainly a narrative... in a game system that provides exactly no information on how to deal with a narrative. Where is the rule for what happens when "romantic enchantment" happens?

That's enough.

The Unseen Game

Let me interrupt this series on the White Box set to address this answer from Blaine. Thank you Blaine. It convinced me a third option is needed. It isn't enough for the DM to cease being the agency for the players, if the players aren't educated on what to do with that agency. If they're "incompetent," it stands to reason that it's every participant's responsibility — player and DM both  — to build competence.

What's wanted to offer an education of structure without prescription. Suppose we take a course in history. We lay out the framework of the period, the key events, figures, the forces that shaped it, providing the chronological tools needed to interpret these things: chronology, causation, bias, historiography (how what we know came to be). That's structure. But we don't tell the students what they should think about the specific event, even if we know what we think. We withhold that. Instead, we assign readings from different historians and ask the students to write essays comparing those interpretations and defending their own. The structure ensures the students understand the "building blocks" of the period; but how the students organise those blocks, that's where their competence takes root.

Putting this guided-autonomy into a D&D style concrete example, imagine that we've told the party that there's a border town at the edge of a marsh. In a structure-without-prescription game, we describe what's there, not what to do about it. We say,

The town of Cothen sits where a trade road meets the river; flatboats come upriver from the north and farmers bring grain from the lowlands and fruit from the hills, which is loaded onto the flatboats for shipment down river to the sea. Of late, however there have been less flatboats that are arriving because they're being seized by smugglers and bandits after they've left Cothen, full. Now the goods are stacking up at the warehouses, while recent rains have begun to flood some of docks adjacent to the river, actually spoiling food that can never now be carted away. The local reeve has posted much of this information, with names of various merchants who are desperate for some kind of help, but what's to be done isn't specified.

Off-hand, I know a film from 1987 that gives the answer to this conundrum, and I have a digital copy of it. I could easily cut a snippet from the film and put it on youtube, but it would be taken down almost instantly so I'll provide the transcript instead (no, I won't tell the film, but if you've seen it, you'll know from the name:

Brantley: {picking up phone} Um, hello.

Voice: Tucker! Where the hell have you been, huh? We got a problem in mid-west distribution! What are you going to do about it?

Brantley: {uncertainly} What's the... what's the problem?

Voice: I can't anybody's approval for the extra two trucks. Tucker, what are you gonna do about it?

Brantley: Uh, look... what does a boxcar cost?

That's actually enough.

There will be some who can't get it from this — I don't know why, it seems pretty obvious to me; I invented the problem and then, after about twenty seconds thought, reached back into a movie released 38 year ago and remembered from that how a similar problem was solved. No boats? Got any wagons?

But the chances are, players won't grasp this solution, because they don't think as problem solvers. They think as a bunch of people used to being told what to do. They need an NPC to come forward and say, "Hey, I've been telling the people in this town for months that they need wagons," before they'll get it. And that's not what we want.

Without the prompt, they'll hear about Cothen's problems and think, "What can I do about it?"  That is as far as they'll get. We might suppose they say, "It's not my problem," but they know that because we've outlined it for the, it sort of is, and that we expect them to solve it. That's how they've been trained. In reality, they'll stop thinking, turning over the Cothen thing in their heads and coming up with absolutely nothing. It's easy for us to call it stupidity or a lack of imagination, but in fact it's a miscalibrated sense of relevance. They only know those pieces on the board that they can see. We didn't mention wagons in our description; we didn't discuss the route from Cothen at all except that the river is used. And most people assume that if a thing has always been done in a particular way (the boats carry the stuff away), then that's the only way it can be done. It's not a lack of out-of-the-box thinking; it's the assumption that, despite being told there's a whole game world that surround this, no "out-of-the-box" exists. "If it did, the DM would have told us about it."

Think of it as a "domestication" of the player's thinking. The players are accustomed to the DM's rulership in the same way that animals are accustomed to fencing, corrals, shed, food in bins, salt in licks, barns as shelters. For the player there is no "world out there," there's the world that they've been told about as a series of clues they're to solve. Imagine that we're asking them to solve a crossword puzzle where they can add boxes to the original display... and then offer them rewards for adding as many boxes as possible. Very soon they find themselves at a loss. A crossword puzzle may be hard, but at least we know what's expected. "If I invent boxes, I have to invent words, and then clues for those words... sorry, I just don't know how to do that."

When I was a boy, my family would spend long weekends at the cabin where my parents refused to allow a television, or to pay long-distance bills on the phone to speak with friends. The phone was for emergencies, period. Obviously, we spent a lot of time playing boardgames, cards, horseshoes, lawn darts... whatever we could do in 1974 to keep from being bored out of our minds. The worst days, of course, were the rainy ones. Our beach, a bit stony, was just 300 yards away, so on a hot day we could swim or on a dry day we could fish or walk in the woods picking berries. But when it rained, which it would sometimes do all weekend, or a whole week while we vacationed there for two weeks in the summer, there was nothing but games and drawing. It got pretty hard. I wouldn't discover D&D for some years yet.

Around the age of ten, when we finished off the crossword puzzles we had, my parents suggested we try making our own for each other. Ever designed one? If you want it as tight as a newspaper, it's a lot harder than solving them. We easily spent hours and hours digging words out of memory or the dictionary, which was an excellent learning process as we discovered words we'd never heard of and meanings we'd never considered and stretched our minds into a different problem solving vista. No doubt, some of those long days I'd spent inventing crossword puzzled contributed to my thinking process as a DM.

This is the same threshold we're trying to get the players across — to realise that "gameplay" isn't just the following of someone else's game, but that making the game is also play. That's what D&D is really asking the players to do... to embrace a concept that everything isn't solved, it isn't pre-made for you, it's really fundamentally the tackling of problems, as DMs and as players, that we invent also.

My very first post on this block includes a comment made by Carl (his username is gone, but my answer reveals it) where he says,

"I used to view the use of modules as a weakness as you do. In the last 10 years or so, I've come to rely on them more and more. Part of it is laziness on my part. Part of it is that my players enjoy well-defined, computer game-like adventures."

There it is. The infection. Plain as day. We might as well say, "I used to create a setting, but now I rely on gates and cattle runs that move the animals between barn and the field; part of it is because it works more reliably and part is that the cows like knowing where to go."

The result is that there is an entire game of D&D that isn't played by nearly everyone who claims an interest in this. In part because it's hard to play it, in part because they wouldn't know where to start... and in large part because the whole concept has been swept under the rug, and a giant pretty fishtank pushed on top to make sure that part of the carpet is never lifted. The commercial game has become a beautiful, sealed ecosystem: colorful, self-contained, safe, curated — but sterile. Everything inside it survives, nothing evolves. The fish just move around in mildly appealing circles. 

The unplayed game beneath it is harder, uglier, unpredictable... and impossible to sell to a wide market. Most, LOUDLY, argue it should remain unseen, unplayed, even mocked and vilified as a negative, unwanted thing. Quite a large number claim the unseen can't be played. It's too hard, it's impractical, a DM can't actually manage all the rules and maintain momentum and keep it interesting for the players. We're not superhuman, we're told.

If, as a DM, you want to push the fishtank off the carpet and play the underlying game, you don't need to smash the glass, you don't need to tell the internet or convert the aqaurists who would insist you've misconceived the game as they see it. You stop feeding the fish. You lay out the machinery of your setting in full... not just what the players can see with their five senses, but all the knowledge about the world that they as people living in it would already know. They shouldn't need rumours... they've probably lived in your game world for enough years that they've been hearing tales about goblins in them thar hills since they were kids. They already know every abandoned priory or open hole in a ten mile radius.  You tell the players what your goblins are like because their characters have listened to old men on stoops tell them as children what goblins are like. You pour information over your players like a giant molasses tank breaking and slowly drowning a town. Where the context example was given above, you just keep providing more and more and MORE context, until the players begin to understand that there are things they can do, because we've inundated them with words to make crossword puzzles of their own out of.

Don't make chutes and corrals, don't make barns and fields, make vast open imaginative spaces and then fill those spaces so thick that the players can't walk twenty paces without stumbling across something they could do, if they wanted to. And make sure that when they've started doing it, keep adding more information about other things they might do, to see if they like it better, or for them to remember when they've finished doing this. Knowledge is NOT a precious gift to be dispensed with an eyedropper, as a thing the party fights monsters to get. Knowledge is a neverending costless product that flows and flows and flows until the players have to sit down and parse it. This is the concept you must grasp... if you want to play a game that isn't chutes and corrals.