As these Civilization IV technologies progress, it becomes less and less a question of how the game is affected by their presence, and more so how the game continues in their absence. In no previous case more than Liberalism, which is at present the driving force of all our culture. Liberalism brought in its wake property rights, labor rights, the development of the modern democratic state, the separation of the church, the abolition of slavery, the pursuit of personal freedom and the pursuit of national freedom, human rights, the recognition of war crimes, universal healthcare and so on and so on ... those are just the biggies that come to mind first.
I don't propose to talk about how all this came into being. I recommend starting with either John Locke or Voltaire, progressing through Jean Jacques Rousseau (if you must), Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mills and then probably Sigmund Freud ... and then going back again and doing some serious reading, since all you've done at that point is dangle your feet. The very last thing I'm going to do in this savage and hostile blogging universe is make an attempt to describe to the gentle reader why you're an enlightened person and how that came to be ... as an enlightened person you're responsible for finding out these things yourself. All I am going to do here is talk about what an unenlightened person most likely was.
To begin with, largely guilt free. Robert Louis Stevenson proposed with his novel the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that a rational, 'modern' person without a conscience or a sense of guilt was quite probably a monster, terrorizing his way through the streets and pubs of 19th century London - depicted by Hollywood as imprisoning women and scaring them a lot. I am not proposing that the 14th century counterpart was the same hideous creature - familial ties and responsibilities went a long way towards keeping the average individual under social restraint - but I am proposing that the 'horrible' things that the 14th century individual saw or did in their lifetime was probably managed without huge amounts of guilt. Caving in someone's skull with a club for the purpose of 'fun' was seen quite differently then - depending upon the use the hapless owner made of that skull just prior to its bludgeoning.
Because you see, while guilt was not the constant companion of the medieval mind that it is of the modern counterpart, what did exist was a steady and absolute certainty - for most - that 'badness' would lead to the most awful consequences. That is, Damnation. This is why it was so important to get God's approval upon your upcoming actions, to be assured that the skull-caving you hoped to spend the afternoon doing was completely sanctioned. If it was, well, go at it me boy, cave what you can reach and bring back a pot of the brains for good measure.
Since obviously we tend to be spontaneous creatures, why did this not bring terrific amounts of guilt to the medievalite whenever they happened to spontaneously bludgeon a random fellow to death? Well, two reasons really. The first, if it really turned out to be someone who needed it after all, you could be forgiven after the fact ... which cleared you of any guilt absolutely, just as though you'd done the deed with getting the sanction first. And the second, if you by circumstance killed the wrong person, well, you could still get forgiven, but you'd also get very dead ... far too quickly to bathe in the glow of any after guilt.
I've been talking about murder through this to make the extreme point, but the truth is the standards hold for every kind of action across the board. If you steal, if you covet, if you sexually jump someone or what have you, it ultimately all comes down to being A) forgiven and B) killed. For most of history it didn't take much to get yourself killed by doing something wrong. For a lot of women in the middle ages, all they needed was to be widowed and have property ... a witches' property went immediately to the church that burned her first, so it was all out justice against anyone who could have that moniker hammered ... er, burned ... onto their person.
The nice thing about all this is that the force doing all the forgiving were themselves subject to being sanctioned in most any action they performed by themselves - like a 9/11 investigation commission. Clerics tended to get into trouble only when they stepped on the toes of other clerics ... or when they stepped on the toes of people other clerics were adamant to keep in power, like kings and so on. Provided they did neither, the money would nicely roll in and support all this lovely forgiving and these executions for citizen wrongdoing. The only real shame was so much of the money pouring in had to be channeled to other clerics higher up. It's an enlightening way of looking at the Reformation when you realize that Wycliffe, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and so on weren't half so interested in stopping the flow of cash into their own pockets as they were cutting off ties with the people to whom they were expected to give money. But that's really beside the point.
In this environment, where your immortal soul mattered far more than the property, rights, importance or humanity of your fellow earthly occupants (who were mostly going to hell due to their being not quite so pious as you), the distance between justification and skull caving was a lot shorter than one with which we'd be familiar. Once Henry V tells you that slaughtering the French is a holy act, supported by a group of bishops standing around him waiting for Henry to wrest money out of the hands of other bishops, it's very easy to lift that mace. When Caesarius of Heisterbach tells you to slaughter every person in Beziers, Catholic and Cathar alike, because "God will know his own," that is going to make an enormous amount of sense to you. God DOES know his own, doesn't he? There is nothing on this Earth more certain than that.
If this all seems strange or uncomfortable for you, or if it seems I'm not talking about liberalism at all, question how you yourself would handle being at Beziers on the 22nd of July, 1209, when the 20,000 inhabitants of the city were slaughtered, and if your priest giving you his blessing after the fact would have much influence on your thought process. The failure of that blessing to affect you IS the effect of liberalism ... an effect which your player characters, were they living in the 13th century, wouldn't be feeling.
Disgust, unquestionably. Doubt about quite a few things, oh yes, I'm sure of that. A certainty that life was fleeting and that it could disappear in the blink of an eye? Yes, that too, and not just from the occasional slaughter of 'innocents' - though no one was, by definition - but also from the terrifying and sudden onset of disease or the tenuous presence of enough food for all. All the more reason to throw one's lot in with the priests, who have it in their power to reassure you that this life is merely a passing thing, an antechamber for the next life.
I've read some rather silly things online about how magic would bring about a utopia of some such, with food and healing for all, and naturally a freedom from the ordinary sufferings of daily life ... and I wonder if these writers are able to recognize a human being when they see one. If the reader supposes for a moment that real magical power put into the hands of a person like Caesarius would bring about a age of universal happiness, you live in a liberal cocoon of truly impressive thickness. Why should any person with power directly aid any person without power, when the power itself makes the powerless immaterial? Liberalism came into the universal consciousness because the power of the ruling class was questioned, then ultimately seized in an horrific orgy of fear and hate - comparable, I might add, with the slaughter of Beziers. This lovely spreading of human privilege and freedom was planted in very bloody ground.
If Louis XVI of France and all his secular and religious attendents were not ready to surrender a fraction of their untold wealth for the purpose of feeding the peasants food the peasants had grown themselves, how does one imagine that Louis or anyone else would sit up for hours memorizing spells in order to vacation in the countryside distributing them? Even if a diseased person could be healed every day, it takes time and trouble to find these diseased persons, and the facts are the privileged class is not inclined to take much time or trouble for anyone. Truth be told, if the shitfuck who very nearly hits me everyday at the pedestrian crossing can't be bothered to stop and wait when the lights are blinking, what is the chance of his coming around to see me when I'm unwell? Perhaps, if I pour enough money into Louis' coffers, he might let me hang around his court, for I'd be paying him ... but I wouldn't count even then on having his cardinal cast spells for me that might be needed elsewhere by Louis before the day ends. Never mind giving them to the peasants. Those are the simple facts of life.
Characters in D&D, however, will always be acted out to be as liberal as their player puppeteers ... you puppeteers cannot help yourselves. You may think characters slaughtering the women or children of a town, or thieving, or raping women, or selling off slaves or whatever other nightmares you might conjure is a loathesome way to spend a Saturday night's running - but I propose that the characters themselves, free of your puppeteering, would find your perception of their world one of inexpressible weakness. They would view your pampered, fat greasy bodies with an eye that revealed you as hardly worth leaving alive - something their clerics would advocate were better killed than let to live and infect the minds of decent, god-fearing persons. Your characters would be certain they'd be forgiven for your deaths ... who in the world could miss squeamish, pathetic worms like yourselves?
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
September Sixth
I almost forgot. I guess the actual beginning date isn't all that important, really.
It is 32 years since I started playing D&D, to the day.
It is 32 years since I started playing D&D, to the day.
Solutions To The Campaign
I meant to talk about addressing the six points in Friday's post, having had the weekend to think about them. So here goes.
1) Pace. The question is, why not simply assign an evening and run the game on skype or some such? I had considered that, but the fact is the time I have is usually bits and pieces during the day, and the time I do not have is a given evening, even once a month. Moreover, once a month, or even once every two weeks, doesn't provide me with a distraction on an ongoing basis ... which is something I really liked about the online campaign. The possibility of thinking through a particular problem once per day, and then enjoying being able to put it off if there was no immediate solution. Sometimes, I took a day or two to research something that I suddenly invented, and being online gave me the chance to do so on the fly. This I cannot really do during a real time session.
The slowness of the campaign was not, in itself, a problem. The problem that I saw was when a character would spend a week doing nothing of any special interest. I think this would be solved in great degree if the players had specific goals, thereby pushing them to come up with something for their characters to do which moved the game along. The journey into Switzerland and back did not seem to drag overmuch, except at points where I tried to get clever. My 'cleverness' is usually a problem in every game I play, whenever I propose a problem no one seems to be able to solve (the Serefina = frightened portion of the campaign). I am trying to stop myself from doing it.
In a way, doing it in the online campaign, where solving/not solving it took the whole day, I really began to understand what a bad thing this was of my gameplaying. I've been resolved to stop doing it ever since.
2) Missed Opportunities. I guess I'll have to put a much bigger red flag on top of everything. Rather than saying, "You see a cliff face that extends a thousand feet upwards from the road towards the mountain peaks," I'll have to say instead, "You see a cliff face, exactly the sort of habitat that you know kobalds really love to dwell in whenever there happen to be caves which cannot be seen from the road, extending upwards from the road to the mountain peaks, where dragons are often known to dwell."
It is kind of infantile, but whatever it takes to make the game move a bit more. Frankly, I hate this sort of thing ... the whole 'rumor' mill that players are supposed to tap into upon entering a town that fuels the adventure machine. On some level I really feel that if players want to stumble ignorantly and blindly through a world for session after session, then like people who aren't proactive in real life, they should just age and die. Maybe I'll institute a rule that says whenever players spend a day without any actual plan, a week or a month of game time goes by. (For my offline games, this might be one of those awful hours spent as a DM when the players all sit around saying, 'I don't know, what do you want to do?' ad nauseum). One way or the other, I can see pabulum-feeding may be in order.
3) Exhaustion. Since I'm not likely to cut down on my exposition, as this is an important part of the game for me, my only real solution to this is to pace myself a little better. Like Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, I may take every third week off or something when I am feeling pressured. Alternately, I may push for more hands on DMing ... maybe turning to a live interaction when a lot of information could be relayed more quickly, or when a question-answering session is in order. This would be spontaneous I think, and not an attendance requirement ... but it might help get things moving a bit better in places. Jeez, I suppose that means google + (shudder).
4) Lack of Engagement. Okay, this is the player's problem. The best I can do is toss people who are clearly not trying. I worried quite a lot about this, since it is cold and heartless, and therefore not comfortable for a big fuzzy teddy bear like me, but the poll more than clearly indicates that people would prefer cold and heartless where it comes to their games as opposed a forgiving attitude. There's probably a post I could write about how people don't want to work as a DM because the game is 'fun' but they're more than willing to be assholes when it comes to telling players how to act or pick up their feet. But I'm not going to write it today.
The best I can do beside this is to create a questionaire that selects people according to their willingness to write a lot, research shit that they maybe don't already know, answer questions about AD&D issues and sociological qualms they might have about being booted. Put the fear o' Gawd in'o 'em, an' flay 'em fust afore lettin' 'em in.
5) Timing. I'm sorry, but it is going to have to be full 24-hour access to a computer and the power to post on that computer. The game can drift into certain times of the day and certain habits, but there's just no way to play around someone who can't get on the computer for 10 hours of the day. Get a cell phone and learn to text, and then at least you can squeeze in a couple of lines here and there; make arrangements to get that information somehow online so it can be viewed by one of the other players who can be a proxy for you when you yourself don't have a computer. Call in by phone and spend hundreds of dollars if you have to, but make it so. If you have a job that is physical and you don't even see a computer for most of the day, you have my sympathy but it just isn't doable. We can manage around meetings, your workout, a bad day at the office, sex with your partner for five hours at a time and a dozen other issues, but absolute non-existence for two thirds of every day, including sleep? Sorry. Let me know when your circumstances change.
6) Lack of Purpose. This is the killer. I know not every player can have the same purpose, and most of you won't get to do what you want, but the rules are going to be as follows:
First, that you have some purpose you'd like to accomplish before playing.
Second, that you are absolutely willing to try somebody else's purpose.
In other words, have an idea, but don't get married to that idea. I'm going to need a party that all wants to do the same thing at the outset, so be prepared to negotiate. That's all I'm saying.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Those are the points. I'm still figuring out the questionaire, so any comments on that or any of the above points would be helpful.
1) Pace. The question is, why not simply assign an evening and run the game on skype or some such? I had considered that, but the fact is the time I have is usually bits and pieces during the day, and the time I do not have is a given evening, even once a month. Moreover, once a month, or even once every two weeks, doesn't provide me with a distraction on an ongoing basis ... which is something I really liked about the online campaign. The possibility of thinking through a particular problem once per day, and then enjoying being able to put it off if there was no immediate solution. Sometimes, I took a day or two to research something that I suddenly invented, and being online gave me the chance to do so on the fly. This I cannot really do during a real time session.
The slowness of the campaign was not, in itself, a problem. The problem that I saw was when a character would spend a week doing nothing of any special interest. I think this would be solved in great degree if the players had specific goals, thereby pushing them to come up with something for their characters to do which moved the game along. The journey into Switzerland and back did not seem to drag overmuch, except at points where I tried to get clever. My 'cleverness' is usually a problem in every game I play, whenever I propose a problem no one seems to be able to solve (the Serefina = frightened portion of the campaign). I am trying to stop myself from doing it.
In a way, doing it in the online campaign, where solving/not solving it took the whole day, I really began to understand what a bad thing this was of my gameplaying. I've been resolved to stop doing it ever since.
2) Missed Opportunities. I guess I'll have to put a much bigger red flag on top of everything. Rather than saying, "You see a cliff face that extends a thousand feet upwards from the road towards the mountain peaks," I'll have to say instead, "You see a cliff face, exactly the sort of habitat that you know kobalds really love to dwell in whenever there happen to be caves which cannot be seen from the road, extending upwards from the road to the mountain peaks, where dragons are often known to dwell."
It is kind of infantile, but whatever it takes to make the game move a bit more. Frankly, I hate this sort of thing ... the whole 'rumor' mill that players are supposed to tap into upon entering a town that fuels the adventure machine. On some level I really feel that if players want to stumble ignorantly and blindly through a world for session after session, then like people who aren't proactive in real life, they should just age and die. Maybe I'll institute a rule that says whenever players spend a day without any actual plan, a week or a month of game time goes by. (For my offline games, this might be one of those awful hours spent as a DM when the players all sit around saying, 'I don't know, what do you want to do?' ad nauseum). One way or the other, I can see pabulum-feeding may be in order.
3) Exhaustion. Since I'm not likely to cut down on my exposition, as this is an important part of the game for me, my only real solution to this is to pace myself a little better. Like Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, I may take every third week off or something when I am feeling pressured. Alternately, I may push for more hands on DMing ... maybe turning to a live interaction when a lot of information could be relayed more quickly, or when a question-answering session is in order. This would be spontaneous I think, and not an attendance requirement ... but it might help get things moving a bit better in places. Jeez, I suppose that means google + (shudder).
4) Lack of Engagement. Okay, this is the player's problem. The best I can do is toss people who are clearly not trying. I worried quite a lot about this, since it is cold and heartless, and therefore not comfortable for a big fuzzy teddy bear like me, but the poll more than clearly indicates that people would prefer cold and heartless where it comes to their games as opposed a forgiving attitude. There's probably a post I could write about how people don't want to work as a DM because the game is 'fun' but they're more than willing to be assholes when it comes to telling players how to act or pick up their feet. But I'm not going to write it today.
The best I can do beside this is to create a questionaire that selects people according to their willingness to write a lot, research shit that they maybe don't already know, answer questions about AD&D issues and sociological qualms they might have about being booted. Put the fear o' Gawd in'o 'em, an' flay 'em fust afore lettin' 'em in.
5) Timing. I'm sorry, but it is going to have to be full 24-hour access to a computer and the power to post on that computer. The game can drift into certain times of the day and certain habits, but there's just no way to play around someone who can't get on the computer for 10 hours of the day. Get a cell phone and learn to text, and then at least you can squeeze in a couple of lines here and there; make arrangements to get that information somehow online so it can be viewed by one of the other players who can be a proxy for you when you yourself don't have a computer. Call in by phone and spend hundreds of dollars if you have to, but make it so. If you have a job that is physical and you don't even see a computer for most of the day, you have my sympathy but it just isn't doable. We can manage around meetings, your workout, a bad day at the office, sex with your partner for five hours at a time and a dozen other issues, but absolute non-existence for two thirds of every day, including sleep? Sorry. Let me know when your circumstances change.
6) Lack of Purpose. This is the killer. I know not every player can have the same purpose, and most of you won't get to do what you want, but the rules are going to be as follows:
First, that you have some purpose you'd like to accomplish before playing.
Second, that you are absolutely willing to try somebody else's purpose.
In other words, have an idea, but don't get married to that idea. I'm going to need a party that all wants to do the same thing at the outset, so be prepared to negotiate. That's all I'm saying.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Those are the points. I'm still figuring out the questionaire, so any comments on that or any of the above points would be helpful.
Projection
I've had a long Labor Day weekend, invested mostly in furniture building - which I am bad at - and mapping India. I've made it to the southern tip and I've just finished mapping Lanka, which is Sri Lanka in modern parlance and Ceylon on English colonial maps. As it happens, in 1650 none of the island was controlled by the English, and was in fact in dispute between the Dutch and the Portuguese on the coast, and the Kingdom of Kandy in the interior. The Portuguese would hang on to portions of the island until 1650.
Lanka is officially the most southern part of the world that I have mapped. I am beginning to realize that there are certain flaws in the projection of using a flat hex map to create the half dome of the northern hemisphere, causing my world to be somewhat fatter around the equator ... or rather, that the hexes themselves at the equator are in fact only 13 and a third miles in diameter, while still technically 20 miles high. This was unavoidable, and in fact doesn't bother me in the least.
Its the same distortion that occurs on the map below, which makes Africa and the small part of South America much larger in comparison with Northern Asia than they have a right to be. Personally I can live with the distortion, since this is D&D and the principle aim is to create a game world, not to devise flight plans for real world aircraft.
It does come back to the argument I made before and before that my world is anything but 'perfect' or 'realistic.' What it remains is extremely workable and gratifying, and thus excellent for my purposes in D&D. If the party wants to go to Lanka, it is there ... with all the internet entries necessary to make it come alive.
The bigger problem is the Southern Hemisphere, in that it too is a flat disk like the one above, the two flat disks coming together at the equator. The players aren't supposed to be able to tell, naturally (this involves hand-waving), but on the map itself the reverse becomes difficult to show. Remembering that the map 'turns' every 60 degrees, the flip side on the northern view then becomes six 'leaves' that extend out from the center map towards the South Pole. A simple version shows below:
If you imagine the lightest ring is the equator, and the north pole is at the centre, then everything that is south of the equator diverges into six different points. With my actual map, the equator ring is 1,866 hexes in circumference (the actual Earth should be about 1,233), but the principle is the same.
If you're looking at a map somewhere in the middle of where one of the points meets the equator (on the larger version), it is easy to forget that the equator in the middle distorts the map. But where the map is at 30, 90, 150 degrees and so on, it is very evident.
However, the Southern Hemisphere can also be the center of the map, with the Northern broken into six points. This, obviously, is how I intend to represent it, since it is much easier for travel distances.
I wasn't going to go all into this, I was originally intending just to write one front paragraph and move onto other things, but what the heck. I ran into this on the weekend when I was preparing the map for the Maldives Islands, which extends south of India ... and to get the staggering right on the next ring of large hex maps (Lanka is split between H 14 and H 15), which would be 'I', I was sketching out the shape of the map for the Great Rift valley in Africa, which is on the 30th Meridian.
I get the sneaking suspicion, however, that there's something wrong with all this, and its been bugging me since Saturday. If someone wants to give me a poke and let me know what it is, don't hesitate. I think I've calculated something wrong in the projection split between the points ... but I honestly don't know what it is, IF it is anything at all. I'd like some reassurance that I've got it right, or some correction if its out there.
We all make mistakes.
UPDATE:
Kees de Kunder sent me the necessary correction to the map above:
I'll leave mine up so the difference can be noted ... and as proof positive of my lack of perfection. Thank you Kees.
Lanka is officially the most southern part of the world that I have mapped. I am beginning to realize that there are certain flaws in the projection of using a flat hex map to create the half dome of the northern hemisphere, causing my world to be somewhat fatter around the equator ... or rather, that the hexes themselves at the equator are in fact only 13 and a third miles in diameter, while still technically 20 miles high. This was unavoidable, and in fact doesn't bother me in the least.
Its the same distortion that occurs on the map below, which makes Africa and the small part of South America much larger in comparison with Northern Asia than they have a right to be. Personally I can live with the distortion, since this is D&D and the principle aim is to create a game world, not to devise flight plans for real world aircraft.
 |
| Distorted. |
The bigger problem is the Southern Hemisphere, in that it too is a flat disk like the one above, the two flat disks coming together at the equator. The players aren't supposed to be able to tell, naturally (this involves hand-waving), but on the map itself the reverse becomes difficult to show. Remembering that the map 'turns' every 60 degrees, the flip side on the northern view then becomes six 'leaves' that extend out from the center map towards the South Pole. A simple version shows below:
 |
| Only much, much bigger. |
If you're looking at a map somewhere in the middle of where one of the points meets the equator (on the larger version), it is easy to forget that the equator in the middle distorts the map. But where the map is at 30, 90, 150 degrees and so on, it is very evident.
However, the Southern Hemisphere can also be the center of the map, with the Northern broken into six points. This, obviously, is how I intend to represent it, since it is much easier for travel distances.
I wasn't going to go all into this, I was originally intending just to write one front paragraph and move onto other things, but what the heck. I ran into this on the weekend when I was preparing the map for the Maldives Islands, which extends south of India ... and to get the staggering right on the next ring of large hex maps (Lanka is split between H 14 and H 15), which would be 'I', I was sketching out the shape of the map for the Great Rift valley in Africa, which is on the 30th Meridian.
I get the sneaking suspicion, however, that there's something wrong with all this, and its been bugging me since Saturday. If someone wants to give me a poke and let me know what it is, don't hesitate. I think I've calculated something wrong in the projection split between the points ... but I honestly don't know what it is, IF it is anything at all. I'd like some reassurance that I've got it right, or some correction if its out there.
We all make mistakes.
UPDATE:
Kees de Kunder sent me the necessary correction to the map above:
I'll leave mine up so the difference can be noted ... and as proof positive of my lack of perfection. Thank you Kees.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Rethinking
I had never intended to wait two weeks before speaking about the poll, though I think I'll leave it up until it's done. Probably there won't be much movement on it after today. I think its funny that there are more people who would be willing to answer a questionaire in order to play than there are actually people interested in playing. A strict sociologist would have set up a number of questions, so I have no one to blame but myself. At the same time the poll answers some questions I've been curious about the last couple of months.
There were a number of problems with the last online campaign, which time and distance have helped me sort out in my head. I'll talk about them below:
1) Pace. The campaign moved very slowly. A single small event could take three to five days, while anything that was bigger in scope would take a month to play out. This was especially poor when nothing really was happening, such as when the party was travelling from place to place. Parties in my experience have a tendency to treat travel in the game as a sort of 'time out,' allowing for random encounters to get in the way and provide a little interest, but not particularly enjoying the whole "go here see this" kind of gaming. Online, this tended to sink into a state of great dullness, with a great deal of work for me as I described this thing, then the next thing, then the thing after that, without much value in it.
2) Missed Opportunities. As a tactic I like to provide a lot of description of things in order to make them seem more real, but if I press hard on this it can slow even an offline game down. I notice that my style of gaming requires players who can recognize clues in the description and act upon them. Such as, if I mention a cliff overlooking the town, it is an opportunity for exploring. If I mention an extended dockside, there are opportunities for smuggling. If the party runs into four of the king's soldiers in a casual situation, at an inn, say, it is an opportunity for doing them some kind of favor in exchange for access. But if the party only sees a cliff, a dockside or four soldiers, and never makes any connection of how they can be turned to the benefit, nothing happens. If players sit on the edge of the box and just look at the sand, or swirl the dry surface with their feet, nothing happens. A player has to dig into the soft, moist sand underneath ... and this often didn't happen in the online campaign.
3) Exhaustion. Between (1) and (2) I felt exhausted before the end of the campaign. I was tired of writing exposition, and I felt like I was going to have to plunk monsters right in front of the party to get others engaged. Problem was, even when I did this, the low level parties would simply move away to avoid getting killed. Which brings us to -
4) Lack of Engagement. I'm not clear why, but it seems too much emphasis was put on survival at first level than upon achievement. I am not opposed to caution, or care, but as I wrote at the time, there seemed to be a great deal of sheer cowardice on the part of many of the players in the campaign. They tended to see their imminent death in every potential action, as though I would simply step up and kill them without warning, on the slightest, silliest provocation.
This may have been the ominous quality I have as DM of presenting things in their harshest, least trustworthy appearance. If I describe a rock face, I'm almost certain to pick words that would suggest that rock face is upon the verge of collapsing any moment. By nature I tend to describe nature in its coldest possible form, since I firmly believe that beauty in nature is a deception we practice in order to hide all the death going on there. Right now, as the leaves begin to turn, people will get into their cars and drive hither and yon about the country to view the spectacular colors death yields ... and very few will remark or even consider it is due to a mass withering. For D&D, I like describing the world as a deadly place. Unfortunately, for the online campaign this seemed to convince people to treat their characters as though they themselves were about to be killed by said rock face.
While it would be interesting to play an online game that included my having Russian hitmen on a payroll who would show up at your house and off you permanently if your online character died, I haven't quite obtained the necessary diplomatic immunity this would entail. So I am, and was at the time, baffled by the degree of irrational cowardice I saw many of the players embrace rather than take a real risk with their character. Playing is a proactive sport.
5) Timing. Without question the more successful campaign was very much aided by the main players having access to their computers between noon and 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The campaign tended to die after 6 p.m., and players who could not get access to their computers except in the evening were hard put to stay 'in the beat' of the campaign's activity. To do so would have required a very rigorous effort to write their actions every day at a set time (say 8 p.m.) so they could be predicted ... but when this wasn't done it proved very inconvenient. For myself, I found that by 9 or 10 p.m. EST I no longer had any interest in the campaign at all that day, and did not want to sit down and write out more description or answers to questions that wouldn't have bothered me to do so earlier in the morning. When I knew that no answer would be immediately forthcoming - as it often was with events during the day, when I could answer a question and expect to get a response within 30 minutes - I just didn't care. And if I left the answer to the next morning, then I wouldn't hear from the evening person until 9 or 10 that night, if at all that day. This was absolutely brutal in the Greek campaign, and was certainly the reason for its death.
6) Lack of Purpose. I made the error at the beginning of all the campaigns in thinking that if I offered the new players an opportunity to pick their point of origin in my world, they would pick places they knew very well, and for which they would have specific goals in mind. For example, if I were asked what part of my existing world I would like to start in, I think I would ask to begin in Dalmatia, on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea. I would venture into the mountains there to kill or slaughter whatever beasts presented themselves, and probably the Turkish overlords as well, in order to raise the capital to purchase a ship in Ragusa; I would take steps to be recognized by Ragusa, Venice or Genoa as a trader, with merchant access to one of those cities, and then turn pirate to plunder whatever Ottoman shipping I could. I'd choose an island in Greece as a haven, slowly raising capital until I had enough to purchase a immense collection of books, which I would steadily have moved to Oslo or Sweden, with the intent to begin a great university there and to become a player in the government there. Why those places? I don't know, exactly. It just sounds like fun.
I wouldn't expect anyone to live out my fantasies. But I presumed that if a player wanted to start in any particular place, they would know the place well and begin moving towards improving their lot in life with their knowledge. This did not prove to be the case. Players tended to remain very passive, waiting for something to happen, which I then created in order to showcase some of my running styles. I showed how first levels could be pulled into a huge magical conflagration without killing them; I presented enemies which were not insurmountable foes; I created a quest that did not require entering a dungeon and getting a bauble; I set up factions and put the players in the middle. Most of the time this was a dismal failure.
Of course I blame myself, but only because I yielded and attempted to set up circumstances in which the players would play. I should have let them sit there at the Inn for months. The more I pampered them, the more they failed to create their own scenarios or move after their own dreams. It is hard not to railroad when the players sit and wait for you to build the tracks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These, then, where the worst problems. Personality conflicts occurred, but these are inevitable. The principle missing element was ambition. Offline, this can be accepted for awhile, and handled more easily. Online, with the game experiencing a necessary isolation, it was absolutely intolerable. Eventually it destroyed my interest in playing.
I wouldn't be interested in playing with a group of people who wanted to try things for a few weeks and then quit. The problem here IS the slowness of the campaign. It takes six weeks to accomplish which might be covered in one three hour session. If you see yourself playing four 6-hour sessions to get a good idea of what a person's world is, that's a year online.
Now, who wants to change their mind?
There were a number of problems with the last online campaign, which time and distance have helped me sort out in my head. I'll talk about them below:
1) Pace. The campaign moved very slowly. A single small event could take three to five days, while anything that was bigger in scope would take a month to play out. This was especially poor when nothing really was happening, such as when the party was travelling from place to place. Parties in my experience have a tendency to treat travel in the game as a sort of 'time out,' allowing for random encounters to get in the way and provide a little interest, but not particularly enjoying the whole "go here see this" kind of gaming. Online, this tended to sink into a state of great dullness, with a great deal of work for me as I described this thing, then the next thing, then the thing after that, without much value in it.
2) Missed Opportunities. As a tactic I like to provide a lot of description of things in order to make them seem more real, but if I press hard on this it can slow even an offline game down. I notice that my style of gaming requires players who can recognize clues in the description and act upon them. Such as, if I mention a cliff overlooking the town, it is an opportunity for exploring. If I mention an extended dockside, there are opportunities for smuggling. If the party runs into four of the king's soldiers in a casual situation, at an inn, say, it is an opportunity for doing them some kind of favor in exchange for access. But if the party only sees a cliff, a dockside or four soldiers, and never makes any connection of how they can be turned to the benefit, nothing happens. If players sit on the edge of the box and just look at the sand, or swirl the dry surface with their feet, nothing happens. A player has to dig into the soft, moist sand underneath ... and this often didn't happen in the online campaign.
3) Exhaustion. Between (1) and (2) I felt exhausted before the end of the campaign. I was tired of writing exposition, and I felt like I was going to have to plunk monsters right in front of the party to get others engaged. Problem was, even when I did this, the low level parties would simply move away to avoid getting killed. Which brings us to -
4) Lack of Engagement. I'm not clear why, but it seems too much emphasis was put on survival at first level than upon achievement. I am not opposed to caution, or care, but as I wrote at the time, there seemed to be a great deal of sheer cowardice on the part of many of the players in the campaign. They tended to see their imminent death in every potential action, as though I would simply step up and kill them without warning, on the slightest, silliest provocation.
This may have been the ominous quality I have as DM of presenting things in their harshest, least trustworthy appearance. If I describe a rock face, I'm almost certain to pick words that would suggest that rock face is upon the verge of collapsing any moment. By nature I tend to describe nature in its coldest possible form, since I firmly believe that beauty in nature is a deception we practice in order to hide all the death going on there. Right now, as the leaves begin to turn, people will get into their cars and drive hither and yon about the country to view the spectacular colors death yields ... and very few will remark or even consider it is due to a mass withering. For D&D, I like describing the world as a deadly place. Unfortunately, for the online campaign this seemed to convince people to treat their characters as though they themselves were about to be killed by said rock face.
While it would be interesting to play an online game that included my having Russian hitmen on a payroll who would show up at your house and off you permanently if your online character died, I haven't quite obtained the necessary diplomatic immunity this would entail. So I am, and was at the time, baffled by the degree of irrational cowardice I saw many of the players embrace rather than take a real risk with their character. Playing is a proactive sport.
5) Timing. Without question the more successful campaign was very much aided by the main players having access to their computers between noon and 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The campaign tended to die after 6 p.m., and players who could not get access to their computers except in the evening were hard put to stay 'in the beat' of the campaign's activity. To do so would have required a very rigorous effort to write their actions every day at a set time (say 8 p.m.) so they could be predicted ... but when this wasn't done it proved very inconvenient. For myself, I found that by 9 or 10 p.m. EST I no longer had any interest in the campaign at all that day, and did not want to sit down and write out more description or answers to questions that wouldn't have bothered me to do so earlier in the morning. When I knew that no answer would be immediately forthcoming - as it often was with events during the day, when I could answer a question and expect to get a response within 30 minutes - I just didn't care. And if I left the answer to the next morning, then I wouldn't hear from the evening person until 9 or 10 that night, if at all that day. This was absolutely brutal in the Greek campaign, and was certainly the reason for its death.
6) Lack of Purpose. I made the error at the beginning of all the campaigns in thinking that if I offered the new players an opportunity to pick their point of origin in my world, they would pick places they knew very well, and for which they would have specific goals in mind. For example, if I were asked what part of my existing world I would like to start in, I think I would ask to begin in Dalmatia, on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea. I would venture into the mountains there to kill or slaughter whatever beasts presented themselves, and probably the Turkish overlords as well, in order to raise the capital to purchase a ship in Ragusa; I would take steps to be recognized by Ragusa, Venice or Genoa as a trader, with merchant access to one of those cities, and then turn pirate to plunder whatever Ottoman shipping I could. I'd choose an island in Greece as a haven, slowly raising capital until I had enough to purchase a immense collection of books, which I would steadily have moved to Oslo or Sweden, with the intent to begin a great university there and to become a player in the government there. Why those places? I don't know, exactly. It just sounds like fun.
I wouldn't expect anyone to live out my fantasies. But I presumed that if a player wanted to start in any particular place, they would know the place well and begin moving towards improving their lot in life with their knowledge. This did not prove to be the case. Players tended to remain very passive, waiting for something to happen, which I then created in order to showcase some of my running styles. I showed how first levels could be pulled into a huge magical conflagration without killing them; I presented enemies which were not insurmountable foes; I created a quest that did not require entering a dungeon and getting a bauble; I set up factions and put the players in the middle. Most of the time this was a dismal failure.
Of course I blame myself, but only because I yielded and attempted to set up circumstances in which the players would play. I should have let them sit there at the Inn for months. The more I pampered them, the more they failed to create their own scenarios or move after their own dreams. It is hard not to railroad when the players sit and wait for you to build the tracks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These, then, where the worst problems. Personality conflicts occurred, but these are inevitable. The principle missing element was ambition. Offline, this can be accepted for awhile, and handled more easily. Online, with the game experiencing a necessary isolation, it was absolutely intolerable. Eventually it destroyed my interest in playing.
I wouldn't be interested in playing with a group of people who wanted to try things for a few weeks and then quit. The problem here IS the slowness of the campaign. It takes six weeks to accomplish which might be covered in one three hour session. If you see yourself playing four 6-hour sessions to get a good idea of what a person's world is, that's a year online.
Now, who wants to change their mind?
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Market Research First
I'm just running a small poll to see if results should indicate my seriously thinking about this. Found on the side bar, if the gentle reader can spare the time.
Please view Tao's Campaign if you need information on what I've done before.
Please view Tao's Campaign if you need information on what I've done before.
Replaceable Parts
My grandfather was born in the Pripet Marshes, the same marshes that split the Nazi invading forces in Operation Barbarossa, in 1886, in the south part of Belarus, or Byelorus as it was spelled then. Byelo is Russian for "white," and so he came from what is called White Russia, the literal translation of the country's name. He was only two generations before me, but his being quite old when my father was born (50) has meant that in the three generations between him and I there have been 125 years. That reaches back quite a ways.
My grandfather came to Canada at the age of 15, and thence dwelt in the wilds that then comprised the lands north of Toronto, that which is now the fringes of Algonquin park. What he did there is not well known to me; I have it on good authority that he did a lot of hunting right up to the point where Canada entered the First World War against the Kaiser. His hunting had given him a mastery, and he spent four years in the trenches of Europe as a sniper, one of those fellows who sits and waits and waits and sits until someone lifts his head up a little too high ...
After the war he drifted around at odd jobs, finally meeting my grandmother sometime in the late 1920s. They had three children ... my two aunts and my father, who was born in 1936. Not long after my father was born, my grandfather and my grandmother, who had never seen eye to eye on anything, separated. They were never divorced, but to the best of my knowledge they did not see each other again. But my father would visit my grandfather in the summers, and from him learned all about hunting and fishing, and the ways of the wilderness, and in this way some of that information was passed down to me.
As the decades passed, my grandfather became more and more reclusive, climbing higher and higher into the Canadian Rockies. Much of the land in Canada - more so at that time - is available for squatting, and that's what my grandfather became by the time I knew him. He lived in a little shack about the size of an office cubicle, 5,500 ft. above sea level, which had an iron stove he had hauled up himself and a bed. He grew fruit on trees he had planted. He fished in a kayak he had made himself. Once a year he would climb down into town where he would buy materials - not food - for his hobbies, and deliver his mail. He wrote articles about birds that were published in national magazines. He painted pictures which were sometimes locally shown, though my grandfather was never present. Beyond paper, canvas and some pigments for his oils, virtually everything he used in his daily activities he made himself, including the fishing line he used.
I mention all this because I believe it offers an insight that is nearly always lacking in the mind's eye of the players of D&D. Life was certainly hard. But more importantly, life was something that was managed almost universally by people who made for themselves everything that was needed. They fashioned their own clothes, tanned and cut their own leather, made their own wooden tools and even forged their own metal. An ordinary cotter could not hope to buy even a hammer head that was already made, but he could buy pieces that could be heated with charcoal he had made himself and beaten with stones until it adopted a useable shape. Perhaps not the clean, perfect edge of a manufactured craftsman, but serviceable in a community where there were no craftsman. And once that tool was made, it would cared for and passed from generation to generation, for two hundred years if need be, to be ultimately used by every family of the village.
We are such instruments of massive consumption that we can hardly reckon with an outlook like this. If the axle on a character's wagon breaks along a stretch of country road, naturally the character thinks to head for the next town, pay out a few coins and return with the replacement axle. It is viewed in exactly modern terms, only the missing gasoline that runs your car is replaced with the word axle and all goes on as before.
Only that was impossible. Without having the cart present, no person anywhere could make an axle to fit the cart. Even with the cart present, the carter can't simply fit the right axle in place and have you on your way. He would have to make a tailored axle to fit your tailored cart, and that would take him quite a lot of time. And no, he would not consent to come along with you to fix your cart twenty miles away.
Then what? Abandon the cart? We are so lock-stepped into the consumerist framework of mind that it doesn't occur to us that the characters would never have left the cart in the first place. They would never have thought, "get a new axle." They'd have made one. Then and there, with their own hands. It would not have occurred to them that they were unable to make an axle on their own ... not because they were naturally more proficient in that day and age, and more knowledgeable about such things, but because they had no template of a perfectly working axle in their minds to stop them from putting together an axle that would be - by our standards - a piece of shit.
When I say my grandfather made his own kayak, what immediately leaps to one's mind is a marvelously fashioned instrument lovingly crafted by my grandfather's hand. This conception is aided by museums, which present most every object from the past as a work of art, often clouding the issue by 'restoring' them to their past glory ... when in fact we have no certainty about what that glory might have been. And anything that wasn't a work of art didn't survive from the age of its construction, because over time it ruined with use. My grandfather's kayak was awful! It leaked ... just enough to make it uncomfortable for you and me, sitting in a cold lake, with our sensibilities, but not enough to sink it. My grandfather did not care. He could not make a better kayak with his abilities, and that didn't matter. Even into his 80s he was tough as nails, and if it got a little watery in the bottom while he sat and fished for four hours, what of it?
You and I, gentle reader, would attempt to make an axle for our cart only by absolute necessity ... and if we did make one that worked, we'd hate it with every turn as it bumped and ground along, with our minds full of what a perfect axle would feel like. This was not the conception of those living before the age of replaceable manufactured parts. They did not care. They had no 'perfect' axle to compare it with. This was the best axle they themselves could make, and if it jostled and shook, what of it?
It is not only that replaceable parts weren't available, it is also that the consumerist world they made possible had not yet come into existence. People often ask me about certain items on my equipment list, like clothes or tools, being irrationally expensive ... but in fact most people did not buy goods from town. Except that my grandfather could not make his own linen in the BC mountains, which he needed for paint canvas, or that he could not make his own paper for writing, he would have had little - if any - reason for coming down to civilization. His medieval ancestor in the Pripet marshes would not have, for there were no magazines to print articles, and no galleries to display his work, and no mail to distribute it to others. Even as a mountain man his life bore the stamp of the consumerist society.
(yes, aware of the pun)
I have been running the game for more than thirty years, and every player still thinks of no other means of obtaining goods except to buy them. Very rarely, if pushed into unusual circumstances, a player will fabricate something, but how often will they in the middle of town. Does a bard with very little starting income, staring at the frightening costs for instruments, think of buying a simple blade and whittling a pipe to play? No. The cheapest instrument is chosen from what is there and the silver is spent. A fighter knows a club is the cheapest weapon, but does the fighter ask me if he can make his own wooden shield? Does a thief haunt the local blacksmith for bits of metal and twist his own lockpick? Does a paladin buy red paint and mark his own clothing? No. Because in our minds it would look awful. Crusaders in every film, even those where the participants are covered in feces, still wear clothes where the seams are straight and every fold is perfectly tailored. The armor never has an explicit dent or bend in it. The squeaking from the cart remains at a carefully selected decibel so as not to disturb the dialogue. The coconuts have been neatly cut by a band saw.
We are trained to think this is normal. It isn't. It is modern, but it is far past normal when viewed from the perspective of human history. There are no replaceable parts. There are no uniforms, because nothing is uniform. But it is something you will have a great deal of trouble getting out of your head.
I am betting you won't be able to.
My grandfather came to Canada at the age of 15, and thence dwelt in the wilds that then comprised the lands north of Toronto, that which is now the fringes of Algonquin park. What he did there is not well known to me; I have it on good authority that he did a lot of hunting right up to the point where Canada entered the First World War against the Kaiser. His hunting had given him a mastery, and he spent four years in the trenches of Europe as a sniper, one of those fellows who sits and waits and waits and sits until someone lifts his head up a little too high ...
After the war he drifted around at odd jobs, finally meeting my grandmother sometime in the late 1920s. They had three children ... my two aunts and my father, who was born in 1936. Not long after my father was born, my grandfather and my grandmother, who had never seen eye to eye on anything, separated. They were never divorced, but to the best of my knowledge they did not see each other again. But my father would visit my grandfather in the summers, and from him learned all about hunting and fishing, and the ways of the wilderness, and in this way some of that information was passed down to me.
As the decades passed, my grandfather became more and more reclusive, climbing higher and higher into the Canadian Rockies. Much of the land in Canada - more so at that time - is available for squatting, and that's what my grandfather became by the time I knew him. He lived in a little shack about the size of an office cubicle, 5,500 ft. above sea level, which had an iron stove he had hauled up himself and a bed. He grew fruit on trees he had planted. He fished in a kayak he had made himself. Once a year he would climb down into town where he would buy materials - not food - for his hobbies, and deliver his mail. He wrote articles about birds that were published in national magazines. He painted pictures which were sometimes locally shown, though my grandfather was never present. Beyond paper, canvas and some pigments for his oils, virtually everything he used in his daily activities he made himself, including the fishing line he used.
I mention all this because I believe it offers an insight that is nearly always lacking in the mind's eye of the players of D&D. Life was certainly hard. But more importantly, life was something that was managed almost universally by people who made for themselves everything that was needed. They fashioned their own clothes, tanned and cut their own leather, made their own wooden tools and even forged their own metal. An ordinary cotter could not hope to buy even a hammer head that was already made, but he could buy pieces that could be heated with charcoal he had made himself and beaten with stones until it adopted a useable shape. Perhaps not the clean, perfect edge of a manufactured craftsman, but serviceable in a community where there were no craftsman. And once that tool was made, it would cared for and passed from generation to generation, for two hundred years if need be, to be ultimately used by every family of the village.
We are such instruments of massive consumption that we can hardly reckon with an outlook like this. If the axle on a character's wagon breaks along a stretch of country road, naturally the character thinks to head for the next town, pay out a few coins and return with the replacement axle. It is viewed in exactly modern terms, only the missing gasoline that runs your car is replaced with the word axle and all goes on as before.
Only that was impossible. Without having the cart present, no person anywhere could make an axle to fit the cart. Even with the cart present, the carter can't simply fit the right axle in place and have you on your way. He would have to make a tailored axle to fit your tailored cart, and that would take him quite a lot of time. And no, he would not consent to come along with you to fix your cart twenty miles away.
Then what? Abandon the cart? We are so lock-stepped into the consumerist framework of mind that it doesn't occur to us that the characters would never have left the cart in the first place. They would never have thought, "get a new axle." They'd have made one. Then and there, with their own hands. It would not have occurred to them that they were unable to make an axle on their own ... not because they were naturally more proficient in that day and age, and more knowledgeable about such things, but because they had no template of a perfectly working axle in their minds to stop them from putting together an axle that would be - by our standards - a piece of shit.
When I say my grandfather made his own kayak, what immediately leaps to one's mind is a marvelously fashioned instrument lovingly crafted by my grandfather's hand. This conception is aided by museums, which present most every object from the past as a work of art, often clouding the issue by 'restoring' them to their past glory ... when in fact we have no certainty about what that glory might have been. And anything that wasn't a work of art didn't survive from the age of its construction, because over time it ruined with use. My grandfather's kayak was awful! It leaked ... just enough to make it uncomfortable for you and me, sitting in a cold lake, with our sensibilities, but not enough to sink it. My grandfather did not care. He could not make a better kayak with his abilities, and that didn't matter. Even into his 80s he was tough as nails, and if it got a little watery in the bottom while he sat and fished for four hours, what of it?
You and I, gentle reader, would attempt to make an axle for our cart only by absolute necessity ... and if we did make one that worked, we'd hate it with every turn as it bumped and ground along, with our minds full of what a perfect axle would feel like. This was not the conception of those living before the age of replaceable manufactured parts. They did not care. They had no 'perfect' axle to compare it with. This was the best axle they themselves could make, and if it jostled and shook, what of it?
It is not only that replaceable parts weren't available, it is also that the consumerist world they made possible had not yet come into existence. People often ask me about certain items on my equipment list, like clothes or tools, being irrationally expensive ... but in fact most people did not buy goods from town. Except that my grandfather could not make his own linen in the BC mountains, which he needed for paint canvas, or that he could not make his own paper for writing, he would have had little - if any - reason for coming down to civilization. His medieval ancestor in the Pripet marshes would not have, for there were no magazines to print articles, and no galleries to display his work, and no mail to distribute it to others. Even as a mountain man his life bore the stamp of the consumerist society.
(yes, aware of the pun)
I have been running the game for more than thirty years, and every player still thinks of no other means of obtaining goods except to buy them. Very rarely, if pushed into unusual circumstances, a player will fabricate something, but how often will they in the middle of town. Does a bard with very little starting income, staring at the frightening costs for instruments, think of buying a simple blade and whittling a pipe to play? No. The cheapest instrument is chosen from what is there and the silver is spent. A fighter knows a club is the cheapest weapon, but does the fighter ask me if he can make his own wooden shield? Does a thief haunt the local blacksmith for bits of metal and twist his own lockpick? Does a paladin buy red paint and mark his own clothing? No. Because in our minds it would look awful. Crusaders in every film, even those where the participants are covered in feces, still wear clothes where the seams are straight and every fold is perfectly tailored. The armor never has an explicit dent or bend in it. The squeaking from the cart remains at a carefully selected decibel so as not to disturb the dialogue. The coconuts have been neatly cut by a band saw.
We are trained to think this is normal. It isn't. It is modern, but it is far past normal when viewed from the perspective of human history. There are no replaceable parts. There are no uniforms, because nothing is uniform. But it is something you will have a great deal of trouble getting out of your head.
I am betting you won't be able to.
Nagging Questions
I do hope to write another post later today, but for the moment I wanted to address a negative response someone - can't remember who - gave me about the complete lack of need for my trading tables in the MMORG world. They weren't needed, went the response. They've been created already, and exist right now in online games like EVE.
I am not familiar with MMORGs. I've never played one. I don't have any interest in playing one. But I know that some of my gentle readers have, and I would like to have some questions answered.
1) Do online MMORGs which make use of economic frameworks, like EVE, have the value and price of materials in those frameworks affected by the distance the miners, farmers and acquisitors of raw material wealth are from depots where those goods are sold?
2) Is the value and price of manufactured things participants in the game want to buy affected by the distance they are in the game from the source of the raw materials needed for manufacture?
3) Is it, rather, that all materials and manufactures acquired or paid for in the game have one single static price, regardless of where that material is obtained, or where that material is manufactured?
If (3) is correct, then NO, no existing economic system in an MMORG has anything like the system I've built for D&D, which means I do have something to sell. If (3) is not correct, please identify the game and provide me with information on how I can play it. I may need to take my first step into that culture.
Thank you.
I am not familiar with MMORGs. I've never played one. I don't have any interest in playing one. But I know that some of my gentle readers have, and I would like to have some questions answered.
1) Do online MMORGs which make use of economic frameworks, like EVE, have the value and price of materials in those frameworks affected by the distance the miners, farmers and acquisitors of raw material wealth are from depots where those goods are sold?
2) Is the value and price of manufactured things participants in the game want to buy affected by the distance they are in the game from the source of the raw materials needed for manufacture?
3) Is it, rather, that all materials and manufactures acquired or paid for in the game have one single static price, regardless of where that material is obtained, or where that material is manufactured?
If (3) is correct, then NO, no existing economic system in an MMORG has anything like the system I've built for D&D, which means I do have something to sell. If (3) is not correct, please identify the game and provide me with information on how I can play it. I may need to take my first step into that culture.
Thank you.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Master Class
I have considered the possibility of Dungeon Mastering being taught as a fine arts course, and from that consideration has grown a picture in my head that I'd like to share. The scene, if you will, is similar to drama courses I once took. We have a large room with a black floor, made gray with the dust from people's shoes. There are benches arranged in tiers along one wall, where up to sixty persons might sit and watch the proceedings. The ceiling is 12 feet high, without any panels to soak up the sound, with an open framework where spotlights might be hung and pointed at a performance. Ducts, pipes and vents, along with the outer walls of the room, are painted black to give the illusion of greater space. There are no windows. In the middle of the floor is a large table, with five chairs arranged around it. One chair is isolated from the others. On this chair sits a 'master in training.' The other four chairs have 'players in training.' On successive days, the participants change roles in order to each experience the game from differing points of view, playing all possible character classes as well as adjudicating the game.
A group of ten other students sit on the benches awaiting their turn. In a 90-minute class, three groups will each participate for 30 minutes; the remaining time is spent watching, learning and not speaking.
Circling the table where the students participate is the professor, called the 'Director' to emphasize the performance aspect of the game. He holds a yardstick menacingly. He watches the students with the vicious patience of a bird of prey, descending upon their errors with the emotion that ... well, that I remember my acting coaches and performance directors having. In particular one Mr. Phil Edie, loathed, feared and - by some of us - greatly loved.
We worked very hard for him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Director: Again!
DM: You find yourselves in a small, quiet town on the edge of the Kingdom of Yarl. Beyond the fields of the town begins the area of wilderness known as the -
Director: Why have you put them there? (student begins to explain and is cut off) No! It is the worst sort of cliche! It shows no sign of thought whatsoever. You must awaken the players. You must invest them into the game from the beginning. If you do not give them something purposeful to do, they will drift from the game and despise you! Make them feel alive and they will reward you. Choose another setting and start again.
DM: (closing his eyes and taking a few breaths) The town is not quiet, it is large and busy and is right now experiencing the effects of a nearby volcano, which is dropping bombs of acid-infused rock among the citizens. The lava is beginning to flow through the streets ...
Director: What are you doing!? (Catches his breath, appears to be suffering from a heart attack) No, no, no, NO! You are railroading the party. You're giving them only one possible response ... they might as well not even be playing the game! Is that what you want? To make them puppets on your string? You must never, ever do this! They must be allowed to choose their own destiny, and that does not begin with the crisis as it is ongoing! Did they not have an opportunity to move and choose their lives before the actual eruption of the volcano? Not to speak of the simple truth that you have chosen an event that is hardly likely to happen to any person in the whole of their lives! This makes it precious, a worthy experience to be built up to, not to be exploited like a cheap magician's trick. You must not weaken your own presentation by grabbing for the climax at the beginning. These are players who have not yet met your world. There must be introductions. There must be formalities. Invest them slowly. Now, again!
DM: (clearly rattled) You meet each other together on a road. It is ... a crossroads. During the course of an evening you arrive one by one, deciding to rest there while it becomes dark ...
Director: Good. Continue.
DM: Getting to know one another.
Director: (turning to the benches) At this point a poor group of players will waste time with fruitless words about how this elf would not speak with this dwarf or how their character is a lone wolf or some other banter while it is quite clear that they will be together as a party because this is the game. I want it understood that this nonsense will not happen in this class. (hammers end of the ruler upon the floor) If you will learn anything it is that we are not mawkish children making poor jokes to emphasize our own importance! (looks back at the DM) Continue.
DM: You agree to set a watch through the night in pairs for safety, and since none of you have any animosity for the others -
Director: Be careful in dictating the characters of the players; they may take no direct action, but yet have animosity. Allow the players to decide their emotional states. Continue.
DM: Pardon me. The night passes without incident between you four ... (brightening as something is thought of) ... but one thing does happen. Throughout the night a small herd of cattle moves towards you.
Player 1: How many?
DM: There are nine that you can see.
Player 1: Nine is not much of a herd.
Director: Do not quibble. It wastes time. Continue.
DM: The cattle sleep much of the time but slowly gravitate towards the crossroads.
Player 2: We keep an eye on them.
DM: As the sun begins to rise, you can't help noticing the cattle have no one tending them.
Player 3: Where is this crossroads? What's the land like? Pastures and farmland?
DM: Neither. All four of you can testify to there being no nearby manor house, nor farm, nor known pasture in any of the four directions you've come.
Director: Excellent. Continue.
DM: The land is sort of a bottom land, with one road following the course of the small stream and the other cutting across the low valley. The ground off the road is a little soggy. The cattle's feet are sinking into it.
Player 1: So who do the cattle belong to?
DM: You don't know. They -
Director: Stop. You've said enough. Let the players ask questions. Do not give more information than is necessary.
(a long pause as the players look at each other without speaking, or being certain what to do)
Come then, put yourselves in the position. You are in a medieval setting, the cattle represent a measure of property, which at present appears to be unclaimed. What do you do?
Player 4: Steal them?
Director: Avoid assumptions. You are not certain at this time that they belong to anyone. You must think in the terms of someone in that situation. You would not say 'steal,' which is reserved for actively arresting the cows from a herder. You would say -
Player 4: Take them.
Director: Yes.
Player 2: Are they tame?
DM: Yes.
Director: No. This cannot be learned from looking at them. The DM should not answer questions of this nature. (to the player) You must ask a question which can be answered with your eyes, or take an action which gives information in some other way. (to the DM) You must not give information that they cannot know given the effort they have made thus far. (to all the players) What must you do to determine if the domestication of the cattle?
Player 1: Go towards them.
Director: Do not tell me, tell the DM!
Player 1: We go towards the cattle.
Director: NO! Do not decide the actions of the other players! Speak only in terms of what your character does. Nothing more. You cannot decide ahead of time what others will do. You may either ask them to go with you, or go alone. Continue.
Player 1: I go towards the cattle. What happens.
DM: The cattle remain peaceable. They seem tame.
Director: Very good. Continue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That's enough I think, to get across the idea. Carl, you may have something there. I could see this being an effective training in performance technique, both from the point of view of players and DM. A class like this would rankle me, but I can see how keeping at it would improve me ... if nothing else it would help cut down on the sloppiness of my delivery, which does tend to degrade if I'm not full of energy and crisp of mind.
I suppose some would find the occasional thing the Director attacked as something not deserving of attack. And I think that probably people wouldn't like him very much. I never attended a drama class that didn't have a few people who were there because they thought drama would be "fun." They failed to recognize that entertainment is a very hard, very unforgiving industry, evident in the acidity of reviews and the often outright condemnation by sitting audiences, particularly while the performance is going on. People who in their normal habit of living would argue that the greatest virtue is compassion have no compunction whatsoever about booing performers who have not put in the time and effort to achieve anything less than a brilliant performance, nor a writer who has made the mistake of being only mildly humourous.
Fun is Work. When there has been no work, it is not fun. D&D often gets away with it because the people sitting around the table are friends, and being friends we make our own fun. But then it is not the D&D, is it? So how can you claim to love the game if you will not suffer for it?
A group of ten other students sit on the benches awaiting their turn. In a 90-minute class, three groups will each participate for 30 minutes; the remaining time is spent watching, learning and not speaking.
Circling the table where the students participate is the professor, called the 'Director' to emphasize the performance aspect of the game. He holds a yardstick menacingly. He watches the students with the vicious patience of a bird of prey, descending upon their errors with the emotion that ... well, that I remember my acting coaches and performance directors having. In particular one Mr. Phil Edie, loathed, feared and - by some of us - greatly loved.
We worked very hard for him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Director: Again!
DM: You find yourselves in a small, quiet town on the edge of the Kingdom of Yarl. Beyond the fields of the town begins the area of wilderness known as the -
Director: Why have you put them there? (student begins to explain and is cut off) No! It is the worst sort of cliche! It shows no sign of thought whatsoever. You must awaken the players. You must invest them into the game from the beginning. If you do not give them something purposeful to do, they will drift from the game and despise you! Make them feel alive and they will reward you. Choose another setting and start again.
DM: (closing his eyes and taking a few breaths) The town is not quiet, it is large and busy and is right now experiencing the effects of a nearby volcano, which is dropping bombs of acid-infused rock among the citizens. The lava is beginning to flow through the streets ...
Director: What are you doing!? (Catches his breath, appears to be suffering from a heart attack) No, no, no, NO! You are railroading the party. You're giving them only one possible response ... they might as well not even be playing the game! Is that what you want? To make them puppets on your string? You must never, ever do this! They must be allowed to choose their own destiny, and that does not begin with the crisis as it is ongoing! Did they not have an opportunity to move and choose their lives before the actual eruption of the volcano? Not to speak of the simple truth that you have chosen an event that is hardly likely to happen to any person in the whole of their lives! This makes it precious, a worthy experience to be built up to, not to be exploited like a cheap magician's trick. You must not weaken your own presentation by grabbing for the climax at the beginning. These are players who have not yet met your world. There must be introductions. There must be formalities. Invest them slowly. Now, again!
DM: (clearly rattled) You meet each other together on a road. It is ... a crossroads. During the course of an evening you arrive one by one, deciding to rest there while it becomes dark ...
Director: Good. Continue.
DM: Getting to know one another.
Director: (turning to the benches) At this point a poor group of players will waste time with fruitless words about how this elf would not speak with this dwarf or how their character is a lone wolf or some other banter while it is quite clear that they will be together as a party because this is the game. I want it understood that this nonsense will not happen in this class. (hammers end of the ruler upon the floor) If you will learn anything it is that we are not mawkish children making poor jokes to emphasize our own importance! (looks back at the DM) Continue.
DM: You agree to set a watch through the night in pairs for safety, and since none of you have any animosity for the others -
Director: Be careful in dictating the characters of the players; they may take no direct action, but yet have animosity. Allow the players to decide their emotional states. Continue.
DM: Pardon me. The night passes without incident between you four ... (brightening as something is thought of) ... but one thing does happen. Throughout the night a small herd of cattle moves towards you.
Player 1: How many?
DM: There are nine that you can see.
Player 1: Nine is not much of a herd.
Director: Do not quibble. It wastes time. Continue.
DM: The cattle sleep much of the time but slowly gravitate towards the crossroads.
Player 2: We keep an eye on them.
DM: As the sun begins to rise, you can't help noticing the cattle have no one tending them.
Player 3: Where is this crossroads? What's the land like? Pastures and farmland?
DM: Neither. All four of you can testify to there being no nearby manor house, nor farm, nor known pasture in any of the four directions you've come.
Director: Excellent. Continue.
DM: The land is sort of a bottom land, with one road following the course of the small stream and the other cutting across the low valley. The ground off the road is a little soggy. The cattle's feet are sinking into it.
Player 1: So who do the cattle belong to?
DM: You don't know. They -
Director: Stop. You've said enough. Let the players ask questions. Do not give more information than is necessary.
(a long pause as the players look at each other without speaking, or being certain what to do)
Come then, put yourselves in the position. You are in a medieval setting, the cattle represent a measure of property, which at present appears to be unclaimed. What do you do?
Player 4: Steal them?
Director: Avoid assumptions. You are not certain at this time that they belong to anyone. You must think in the terms of someone in that situation. You would not say 'steal,' which is reserved for actively arresting the cows from a herder. You would say -
Player 4: Take them.
Director: Yes.
Player 2: Are they tame?
DM: Yes.
Director: No. This cannot be learned from looking at them. The DM should not answer questions of this nature. (to the player) You must ask a question which can be answered with your eyes, or take an action which gives information in some other way. (to the DM) You must not give information that they cannot know given the effort they have made thus far. (to all the players) What must you do to determine if the domestication of the cattle?
Player 1: Go towards them.
Director: Do not tell me, tell the DM!
Player 1: We go towards the cattle.
Director: NO! Do not decide the actions of the other players! Speak only in terms of what your character does. Nothing more. You cannot decide ahead of time what others will do. You may either ask them to go with you, or go alone. Continue.
Player 1: I go towards the cattle. What happens.
DM: The cattle remain peaceable. They seem tame.
Director: Very good. Continue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That's enough I think, to get across the idea. Carl, you may have something there. I could see this being an effective training in performance technique, both from the point of view of players and DM. A class like this would rankle me, but I can see how keeping at it would improve me ... if nothing else it would help cut down on the sloppiness of my delivery, which does tend to degrade if I'm not full of energy and crisp of mind.
I suppose some would find the occasional thing the Director attacked as something not deserving of attack. And I think that probably people wouldn't like him very much. I never attended a drama class that didn't have a few people who were there because they thought drama would be "fun." They failed to recognize that entertainment is a very hard, very unforgiving industry, evident in the acidity of reviews and the often outright condemnation by sitting audiences, particularly while the performance is going on. People who in their normal habit of living would argue that the greatest virtue is compassion have no compunction whatsoever about booing performers who have not put in the time and effort to achieve anything less than a brilliant performance, nor a writer who has made the mistake of being only mildly humourous.
Fun is Work. When there has been no work, it is not fun. D&D often gets away with it because the people sitting around the table are friends, and being friends we make our own fun. But then it is not the D&D, is it? So how can you claim to love the game if you will not suffer for it?
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Vizzini Before He Croaks
Vizzini: You only think I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
I am here to say, I do not have an answer to the question of how to be a better DM. I don't. I can give suggestions on what to do here or there, how to present a given adventure, how to present yourself as a DM, how to care a little more, how to control your party a little better, why you should take it seriously and what you should expect back from your players. But all this is fluff. It is filler. It is cosmetic, and while it will help with momentary problems in your sessions, it won't make you a better DM if you are not already acceptable. This is why I said in the previous post on this subject that I'm sitting in the back feeling the bile rise in my throat. I am watching the professor write notes on the blackboard, I am watching the other students diligently copying the notes, I am watching everyone feel they are growing and changing as people, and I am not seeing anything grow or change. I'm seeing 30 years of this bullshit - don't believe for a second that it has started with the internet - and after all this time I am hearing and seeing the same repeated statements all over again. Dance like this, sing like this, wave your arms like this and everything will be wonderful.
Bleh.
Allow me to leap to a something tawdry that some of us might know from experience. My first wife Michelle, who rests in peace, lived and breathed music. Her father had been a music teacher in a high school and Michelle had embraced the lifestyle as early as it is possible. Training in french horn and flute, she began in marching bands - something she adored - at the age of eleven, and continued touring and marching throughout her teens. Every year she marched in a little event around here we call the Calgary Stampede, which means that I was probably in the crowd one July when my wife of ten years later went marching by. Life is funny.
When she entered university it was to obtain a music degree, which she pursued with vigor, particularly theory and composition, while continuing to play in orchestras and in her own band. She was a punk rocker in leather mini-skirt and torn top lo about 1982, and I am sorry to say I did not know her in that period. Suffice to say she was eclectic, driven, highly intellectual and wonderfully confrontational. I have never enjoyed arguments as much as I did with her.
Part of her training and drive involved spending much of her existence incorporating Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians into her knowledge base. Let me put that better: she effectively reduced the books into a rich paste which she was then able to introveneously inject directly into her brain. If you have not opened these books, let me explain that this is not light reading. This is extraordinarily heavy material. It is the bible of music. And of course Michelle owned a copy.
I very much respected my wife's knowledge of music, and I learned a very great deal about it. But that isn't important right now. What is important is the story that goes along with all this knowledge.
It happened one Christmas several years after our marriage that Michelle received a gift from my parents: a coffee table book gotten from the local big box store about ... yes, embarrassingly, music. In nice big lettering with lots of pictures. Michelle was polite about it, but that book and my parent's stupidity became a topic of conversation very often in the years afterwards, for which I cannot blame her. They knew perfectly well the level of her investment and knowledge, but that didn't matter in the fluffy world of their middle-class sensibilities. "She likes music," they thought to themselves. "Let's get her a book about music."
What's really baffling about it is my father, who is an engineer and rockhound, acquired at a very early age Dana's manual of mineralogy, which also is not a light book. If I had bought my father for Christmas a Big Book of Rocks, he would not have been amused and I doubt very much he would have been polite at all. He should have known better.
My point to all this story is that there comes a time when a little bit of knowledge just isn't enough to make reading worthwhile. After thirty-two years of playing and reading and studying and building my world and securing players and changing to suit players and re-evaluating my goals and rifting through unbelievable tons of written crappy material about RPG's (which, I am not sorry to say, the authors of which did not impress their names upon my brain), I am hopelessly and disasterously past the Big Book of GM Challenge. It's crap from end to end not because it's wrong, but because it isn't new. It is flabbergastingly difficult to explain to people that while the Big Book is pretty and full of accurate little facts, it is full of accurate little facts I acquired some twenty years ago and which no longer hold the magnificent quality of original thought they did when I was very young. It is therefore useless to me. It gives me nothing. It is dead weight.
This was my point with the goldfish essay a couple of weeks ago. The massive horde of bloggers about are still wanking themselves with this material, even while claiming they've played the game for twenty years. Really? Twenty years and this isn't shit you know already? You know, it only takes 8 years to become enough of a doctor that you can split my chest and operate on my heart. And after 20 years, you're just now learning to stand up and use your whole body to conduct a session? Holy crap.
I am here, waiting for someone to tell me something I don't know. I'm patient. And while Vizzini laughs and tells me what's what and how much of a fool I am, I'm perfectly aware of the location of the iocane powder and that he's going to tip over any moment. Change is coming. When it does, I'll be happy about it.
But O gentle reader, who's content with the way things are ...
You're already dead.
I am here to say, I do not have an answer to the question of how to be a better DM. I don't. I can give suggestions on what to do here or there, how to present a given adventure, how to present yourself as a DM, how to care a little more, how to control your party a little better, why you should take it seriously and what you should expect back from your players. But all this is fluff. It is filler. It is cosmetic, and while it will help with momentary problems in your sessions, it won't make you a better DM if you are not already acceptable. This is why I said in the previous post on this subject that I'm sitting in the back feeling the bile rise in my throat. I am watching the professor write notes on the blackboard, I am watching the other students diligently copying the notes, I am watching everyone feel they are growing and changing as people, and I am not seeing anything grow or change. I'm seeing 30 years of this bullshit - don't believe for a second that it has started with the internet - and after all this time I am hearing and seeing the same repeated statements all over again. Dance like this, sing like this, wave your arms like this and everything will be wonderful.
Bleh.
Allow me to leap to a something tawdry that some of us might know from experience. My first wife Michelle, who rests in peace, lived and breathed music. Her father had been a music teacher in a high school and Michelle had embraced the lifestyle as early as it is possible. Training in french horn and flute, she began in marching bands - something she adored - at the age of eleven, and continued touring and marching throughout her teens. Every year she marched in a little event around here we call the Calgary Stampede, which means that I was probably in the crowd one July when my wife of ten years later went marching by. Life is funny.
When she entered university it was to obtain a music degree, which she pursued with vigor, particularly theory and composition, while continuing to play in orchestras and in her own band. She was a punk rocker in leather mini-skirt and torn top lo about 1982, and I am sorry to say I did not know her in that period. Suffice to say she was eclectic, driven, highly intellectual and wonderfully confrontational. I have never enjoyed arguments as much as I did with her.
Part of her training and drive involved spending much of her existence incorporating Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians into her knowledge base. Let me put that better: she effectively reduced the books into a rich paste which she was then able to introveneously inject directly into her brain. If you have not opened these books, let me explain that this is not light reading. This is extraordinarily heavy material. It is the bible of music. And of course Michelle owned a copy.
 |
| It will only take 15 or 20 years before you're thoroughly familiar with this. |
It happened one Christmas several years after our marriage that Michelle received a gift from my parents: a coffee table book gotten from the local big box store about ... yes, embarrassingly, music. In nice big lettering with lots of pictures. Michelle was polite about it, but that book and my parent's stupidity became a topic of conversation very often in the years afterwards, for which I cannot blame her. They knew perfectly well the level of her investment and knowledge, but that didn't matter in the fluffy world of their middle-class sensibilities. "She likes music," they thought to themselves. "Let's get her a book about music."
What's really baffling about it is my father, who is an engineer and rockhound, acquired at a very early age Dana's manual of mineralogy, which also is not a light book. If I had bought my father for Christmas a Big Book of Rocks, he would not have been amused and I doubt very much he would have been polite at all. He should have known better.
My point to all this story is that there comes a time when a little bit of knowledge just isn't enough to make reading worthwhile. After thirty-two years of playing and reading and studying and building my world and securing players and changing to suit players and re-evaluating my goals and rifting through unbelievable tons of written crappy material about RPG's (which, I am not sorry to say, the authors of which did not impress their names upon my brain), I am hopelessly and disasterously past the Big Book of GM Challenge. It's crap from end to end not because it's wrong, but because it isn't new. It is flabbergastingly difficult to explain to people that while the Big Book is pretty and full of accurate little facts, it is full of accurate little facts I acquired some twenty years ago and which no longer hold the magnificent quality of original thought they did when I was very young. It is therefore useless to me. It gives me nothing. It is dead weight.
This was my point with the goldfish essay a couple of weeks ago. The massive horde of bloggers about are still wanking themselves with this material, even while claiming they've played the game for twenty years. Really? Twenty years and this isn't shit you know already? You know, it only takes 8 years to become enough of a doctor that you can split my chest and operate on my heart. And after 20 years, you're just now learning to stand up and use your whole body to conduct a session? Holy crap.
I am here, waiting for someone to tell me something I don't know. I'm patient. And while Vizzini laughs and tells me what's what and how much of a fool I am, I'm perfectly aware of the location of the iocane powder and that he's going to tip over any moment. Change is coming. When it does, I'll be happy about it.
But O gentle reader, who's content with the way things are ...
You're already dead.
Intermission
Vizzini: I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
Roberts: You're just stalling now.
To all the poor, sad, disgruntled, unsatisfied, ignored people who have taken the time to comment on this blog and who have not seen their genius presented. You have an alternative. You may take your grievances regarding what I have not published, and therefore have not acknowledged, here. In this magical place, you can whine, piss and moan to your heart's delight, and you shall be bouyed up by your fellow complaintants as a good and steadfast intellect of the highest degree. There, every concocted truth about the motivations and character of the author of this blog shall be accepted with the sincerest belief, as can only be known about a person who has never been met. I encourage your participation there.
I don't want you here. That's a terrible sentiment, I know, to have about my fellow human, but it is true. Last week I made a series of propositions that led to an enlightening, enjoyable discourse between persons who felt inclined to write long, long posts presenting their points of view. It was refreshingly lacking in bullshit. This is because the bullshit was removed by me. I am in love with moderated comments, knowing now that it doesn't seem to stop the SMART people from commenting here. I also know now that the dialogue doesn't get sidetracked by attempts to politically 'spin' the topic, or degrade into semantic nonsense, or philosophical sophistry. How wonderful that is.
So take a shuffle off to Buffalo. Take the A-train. Go anywhere else. Please. Because no, there's no soapbox for you here.
Roberts: You're just stalling now.
To all the poor, sad, disgruntled, unsatisfied, ignored people who have taken the time to comment on this blog and who have not seen their genius presented. You have an alternative. You may take your grievances regarding what I have not published, and therefore have not acknowledged, here. In this magical place, you can whine, piss and moan to your heart's delight, and you shall be bouyed up by your fellow complaintants as a good and steadfast intellect of the highest degree. There, every concocted truth about the motivations and character of the author of this blog shall be accepted with the sincerest belief, as can only be known about a person who has never been met. I encourage your participation there.
I don't want you here. That's a terrible sentiment, I know, to have about my fellow human, but it is true. Last week I made a series of propositions that led to an enlightening, enjoyable discourse between persons who felt inclined to write long, long posts presenting their points of view. It was refreshingly lacking in bullshit. This is because the bullshit was removed by me. I am in love with moderated comments, knowing now that it doesn't seem to stop the SMART people from commenting here. I also know now that the dialogue doesn't get sidetracked by attempts to politically 'spin' the topic, or degrade into semantic nonsense, or philosophical sophistry. How wonderful that is.
So take a shuffle off to Buffalo. Take the A-train. Go anywhere else. Please. Because no, there's no soapbox for you here.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Well Water
There comes a point in making a stand when a writer realizes there is little left to say ... but this is not the end of writing. Political pundits know that if their theme is to be adopted, that theme must be pounded on the rock until it is soft and pallatable for ordinary minds. People shall accept free trade as a doctrine, and daily I shall write articles which presents the matter of free trade from positive direction after positive direction. People who do not know what free trade is shall believe me because they know me, and they shall willingly speak my doctrine to others who know them. Go to that well and draw, my dear friends. Draw and draw, for it takes a lot of well water to wash a brain.
This last week I have watched the buckets come up and I have read much praise for water's taste. We have the written word on how to be a better GM, and the critics are in favor. This shall surely hail a change in game playing across the land, for the true knowledge on how to better run your games is but a mouse click away. There never need be any lack of a great GM ever again.
Or it may be a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
When hair conditioner was first advanced on the market back in the 1950s, the marketing department discovered that women didn't believe the product worked because it was far too simple; women were used to the trials and tribulations of hair salons. It was necessary to create a ruse, and women were told that the product needed to remain in their hair for 30 minutes to get the full effect. The lie worked. Women everywhere sat with their hair wrapped, moisture dripping uncomfortably down the backs of their necks, to give enough time for the product's effect - even though that effect in reality took only a minute. People will believe anything if it is presented as rational.
Will reading about how to be a better DM actually make you a better DM? No, probably not. Will it make you believe you are a better DM? Almost certainly.
For most good folks, this is enough. We all live in a cloud of dubious certainty, and belief is a comfortable blanket we can pull around ourselves and feel snuggly and warm. Belief can carry you through the darkest times; it can reshape and revitalize misery; it can justify the continued slavery to a job that has brought you nothing for twenty years; it can work wonders with love; it gives solace to the dying.
Reality can offer very little in kind. It will not wrap you in a blanket, it will wrap you in barbed wire. It will not wake you up in the morning and get you to work. It will not give you a good sex life. It is virtually impossible to define and it is in constant dispute due to its flagrant disregard for belief. Becoming a better DM in reality is a very hard thing, taking years and sweating effort, and is much harder than believing you're a better DM, which can be accomplished by reading a few hundred words and saying that its true.
The only snag is that other people are rarely prepared to buy into your belief strategy. If you sit down at your gaming table with the statement, "I am a better DM today!" You will more likely be met with doubt and derision than with backslapping and approval. Selling your belief to other people pulls with it a full bucket that feels like the work you associate with reality. "Oh yeah?" they ask. "Show us." And in that demand is implied the insistence that some kind of real change is demonstration. Call it, I don't know, 'proof.'
You may have gleaned a gimmick or two from the recent compilation of belief strategies, and you may apply it to your upcoming or recent session, and it may ge a cry of approval that may very well seem like proof. Gimmicks have a shelf life, however; and by the next running that shelf life may have run out. Three or four runnings down the road, your gimmicks will all be gone and unless there was real change, you will have gone back to running the same dry campaigns you ran prior to your 'great improvement' as a DM. That's all right, however ... you'll believe, and your players will believe, that you're pretty snappy now. That one terrific session you ran will echo in their heads for months, and will carry you through a lot of dry times. And no doubt that'll be good for your ego.
All this said ... the question of how to make you a better DM in reality, that I can't answer. Carl, who regularly comments on this blog, often calls for an answer to that. But in all the time that's passed since I began playing, I haven't figured out yet what makes me a good - or a bad - DM.
Let's conjecture a university course in the subject, which I would have probably attended if it had been on the curriculum. It would probably be slotted into the social sciences; I feel belongs in the humanities department, but that isn't really important. As long as it's not 'Business.' I can imagine myself in the class with forty or fifty others, half of them with at least some experience of the game, a quarter thinking that "dragons" meant a survey course on mythology and a quarter there just to get their credit requirements - computer programmers, probably, or jocks told by their chums that D&D meant "Ds for Dummies."
The prof comes into the room, writes his name on the blackboard - Mr. Chundley - and goes into his introduction. There will be a midterm and a final and there will be a 2,500 word essay on the social relevance of D&D. Each will count for one third of the total grade. No, there will be no actual playing of the game during the course, but we are "encouraged" to take part in as many games as possible in order to get a full sense of the game. The jocks groan, the game players nod enthusiastically, the mythologists check their schedule to see how fast they can dump this course for something else ... and I sit in the back and feel my bile rise in my throat.
Naturally, if we're dealing with what is substantially a complicated context-oriented performance art, the last thing we would want to do is have anyone actually perform. That would involve standing to the side and criticizing people as they ran the game. Hands up, those of you who would care to learn to be a better DM by running the game in an auditorium full of well-meaning critics who were encouraged to shout at you during your presentation. Mind you, I said "well-meaning" - not trolls anxious to put you off your game, but persons who have legitimate, well-founded oppositions to what you're trying to do.
Cue laughter. What in this game represents a "well-founded opposition?" Anyone?
We're all old hands at the blogosphere, the sniping, the derision, the pompous superiority, the dismissive carping and so on ... most of it to be found right here in this post. What's missing here is the slobbering praise, the wanking approval and the excited presentation of the very ordinary.
Oops ... that was more dismissive carping, wasn't it? Sorry. It's a hard habit to break.
Call it what you will, the last thing we have represented in the D&D 'field' is a well-founded anything. D&D is, for those following around the blogosphere like puppies, a survey course, taught without play and taught be people who think "social relevance" is a measureable quality in the superiority of the game and its participants. You can't teach something if there's nothing standardized enough to be taught. All we really have is what people believe, and you don't teach beliefs.
You sell them.
This last week I have watched the buckets come up and I have read much praise for water's taste. We have the written word on how to be a better GM, and the critics are in favor. This shall surely hail a change in game playing across the land, for the true knowledge on how to better run your games is but a mouse click away. There never need be any lack of a great GM ever again.
Or it may be a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
When hair conditioner was first advanced on the market back in the 1950s, the marketing department discovered that women didn't believe the product worked because it was far too simple; women were used to the trials and tribulations of hair salons. It was necessary to create a ruse, and women were told that the product needed to remain in their hair for 30 minutes to get the full effect. The lie worked. Women everywhere sat with their hair wrapped, moisture dripping uncomfortably down the backs of their necks, to give enough time for the product's effect - even though that effect in reality took only a minute. People will believe anything if it is presented as rational.
Will reading about how to be a better DM actually make you a better DM? No, probably not. Will it make you believe you are a better DM? Almost certainly.
For most good folks, this is enough. We all live in a cloud of dubious certainty, and belief is a comfortable blanket we can pull around ourselves and feel snuggly and warm. Belief can carry you through the darkest times; it can reshape and revitalize misery; it can justify the continued slavery to a job that has brought you nothing for twenty years; it can work wonders with love; it gives solace to the dying.
Reality can offer very little in kind. It will not wrap you in a blanket, it will wrap you in barbed wire. It will not wake you up in the morning and get you to work. It will not give you a good sex life. It is virtually impossible to define and it is in constant dispute due to its flagrant disregard for belief. Becoming a better DM in reality is a very hard thing, taking years and sweating effort, and is much harder than believing you're a better DM, which can be accomplished by reading a few hundred words and saying that its true.
The only snag is that other people are rarely prepared to buy into your belief strategy. If you sit down at your gaming table with the statement, "I am a better DM today!" You will more likely be met with doubt and derision than with backslapping and approval. Selling your belief to other people pulls with it a full bucket that feels like the work you associate with reality. "Oh yeah?" they ask. "Show us." And in that demand is implied the insistence that some kind of real change is demonstration. Call it, I don't know, 'proof.'
You may have gleaned a gimmick or two from the recent compilation of belief strategies, and you may apply it to your upcoming or recent session, and it may ge a cry of approval that may very well seem like proof. Gimmicks have a shelf life, however; and by the next running that shelf life may have run out. Three or four runnings down the road, your gimmicks will all be gone and unless there was real change, you will have gone back to running the same dry campaigns you ran prior to your 'great improvement' as a DM. That's all right, however ... you'll believe, and your players will believe, that you're pretty snappy now. That one terrific session you ran will echo in their heads for months, and will carry you through a lot of dry times. And no doubt that'll be good for your ego.
All this said ... the question of how to make you a better DM in reality, that I can't answer. Carl, who regularly comments on this blog, often calls for an answer to that. But in all the time that's passed since I began playing, I haven't figured out yet what makes me a good - or a bad - DM.
Let's conjecture a university course in the subject, which I would have probably attended if it had been on the curriculum. It would probably be slotted into the social sciences; I feel belongs in the humanities department, but that isn't really important. As long as it's not 'Business.' I can imagine myself in the class with forty or fifty others, half of them with at least some experience of the game, a quarter thinking that "dragons" meant a survey course on mythology and a quarter there just to get their credit requirements - computer programmers, probably, or jocks told by their chums that D&D meant "Ds for Dummies."
The prof comes into the room, writes his name on the blackboard - Mr. Chundley - and goes into his introduction. There will be a midterm and a final and there will be a 2,500 word essay on the social relevance of D&D. Each will count for one third of the total grade. No, there will be no actual playing of the game during the course, but we are "encouraged" to take part in as many games as possible in order to get a full sense of the game. The jocks groan, the game players nod enthusiastically, the mythologists check their schedule to see how fast they can dump this course for something else ... and I sit in the back and feel my bile rise in my throat.
Naturally, if we're dealing with what is substantially a complicated context-oriented performance art, the last thing we would want to do is have anyone actually perform. That would involve standing to the side and criticizing people as they ran the game. Hands up, those of you who would care to learn to be a better DM by running the game in an auditorium full of well-meaning critics who were encouraged to shout at you during your presentation. Mind you, I said "well-meaning" - not trolls anxious to put you off your game, but persons who have legitimate, well-founded oppositions to what you're trying to do.
Cue laughter. What in this game represents a "well-founded opposition?" Anyone?
We're all old hands at the blogosphere, the sniping, the derision, the pompous superiority, the dismissive carping and so on ... most of it to be found right here in this post. What's missing here is the slobbering praise, the wanking approval and the excited presentation of the very ordinary.
Oops ... that was more dismissive carping, wasn't it? Sorry. It's a hard habit to break.
Call it what you will, the last thing we have represented in the D&D 'field' is a well-founded anything. D&D is, for those following around the blogosphere like puppies, a survey course, taught without play and taught be people who think "social relevance" is a measureable quality in the superiority of the game and its participants. You can't teach something if there's nothing standardized enough to be taught. All we really have is what people believe, and you don't teach beliefs.
You sell them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)