The Sexless Grail

To write this post, I struggled to find some online version of the story of Parzival as told by the 13th century author Wolfgang von Eschenbach ... but that proved unexpectedly difficult.  The original story is written in medieval German.  Those translations I could find were either excessively worded poetry (longer than the original text) or children's simplifications.  Fact is, because I've never read the German (don't speak German) I've never actually "read" Parzival.  At best, I'm familiar with the story.

It's long, and wikipedia covers it fairly well.  It's fundamentally misogynistic, but in an odd way; the knight Parzival adores, loves, aches for his lady love, Kondwiramur ... but this intense worship steals him away from the Grail, which is the true adoration of God and all that is good, right and proper.  Well, this is the 13th century, and this sort of attitude towards women held a lot of power among males who tried to believe camaraderie with one's fellows and perfect worship of the Supreme Being were higher ideals than raw, unrelenting sex.  Not that there is any actual sex in Parzival.

There are many motifs, however, of women controlling or guiding Parzival's 'nature,' however, and the keen eye can see all the erectile symbolism, the collar around the male's throat, the mystical weaving of spells that we know all women possess, etc., etc.  You can miss all that if you haven't had extensive training in literary deconstruction - and you're all the better for it, believe me.  Deconstruction is only good if you want to write for a living, or if you want to be terribly depressing at parties.

The specific part of Parzival that I want to talk about is a famous passage.  Parzival is passing through the woods when a hawk hits a goose above him, and three drops of blood hit the snow next to Parzival's horse.  The knight looks at the snow and sees Kondwiramur - her cheeks, her white skin, her beautiful ruby lips ... and Parzival's heart yearns for the woman he's left behind.  He aches, his heart beats in his chest, he goes weak in the knees, he can't take his eyes off the snow as he drifts into a 'love trance' thinking of his lady love.

As he does this, his lance dips forward, and he's seen by a retainer in King Arthur's party, who is moving through the same wood.  The lance being dipped forward, the retainer rushes back and tells the King's party that there's a knight looking for a fight (the sign of the lance giving the intent).  Sir Sagramor puts up his hand (colloquially speaking) and goes Oh, Oh!  Let me fight him.  Arthur's got other things on his mind, but he says all right, but be back by suppertime (still colloquial).

Sagramor goes and finds Parzival and can't help noticing that he's rather distracted.  So Sagramor says, "Come on, have at ye!" and attacks ... and before time takes to tell, with one blow Parzival lays him out, never taking his eyes off the imagined image of Konwiramur in the snow.

Sagramor staggers back with his tail between his legs, and upon hearing the story Arthur's step-brother Kay shouts, Me! Me!  So Arthur lets Kay have a try.

Kay is a great blustering self-important asshole, and when he finds Parzival he insults him and cries, "I'll wake you up!"  And its the same scene all over again, except that Parzival kills Kay's horse and leaves Kay in a terrible state, so much so that Kay has to stay in his tent in pain after having to walk back.  All the while, Parzival never takes his eye off the snow.

The next to have a go is Gawain, who warned by Arthur to be careful, approaches Parzival in a very different manner.  Gawain recognizes him, calls out as a comrade (note the 'we are men' angle) and then takes note what's really going on.  So he lays a cloak upon the snow, Parzival immediately falls out the trance and says, "What's happened, what's going on?"  And Gawain has to explain how he's whacked two knights already, though Parzival has no memory of it.

There are other things going on - the whole Kondwiramur in the snow thing is part of a spell cast by Kondwiramur's mother, to entrap Parzival's heart and make him a slave to love, and so on, getting back to the general theme.  For myself, I don't really care about the glory of mythical deities, but I suppose there's something to be said about player characters throwing off the yoke of sex and giving obeisance to Gods and Demi-gods.

Nothing good, but something.

Now, I've gone through the exercise of getting across this story because I want to talk about love in D&D, and especially this whole 'love trance' thing.  Love is a powerful force, either for good or bad, as evidenced in the tale above.  Yes, it may not be as 'important' as the Holy Grail, which Parzival seeks - depending on how you define importance - but it is a damn sight stronger than a couple of mere knights.  There is a spectacular cult of passion that runs through most of human history, the better known since the 12th and 13th centuries (and the rise of romance), in which men of all varieties have rushed around getting themselves hacked to pieces over the erotic expectation of getting a LOT more than a pretty scarf to wrap around their uppers.  We may think that that knights and aristocratic ladies did not get it on in the bushes after a joust, but we also know there were a helluva a lot of bastard kings and other unwanted children running about the age, and they didn't pop out of bellies by chance.  Outwardly, it may have been for favors, but it takes an idiot to think that favors were as far as it went.

However, none of this is part of D&D.  You may be rushing around saving princesses, but after the fact its no touchy touchy.  Obviously there's the odd DM promoting the sweaty nasty after a good day's dragon killing, but by and large the consensus is that sex is not the mandate in D&D, and shouldn't get rubbed in the faces of people who are squeamish and all.

We can guess why there's no page about sex, love and the virtues of 14th century rape in the Dungeon Master's compendium of whatever version of the game you will.  For one thing, Gygax and Arneson were creatures of the 50s and 60s ... and though publishing their little books in the 1970s, it's pretty clear from the content that we're not talking about a couple of guys dropping into Plato's Retreat or anywhere near Stonewall in New York.  There may have been a sexual revolution going on at the time, but the Happy Hooker did not have any D&D questions to answer in her Penthouse column.

Now, I'm 48, and I can tell you that I have loved.  I have loved deeply and passionately, and I can certainly attest to the fact that when I am not writing here online or actually working at my job, there's a pretty good chance that I'm in some dark, sweaty place having a very good time without D&D on my mind.  I think this has to be true also for all the husbands and wives who read the various blogs about the game.  We are none of us ignorant in the ways of love, or the way that it will drive us to doing impossible, frightening things, or the way it keeps us chained happily to the work-desk and the bank mortgage.  We are all of us familiar with love.  Some of us are still in love with it, some of us are angrily in thrall to it and some of us stare achingly at the snow wondering why we don't have it now.

So IF we're going to talk about magic, and IF we're going to talk about fantasy, isn't it just a little boneheaded to think that none of that has anything to do with LOVE?  Or is there a special castration ceremony we've been meant to undergo upon entering a convention or sitting at the gaming table?  If there is, then why isn't THAT in the books, hum?

It seems to me the above tale of Parzival gives a hint of what kind of powers love might impart to characters willing to risk all.  Giving an opportunity for players to go to that place in the fantasy forum, where reconciling their nerdish nature with the nympholific, might shake loose some of the boundries of your game ... except that ...

Well, you should be able to see the problem at once.  THERE ARE NO RULES.  Nix, naught, nothing, not a thing to make the least suggestion of how you fall in love, how this love manifests, what should inspire your character or what the effects are.  Beyond the silly tropes of television, where every father hates every prospective mate, what real impact does the character's love have upon the family, searching for a really good sire to offspring.  Let's face it, player characters would make really good sires ... high ability stats and all that.  How about some serious bling for proving love and how about some serious positive consequences for the player willing to act greenly in front of the other players?  How about a grown up stance that says, this is my character and he by the bloodstains on Cthulhu's lips wants a goddamn good woman to have sex with.

I'm not saying that the participants should step into yon bedroom for twenty minutes and consummate a player character relationship ... but damn, what a running that would be!  Eh?  Anyone?

All I'm asking for is a little thought on the matter.  A little less digging of toes in the sand.  A recognition that you have testicles and genitalia, and that they transform interestingly now and then.  Contemplate it.  Give it some consideration.  Muse upon it.

You can go seek Parzival's sexless grail afterwards.

Oh, Yes, So Hard!

Am I to seriously believe there are people in the world who think it is a "challenge" to roleplay a particular class, having 'just' chosen it from the die roll?

My previous post was a suggestion that it would save the campaign TIME by knowing what you were going to play in advance ... and yet I received comments that described choosing a class "totally random and challenging myself to roleplay whatever I came up with."

Seriously?

Perhaps it is because I've been a DM.  Perhaps its because I've been playing for quite some time.  Somehow, having played princesses, dragons, small insects, dryads, brownies, heavenly beings, giants, treants, troglodytes, insane scientists, criminal masterminds, prostitutes and a wide range of classes and characters as NPCs, I don't find it that much of a "challenge" to be only a fighter or an illusionist or an assassin.  In fact, the very idea that roleplaying a particular 'class' is a "challenge" baffles the very shit out of me.

Now, please to let the gentle reader TAKE NOTE ... I am specifying, "class" ... writing it in boldface, with quotes and underlined, in the hopes that the ordinary skimming reader will pick it up.  ROLEPLAYING in general, YES, I take that as difficult, hard, subject to great amounts of mastery, with people making an effort.  No argument from me.

But fighter vs. druid?  Cleric vs. thief?  Really?

I guess that part of my incredulity is the thought that in someway, a class run in a particular way by a particular player character could be done "wrong."  I mean, I've written posts about how classes define people in the game, but I meant NPC's ... not players!  Players, I assume, will act in accordance with whatever beliefs they will.  I have harped on medieval life and how people used to think back then, but this is by and large directed at DMs to help them to flesh out their world.

This has to be some fucked up perception that's arisen from the use of alignment.  "Honest, Alexis, it's really freakin' HARD to run a neutral Druid!  You have no idea what a blue-bloody bitch chaotic good can be!"  And other similar happy horseshit.

Sometimes I wonder if you people actually know when you're shitting on a toilet and when you're doing it in front of the computer.  I can't begin to guess what kind of headspace one has to adopt in order to think that "making lemonade" out of six random scores is something you pat yourself on the back for, in order to give yourself a feeling of accomplishment.  This is a kindergarten accomplishment, kiddies.  Yes, you've smooshed clay into a flat shape vaguely similar to an ashtray!  GOOD for you, Jimmy.  Here's a star.

It's fucking sad, that's what it is.  It's just sad that people are so bloody weak that playing a set of different, limited classes is a 'challenge' to them.  I tell you, if there were only 18 very poorly identified fictional characters in the world for actors to perform, there wouldn't be any of them talking about what a great challenge it was to play #11.  Actors step in and play THOUSANDS of different characters ... and it takes a really unique one to be a "challenge."

Oh, oh, oh, acting isn't a fair comparison?  Okay.  Can anyone think of any craft, from fixing cars and photography through mountaineering and dance where there are only 18 forms of anything?  Hm?  Anyone?

I had a really, really nasty ending for this post, but I guess I should be charitable.  Listen, just go play more, okay?  You really need the practice.

The Dice Are Not Puppet Masters

Where it comes to rolling up a new player, I appreciate players who have been in my world and are not coming fresh from someone else's campaign. I have a LOT of home rules ... the entire character generator, to start ... and it is easier if I have a player who at the start simply writes down what I tell them, and saves the questions until later.


I am not opposed to questions. The session as I run it tends to be a continuous process of mastering question after question hurled from 8 to 10 people (the big offline campaign I run). I think a player is entitled to know what everything on their character sheet means, obviously. I only mean that during the creation process, there's a hell of a lot of information, and I need specific decisions in order to generate that information. Decisions like, are you male or female? Do you want to be a cleric? If so, what religion would you like to be?

The majority of players seemd to believe that the scores determine what class they'll play. I get that if you don't have the scores, you can't play a paladin or a monk. That makes sense. But if you roll a 17, a 16 and a 15, you can be any class in the game (this is assuming, I'm afraid, that you're entitled to arrange your stats; if you can't arrange your stats, well, your DM is a sadistic prick and you should find someone better to be around).

So where is the hang-up?

I want the gentle reader to try a genuine experiment. Imagine that you are on the verge of rolling your first dice to determine your first ability statistic. Before you roll those dice ... decide then and there what class you're going to play. Have it fixed in your mind. Have it set in concrete, surrounded by a vault and dropped in the bottom of the deepest underwater trench of your mind. If it is something where you are unlikely to get the minimums, such as a monk, have a second choice and sink that in concrete also. Now roll the dice, and do NOT change your mind.

If you roll four 17s out of the blue, still hold fast to your original ideal. Though you may have wanted a bard, and now you have the scores for a monk, PLAY a bard! Don't make it multi-classed. And see if you've 'wasted' your stats on that character that did not need those minimums.

I can tell you from a lot of experience, those stats won't be a waste. No matter where you put them, no matter what character you run, the stats will serve you well or badly, depending on how good they are. Which means - wait for it - the dice don't determine what character you should play!

If you had in your mind to play a fighter before you rolled, there are reasons for that which do not change simply because you got lucky. You wanted to play a fighter. If you see those four 17s and decide to play something else, you're enslaving yourself to the dice - and more specifically, to someone else's ideal of what you should play based on what you roll. Try to parse that together. For the next forty runnings - if its a good long campaign - you're playing the class you didn't want to play because the dice were "too good" for the class you wanted.

You do know how stupid this is, right?

If you have in your mind the class you want to play before you arrive at the game - and you force the dice to fit your ideal, instead of the other way around - ALL the decisions about your character can be made in advance. You can think clearly and ahead of time what weapons you want. You can structure your equipment list far in advance, even writing it down so that when the time comes to actually create the character, you're looking for prices and not ideas.

See, I'm convinced that a lot of mistakes about character creation get made at the table because players have to make up their mind on a dime. The dice say, play this; they rush the process in their heads in order to play this; and thus they don't know what weapons they want, they're not clear on armor - and when the game actually starts, they haven't got any character goals in mind. Obviously! Until twenty minutes ago, they didn't even know they were going to be a thief!

The game savvy people out there will say at this point, "Pshaw, I can play any character." Well, yes, so can I. I can also shove any food like product in my mouth, walk in any random direction from my front door and buy any one of a dozen sofas for my living room. I'm ABLE to do those things ... but I don't decide to do them with 30 seconds notice, out of the blue. Hell, even as I'm making my way to where sofas are for sale, I'm thinking, "I'd rather get a green one."

But players slot themselves into playing a particular class with just that much notice ... because you CAN'T decide what class you'll be until you see the dice! It's practically de rigueur.

It seems to me that if you really are game savvy, you'd have stopped letting the die tell you what to do.

The Crackers Ain't Wise

“You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.”

― W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge

My definition of 'wisecrack' defines it as "a remark intended as a clever joke, especially one which criticizes someone."

The word dates from 1924, sardonically superimposing 'wise' with the mid-15th century Scottish word for 'boast' ... as in, "not what it's cracked up to be."  The word 'crackers' for southerners came from an 18th century, pre-revolution speech by G. Cochrane, of whom I could find no information online apart from his quip:

"I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by 'crackers' ... a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls [sic] on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode."

The term became synonomous with poor white trash by the 19th century, so that by the 20th the combination "wise-crack" could be used as a word for "cheap shot."  Which is what they are.

Wisecracks are fun.  You're only allowed a second or two to get them off for effect, and there's a certain smug charm in having the wit to concoct them and shoot them off with the right tone and volume to really hit home.  Some of the proudest moments of my life come from totally destroying some really annoying prof or political pundit with a masterful cutdown, simply because I hated that bastard or what they stood for so much.

I haven't thrown out every wisecrack as a message of hate; most of them are a moment of humour inserted into some circumstance that was somewhat boring or perhaps condescending.  One place I worked at told us that in order for us to feel 'engaged' in the company's activities, they were going to give us a survey to fill out - but that we shouldn't worry, since it was only going to be ten question.  To which I said, good and loud for everyone to hear, "Gee, I don't know if I can feel engaged with only ten questions."

No, I was not fired.  But it did interject a moment of humor into an otherwise dull and somewhat annoying procedural event.  Such interjections accomplish one task:  derail the speaker and  diminish the importance of what's being said.

Sometimes a wisecrack includes a pun, such as remarking that to restore a magic item's illumination charges requires a cure light wands spell or that it really takes six to make a proper wolf pack.  Such lines get a healthy 'BOO' or groan from the crowds, and another moment of self-importance is happily achieved.

There is a particular kind of personality who is especially given to making wisecracks prodigiously.  It is almost always someone with the kind of snappy wit needed, though not always.  A young person is more likely to be someone who makes the attempt and fails, than someone who is older and almost always hits the mark to some degree.  Many people try to do it, since there seems to be a sort of cultural notariety to be gained ... Jim always has something funny to say; he's great to have at a party.  Some women have the gift and it makes them wildly attractive to some men ... and so other women give it a whirl and turn out to just be hateful.  Film, theatre, criticism, journalism and so on have all done well with the wisecrack, with some personality based entirely upon their perceived ability to do it well (though its often rehearsed).  A wisecracking 'personality' can just as easily become typecast and their career destroyed ... but only because the audience wants more of what they were famous for, and the more rapid-fire the better.

However ... the ordinary at home wisecracker has another personality characteristic that should not be overlooked where it comes to D&D campaigns:  they are in it for the immediate gratification.

A great many potential D&D campaigns have been destroyed by the proliferation of wisecracking.  Note the earlier statement about derailing the speaker.  In D&D, it is presumed that the speaker is not your boss or some corporate flunky; not a politician whose political views make you squirm; not a tight-assed bitch on the train and not a self-important fuckwit giving you orders.  It is somewhat presumed that you're actually there to listen to the DM, because you want to play the game and what he or she has to say is important.

Then why is it that wisecracking is so thoroughly part of the gaming table?

There's no question that it's an aggressive response; S. Maugham considered it so aggressive as to lump it in with the rack and the stake.  It exists to cut down, undermine, parody and humiliate the speaker.  For that purpose, I'm right in there with the retort designed to slap down opponents.

But in the game, it has no place.

Naturally, there are DMs who do nothing but wisecrack their way through a session.  That is the 'session' to them - who can think of the smartest thing, or the most smart things to say in the least amount of time, so that the game becomes a one-upmanship contest until everyone has had a thorough and satisfying evening.  That is, if you like this sort of thing.

If you are a noobie DM, however, or if you're on a quest to create honest drama in your campaign, the wisecrack is worse than repeated, random cold showers.  Just as you attempt to lift the party into a state of concern or anxiety, someone makes a joke about the recent magic item that's been picked up, and the tension is gone.  You describe the massive gate in front of the castle, with its terrifying head - that you've spent an hour working on the description for - and someone compares it to Barney the purple dinosaur and the tension is gone.  Someone has to roll a die to keep from falling into the Pit of Neverfound, and there's a shout of "USE THE FORCE LUKE" before the die is rolled and the tension is gone.

There's a conflict here, between those at your table who are seeking the aforementioned immediate gratification, and those who are seeking something long term.  Long term takes time; it takes effort; it requires concentration, and it requires that a person step out of their comfort zone in order to truly embrace the fantasy of what is going on.

That's the thing about the wisecracker.  Whoever they are, they DON'T want to step out of themselves.  The whole point of wisecracking is to hold up a sign which says, "Pay attention to me!"  It is a handwaving, dancing, fuck you signal that forces people to turn their minds from whatever the hell is going on and point it straight at the present wit.  It is selfish, it is abusive, it is calculated to pump one's own importance.  It is NOT designed for D&D.

What can you do about it?

Almost nothing, short of asking the person to be respectful ... which they probably won't, since the insistence on wisecracking is based on being disrespectful.  The greater the demand for respect, the more tempting it is to throw in a remark.  The greater the tension of the moment, the greater the emotional and verbal response to a really smart crack, and thus the greater the temptation to do it.  However you may try to explain it to the wisecracker, they are caught in a loop.  They KNOW this could be possibly the best remark EVER, given that just about everyone in the room is freaked out to the nth degree.  How can they resist.

You could threaten to drop a -1,000 x.p. bomb on anyone who makes a wisecrack ... but the problem is that often wisecracks ARE funny, and you tend to look like an asshole if you punish someone who's just made everyone at the table laugh.  Everyone is here to have fun, after all, and fun is synonymous with laughter, so ipso facto, why are you fucking Jim just 'cause he's funny?

But if you've been running long enough, you've had this experience:  Jim had to work, and couldn't play.  And Jim's friend, who is the person who especially finds Jim the funniest person ever, can't come because his mother needs someone to help her move boxes for some purpose or other.  Which just leaves Maggie, Dave and Garrett to play.

And holy shit, you just had the best fucking running you've ever, ever had.  The tension was so thick you could build igloos from it.  At one point, Dave's involvement was so high he broke the pencil he was holding - and no one laughed when that happened.

For that one night, you really felt like a DM.  You really felt you had your finger on the pulse of the players, and you really felt you were all right in the game.

Artillery

To begin, we must first acknowledge the difference between "artillery" and "engines of war."  It is more than just a matter of scale and distance - it must also be taken into account that artillery lobs complex shells that are capable of doing more than merely blunting an enemy fortification.  Artillery creates fire, it creates shrapnel ... and most importantly of all, it creates smoke.  Engines of war are a complex arrangement of mechanical applications; artillery is a much more systematized weapon, applying scientific methods that require physics as well as geometry in order to promote accuracy.

D&D weapons, even magic, rely almost entirely upon line of sight, which with weapons includes a near-flat trajectory (direct fire), and with magic means a perfectly flat trajectory (almost anti-physical in nature).  While long bows employed at Crecy and Agincourt clearly were not fired to produce a flat trajectory, but were mass fired blind at opponents beyond friendly lines, there are no rules for the in D&D that I know of.  Ask your DM - what's your chance of pulling twenty bowmen together and then having an effective attack by firing blind into the goblin's fortification?  Don't expect the DM to assign a 5% chance per bowman.

Artillery is entirely about indirect fire, produced with frightening accuracy.  Airburst artillery, in which the shell explodes above the ground and fires shrapnel into every possible axis, is so deadly in fact that most military situations would prefer not to use it (as it tends to kill defenders and attackers indescriminately).  It is something like a mechanical fireball ... except that someone can load the gun again and produce the same effect about 90 seconds later.

Artillery can also lay groundsmoke so that it covers the battlefield, making the blind indirect method of artillery use more effective by reducing direct fire attacks.  This is why they say, on the battlefield, artillery is king.

The cannon precedes the modern artillery piece, and is the first frustration for a game that wants to include "gunpowder" but not "modern warfare."  See, the trouble is that cannons produce modern warfare by blasting holes in everything and forcing towns to reproduce themselves as large, flat geometric shapes, as early as the 16th century.  Battle ceases to be the sort of thing that you see in ancient Rome, and starts to be a ridiculous free for all in which humans are cut to pieces because they happen to be standing in the wrong spot (there were cannons at Crecy and Agincourt too, though we tend to forget that).  Being slaughtered as twenty cannon balls filled with shot and gunpowder explode randomly next to the party tends to ruin the whole joy of battle, so many campaigns say 'yes' to gunpowder pistols, while casually forgoing their cannon grandfathers.  But many campaigns also avoid mass struggles in general, so it works out.

Funny thing about cannon and direct fire.  They aren't.  Cannonballs do not fly straight (thought it was assumed that they would), and for a time (more than a century) it was tremendously frustrating to aim them.  It was not merely enough to raise or lower the cannon, or shift it left or right ... the balls themselves were made of stone or partial iron or whatever large block could be stuffed into the breech, and as such one cannon "ball" did not fly exactly like another.  Even small imperfections would mean missing at a distance of a hundred yards, as any major leaguer can tell you about a baseball over 90 feet.

This problem launched considerable scientific inquiry into ballistics, air resistance, mass displacement and so on ... but James Burke can catch you up on all that (for the short jump up, watch from 13:00 to 19:00).

Which brings me up to the usual question about magic and history.  One can easily say, well the problems of understanding missiles curving through the air can be solved with magic.  Yes, that's true ... if the magicians are aware that missiles curve through air.  We did not fully understand that they did, or how they did, in history until after 1500 (Tartaglia's date of birth - see link).  So why would mages in the 11th century not automatically assume that objects did as Aristotle said they did?  Would not magic - for a couple of centuries at least - frustrate itself trying to force cannonballs to fly straight, until it became evident that non-magicians were wreaking bloody havoc by simply allowing them to fly in a curved fashion, thus employing artillery far better than the magician's could?

Is this not the sort of thing that would have been happening continuously?  We can't assume that magicians always knew the truth about natural physics going back four or five thousand years.  We MUST assume that they were ignorant of quite a number of physical principles, which had yet to be discovered by Aristotle or Al-hazam or Tartaglia.  Which would mean that for a time, magic was designed to compensate for our inability to do this particular thing, which was then later understood, forcing magic - like any other technology - to adapt itself and change.  Which would mean there were spells that had been created for the purpose of making a two crowns of different metals displace the exact same amount of water, even though they were technically of different volumes.

Perhaps it was Aristotle himself who invented the spell ... and thus blew understanding the physical principal.  By constantly "fixing" inconsistencies in physics, magic might possibly have increased the general ignorance of the upper classes, so that it would really be a fighter type or a monk, and NOT a spellcaster, who solved these things despite magic's insistence to the contrary.

Magic might have made us all dumber.

Cantrips For Christmas

Debating a number of things to post about, I think I'll keep this simple and straight-forward.  I already mentioned these on my campaign blog, but it's useful to copy them over here.

Just a few ideas for cantrips, spells not meant to be especially powerful, but to add that bit of window dressing that makes playing a mage fun.  These would all be legerdemain cantrips.

Furnish

Creates an ordinary piece of household furniture, a chair, stool, small writing table, single-person bed or cot, cabinet, end table, cupboard or screen ... any of which will continue to exist so long as the mage is in physical contact with the item.

Thus, if the mage is sitting in the chair, laying on the bed, hiding behind the screen or inside a cupboard, the item will remain ... but upon letting go, the item will dissolve and disappear.

If the item receives a sharp blow, for example if it were used as a club, it would cause 1-3 damage upon a hit but then shatter and dissolve.  If two persons were attempt to sleep in the single bed, the bed would last for an hour and then break up and dissolve.  However, it will serve the mage all night and all day if he or she remains in it alone.

The DM may decide if a bench allowing two or three persons to sit is possible.

Pottery

Creates any ordinary household object made of pottery or earthenware up to one cubic foot.  Pots, jugs, cups, mugs, plates, vases or jars are possible, or things of that kind.  The object will remain in existence until the sun rises the next day, until dropped (in which case it will automatically shatter and dissolve) or otherwise given a sharp blow.  The object will serve as a missile, causing 1-2 damage upon hitting, whereupon it will break and cease existence.

If used gently, the object will serve to hold water, or as a chamberpot, and will even allow itself to be fired if its use is desired to melt metals in an oven.

Woodcraft

Like pottery, only this creates an up to one cubic foot object made of wood, such as a smoking pipe, spoon, candleholder, whistle, toy, windvane, bowl, cup, birdcage, ball, box, etc.  Like with pottery, the object can be thrown and will cause 1-2 damage, but will split and dissolve afterwards.  The types of wood that can be created are limited to pine, spruce, fir, oak, chestnut and maple.

Thingamajig

Creates a small, useful object for up to 1 hour, which can be used as normally.  Such objects would include a corkscrew, woodplane, metal whistle, chisel, flint or steel (but not both), fish hook, sewing needle, dice cup or a die, a metal stamp (without an image) or tongs.  Other objects may be agreed to by the DM, so long as it is nothing that can conceivably be used directly as a weapon or as a threat.


There, just a few ideas.

Combat Nigglings

Today, I just wanted to talk about a couple of possible rules for combat.

Whether or not you're familiar with my combat system - and there are many posts about it, plus these the newbie should start with - you may be able to fit this idea in with your present system.

One of my house rules is that when a '1' is rolled on the 20-sided attack die, the weapon the player has is dropped.  Apart from determining if the weapon breaks or not, the weapon ends up in one of these hexes, determined by a 8-sided die:

Admittedly, I've considered a version using a 30-sided die, but it is a bit overwhelming:

It  changes the odds of the weapon falling at the user's feet from 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 ... and definitely increases the annoyance of dropping a weapon by having it fall two hexes away 40% of the time.  It is, unfortunately, a difficult table to memorize, and thus the reason for using the simpler version.

Having  combatists drop weapons, however, I find myself thinking of a different matter entirely.  And I'm surprised I have had a player ask me about it.  Strangely, it's taken for granted that you'll have to go get your weapon, wherever its fallen.  I have had players pick up someone else's weapon in a moment of combat - particularly an axe or dagger that makes a missile weapon - but I've never had anyone suggest kicking away a weapon that's hit the ground.

Take the following situation:

White has dropped his own sword in the hex he's in, and it's Blue's move.  Normally, blue would attack White, White would recollect his weapon and attack Blue, and so on.

Let's suppose, however, that Blue decides to either kick away White's weapon, or possibly hook it with his own sword and sweep it behind him.  We can assign numbers on a 12-sided die to determine his success, so that if Blue manages, he moves the dropped weapon to hexes 1 through 12.

What determines success?

We can easily assign the weapon a given AC ... for some, this might be high.  For me, I'd say the AC is no better than 10.  There must be something that stops people from hitting a creature without armor or shield (AC 10) ... that something must be the weapon the defending creature is using.

We could modify the roll easily.  The defender's dexterity ought to come into play, to stamp on the dropped weapon before it can be moved away.  The attacker's dexterity ought to be ignored, as it is ignored for all combat attacks.  The attacker should have to choose to "attack" the dropped weapon instead of the defender, so the defender wouldn't take damage no matter the success of the attacker.  If the dropped weapon were in the same hex as the defender, possibly -2 could be included because of the reach ... but perhaps not.  If the dropped weapon were not in the same hex as the defender - but in reach of the attacker - Blue should be able to easily move to the left or right and have a just about automatic chance of kicking away the weapon.  If it were in the hexes behind White, that might depend on how much move Blue has.  So that would mean there was no comparative situation vs. which the -2 modifier ought to, or ought not to, be included.  Might as well just call the dropped weapon AC 8.

It could be a good thing to go for the weapon and not the defender ... after all, if you get the weapon far enough away, that takes care of that defender for a round.  And if the combat is on the edge of a cliff ... goodbye magic sword.

The other idea I had for combat ... and this has nothing to do with the above ... involves a rather cliched scene where someone about to be hit is - in the nick of time - snapped out of the way by a friend.  The only one I can think of right off is the scene in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where Quartermain pushes Sawyer out of the way in the nick of time, keeping him from being hit by a roof tile (or whatever Hyde throws).  I liked the movie - I know people don't, due to the sad, inconsistent special effects and other reasons - but try to concentrate on the actual event.

What else might a back-up do?  Taunt the enemy?  Jab a weapon at the right moments, not near enough to hit but enough to harrass the enemy into missing a defender?  While the apparent positions for the game may seem static, we must assume that people are floating all over the hexes they're defending ... perhaps that gives opportunities for a back up to make themselves especially useful.

What would it offer?  Would it simply mean a 1 better armor class could be added by someone behind the fighting creature?  A two better armor class?

It would have interesting possibilities.  If +2 AC, then a line of defenders two deep would certainly be harder to take down than a single line.  And if the depth was continuous, a host of low-level creatures with a normal AC of 5 would have that pushed to 3 ... making them notably difficult for a low level party to take down.  It would reduce the overall chance of hitting just 10% ... but if you consider that a first level fighter will hit AC 5 only 30% of the time, the rule is reducing combat effectiveness by one third.  That is very significant!

Would players deliberately not fight so they could empower their companions?  If you consider the number of situations in which a low level mage "runs out of spells" and has to just throw daggers, would it be better if they simply helped the fighter get hit less?  It would be interesting to see how difficult it would be to run, and if it were worthwhile for the players.

Can you hire a guy to stand behind you and improve your AC?

An Advanced Guide to Managing Roleplaying Games

December 16, 2011, I wrote a post called "How to DM" ... and that has definitely been my most popular post in the last year.  For the month of November, it received 1,400 page views all on its own ... which isn't bad, given that it's in the distant past and pretty long for a blog post.

I've been playing with the idea of writing a book to match the post, something considerably longer of course, at least 50-60 thousand words.  Last week, a few other people suggested I do the same, so I think there's an interest.  I've been thinking on it since the weekend ... how it would be written, what it would cover, what would be its purpose.

I have no worries about trademarks.  It is legal to write about Pepsi or Coke without getting their permission to use the product names.  This is journalism.  I can't sell a pop with Coke's name; and I can't liable Coke, or misrepresent it.  There are some issues with having a character drink coke in a fiction novel.  But I can refer to Coke in passing.

So long as I don't represent myself as a spokesperson for D&D, or say things that would threaten its sales, I can use the term "DM" and I can describe elements of D&D and other roleplaying games.  Or so I have come to understand it.

I think I would call a book "How to DM" with the subtitle, "An Advanced Guide to Managing Role-playing Games."  I would write it specifically for people who had played D&D for quite a long time.  I would not waste any time explaining to a person who had never played before how to manage a game.  I have no interest in competing with all the other books whose sole purpose is to do that, and therefore to cover the same tired ground that only people who know nothing can comprehend.

I would not write anything about designing a dungeon.  I would not offer ideas about how to produce puzzles or conundrums, or offer any tables on ... well, anything.  This would not be a book that included a lot of dead white space filled with charts and pictures.  I would not put ANY pictures into the book.  I am definitely thinking that, since D&D is so much about selling shit using pictures, I would intentionally include a front cover without any pictures.  Picture books are for children.  I would not want to write my D&D book for children.

What would be included, I think, would be a series of 5 to 15 thousand word essays, in depth, detailed, patiently discussing as many elements of a particular part of the game as I could deconstruct.  Managing different kinds of players; Managing yourself; Approaching the setting; Sandboxing; Creating conflict; and probably something about loving the game, though I haven't cemented that last in my head yet.

It takes a considerable amount of ego to write ANY book.  It says that you think you're so interesting that another person will sit while you talk for sixty-thousand words at them.  This is about the equivalent of ten uninterrupted hours.  If you're going to think in your mind that you have 10 hours of worthwhile things to say, you're going to have to have an ego.

Do I think I know something about this game?  Yes I do.  In part because I've played it for 33 years, but also because of what else I've done during that time.  I think mostly its that I've spent a lot of it deconstructing people, learning what makes them tick, learning what makes them want to be appreciated or why they need to be pushed.  People are terribly complicated, but there are a few things which they tend to share in common:  most look for their own worth in the eyes of other people; most do not question the precepts they were given when they first began anything, including life; and anything recommended as uncomfortable, difficult or time consuming is advice that almost certainly will not be taken.

Why would the gentle reader read this book?  Because it will provoke thought.  It will advance ideas the way this blog does.  It will promote things you haven't heard before.  It will offer insights into things you've taken for granted.  It will confirm your beliefs about things that you've never heard anyone else say ... things you've doubted, but won't any more, because you will not be alone in the world.  It will not be personal, but I hope like hell I can make parts of it funny.  Sometimes I'm a funny person.

I think it will be worth the read.  I think it will cost about the same amount as D&D for Dummies ... which seems to me right and proper.

When?  Well, finishing up another book right now, but starting on this one right after.  Right now, optimistically, I'd say six months.  It's not a matter of research.  I've researched this game just about every day of my life.  So that should tighten up the time necessary.  Still, I expect it will be hard to write, since I'd want it to be worthy of me, and worthy of all of you, many of whom will no doubt disagree with every word.

BBC's Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Not to step on my own last post, which I think was good, but last night upon searching I found that the old 1981 BBC version of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy can be found on youtube.  In pieces, surely, but as far as I know it is there to the third episode.  That's as far as I got last night.



It is only about a million times better than that piece of unbelievable shit that was released in 2005.

We were all excited about the new version.  We thought they would just take the old BBC show and make it with, you know, a budget.  Jazz it up, prettify it.  We did not know that the Hollywood plan was to piss all over Douglas Adams.

If you're not familiar with the BBC version, you will notice the difference almost right away in that the narrative and dialogue is lifted straight from Adams' pen.  Something which, apparently, it is now impossible to do.

Sermonizing

Since I am working on the cleric class, tweaking and adjusting the elements of the class within my game, I find myself faced one more with the question, one that came up before on this blog (not that I can find the post).

What effect does a cleric's preaching have?

There certainly should be an effect.  A cleric preaching to a crowd is a highly symbolic act, one which defines the very nature of clericism - the pronouncement of 'truth,' carrying it to the people so that they may hear the spoken word, this is definitive.  The word is the embodiment of the cleric's religion; the practice of speaking it is an exhibition of bravery and resolution, the statement that say "This I believe, and that belief shall not be hidden!"

Many of us believe things; we secretly hold something to be true, but we dare not say that thing out loud for fear that it will lose us friends, respect, even our jobs or our freedom.  The boss is an idiot.  I do not love my wife.  I wish my best friend would stop going with that bitch/bastard.  When a cleric stands up and says, "I believe in an invisible force that says YOU must live your life differently," this takes guts.  An audience may not like it.  Prostelytizers have been killed before.

So somehow, the power of sermonizing must embody these characteristics.  It must be empowering; it must influence; it must be something practical for the cleric to do, but it should  be something potentially dangerous, too.  It must be useful.  It must be practical.  And while it can be magical, it can't step on pre-existing magic.

For many campaigns, the problem is already solved by the enthrall spell.  When a cleric wishes to sermonize, he or she need only employ this spell:

"Enchants creatures who fail to make save vs. magic. Creatures less than 4 hit dice suffer a –4 penalty to their saving throws. Creatures that are neither human nor demi-human enjoy a +4 modifier to their saving throw.  The cleric’s charisma is temporarily raised to 21. Listeners who fail their save will, in any event, continue to listen so long as the cleric continues speaking."

Somehow, this doesn't suit me.  To begin with, I don't allow my clerics to change their spells from day to day - which is my means of reducing the power of spellcasting (damn, can't find that post either).  Briefly explained, you pick your spells and those are your spells.  No changing.

It's a cheap fix anyway.  People don't get up and walk out of a temple when the priest starts speaking.  It isn't a "saving throw" problem.  The cleric ought to be able to affect everyone, but to a much lesser degree ... so that, in a slightly upgraded manner, people still leave the church or the circle feeling enlightened, invigorated ... and even intrigued with some matter about their lives.

It's difficult to manage a magical effect in D&D that isn't bold and forthright.  Magic missile ... now that is simple.  Bang, hits automatically, causes damage.  No gray areas.  How do you run a magical effect that "enlightens" but does not flat out affect the listener like a suggestion spell?

I've been building a straw man here, because the answer is actually easy.

D&D has so many ways to moderately push the numbers that there's always something that can be done.  Another problem I've been working on has been the 'sage abilities,' which I think I mentioned last week ... but if I forgot, here's a link to what they've been for about three years.

I am enormously unhappy with these - primarily because of the lack of use players have put them to.  The mage in the online campaign, played by 'Lukas' or Oddbit as he is called, has employed his architecture knowledge a fair bit; everyone who has taken "beasts" in the cleric list has definitely made use of that to know more about what's attacking them.  There has been dabbling on a few other topics.  But its not giving the guts I need to make the talents work, and I know that's because they're far too vague.  My fault, not the player's.

So I am working through the lists to make them more concrete, which I know is going to be a year-long job, requiring a lot of brain hemorrages and imaginative effort.  Mostly, I'm looking to enhance these things so that they can be played very simply.  A set % per level chance at success, and very definite results that can be expected, which offer a wide range of talents and abilities - even some magic.

For example, a knowledge of Aesthetics, knowing better how performance and art has the potential to influence, could mean moderately greater effects for some spells (duration, area of effect, range), or an improvement in the use of physical tools ranging from weapons to mountain climbing equipment, or an increase in the value of property and equipment.

Let's break down Metaphysics ... which, if there was ever a topic that seemed impractical for a D&D player, this would seem to be it.  But metaphysics is, after all, a greater comprehension of reality, and how to live within that reality.  So we can presume that an advanced knowledge of "reality" might offer the following special abilities (still limited by a set % chance of success per level of the character):

Perception:  a deeper comprehension of the nature of time enables the player to grasp more deeply its passage, so that if the % is rolled, time can be slowed so that the player is able to experience two rounds where others would only experience one - however, this can only be accomplished for a limited period, so long as the % is rolled and no more than 5 (possibly 10, needs gameplay) 'rounds' per day.

An alternate to the above would be to shorten distances to be crossed by half, so that while time remains the same players are able to step two spaces where they were ordinarily move one.  Another alternate might be that the player could perceive distances visually, so that their vision was magnified 30x (equivalent of binoculars).

Asceticism:  The body's natural functions can be overcome so that the player would be less dependent upon food or sleep, reducing the requirement for either by 50%, with this having no effect upon the player's combat or other abilities, when the % is rolled.

Sustained Life:  The character is able to keep themselves alive even though their body has technically been "killed", to as far as -15 hit points, for a period of 1 to 4 minutes, giving time for the player to be healed by ordinary means, if the % is rolled.

I perceive a lot of differing rules like this, somewhat similar in some ways to the skills that pop up in a lot of games, but based on knowledge and not skill.  In a sense, there's no difference, except that in the above it would also be taken for granted that the player knew just about everything there was to know about metaphysics, to even have a chance at performing these strange abilities.

So back to the sermon.  I think an elegant solution is suggested by the ceremony found in the Unearthed Arcana, that gives a +1 to any roll for an individual when they are first baptized into a religion.  This is a pretty crappy effect for a ceremony like that, but it would be marvelous for a congregation as they left the local temple.  Everyone in the neighborhood gets a +1 modifier to one thing, probably to be used up that day?  Marvelous.

It probably won't mean much to many the gentle reader, but I remember Sundays where the morning was screwed by church ... and the afternoon seemed strangely special afterwards.  I think, subject to certain other conditions (done on holy ground, affecting only believers, that sort of thing) that this would be a great talent to allow a cleric to perform.

The Golden Rule

Thinking about a portion of the comment Blaine H. made on the last post:

"... it can be just as frustrating to put all that information out there... to feed them all the names, keep track of where all the major NPCs are running and what agendas they are working on... and have the players just not pay attention."

This is true, but it is frustration resulting from a particular kind of blindness, common to artists of every stripe.  Sometimes it is called narcissism.  Mostly, it derives from a passion for something that fascinates the creator so much that they cease to care if anyone else is interested.

Now and then I am driven to write something which I know will appeal to few people, if indeed anyone at all.  It's usually philosophical in nature; for me, it always revolves around a series of dialectic discussions, esoteric and self-referential ... and always deathly dull for someone who hasn't read various things that I know quite well.  I don't wave these writings around - what would be the point?  They do me good because I'm apt to cut my teeth on new techniques or tries at difficult emotional states ... but they'll never make a case for me as a storyteller.

The tendency to go up one's own ass is a common practice for an artist.  A dancer works for weeks on some tricky, nearly impossible move that actually looks grotesque to the viewer; a musician explores an atonal cacophony that no sane person would ever record; an historical novelist piles up tens of thousands of words of family histories, genealogies and letters that the proposed novel will never actually contain; and artists paint pictures which they carefully hide away where no one will see.

Occasionally, however, one of these artists will stupidly fall in love with their work, believe it to be the most brilliant thing they've ever accomplished, and try to display it.  The result is hideous, and the reaction from the artist is usually ... sad.

D&D is no less an art.  It is an interactive art, and more than most creative exercises it is subject to an extreme level of criticism.  A viewer sees a bad picture, shrugs and moves on.  A player in a game encounters a bad sequence of events and very vocally denounces them, the DM, the campaign and so on, often explicitly and without much remorse.

Part of this level of criticism arises from the players rarely thinking that D&D - and the DM's efforts - is an art.  A player will be more truthful than the cruelest reviewer, even though the criticism is often blasted at the player's friend.  Honesty is a cold, unavoidable companion in the game because the player, unlike an ordinary critic, is compelled to participate in the bad production.

If you were watching a really crappy production, and someone handed you a script, dragged you onto the stage and then forced you to read the crappy lines personally, you'd be pissed too.  More so if you had something personally invested in the play ... which we have in D&D.

You, the gentle reader, CARE about your character.  He, she, it matters to you.  So does the time and the venue, but particularly your own involvement.  If the DM is nothing less than a harbinger of their own emotional masturbation, you're NOT going to feel very appreciative.  Even if you don't shout and throw things, at the very least you're going to portray the height of passive aggressiveness.  Stolidly you watch the DM go through his or her trip, and stolidly you wait for something to happen that doesn't make you personally sick to your stomach.

O DMs, if you find yourself facing a table full of blank, unsatisfied stares, take a close look around you.  If you notice your own kidneys on the left and right of you, you've take a bad direction.  It's time to back out, get some air and try to remember that interactive gaming demands that you pay attention to that old golden rule - try to run a game that you'd want to run in, yes ... but try, too, to run a game that someone else would as well.

Crossovers

In the 10,000 Word Post, I spend six paragraphs speaking about narratives and the inter-relationship of the NPC narrative and the Player narrative.  You can find where it all begins where I describe "Han, Chewie and Luke going to rescue the princess."  (search that phrase and read down).

On one level I feel I covered the subject, but in retrospect there's probably no real way to "cover the subject" entirely.  The pattern of building up narratives that run conjointly with one another, then meet in order to produce a meaningful and entertaining climax is the stuff which has eluded writers since Homer.  It is a hard thing to do badly, and badly is mostly what people are capable of doing.

Worse, the process can be a bitch when you've got time to  think about the plot line, write, contemplate the characters, rewrite, have a stroke of energy that enables you to add one more element, rewrite some more, rid the tale of all the crap and rewrite seven or eight more times.  Doing this sort of thing on the fly, i.e. as the players are changing their mind about what they're doing, is the mindfuck Tolkein never had to deal with.

To get the idea, let's toss up xkcd's brilliant and mind-boggling narrative of Lord of the Rings, stolen but respecting the author's wishes as described on his own blog:



Chart shows movie character interactions.
The horizontal axis is time.
The vertical groupings of the lines indicates
which characters are together at a given time.

 This, then, is the visual construction of what I was going on about in my large post last year.  Above you can see the crossovers, which led to elements of the story such as exposition (telling you what was going on, how the characters would need to resolve the conflict, what each of them felt about it and so on) and the building of tension towards actually resulting in the story's resolution.

To master the idea of narrative, you have to have a strong handle on what conflict is; what separates a meaningful conflict from a frivolous conflict; and WHEN to drive a conflict onward and when to allow it to resolve itself.

Many a crappy story has started out with a conflict no one, or very few people, give a damn about.  Many serials have died an exhaustive death because no resolution was ever going to occur ... or because when the resolution was finally attempted by the author, it fizzled pathetically and died.  Humans, strangely enough, react viscerally to conflict.  If it's done right, it hits you in the gut.  If it's done half-right, you might as well dump it with tomorrow morning's garbage.

Shelves are full of ignored stories written by people who felt SURE that there was no "right way" to design a conflict.  Slightly fewer exist that were written by people SURE that there was a right way, but that they were the only ones who knew it.  Finally, there are stories written by people who believe there's a right way, and that the way to learn it is to stop listening to your own judgement and study up on the way its done ... a very small number of stories.

That's because it is far easier to soothe your ego by writing in a bell jar than by measuring yourself against people who are clearly smarter than you.  Shakespeare, Dickens, Dafoe, Joyce, Lawrence, Austen, Maugham and Hemingway will make a new writer feel like an inadequate pipsqueak, and people DON'T like that feeling.  Impotency is never popular.  For myself, I am merely in awe.  When asked what to do about making oneself a better story-teller, I have only one piece of advice:  pick a writer that is ridiculously better than you.  Then read that writer until every sentence is torn apart, and you understand what those sentences do to make the story what it is.  Then look at your own sentences, force yourself to see where each one fails to measure up to its purpose and then fix it.

Do this until you bleed out of your eyes.

But I am supposed to be talking about running a D&D game, and I've let myself get hijacked into the writing process.

What D&D benefits from is that you are not telling a story which depends upon your sentence structure.  The audience of your story need not worry that you haven't made the words clear the first time; you're free, in a running, to explain again and again if need be, until the full import of a particular element of your story is comprehended.  This allows you to spend less time on the mechanics of writing your conflict and more time on the structure of the conflict itself.

Take the interplay of the characters in LOTR.  A reasonable writer producing a book would be expected to produce some kind of character for Frodo that defines who he is and what he does.  BUT YOU, O DM, do not have to do this in depth.  Chances are, a character like Frodo is one of your player characters.  Likewise Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli or Legolas.  As a DM, you're expected to supply characters like Denethor and Wormtongue, basically people who are mere foils - one dimensional - for the characters to play off against.  Even easier, you're providing the orcs, the men and the ordinary elves, who hardly need any character at all.  You might stretch yourself by creating a really interesting Gollum or Theoden, or match with a couple of interesting hobbits, but that's really dependent on how clever you are at character or how much time you have during the particular session.

What you really should concentrate on is WHERE these secondary characters, the NPCs, are at any given time in the story.  Note how xkcd has extrapolated from the book the placement of Faramir, Galadriel, Bilbo and so on, where in fact we never do precisely learn what they're doing during most of the course of the story.  Bilbo is out there, he's doing something, but it isn't important - and yet still we know where he is, don't we?  And if Bilbo should suddenly appear next to the party, we need some kind of explanation for why he left where he was, and how he got to where he is right now.

There had better be an important reason for him doing that, hadn't there?  Otherwise, he's wasting the player's time, he's wasting your time, and he's contributing nothing to the story.

Of course, there will always be those who cry from the balcony, what about red herrings, hm?  Aren't red herrings important?

Preserve me.  I shall probably have to write at length as to why red herrings are a terrible curse of the writing industry; why they are invariably employed by the worst writers; how they've all be used to death; and worst, how the name itself has become a justification for their use.  For the moment, if you have the time, I would give a little thought to how many times have you either A) enjoyed a storyteller pointlessly deceiving you; or B) felt that the story was made better by spending precious minutes of your life pursuing literary dead ends.

The red herring is an excellent tool for making 19 minutes of television into 24 minutes of television, so as to pad around commercials.  That is its greatest achievement in the science of entertainment.

If you have a solid, meaningful, cool reason for Bilbo to suddenly appear from behind the curtain at the rightest possible moment, it is going to only be about ten thousand times better for your story than Bilbo being there 'just cuze.'  The gentle reader may not believe me.  The gentle reader is invited to experiment with the matter.

Thus, how is it Gollum happens to be where he needs to be?  He's following the ring.  How is it Faramir conveniently crosses the path of Frodo's party?  He's hunting bad guys up by the Black Gate.  The meeting of Faramir then drags Frodo down to Osgiliath, so that the "party" can witness the orcs attacking the city, the defense thereof, the set-up for Faramir's conflict with his father (which makes sense for Gandalf and Pippin when they arrive) and the crystal moment between Frodo and the Nazgul.

In other words, the crossover isn't random.  The game you play may be a sandbox, but you totally have control over the other elements/NPCs of the game, and you're intervention with an odd character like Faramir can create interesting interplays that build up your campaign.  Remember that Faramir kidnaps - forcibly relocates - Frodo and his party.  You're totally permitted to do the same to your characters, IF you can roll the necessary dice and IF you have a good reason for doing so.

That is, you're not a sadist or a railroader.  You're just relocating them so that there are OTHER conflicts (battle of Osgiliath, appearance of the Nazgul, debate over who has the ring, etc.) for the party to play against.  You haven't railroaded them ... you've just changed the scenery.

This is what I meant by having a host of NPCs who are running at the same time (in the same direction of time) as the party, but perhaps out of sight.  Character crossovers are interesting - see the chart - whereas periods without crossovers are dull.  The story isn't about Elrond, but if it was, it wouldn't be much of a story, except for those few interesting moments where he crosses over with the Fellowship.

You must conceive of character crossovers - alternate NPC narratives - that occur with your party.  Find solid, interesting reasons for those crossovers to occur.  Conceive of ways in which the crossover provides the party with vital information, changes their possible venue and inspires new and interesting conflicts.

The most common crossover in D&D is the guy at the bar talking about the monster in the nearby ruins.  It's one crummy crossover that lasts for about five minutes ... and nothing else interesting happens until the party crosses a monster.  I would go further and argue that this is the problem with empty dungeons that you wander through and solve puzzles.  Strangers are interesting.  Strangers educate and create conflict.  Puzzles merely pass time.