One thing I love doing as a DM is playing three adventures simultaneously with the same players.
The way this is managed can be worked out by any DM with experience and the willingness to be patient.
The first adventure is always whatever the players WANT to do. They want to plunder a dungeon, start a farm, travel to China, etc. In an extended campaign they're bound to have a long term goal which cannot be fulfilled in a few runnings, which will usually require that they travel or build ... and the events associated with that goal are usually obstacles in the way of achieving that goal. The party settles in to do some goldmining and someone either wants to seize their claim or push them off the land, that sort of thing (to describe a cliche sort of obstacle).
The second adventure is what people in the industry of making modules likes to call a "side adventure." It's the event that occurs while the party is on their way to something else, where some element of the side adventure is so intriguing or so appalling that the party must investigate or set things right. They're on their way to China, but this village on the way is being plagued by bandits, several children and old folks have died, "We really ought to fix this." Something on these lines CAN be cleaned up in a few runnings.
The third adventure is my favorite, a large part of why I find running D&D an unmatchable enterprise. The third adventure is where something is happening that is so big, so unfathomable, that the party is only one tiny element on the edge of it. The entire planet is going to be taken over by Slaad, but no one the party has ever met has even seen such a creature. By chance the party stumbles across one and kills it. An X-files like crew of ridiculously high-level people show up, bundle up the evidence, briefly make the acquintance of the party and then disappear ... for six or seven months of running, NOTHING is heard again. No information, Nix, leaving the party to assume it was all a glitch and that it can be ignored.
It is like the Alien space ship grabbing Brian as he falls, rescuing him before he dies, then dropping out of the film never to appear again. What did it mean? In the movie, probably your best guess. In my world, something far too magnificently important to be even remotely grasped by mere players.
Admittedly, it is a bit of fucking around with people, but in my head I have the whole trail of events sketched out. These people over there did this, which caused this, which resulted in this event, spawning that getaway (which the party witnesses), followed up by this bustling about in the aftermath, which produces a plan, which involves the party being contacted in order to do "this," which the party does or doesn't, which cause groups A, B and C to frantically find another way to ... and so on.
I freaking love it. And I'm prepared to sit on it for a decade, if need be (I did once, between '83 and '93). I'm in no hurry.
In a complete world, it is like when you get pulled over to the side of the road because you're driving with a load that's not covered - when you did not know that was even against the law, now. Some people, somewhere, made decisions that now result in you paying a $300 fine. Tough luck. The world is moving all around you and you haven't a clue what they're doing.
It's important to let the party know they're just tiny little fish in a gargantuan, baffling, random pond with elements so remote - yet so influential - that it is more than just a little scary.
Like life is.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
There's a Charge for the Meal
I confess. I read YDIS. I'm not going to link that, nor explain what it is for those who have never stumbled across that particular blog, because I have standards. I read YDIS because every time there's a post, someone in the comments section mentions me, or this blog, and I get a flood of people who show up here because I was mentioned there. I track the sources for my readers, so I can't help but notice.
The general sentiment on YDIS is that I am hated. Greatly. Mostly for existing. Partly for daring to produce intellectual property for money. In every respect because I am an easy target. I have an opinion, and all persons with opinions are easy targets.
I have never had anyone come here and claim to have found me through YDIS. I have never had a negative comment on this blog that reflected anything said on YDIS. I must therefore infer that readers are not affected by, nor influenced, by anything that is said there in any way. I must infer that the vitriol there has all the etching power of a furbie sliding over a gymnasium floor.
So when I read a group of idiots discussing the relevance of YDIS, as there are lately on an rpg-net thread - which I also decline to link, due to the same standards - I am amused. YDIS is keeping us 'honest,' say some. YDIS has great influence in the RPG universe, say others. Very few will step forward and say, "What a load of bunk. A bunch of bastards that will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."
Influential? As much as any troll with a bridge to sit under, I suppose. A bridge that Yahoo tolerates, for reasons that may have something to do with Yahoo employees who - up until recently - collected paycheques from home but did no work there. If YDIS depended on a blogspot bridge, there would be no YDIS.
I challenge anyone to produce an instance demonstrating any concrete influence upon the RPG universe. At best, we may influence individuals. For example, this post will influence the little furtive troll that produces YDIS. Who will write more about me. That will drive more people to this site, who will read here and perhaps comment, but certainly without any reference to YDIS. So I will expand my readership. That will in turn produce a greater ability to sell my intellectual property. Which is good for me.
Trolls are the easiest people in the world to manipulate. But then, they are the only mentally ill not provided for by a Hollywood Celebrity.
Unless that's what Pauly Shore does now.
As a writer, the facts are that to gain any recognition I must sell to someone. Freelance, I sell to editors; politically, I sell to the various national and private elements who offer prizes for work, and most often get paid nothing for it. Lulu allows me a platform on which to sell directly to the reader. My success is not determined by that platform, nor by the opinions of others who feel that platform is right or wrong, or that I am right or wrong for accessing the platform. My success is dependent upon the willingness of people who have read the book to mention the quality of the book to others. If they will read it and enjoy it, that is all well and good. If they will read it and NOT mention to others that they have, and encourage others to read, then I have failed.
If I provide advertising for the book, then I am buying from someone else who is selling their product - air, space, interconnectivity, call it what you will. I am contributing my wealth to someone else's business in order to expand my own. If I were a restauranteur, would I be less of a business person if I did not accede to the dominance of a restaurant chain who told me how to manage my business? Would it be unfair for me to sell to customers, who had to take it on faith that I could cook? If you, the gentle reader, were to walk into my establishment, you could expect to pay $20 for a meal that could turn out to be excellent or poor; you do not know for sure. You judge my establishment on the appearance, the decor, the smell of the food emerging from the kitchen. You have perhaps read advertising I have purchased telling you to come to my restaurant. If you are disappointed, you won't return. You will still be $20 poorer. If the food is well, then you will return, and you will spend another $20.
The business is the same, though I provide a book rather than a meal. I still ask for $20. I give the book a name, Pete's Garage. It is a friendly name. It is a somewhat busy, but odd cover, featuring an old speaker, a blue Les Paul and a wrench. I tell you it is a book about musicians. I tell you that its funny. I offer a preview that's found under the box art on the linked page. I write this blog day-by-day so you will know that I am able to write. That the meal I offer will be rich and tasty and that it will stick to your ribs. I trust you will enjoy the meal so you will return and buy another.
I am a small business owner, with a small business owner's concerns. I also happen to like D&D. I also happen to enjoy history and debate and a certain amount of philosophy. I'm a character. I'm odd and mixed in my tone. I'm a softly played Les Paul. I'm a hard-hitting pipe wrench. I'd like for you, O Gentle Reader, to buy my book. Why? Because I think you might enjoy it. Because I think it might make me richer. And in so doing, because I believe we will both be better off.
I'm selling a book.
YDIS is selling nonsense. He's clearly getting a lot of buyers, but what he has to sell doesn't cost anything, and can be produced out of your own mouth at will. What I'm selling is rare and hard to find.
Reader, make up your mind.
The general sentiment on YDIS is that I am hated. Greatly. Mostly for existing. Partly for daring to produce intellectual property for money. In every respect because I am an easy target. I have an opinion, and all persons with opinions are easy targets.
I have never had anyone come here and claim to have found me through YDIS. I have never had a negative comment on this blog that reflected anything said on YDIS. I must therefore infer that readers are not affected by, nor influenced, by anything that is said there in any way. I must infer that the vitriol there has all the etching power of a furbie sliding over a gymnasium floor.
So when I read a group of idiots discussing the relevance of YDIS, as there are lately on an rpg-net thread - which I also decline to link, due to the same standards - I am amused. YDIS is keeping us 'honest,' say some. YDIS has great influence in the RPG universe, say others. Very few will step forward and say, "What a load of bunk. A bunch of bastards that will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."
Influential? As much as any troll with a bridge to sit under, I suppose. A bridge that Yahoo tolerates, for reasons that may have something to do with Yahoo employees who - up until recently - collected paycheques from home but did no work there. If YDIS depended on a blogspot bridge, there would be no YDIS.
I challenge anyone to produce an instance demonstrating any concrete influence upon the RPG universe. At best, we may influence individuals. For example, this post will influence the little furtive troll that produces YDIS. Who will write more about me. That will drive more people to this site, who will read here and perhaps comment, but certainly without any reference to YDIS. So I will expand my readership. That will in turn produce a greater ability to sell my intellectual property. Which is good for me.
Trolls are the easiest people in the world to manipulate. But then, they are the only mentally ill not provided for by a Hollywood Celebrity.
Unless that's what Pauly Shore does now.
As a writer, the facts are that to gain any recognition I must sell to someone. Freelance, I sell to editors; politically, I sell to the various national and private elements who offer prizes for work, and most often get paid nothing for it. Lulu allows me a platform on which to sell directly to the reader. My success is not determined by that platform, nor by the opinions of others who feel that platform is right or wrong, or that I am right or wrong for accessing the platform. My success is dependent upon the willingness of people who have read the book to mention the quality of the book to others. If they will read it and enjoy it, that is all well and good. If they will read it and NOT mention to others that they have, and encourage others to read, then I have failed.
If I provide advertising for the book, then I am buying from someone else who is selling their product - air, space, interconnectivity, call it what you will. I am contributing my wealth to someone else's business in order to expand my own. If I were a restauranteur, would I be less of a business person if I did not accede to the dominance of a restaurant chain who told me how to manage my business? Would it be unfair for me to sell to customers, who had to take it on faith that I could cook? If you, the gentle reader, were to walk into my establishment, you could expect to pay $20 for a meal that could turn out to be excellent or poor; you do not know for sure. You judge my establishment on the appearance, the decor, the smell of the food emerging from the kitchen. You have perhaps read advertising I have purchased telling you to come to my restaurant. If you are disappointed, you won't return. You will still be $20 poorer. If the food is well, then you will return, and you will spend another $20.
The business is the same, though I provide a book rather than a meal. I still ask for $20. I give the book a name, Pete's Garage. It is a friendly name. It is a somewhat busy, but odd cover, featuring an old speaker, a blue Les Paul and a wrench. I tell you it is a book about musicians. I tell you that its funny. I offer a preview that's found under the box art on the linked page. I write this blog day-by-day so you will know that I am able to write. That the meal I offer will be rich and tasty and that it will stick to your ribs. I trust you will enjoy the meal so you will return and buy another.
I am a small business owner, with a small business owner's concerns. I also happen to like D&D. I also happen to enjoy history and debate and a certain amount of philosophy. I'm a character. I'm odd and mixed in my tone. I'm a softly played Les Paul. I'm a hard-hitting pipe wrench. I'd like for you, O Gentle Reader, to buy my book. Why? Because I think you might enjoy it. Because I think it might make me richer. And in so doing, because I believe we will both be better off.
I'm selling a book.
YDIS is selling nonsense. He's clearly getting a lot of buyers, but what he has to sell doesn't cost anything, and can be produced out of your own mouth at will. What I'm selling is rare and hard to find.
Reader, make up your mind.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Compiled Political to Date
A nice political map, showing areas I've reworked over my original maps, that can be found on the Same Universe Wiki. 20 miles per hex.
Change
As I am aging, and somewhat conscious of being 50 next year, I'm coming around to the recognition that I have to live my life differently. Again.
That doesn't mean giving up things I love, such as D&D, or ceasing this blog; but I did mention last week that I was going to take the month of November off ... I thought I should talk about that again. The decision is all about this difference of which I speak. It is really an adaptation. The sort of adaptation one has when the day comes you realize you just can't party hard until five or six in the morning, put on a fresh shirt and go to work. It no longer works.
That's where I am. I have habits that are no longer working. And because I've survived and stayed passionate because I've been willing to change in the past, I have to take on that decision to change again.
Typically, I am sitting on a computer for between 14 and 16 hours a day. Not just work days. Every day. That's not a matter of compulsion, I choose to do this, because I thoroughly love computers. Rather, I love what I can do with computers. This blog, writing and publishing a book like Pete's Garage, maps and tables, communications, research, entertainment, reviewing intellectual property ... I'd have this thing plugged straight into my brain if I could. I realize that some people my age are frightened by computers, or don't know what to do with them. That isn't me.
Unfortunately, it is the ergonomics of computers that is starting to prey on the inadequate, crumbling body I still possess. I keep it fairly fit; I made a change in my diet that lost me forty pounds this year, so I'm noticeably thinner than my last video of myself. I've never smoked, I don't drink to excess and I've never done drugs. Hung around a lot with people who did drugs - once upon a time, since I mostly knew musicians - but kept off them myself. Still, my shoulders bother me. My wrists, my forearms ... my arthritis bothers me. I've had the arthritis since I was 20, but every year its a bit more of a challenge. Writing all the time has always meant a bit of pain, all the time, but ... of late that's getting to make me feel exhausted. Constantly.
So I'm recognizing that I need to rest occasionally. I need to stand down, get off the computer, and rest. Frankly, I've forgotten how. November is meant to be a little research into that.
For those people who talk about playing D&D until they die, I wonder if they can comprehend how performing intellectual tasks for extended periods becomes more difficult with age. This is why many older people wind up in things like fishing, knitting, lawn bowling and golf. Tasks that are involving, but can be done with muscle memory in time. The problem solving in golf - and some one will tell me all about how there is such problem solving - is way, way down the schedule of difficulty from the problem solving in game theory and design. They are not in the same course.
I want to go on problem solving. Lately, however, I've experienced a certain ... reduction in energy that's the result of 'fucking around' on the computer between doing real work. In the past, my default has been to play a game or do some mindless graphic design (drawing rivers on maps, for instance) when growing tired of serious writing, such as for the combat how-to. But now the mindless stuff is exhausting me as well, and I'm not getting anything serious done.
I want to see how much energy this blog actually takes. Is it part of the problem? Does it satisfy a need for communication that I need to retain? Is it - as I suspect - an encouragement towards creativity and work, or is it sapping energy that I could be using elsewhere. Most people tend to argue the latter, but most people always claim they haven't got "time" to do something ... which is mostly bullshit. We all have plenty of time. The question is how to spend it wisely.
I think this blog is good for me and my creative juices. But I want to see. I want to feel the difference it makes if it isn't there.
I think the knowledge will make me a better person.
That doesn't mean giving up things I love, such as D&D, or ceasing this blog; but I did mention last week that I was going to take the month of November off ... I thought I should talk about that again. The decision is all about this difference of which I speak. It is really an adaptation. The sort of adaptation one has when the day comes you realize you just can't party hard until five or six in the morning, put on a fresh shirt and go to work. It no longer works.
That's where I am. I have habits that are no longer working. And because I've survived and stayed passionate because I've been willing to change in the past, I have to take on that decision to change again.
Typically, I am sitting on a computer for between 14 and 16 hours a day. Not just work days. Every day. That's not a matter of compulsion, I choose to do this, because I thoroughly love computers. Rather, I love what I can do with computers. This blog, writing and publishing a book like Pete's Garage, maps and tables, communications, research, entertainment, reviewing intellectual property ... I'd have this thing plugged straight into my brain if I could. I realize that some people my age are frightened by computers, or don't know what to do with them. That isn't me.
Unfortunately, it is the ergonomics of computers that is starting to prey on the inadequate, crumbling body I still possess. I keep it fairly fit; I made a change in my diet that lost me forty pounds this year, so I'm noticeably thinner than my last video of myself. I've never smoked, I don't drink to excess and I've never done drugs. Hung around a lot with people who did drugs - once upon a time, since I mostly knew musicians - but kept off them myself. Still, my shoulders bother me. My wrists, my forearms ... my arthritis bothers me. I've had the arthritis since I was 20, but every year its a bit more of a challenge. Writing all the time has always meant a bit of pain, all the time, but ... of late that's getting to make me feel exhausted. Constantly.
So I'm recognizing that I need to rest occasionally. I need to stand down, get off the computer, and rest. Frankly, I've forgotten how. November is meant to be a little research into that.
For those people who talk about playing D&D until they die, I wonder if they can comprehend how performing intellectual tasks for extended periods becomes more difficult with age. This is why many older people wind up in things like fishing, knitting, lawn bowling and golf. Tasks that are involving, but can be done with muscle memory in time. The problem solving in golf - and some one will tell me all about how there is such problem solving - is way, way down the schedule of difficulty from the problem solving in game theory and design. They are not in the same course.
I want to go on problem solving. Lately, however, I've experienced a certain ... reduction in energy that's the result of 'fucking around' on the computer between doing real work. In the past, my default has been to play a game or do some mindless graphic design (drawing rivers on maps, for instance) when growing tired of serious writing, such as for the combat how-to. But now the mindless stuff is exhausting me as well, and I'm not getting anything serious done.
I want to see how much energy this blog actually takes. Is it part of the problem? Does it satisfy a need for communication that I need to retain? Is it - as I suspect - an encouragement towards creativity and work, or is it sapping energy that I could be using elsewhere. Most people tend to argue the latter, but most people always claim they haven't got "time" to do something ... which is mostly bullshit. We all have plenty of time. The question is how to spend it wisely.
I think this blog is good for me and my creative juices. But I want to see. I want to feel the difference it makes if it isn't there.
I think the knowledge will make me a better person.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Lapidary
It would be hard to explain why including gems on my equipment tables is difficult. It isn't so much that I couldn't make a list of gems, with price and availability ... it's that adding a different size for each type of gem gets to be inconveniently long.
Desireably, I long-since decided, I could put up a random list. That too proved difficult, what with accounting for availability and size, to make a generation table that was both practical and interesting.
I hope I've done it. I worked all day today on it, and I'm happy with the result. I can't show it as one table, however, since ... well, its randomly generated. So all four of the below images are individual manifestations of the result. A party, to sell their gems, has to get a little lucky with the local demand.
I don't imagine this will mean much to the gentle reader. But I get a warm feeling.
No doubt some will ask why there's a price to buy if there are none available. Well, it's partly a general programming issue (I don't feel the need to wash it out), and at the same time it does give an indication of the mark-up the store is getting over the supplier.
I trust there's enough there to give a general idea of the availability of gems for sale. The weights are based on the mass not only of the size of the gem, but also of the specific density of that particular gem as opposed to others; amber, for instance, has a low specific density, so a plum-sized amber weighs much less than a plum-sized cat's eye.
It will also be noted that the gems are much larger here than they would be in the real world. That's intentional. Somehow, I prefer that gems be the size of cherries, almonds and plums rather than tiny little chips or pin-heads. I could adjust all my prices and availabilities to make the world fit the modern truth, but this just seems more appropriate for a fantasy world.
I've learned a lot from this. I need to try to adapt that to jewelry ... which is bound to be much, much harder. Also, I'll have to repost this table when adding other things a lapidary does beyond providing the stones. But I'm tired and I wanted to post this, after a full day of continuous programming.
Desireably, I long-since decided, I could put up a random list. That too proved difficult, what with accounting for availability and size, to make a generation table that was both practical and interesting.
I hope I've done it. I worked all day today on it, and I'm happy with the result. I can't show it as one table, however, since ... well, its randomly generated. So all four of the below images are individual manifestations of the result. A party, to sell their gems, has to get a little lucky with the local demand.
I don't imagine this will mean much to the gentle reader. But I get a warm feeling.
No doubt some will ask why there's a price to buy if there are none available. Well, it's partly a general programming issue (I don't feel the need to wash it out), and at the same time it does give an indication of the mark-up the store is getting over the supplier.
I trust there's enough there to give a general idea of the availability of gems for sale. The weights are based on the mass not only of the size of the gem, but also of the specific density of that particular gem as opposed to others; amber, for instance, has a low specific density, so a plum-sized amber weighs much less than a plum-sized cat's eye.
It will also be noted that the gems are much larger here than they would be in the real world. That's intentional. Somehow, I prefer that gems be the size of cherries, almonds and plums rather than tiny little chips or pin-heads. I could adjust all my prices and availabilities to make the world fit the modern truth, but this just seems more appropriate for a fantasy world.
I've learned a lot from this. I need to try to adapt that to jewelry ... which is bound to be much, much harder. Also, I'll have to repost this table when adding other things a lapidary does beyond providing the stones. But I'm tired and I wanted to post this, after a full day of continuous programming.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Catskinning
Something you learn as a writer and storyteller, after doing a great deal of it, is that there is always a better way to give information to the reader or the listener. For example, there's several ways I could have started this post, apart from the lede I used, which was to start with the vocation of writer. I could have started, "When you are describing things in D&D ..."; or I could have started with some friendly story about when I tried to write something and then changed my original intent to something else. But let's leave this recursiveness aside for the time being, and presume to believe that I've started this discussion and as such move on with it.
It is called exposition. It is the delivery of information the party needs. How high is the table? Where is the table in reference to the room? How does the color of the table reveal information about where it was made, and how does that apply to the situation as is? As a DM, you have to keep this sort of thing going constantly.
Where it comes to the BIG exposition, that critical start to the campaign where you explain that the King is old and his daughter is a tart who has been schlepping with the Duke, the King's brother, in an incestuous relationship that's now leading to deposing the old king and replacing him with his younger brother in unholy union with the King's daughter, the usual effort in D&D is to sit the party down in some room, have some wizard or otherwise knowledgeable fellow serve them all mead and ale, and then spend 20 minutes telling the whole story.
Never do this.
Seriously. It is the worst kind of writing there is. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the venerable fellow who tells the party the story. There's nothing wrong with the mead and ale. What's wrong is the telling of the WHOLE story.
For the love of all that's dramatic, never, EVER, tell the whole story up front. Always presume the NPC telling the party the story has his OWN motivations, and that therefore he's deliberately motivated to leave things out. Things like the daughter not actually being the king's biological daughter. Or that the Duke had actually been given the throne in the first place by the present King's father, only the older brother usurped it by claiming he was the elder. You want to leave things like that out. You want the party to not know the whole story.
Better yet, don't have the story told by ONE person. And that's where the "more than one way to tell a story" comes in. It's easiest to have one person telling it, yes, but it's better if the party learns different things from different people over more than the first running. The fellow shoeing the party's horse mentions that he did this for the princess the day before, and that he saw her riding into the woods yonder. A few fellows at the bar intimate that the princess has a lover. The party inadvertently stumbles across the Duke as he's paying off someone that looks questionable, and then a few days later the party finds out that fellow is an assassin from a member of the local thieves' guild - who of course knows nothing about the dealings with the Duke. And so on.
But it doesn't have to be that way. The party may not want to stay in that town, SOOOO ... they're not going to see all that shit or talk to those people. So when they're forty miles away, in another town, they hear a couple banging away in the next room at the Inn. The next morning, they see a young woman riding away on a horse, and a rather scruffy man is inadvertantly answered "yes, your highness" by an oddly obsequious but equally scruffy man who's with him. So the party pays no attention and you ... let it go.
Or, the party meets three men on the road, ex-soldiers, and they're angrily discussing with one another the latest news that the King has made a treaty with the next kingdom over, in order to settle the matter because the King wants more military in his capital. One of the soldiers says its because the king is coward and is afraid of assassination, and another says its because he wants to use that military to increase taxes in the kingdom. They make no mention at all of the Duke and the Princess, but they do say there was one assassination attempt already ... and then they ask where the party is from, and if the party knows anything.
Because, I have to tell you, if you can get the party doing your exposition to your NPC's, you have it made in the shade.
The problem for a lot of would-be storytellers is this misconception that the story-telling process is one way, from story teller to audience. This may sound strange to some, but I'm going to extol Pantomime. That's a stage-form that's rarely seen as a masterful storytelling concept ... but it is.
Pantomime is almost thoroughly dead in North America, and at any rate has been reduced to the sort of thing that children are expected to see, and that adults are expected to despise ... or endure for the sake of children. For those not familiar, it is a slapstick variety show with stock characters and typically stock jokes and storylines, in which the audience is encouraged to participate.
The particularly relevant interplay that I want to address is the circumstance in 'Panto' where the comic lead deliberately asserts that something is true, when the audience already knows it isn't, or the reverse. This is because, of course, the audience has seen the entire performance, whereas the comic lead is of course ignorant of things that have happened when he is not on stage (its usually a 'he,' even when it's a woman dressed as a 'he'). So the Comic will say, "Oh, yes it is!" ... and the whole audience will roar, "Oh, no it isn't!" And the Comic will say, "Well, he doesn't love her!" and the audience will reply, "Oh yes he does!" ... and so on.
This is a hard interplay to get with your players, and of course it doesn't play out that obviously. But if you're smart and clever and take your time about giving information from many sources, you'll get your parties to stop believing A or B, and they'll start saying to each other "He's lying" or "That can't be right" and so on and so forth ... until your parties are sorting the whole thing out FOR YOU and all you need to do is watch the process while you get coffee and answer questions.
There are a lot of ways to give the same information. There's always one more than the ways you've invented. With practice, the reader can train his or her self on multiple ways to skin that cat. Don't give up after the first try. Don't think you've done the job with your first idea. There's a better idea behind that first one, hiding a little deeper in the bushes, a bit harder to find, with fur that's so much nicer than the grotty old cat that was half-dead on your doorstep. You'll just have to stretch yourself a bit.
It is called exposition. It is the delivery of information the party needs. How high is the table? Where is the table in reference to the room? How does the color of the table reveal information about where it was made, and how does that apply to the situation as is? As a DM, you have to keep this sort of thing going constantly.
Where it comes to the BIG exposition, that critical start to the campaign where you explain that the King is old and his daughter is a tart who has been schlepping with the Duke, the King's brother, in an incestuous relationship that's now leading to deposing the old king and replacing him with his younger brother in unholy union with the King's daughter, the usual effort in D&D is to sit the party down in some room, have some wizard or otherwise knowledgeable fellow serve them all mead and ale, and then spend 20 minutes telling the whole story.
Never do this.
Seriously. It is the worst kind of writing there is. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the venerable fellow who tells the party the story. There's nothing wrong with the mead and ale. What's wrong is the telling of the WHOLE story.
For the love of all that's dramatic, never, EVER, tell the whole story up front. Always presume the NPC telling the party the story has his OWN motivations, and that therefore he's deliberately motivated to leave things out. Things like the daughter not actually being the king's biological daughter. Or that the Duke had actually been given the throne in the first place by the present King's father, only the older brother usurped it by claiming he was the elder. You want to leave things like that out. You want the party to not know the whole story.
Better yet, don't have the story told by ONE person. And that's where the "more than one way to tell a story" comes in. It's easiest to have one person telling it, yes, but it's better if the party learns different things from different people over more than the first running. The fellow shoeing the party's horse mentions that he did this for the princess the day before, and that he saw her riding into the woods yonder. A few fellows at the bar intimate that the princess has a lover. The party inadvertently stumbles across the Duke as he's paying off someone that looks questionable, and then a few days later the party finds out that fellow is an assassin from a member of the local thieves' guild - who of course knows nothing about the dealings with the Duke. And so on.
But it doesn't have to be that way. The party may not want to stay in that town, SOOOO ... they're not going to see all that shit or talk to those people. So when they're forty miles away, in another town, they hear a couple banging away in the next room at the Inn. The next morning, they see a young woman riding away on a horse, and a rather scruffy man is inadvertantly answered "yes, your highness" by an oddly obsequious but equally scruffy man who's with him. So the party pays no attention and you ... let it go.
Or, the party meets three men on the road, ex-soldiers, and they're angrily discussing with one another the latest news that the King has made a treaty with the next kingdom over, in order to settle the matter because the King wants more military in his capital. One of the soldiers says its because the king is coward and is afraid of assassination, and another says its because he wants to use that military to increase taxes in the kingdom. They make no mention at all of the Duke and the Princess, but they do say there was one assassination attempt already ... and then they ask where the party is from, and if the party knows anything.
Because, I have to tell you, if you can get the party doing your exposition to your NPC's, you have it made in the shade.
The problem for a lot of would-be storytellers is this misconception that the story-telling process is one way, from story teller to audience. This may sound strange to some, but I'm going to extol Pantomime. That's a stage-form that's rarely seen as a masterful storytelling concept ... but it is.
Pantomime is almost thoroughly dead in North America, and at any rate has been reduced to the sort of thing that children are expected to see, and that adults are expected to despise ... or endure for the sake of children. For those not familiar, it is a slapstick variety show with stock characters and typically stock jokes and storylines, in which the audience is encouraged to participate.
The particularly relevant interplay that I want to address is the circumstance in 'Panto' where the comic lead deliberately asserts that something is true, when the audience already knows it isn't, or the reverse. This is because, of course, the audience has seen the entire performance, whereas the comic lead is of course ignorant of things that have happened when he is not on stage (its usually a 'he,' even when it's a woman dressed as a 'he'). So the Comic will say, "Oh, yes it is!" ... and the whole audience will roar, "Oh, no it isn't!" And the Comic will say, "Well, he doesn't love her!" and the audience will reply, "Oh yes he does!" ... and so on.
This is a hard interplay to get with your players, and of course it doesn't play out that obviously. But if you're smart and clever and take your time about giving information from many sources, you'll get your parties to stop believing A or B, and they'll start saying to each other "He's lying" or "That can't be right" and so on and so forth ... until your parties are sorting the whole thing out FOR YOU and all you need to do is watch the process while you get coffee and answer questions.
There are a lot of ways to give the same information. There's always one more than the ways you've invented. With practice, the reader can train his or her self on multiple ways to skin that cat. Don't give up after the first try. Don't think you've done the job with your first idea. There's a better idea behind that first one, hiding a little deeper in the bushes, a bit harder to find, with fur that's so much nicer than the grotty old cat that was half-dead on your doorstep. You'll just have to stretch yourself a bit.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Modelling Roles
I wouldn't know how to be a role-model.
Some fellow last week wrote a comment praising the hell out of my knowledge and writing ability, then damning the use to which I applied them. I'm never very clear about that - if I'm so smart and knowledgeable, then how is it I don't know what I should be talking about? And why is it I'm expected to be a 'leader' by expounding the opinions of people who generally are not considered to be either knowledgeable or clever? How do I lead people on their crusades when I don't believe in their crusades? Wouldn't that make me a manipulating power-grabbing disingenious liar?
On the other hand, if I don't use my power for good - I kid you not, the guy came just this close to telling me with great power comes great responsibility - then I'm evil anyway. I'm evil because I don't champion commonly held truths.
Here's the whole comment, written on this post by c- dm:
"Yesterday I found your blog and I was ecstatic. I play a lot of D&D, most of it from the DM chair. The wealth of ideas you've shared with the gaming community here is praiseworthy on the merit of sheer volume alone. But the quality is also very high, far above the line for this sort of blog. Your passion for the craft is evident. Your background, your personal toolset as a DM, and even your trajectory through a half a lifetime of gaming reminds me a lot of my own experiences.
I don't know why I clicked on the Popular Posts link for this entry. I should have known better. But I did.
I'm very disappointed in you Alexis. It hurts. I can hear in your voice that were angry and wanting to vent. Everyone needs to vent now and then.
As a Canadian, as an ally, as a fellow gamer, and as a human being, you might have chosen to stand with your party members, here in times of trouble as in times of joy, and help us bear the burden. Instead, you have spitefully chosen to run to the sidelines and throw stones. You could have chosen to take this opportunity to bring people of like mind together and do some good. Instead you've chosen to divide us.
I implore you to make a different choice next time. Do not underestimate the influence that you have. When you speak people listen. Given the quality of your blog I'm willing to bet you have a lot of readers. You may not have asked for this responsibility, or even care, but you can change things. Not this way, but by donning the mantle of responsibility and leading the way.
Please, use your influence to lead."
Yes, well, I probably shouldn't have written that post. Too much Noam Chomsky in my head, I suppose. But don't worry. This isn't going to be a political post. Instead, I want to talk about dumping responsibility on people.
And with that, I'll remind the gentle reader of my first line. I wouldn't know how to be a role-model.
Not that I'm not proud of my efforts and happy with my peculiar way of biting and slashing at people; its only that I couldn't in good conscience recommend it as a methodology for dealing with people. People who know me well are familiar with a certain generousity they can expect from me ... but I'd say there's probably an unspoken - but privately held - understanding of what a selfish prick I am. I'm only lately realizing how this plays out in my private life; and that the source of it is definitely my parents.
My mother died about this time last year; I don't particularly miss her. I know that's wrong, but I've also come to realize - and my daughter concurs with me on this with regards to her grandparents, her uncle and her aunt (my brother and sister) - that I grew up in what was largely a loveless home. A responsible home. A respectable home. A home where morality and propriety were held in high estimation. But in fact, a hollow shell.
I did not raise my daughter in such a home. Her mother passed away some years ago, but my partner Tamara is a second mother to my daughter and we are all very close. They both tolerate me and they have both had personal, close experience with the exact reasons why I am broken.
Not something that's going to be evident online. Online, I am only going to appear to be broken without cause. Which is funny, really, since obviously no one is ever broken without cause, and no one who is broken decided to be. The myth that we could all be happy if we simply pretended to be has managed to sell a lot of bad books to broken people who haven't adjusted to their peculiar broken natures, but it really is all just a myth.
We are broken, and that is what has the potential to make us great.
There is nothing special about a perfect piece of pottery that is manufactured by a machine. It sits in your cupboard like its five other perfect brothers, utterly interchangeable and fully replaceable. If you're the sort of person who needs clean, perfect, unflawed things out of which to drink your coffee, then the world has been made for you. Pottery Barn has all you'll ever need.
My favorite cup is anything but perfect. It has a chip on the bottom that broke off when my daughter's mother some 19 years ago hurled it at me in a fit of anger. The cup bounced on the carpet, banged through the bathroom door and ricocheted off the sink without smashing to pieces. It's a big, clunky, hand-made pottery thing and at the moment its not in my cupboard. It's in a box, buried in a storeroom, safe and sound and fully useable. It didn't ask to be broken. Yet it stood up to that indignity with dignity. I love that damn thing.
It can't be replaced. It can't be copied. There's not another cup in the world like it, and there will never be another cup in the world like it. It will never be a role-model for cups.
My particular nature is not to be found in my manufacture, nor in the failed storage facility of my early years. My particular nature is in the glue and gunk that has been slapped into the cracks and ground down over the years. Those edges are nothing like as sharp as they used to be. Another decade or two and they might actually be smooth and comfortable to touch. I can't say. I'm still working on it.
But I'm not here to lead any body down my particular path. The gentle reader shouldn't expect that. At best, I might offer some other path, gathered either from wisdom or from a big sign reading "warning - avoid area." It would be perhaps best to heed that message.
I really wouldn't know how to be a role-model. I think it likely that no one should ever be a role-model, nor seek role-models. There's something parasitic and festering with the whole business. Best to get on with fixing your own broken pieces and leave me to fix mine. And if mine seem to cause division and spread hate and evil, well ... don't read this blog. Encourage others not to read it.
But don't encourage me not to write it, nor to write it in some other way. That's a waste of your time.
Some fellow last week wrote a comment praising the hell out of my knowledge and writing ability, then damning the use to which I applied them. I'm never very clear about that - if I'm so smart and knowledgeable, then how is it I don't know what I should be talking about? And why is it I'm expected to be a 'leader' by expounding the opinions of people who generally are not considered to be either knowledgeable or clever? How do I lead people on their crusades when I don't believe in their crusades? Wouldn't that make me a manipulating power-grabbing disingenious liar?
On the other hand, if I don't use my power for good - I kid you not, the guy came just this close to telling me with great power comes great responsibility - then I'm evil anyway. I'm evil because I don't champion commonly held truths.
Here's the whole comment, written on this post by c- dm:
"Yesterday I found your blog and I was ecstatic. I play a lot of D&D, most of it from the DM chair. The wealth of ideas you've shared with the gaming community here is praiseworthy on the merit of sheer volume alone. But the quality is also very high, far above the line for this sort of blog. Your passion for the craft is evident. Your background, your personal toolset as a DM, and even your trajectory through a half a lifetime of gaming reminds me a lot of my own experiences.
I don't know why I clicked on the Popular Posts link for this entry. I should have known better. But I did.
I'm very disappointed in you Alexis. It hurts. I can hear in your voice that were angry and wanting to vent. Everyone needs to vent now and then.
As a Canadian, as an ally, as a fellow gamer, and as a human being, you might have chosen to stand with your party members, here in times of trouble as in times of joy, and help us bear the burden. Instead, you have spitefully chosen to run to the sidelines and throw stones. You could have chosen to take this opportunity to bring people of like mind together and do some good. Instead you've chosen to divide us.
I implore you to make a different choice next time. Do not underestimate the influence that you have. When you speak people listen. Given the quality of your blog I'm willing to bet you have a lot of readers. You may not have asked for this responsibility, or even care, but you can change things. Not this way, but by donning the mantle of responsibility and leading the way.
Please, use your influence to lead."
Yes, well, I probably shouldn't have written that post. Too much Noam Chomsky in my head, I suppose. But don't worry. This isn't going to be a political post. Instead, I want to talk about dumping responsibility on people.
And with that, I'll remind the gentle reader of my first line. I wouldn't know how to be a role-model.
Not that I'm not proud of my efforts and happy with my peculiar way of biting and slashing at people; its only that I couldn't in good conscience recommend it as a methodology for dealing with people. People who know me well are familiar with a certain generousity they can expect from me ... but I'd say there's probably an unspoken - but privately held - understanding of what a selfish prick I am. I'm only lately realizing how this plays out in my private life; and that the source of it is definitely my parents.
My mother died about this time last year; I don't particularly miss her. I know that's wrong, but I've also come to realize - and my daughter concurs with me on this with regards to her grandparents, her uncle and her aunt (my brother and sister) - that I grew up in what was largely a loveless home. A responsible home. A respectable home. A home where morality and propriety were held in high estimation. But in fact, a hollow shell.
I did not raise my daughter in such a home. Her mother passed away some years ago, but my partner Tamara is a second mother to my daughter and we are all very close. They both tolerate me and they have both had personal, close experience with the exact reasons why I am broken.
Not something that's going to be evident online. Online, I am only going to appear to be broken without cause. Which is funny, really, since obviously no one is ever broken without cause, and no one who is broken decided to be. The myth that we could all be happy if we simply pretended to be has managed to sell a lot of bad books to broken people who haven't adjusted to their peculiar broken natures, but it really is all just a myth.
We are broken, and that is what has the potential to make us great.
There is nothing special about a perfect piece of pottery that is manufactured by a machine. It sits in your cupboard like its five other perfect brothers, utterly interchangeable and fully replaceable. If you're the sort of person who needs clean, perfect, unflawed things out of which to drink your coffee, then the world has been made for you. Pottery Barn has all you'll ever need.
My favorite cup is anything but perfect. It has a chip on the bottom that broke off when my daughter's mother some 19 years ago hurled it at me in a fit of anger. The cup bounced on the carpet, banged through the bathroom door and ricocheted off the sink without smashing to pieces. It's a big, clunky, hand-made pottery thing and at the moment its not in my cupboard. It's in a box, buried in a storeroom, safe and sound and fully useable. It didn't ask to be broken. Yet it stood up to that indignity with dignity. I love that damn thing.
It can't be replaced. It can't be copied. There's not another cup in the world like it, and there will never be another cup in the world like it. It will never be a role-model for cups.
My particular nature is not to be found in my manufacture, nor in the failed storage facility of my early years. My particular nature is in the glue and gunk that has been slapped into the cracks and ground down over the years. Those edges are nothing like as sharp as they used to be. Another decade or two and they might actually be smooth and comfortable to touch. I can't say. I'm still working on it.
But I'm not here to lead any body down my particular path. The gentle reader shouldn't expect that. At best, I might offer some other path, gathered either from wisdom or from a big sign reading "warning - avoid area." It would be perhaps best to heed that message.
I really wouldn't know how to be a role-model. I think it likely that no one should ever be a role-model, nor seek role-models. There's something parasitic and festering with the whole business. Best to get on with fixing your own broken pieces and leave me to fix mine. And if mine seem to cause division and spread hate and evil, well ... don't read this blog. Encourage others not to read it.
But don't encourage me not to write it, nor to write it in some other way. That's a waste of your time.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Alexis the D&D Player
There's a fellow at work who has been moderately damaged by the knowledge that I play D&D. It's not the sort of thing I hide, not any more than I would hide watching sports or going weekend skiing ... but its very strange the effect the game has on people. It isn't as those this fellow harasses me or anything, but he is occasionally inclined to refer to me as "Alexis the D&D Player" in a context having nothing to do with D&D or even weekend activities. This is the sort of thing that happens. It's very unlikely that he would refer to me as "Alexis the skiier" or "Alexis the hockey watcher."
It's clear the thing is on the fellow's mind. He isn't a D&D player, he's never played, his entire conception of the game was being dimly aware that other people in his high school played the game, and that they were a bit 'odd' (he's told me this). So he automatically grafts his one impression of the game onto me. But frankly, I don't care.
It is interesting that he remembers these others from high school (which for him, was twelve or fourteen years ago) enough to make the association at all. That goes to show what a visible influence gamers have. "I have no idea what those people are doing over there, but they're sitting around a table rolling dice, shouting at one another and one of them seems to spend much more time talking than the others."
Does it not seem strange that this is such extraordinary behavior that people are inclined to remember it for years and years afterwards, even though they have never actually known anything about the game other than having someone else say, "those people are playing D&D." Why should anyone but a player remember it? What does that say about other people and their innate fear of sitting around tables talking? And why is it that the mystery of what the game actually includes produces such a intense reaction in people when they meet someone who actually knows something about that game?
Is it even a mystery they care about? This fellow hasn't asked me any questions about the game, so I must presume he thinks he knows something about it, even though clearly he hasn't any idea, enough that he either believes he doesn't need to know more, or perhaps that he is afraid of what I might tell him. Perhaps we're gutting kittens in the dark of the moon or taking turns to go to the toilet in order to fellate one another. I suppose in someone else's imagination, anything is possible.
I don't bother to correct the fellow, or ask him to stop doing this ... that is, calling me by my 'title' as player of a game he doesn't understand. I know this sort of thing is rampantly common, and I know that's why many people don't say that they play the game - which probably increases the mystery and in turn the level of anxiety in some people as to just what happens during a game. The whole thing probably results from a game that's too complicated to pick up in watching for five minutes, and so virtually everyone who chances to hear five minutes of the game being played within earshot is driven to flee the area immediately or else risk being pulled into some body-snatcher pod and reproduced as a walking plant.
Anything's possible.
Changing the subject utterly for just a moment, this next statement being the real reason for writing this post apart from the fact that I felt the need to mumble a bunch of platitudes that really do not apply to anything ... I have decided to take the month of November off. I mean, OFF. I'm going to suspend the online campaign, all my offline campaigns, and all posting on this blog for 30 days. I may work a bit on D&D, but I mostly want to find some time to do some writing and perhaps regain a little of my sanity in a world gone crazy. Being forced off my feet for a few days, to lay on a sofa and rest watching movies and sleeping intermittently, I'm a bit more concious of being plugged in than usual. A vacation would begin with being unplugged ... so I think I will. Unplug.
I trust you'll all find something else to read.
It's clear the thing is on the fellow's mind. He isn't a D&D player, he's never played, his entire conception of the game was being dimly aware that other people in his high school played the game, and that they were a bit 'odd' (he's told me this). So he automatically grafts his one impression of the game onto me. But frankly, I don't care.
It is interesting that he remembers these others from high school (which for him, was twelve or fourteen years ago) enough to make the association at all. That goes to show what a visible influence gamers have. "I have no idea what those people are doing over there, but they're sitting around a table rolling dice, shouting at one another and one of them seems to spend much more time talking than the others."
Does it not seem strange that this is such extraordinary behavior that people are inclined to remember it for years and years afterwards, even though they have never actually known anything about the game other than having someone else say, "those people are playing D&D." Why should anyone but a player remember it? What does that say about other people and their innate fear of sitting around tables talking? And why is it that the mystery of what the game actually includes produces such a intense reaction in people when they meet someone who actually knows something about that game?
Is it even a mystery they care about? This fellow hasn't asked me any questions about the game, so I must presume he thinks he knows something about it, even though clearly he hasn't any idea, enough that he either believes he doesn't need to know more, or perhaps that he is afraid of what I might tell him. Perhaps we're gutting kittens in the dark of the moon or taking turns to go to the toilet in order to fellate one another. I suppose in someone else's imagination, anything is possible.
I don't bother to correct the fellow, or ask him to stop doing this ... that is, calling me by my 'title' as player of a game he doesn't understand. I know this sort of thing is rampantly common, and I know that's why many people don't say that they play the game - which probably increases the mystery and in turn the level of anxiety in some people as to just what happens during a game. The whole thing probably results from a game that's too complicated to pick up in watching for five minutes, and so virtually everyone who chances to hear five minutes of the game being played within earshot is driven to flee the area immediately or else risk being pulled into some body-snatcher pod and reproduced as a walking plant.
Anything's possible.
Changing the subject utterly for just a moment, this next statement being the real reason for writing this post apart from the fact that I felt the need to mumble a bunch of platitudes that really do not apply to anything ... I have decided to take the month of November off. I mean, OFF. I'm going to suspend the online campaign, all my offline campaigns, and all posting on this blog for 30 days. I may work a bit on D&D, but I mostly want to find some time to do some writing and perhaps regain a little of my sanity in a world gone crazy. Being forced off my feet for a few days, to lay on a sofa and rest watching movies and sleeping intermittently, I'm a bit more concious of being plugged in than usual. A vacation would begin with being unplugged ... so I think I will. Unplug.
I trust you'll all find something else to read.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Combat Pages 2 through 4 ... Movement
The pages above are posted without much preamble, I'm afraid. I've cleaned up the language, I hope, reshaped or redesigned some of the graphics, redesigned the pages and - I hope - improved the whole mess. Page four has new material on it.
Neklan in the last post made a point about units turning 360 degrees and needing 72 hexes to do so. If you remove the straight-away from a standard 400 meter track, you get a circle that is approximately 553 feet in diameter, which would be 110.5 hexes side-to-side. The total circumference would be 867 feet, or 173.4 hexes.
I think the movement rules are fine for turning.
Take note that for combat purposes, there are means in the movement rules to sharply change your facing by slowing down briefly at pre-planned moments.
Anyone, player of mine or otherwise, who'd like to nit pick the pages below are welcome to do so, and will get no counterargument from me. I will select the comments that are most useful and will adjust the pages as necessary.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Reworked Page 1
Thank you Gentle Readers, greatly! I have rewritten and reformatted the first page of the rules proposed from the last post (smaller text with 9 point font, to enable more content). I think the language is much improved. I will continue to rework the remaining document, and much more, and have a bunch to show following the weekend.
I shall try to post something new today. For those who are not interested in the combat rules, I'm sorry that I cannot help you. These things become obsessive, you know, to where we have no interest in working on other things.
 |
| Updated Oct. 7 |
UPDATE:
The best laid plans ...
I managed to twist an ankle while loading half a cord of wood up three flights of stairs to my 4th floor flat, the one without an elevator, and where I thought I was going to spend the day working on my combat rules, I spent it with my leg up watching Amadeus and a host of much worse movies. I have come to the conclusion that people like bad movies better than good ones, because seven people can agree on what makes a movie BAD, making them feel a greater kinship, while at the same time seven people can't even agree that a movie is good, much less discuss what makes it good.
This may be the answer to all the misery in the universe.
I shall try to post something new today. For those who are not interested in the combat rules, I'm sorry that I cannot help you. These things become obsessive, you know, to where we have no interest in working on other things.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Erratic Attempts At Rule Writing
For some reason, I find coming up with rules, or keeping them in my head, to be fairly simple. Writing them out so that the least precise reader can understand them ... that I find to be very hard. I tend to see through writing to grasp the author's intention. I am constantly taken by surprise however, when this fails to work in reverse.
It's my fault, yes. I concede this. The only thing I can do to get better at it is to practice, practice, practice.
So please, tell me what's wrong with this obviously inadequate effort below, so I can make the language clearer (these three pages open as images):
UPDATE:
An alternate, better lay-out to page three in keeping with Giordanisti's suggestion in the comments. Sometimes, I just need someone to poke me and make me think harder.
It's my fault, yes. I concede this. The only thing I can do to get better at it is to practice, practice, practice.
So please, tell me what's wrong with this obviously inadequate effort below, so I can make the language clearer (these three pages open as images):
UPDATE:
An alternate, better lay-out to page three in keeping with Giordanisti's suggestion in the comments. Sometimes, I just need someone to poke me and make me think harder.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Bad for Business
Anyone reading this blog should know that I am not optimistic. I feel now and then that I ought to write something encouraging, something that extolls the great strides the game has taken these last four decades, or that I should somehow celebrate all the work and effort of thousands of self-motivated gamers as they strive to produce their campaigns, gathering together in the warm glow of the dining room ceiling lamp to challenge their imaginations, their hopes and dreams.
But I'm reminded of this drunken exchange from Mr. Smith Goes To Washington:
Clarissa: Maybe we could clear out of this town, get to feel like people. Live like we just got out of a tunnel.
Diz: Tunnel?
Clarissa: A tunnel. You've never seen prairie grass with the wind leaning on it, have you Diz?
Diz: Does the wind get tired out there?
Clarissa: Or angry little mountain streams, or ... or the sun moving against the cattle. You've never seen
anything like that, have you Diz?
Diz: Have you?
Clarissa: No.
Diz: (hesitating) Do we have to?
Clarissa: (disgusted) No, I can't think of anything more sappy.
I guess people need to hear that kind of crap said out loud now and then. Truth be told, I'm as moved by angry mountain streams and the wind on prairie grass as much as the next guy. And I love this game I talk about; that should be bleeding obvious too, I spend so much gawddamn time working on it and writing about it. But somehow, whenever I hear someone preaching the glories of the game and the glories of its participants, I get to looking for exits. I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop, the dirty, filthy shoe sitting in the pot that someone's about to serve me for dinner. This isn't cynicism. This is experience.
I've been a sourpuss of late, no question. But if we're going to look at the state of the hobby, it's an ignorant argument of convenience to look at the future, and claim that its going to be something wonderful. We don't know what the future is going to be. The present, on the other hand, is a sewer. It is a fecal drainpipe of repetition and recursiveness, fetishism, bickering and dissension. We're not even arguing over the actual game any more. We've reduced ourselves to the point where we're arguing over how to describe the arguments over the game. We've been factionalized, deadlocked, nitpicked and lethargic for at least a decade. What has the Internet wrought for the game?
Not a fucking thing.
If there's been a glint of hope in all this torpidity, it has come from individuals who have made the effort to change their minds. I've had to change my mind about my style of play to make my online game more accessible for players who can't see me. I've had to change my mind about presentation, and just HOW MUCH work I need to do in order to communicate ideas. I work far harder on clarity than I used to ... where once I would write a few words to cover rules, I find myself now writing pages and pages in order to make clear what I mean.
But there's a bigger change I want to make; and it has much to do with 17th century Holland.
It is difficult to convey the degree of dissention in Europe during the 16th century. Religion had been the property of one entity for so many centuries, when the rise of Protestantism occurred, emotions ran high. The word 'protest' is often missed in the word protestant; and protest was not limited to the mild hammering of paper on church doors. Protest was violent, it was constant, it happened in a moment's notice and - most often - it was perpetrated thoughtlessly.
If the gentle reader can, imagine a world way outside the very conception of tolerance. A world where being within five miles of another religious belief is justification for mounting up and slaughtering husband, wife, children, dogs ... and so on. Imagine that you believe this is mandated ... it's not a whim, it's not a fun time on a Friday night, this is serious business and has a great deal to do with your duty, honor, your soul and the souls of your dead father and mother. If the reader can, gather all the emotional feeling you have about your mother right now, and then imagine your mother being stabbed with pitchforks and burned with oil, and her eyes gutted out and her hair set on fire ... and then imagine yourself being capable of thinking the reason for this happening is because of the non-believers that have lately settled in the house down the road.
It's difficult, I know. We view 'intolerance' as a few nasty words spoken thoughtlessly during a political speech about unemployment. There is so little of it in our day-to-day lives that we have to go to the media to find us examples so we can get upset about it. We have nothing in our conciousness that would enable us to comprehend the bloody-minded hatred possessed by an Augsburgian Catholic for a Wittenberger Lutheran.
And still, it took many decades of Protestantism to coalesce into something that could really challenge Catholic authority ... and until it did really challenge Catholic authority, the Catholics were comparably light-handed about the execution of Protestants.
This is the point where someone ought to point out the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. This was a notorious event in 1572, when an overflowing of religious zeal produced a Catholic mob that proceeded to slaughter Protestant Huguenots in the streets of Paris, largely due to the intolerance I've been talking about. The number of Huguenots had been steadily rising, reaching a critical mass ... but that blind violence I've been speaking of hadn't quite manifested. Yet when a group of targeted assassinations by the King initiated a general emotional feeling of hatred, the thing got out of control and something like 5,000 to 30,000 people died.
So this would be the argument someone might make against my statement that the Catholics had been light-handed. I'd like to point out, however, that Luther had nailed his 95 Theses to the door in 1517. To get a sense of the scale of time here, try to imagine that the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre happened yesterday ... that would mean the theses that started the anti-Catholic protest had been hammered to a door in 1958. Before Kennedy, before Nixon, before most of you were BORN, and in many cases, before your parents were born. That's not a rapid ascendance in violence. Just think of all the mass genocides that have taken place in our culture since 1958 ... Cambodia, Timor and Bosnia all leap immediately to mind, along with Zaire, Darfour and Christ knows how many people died in China during the post-Maoist regieme.
In any case, the Huguenot execution was a small beginning to what was to follow later, when there really were enough Protestants to produce armies of considerable size. Once again, to put it in perspective, if the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre was 9/11, the Thirty Years War was a series of Hiroshimas.
By 1618, following the latter Defenestration of Prague, it was a free-for-all. There were a lot of reasons for war - power politics in Europe being the most significant among the upper classes - but like St. Bartholomew's Day, once the royal agenda was made known, the average individual on the ground went nuts. Off and on for thirty years, whole towns were razed, mass executions seized the victors, Catholics were slaughtered, Protestants were slaughtered ... it was just a long murderous drunken hatred-fueled nightmare that went on unceasing for more than a whole generation of Europeans. If the War were ending today, it would have started just about the time that the movie Return of the Jedi hit the theatres. The first time.
This is from Wikipedia; it's close enough to other accounts I've read in legitimate books:
"So great was the devastation brought about by the war that estimates put the reduction of population in the German states at about 25% to 40%. Some regions were affected much more than others. For example, Württemberg lost three-quarters of its population during the war. In the territory of Brandenburg, the losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an estimated two-thirds of the population died. The male population of the German states was reduced by almost half. The population of the Czech lands declined by a third due to war, disease, famine and the expulsion of Protestant Czechs. Much of the destruction of civilian lives and property was caused by the cruelty and greed of mercenary soldiers. Villages were especially easy prey to the marauding armies. Those that survived, like the small village of Drais near Mainz, would take almost a hundred years to recover. The Swedish armies alone may have destroyed up to 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns."
But what does this long and winding post have to do with Holland and the present state of D&D?
In reality, Holland is just one small province amid a number of regions that were jointly described as the 'Netherlands.' Nether is a word we usually associate with 'out there' or 'at the far end,' but in fact the word derives from the Old Saxon nitheraz, which means down, below ... or bottom. And the Netherlands were indeed down below ... comprising both the modern Netherlands and most of Belguim, these were lands at the bottom of the Rhine and Moselle rivers, meaning that a large part of the commerce of central Europe flowed directly into them. To get a sense of this, imagine that you own the only bridge between the entire Northeast Corner of America and everywhere else in the world, and there are no ships. And everyone has to pay YOU a toll if they want to do business.
This particular toll had been in the hands of a few lucky families in Europe, notably Nassau and Hapsburg, and had fallen into the hands of Spain around the time that Martin Luther was doing his thing. Spain was somewhat keen to go on collecting tolls ... but the Netherlands were becoming less and less passive. Protestantism was flourishing, Spain had grown weak in its military dealings with France, and like all really strong countries that don't want to lose what they consider their own, Spain ultimately marched in to teach those rebellious bastards a lesson.
The result of that was an 80-year fist-fight that would eventually fall into the groove of the 30-years-war like the War in China would eventually groove with WWII. For a sense of the war, imagine the Vietnam war began in 1933 and ended yesterday.
80 years has a way of encouraging a sense of both continuity and cohesion among defenders - and in the Bottom Lands' case, this was heightened by the fact that the residents had a whole other enemy that could not be reasoned with, would never make peace, and had a far greater potential for destroying the landscape than the Spanish. This would be the sea. It is still the Low Countries' enemy.
Where one has a country where much of the land is below sea-level, where it has been wrested from the sea like one would seize enemy territory and make it one's own, there is a recognition that when the sea threatens, EVERYTHING else is immediately dropped. Screw the Spanish, screw Protestantism, screw the argument you had with your neighbor, screw scruples where it comes to whose help you'll accept and who you're too proud to ask help from. Get up, get out, get working, save the country.
Holland is a work project that changed the way human beings began to think of one another.
When the Thirty Years War ended, and the Eighty Years War with it, most of Europe was DONE with religious wars. There were flare-ups, but the war had produced a greater identification with one's nation than with one's religion, and Nationalism as an ideology began to replace the driven, irrational behaviour that had marked the century before the Peace of Westphalia with a driven, irrational behavior that would hit its peak three centuries later. In no place was this more evident than in the Netherlands - which had lost its southern half to Spain, while the northern half organized themselves as a set of 'United Provinces.' If this seems coincidental with the idea of a group of united states, don't you believe it. There is no coincidence. Between the U.P.N. and the U.S., the English invited a Dutchman of Orange-Nassau to come be their king, the English fell in love with all things Dutch, and the Dutch had established themselves as the money-masters of the American Colonies. John Adams would say, "The origins of the two Republics are so much alike that the history of one seems but a transcript from that of the other." This, obviously, is not often quoted when talking about the 'greatest document ever produced in human history,' though a Dutch Constitution had been written a century earlier, and had 120 years of precedent challenges against it that Jefferson would have well known about.
The practice of tolerance possessed the Netherlands, long before it freed itself from Spanish authority. It mattered less to a Hollander that you despised his religion or his heritage than whether or not you intended to buy his fish. The people of the United Provinces developed a live-and-let-live policy to life that they imparted to other peoples, most notably the British for the reasons described above. Moreover, throughout the second half of the 17th century and well into the 18th, Dutch businessmen drove the world's economy. It was clear to the British that there was something to this attitude of tolerance. They themselves had been through a rather bloody religious civil war, from 1640 to 1660, that demonstrated that a Protestant minister could be every bit as much a dick (with a tumbledown son to boot) as a Catholic King. There had been an endless series of civil wars that had possessed England for two centuries - and prior to that endless warring with the French - and this idea of getting rich and having peace at the same time appealed.
But to have it ... and to get rich ... it was necessary to look at another person you hated, and listen to words that made you sick in the throat, and swallow down all that bile. It was necessary to nod and smile and say out loud, "That's very nice. Would you like to buy some fish?" It was necessary to recognize that having an opinion, and killing another person for having an opinion, were two very different things. It meant that it was okay to express yourself, to say what you believed, but taking ACTION intended to suppress opinion was BAD FOR BUSINESS. Best that you just open and close your fists in frustration, before holding out an open hand and accepting their money.
By all means, hate me. By all means, dispise what I have to say. But in the meantime, perhaps there's something in the way of D&D I could tell you about?
But I'm reminded of this drunken exchange from Mr. Smith Goes To Washington:
Clarissa: Maybe we could clear out of this town, get to feel like people. Live like we just got out of a tunnel.
Diz: Tunnel?
Clarissa: A tunnel. You've never seen prairie grass with the wind leaning on it, have you Diz?
Diz: Does the wind get tired out there?
Clarissa: Or angry little mountain streams, or ... or the sun moving against the cattle. You've never seen
anything like that, have you Diz?
Diz: Have you?
Clarissa: No.
Diz: (hesitating) Do we have to?
Clarissa: (disgusted) No, I can't think of anything more sappy.
I guess people need to hear that kind of crap said out loud now and then. Truth be told, I'm as moved by angry mountain streams and the wind on prairie grass as much as the next guy. And I love this game I talk about; that should be bleeding obvious too, I spend so much gawddamn time working on it and writing about it. But somehow, whenever I hear someone preaching the glories of the game and the glories of its participants, I get to looking for exits. I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop, the dirty, filthy shoe sitting in the pot that someone's about to serve me for dinner. This isn't cynicism. This is experience.
I've been a sourpuss of late, no question. But if we're going to look at the state of the hobby, it's an ignorant argument of convenience to look at the future, and claim that its going to be something wonderful. We don't know what the future is going to be. The present, on the other hand, is a sewer. It is a fecal drainpipe of repetition and recursiveness, fetishism, bickering and dissension. We're not even arguing over the actual game any more. We've reduced ourselves to the point where we're arguing over how to describe the arguments over the game. We've been factionalized, deadlocked, nitpicked and lethargic for at least a decade. What has the Internet wrought for the game?
Not a fucking thing.
If there's been a glint of hope in all this torpidity, it has come from individuals who have made the effort to change their minds. I've had to change my mind about my style of play to make my online game more accessible for players who can't see me. I've had to change my mind about presentation, and just HOW MUCH work I need to do in order to communicate ideas. I work far harder on clarity than I used to ... where once I would write a few words to cover rules, I find myself now writing pages and pages in order to make clear what I mean.
But there's a bigger change I want to make; and it has much to do with 17th century Holland.
It is difficult to convey the degree of dissention in Europe during the 16th century. Religion had been the property of one entity for so many centuries, when the rise of Protestantism occurred, emotions ran high. The word 'protest' is often missed in the word protestant; and protest was not limited to the mild hammering of paper on church doors. Protest was violent, it was constant, it happened in a moment's notice and - most often - it was perpetrated thoughtlessly.
If the gentle reader can, imagine a world way outside the very conception of tolerance. A world where being within five miles of another religious belief is justification for mounting up and slaughtering husband, wife, children, dogs ... and so on. Imagine that you believe this is mandated ... it's not a whim, it's not a fun time on a Friday night, this is serious business and has a great deal to do with your duty, honor, your soul and the souls of your dead father and mother. If the reader can, gather all the emotional feeling you have about your mother right now, and then imagine your mother being stabbed with pitchforks and burned with oil, and her eyes gutted out and her hair set on fire ... and then imagine yourself being capable of thinking the reason for this happening is because of the non-believers that have lately settled in the house down the road.
It's difficult, I know. We view 'intolerance' as a few nasty words spoken thoughtlessly during a political speech about unemployment. There is so little of it in our day-to-day lives that we have to go to the media to find us examples so we can get upset about it. We have nothing in our conciousness that would enable us to comprehend the bloody-minded hatred possessed by an Augsburgian Catholic for a Wittenberger Lutheran.
And still, it took many decades of Protestantism to coalesce into something that could really challenge Catholic authority ... and until it did really challenge Catholic authority, the Catholics were comparably light-handed about the execution of Protestants.
This is the point where someone ought to point out the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. This was a notorious event in 1572, when an overflowing of religious zeal produced a Catholic mob that proceeded to slaughter Protestant Huguenots in the streets of Paris, largely due to the intolerance I've been talking about. The number of Huguenots had been steadily rising, reaching a critical mass ... but that blind violence I've been speaking of hadn't quite manifested. Yet when a group of targeted assassinations by the King initiated a general emotional feeling of hatred, the thing got out of control and something like 5,000 to 30,000 people died.
So this would be the argument someone might make against my statement that the Catholics had been light-handed. I'd like to point out, however, that Luther had nailed his 95 Theses to the door in 1517. To get a sense of the scale of time here, try to imagine that the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre happened yesterday ... that would mean the theses that started the anti-Catholic protest had been hammered to a door in 1958. Before Kennedy, before Nixon, before most of you were BORN, and in many cases, before your parents were born. That's not a rapid ascendance in violence. Just think of all the mass genocides that have taken place in our culture since 1958 ... Cambodia, Timor and Bosnia all leap immediately to mind, along with Zaire, Darfour and Christ knows how many people died in China during the post-Maoist regieme.
In any case, the Huguenot execution was a small beginning to what was to follow later, when there really were enough Protestants to produce armies of considerable size. Once again, to put it in perspective, if the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre was 9/11, the Thirty Years War was a series of Hiroshimas.
By 1618, following the latter Defenestration of Prague, it was a free-for-all. There were a lot of reasons for war - power politics in Europe being the most significant among the upper classes - but like St. Bartholomew's Day, once the royal agenda was made known, the average individual on the ground went nuts. Off and on for thirty years, whole towns were razed, mass executions seized the victors, Catholics were slaughtered, Protestants were slaughtered ... it was just a long murderous drunken hatred-fueled nightmare that went on unceasing for more than a whole generation of Europeans. If the War were ending today, it would have started just about the time that the movie Return of the Jedi hit the theatres. The first time.
This is from Wikipedia; it's close enough to other accounts I've read in legitimate books:
"So great was the devastation brought about by the war that estimates put the reduction of population in the German states at about 25% to 40%. Some regions were affected much more than others. For example, Württemberg lost three-quarters of its population during the war. In the territory of Brandenburg, the losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an estimated two-thirds of the population died. The male population of the German states was reduced by almost half. The population of the Czech lands declined by a third due to war, disease, famine and the expulsion of Protestant Czechs. Much of the destruction of civilian lives and property was caused by the cruelty and greed of mercenary soldiers. Villages were especially easy prey to the marauding armies. Those that survived, like the small village of Drais near Mainz, would take almost a hundred years to recover. The Swedish armies alone may have destroyed up to 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns."
But what does this long and winding post have to do with Holland and the present state of D&D?
In reality, Holland is just one small province amid a number of regions that were jointly described as the 'Netherlands.' Nether is a word we usually associate with 'out there' or 'at the far end,' but in fact the word derives from the Old Saxon nitheraz, which means down, below ... or bottom. And the Netherlands were indeed down below ... comprising both the modern Netherlands and most of Belguim, these were lands at the bottom of the Rhine and Moselle rivers, meaning that a large part of the commerce of central Europe flowed directly into them. To get a sense of this, imagine that you own the only bridge between the entire Northeast Corner of America and everywhere else in the world, and there are no ships. And everyone has to pay YOU a toll if they want to do business.
This particular toll had been in the hands of a few lucky families in Europe, notably Nassau and Hapsburg, and had fallen into the hands of Spain around the time that Martin Luther was doing his thing. Spain was somewhat keen to go on collecting tolls ... but the Netherlands were becoming less and less passive. Protestantism was flourishing, Spain had grown weak in its military dealings with France, and like all really strong countries that don't want to lose what they consider their own, Spain ultimately marched in to teach those rebellious bastards a lesson.
The result of that was an 80-year fist-fight that would eventually fall into the groove of the 30-years-war like the War in China would eventually groove with WWII. For a sense of the war, imagine the Vietnam war began in 1933 and ended yesterday.
80 years has a way of encouraging a sense of both continuity and cohesion among defenders - and in the Bottom Lands' case, this was heightened by the fact that the residents had a whole other enemy that could not be reasoned with, would never make peace, and had a far greater potential for destroying the landscape than the Spanish. This would be the sea. It is still the Low Countries' enemy.
Where one has a country where much of the land is below sea-level, where it has been wrested from the sea like one would seize enemy territory and make it one's own, there is a recognition that when the sea threatens, EVERYTHING else is immediately dropped. Screw the Spanish, screw Protestantism, screw the argument you had with your neighbor, screw scruples where it comes to whose help you'll accept and who you're too proud to ask help from. Get up, get out, get working, save the country.
Holland is a work project that changed the way human beings began to think of one another.
When the Thirty Years War ended, and the Eighty Years War with it, most of Europe was DONE with religious wars. There were flare-ups, but the war had produced a greater identification with one's nation than with one's religion, and Nationalism as an ideology began to replace the driven, irrational behaviour that had marked the century before the Peace of Westphalia with a driven, irrational behavior that would hit its peak three centuries later. In no place was this more evident than in the Netherlands - which had lost its southern half to Spain, while the northern half organized themselves as a set of 'United Provinces.' If this seems coincidental with the idea of a group of united states, don't you believe it. There is no coincidence. Between the U.P.N. and the U.S., the English invited a Dutchman of Orange-Nassau to come be their king, the English fell in love with all things Dutch, and the Dutch had established themselves as the money-masters of the American Colonies. John Adams would say, "The origins of the two Republics are so much alike that the history of one seems but a transcript from that of the other." This, obviously, is not often quoted when talking about the 'greatest document ever produced in human history,' though a Dutch Constitution had been written a century earlier, and had 120 years of precedent challenges against it that Jefferson would have well known about.
The practice of tolerance possessed the Netherlands, long before it freed itself from Spanish authority. It mattered less to a Hollander that you despised his religion or his heritage than whether or not you intended to buy his fish. The people of the United Provinces developed a live-and-let-live policy to life that they imparted to other peoples, most notably the British for the reasons described above. Moreover, throughout the second half of the 17th century and well into the 18th, Dutch businessmen drove the world's economy. It was clear to the British that there was something to this attitude of tolerance. They themselves had been through a rather bloody religious civil war, from 1640 to 1660, that demonstrated that a Protestant minister could be every bit as much a dick (with a tumbledown son to boot) as a Catholic King. There had been an endless series of civil wars that had possessed England for two centuries - and prior to that endless warring with the French - and this idea of getting rich and having peace at the same time appealed.
But to have it ... and to get rich ... it was necessary to look at another person you hated, and listen to words that made you sick in the throat, and swallow down all that bile. It was necessary to nod and smile and say out loud, "That's very nice. Would you like to buy some fish?" It was necessary to recognize that having an opinion, and killing another person for having an opinion, were two very different things. It meant that it was okay to express yourself, to say what you believed, but taking ACTION intended to suppress opinion was BAD FOR BUSINESS. Best that you just open and close your fists in frustration, before holding out an open hand and accepting their money.
By all means, hate me. By all means, dispise what I have to say. But in the meantime, perhaps there's something in the way of D&D I could tell you about?
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