It is a common story. A group of people would like to role-play, only there's no one to actually run the game. After some discussion, an agreement is made by everyone who isn't Jeremy: Jeremy is going to be the DM. Jeremy protests, but it's no use. The matter is decided. Jeremy will run the game.
We spoke to at least two dozen people with this story, people who felt inadequate to the task, people who would rather just play, people who were trying and doing their best and well aware that they were failing. I would try to be as encouraging as possible. "If you're feeling less than up to it," I'd say, "imagine the inadequacy the rest of your party feels. They're not even strong enough to try!" But while this was meant to be encouraging, these are people past encouragement. They just do not want to run.
At least half of them will run a module or two out of guilt before quitting, whereupon none of the people may ever play D&D again. Many of the remainder will build up a stock of resentment, turning that into a vindictive campaign that will degrade into a revolving door of character death, or player-vs-player conflicts that will serve the DM's subconscious desire for revenge (pvp is really just a form of gladiators playing their roles for the emperor's pleasure). Some of those DMs, over a period of years, will become right bastards, concealing their original resistance against running under layer after layer of spiteful lacquer. Revenge against the player becomes their own single ambition.
Only a very, very few will develop an aptitude for it and an inclination to grow positively.
How did we get into this mess?
I learned to run the game through watching others, during a time when many people wanted to give the prospect of DMing a go. The initial game was very simple - roll characters, explore dungeons, roll to hit, roll damage, haul away the loot. AD&D only marginally changed the basic principles of doing those things, so that the majority of participants shared a common experience that could be shared, explained and consulted. The answers that would come back were, for the most part, universal, for suggestions that were made or cautions that were given reflected issues or problems that everyone who had run the game had encountered. There were none of the dialogues that would later befuddle or bog down the basic process of learning - for someone just starting out, things like railroad-vs-sandbox or narration-vs-simulation, have very little meaning. They're concerned with finding rules, making good calls, enabling the participants to enjoy themselves and not fucking up.
The new DM has been repeatedly made the victim these past forty years. Endless rule changes have shattered any supervisory potential the community may have had. A new DM can expect nothing but endless conflicting arguments weighted by uber-nuanced advice that speaks more about the teacher than the student. Rather than teach, long time participants are anxious to grind their axes, leaving those on the outside feeling overwhelmed and under-supported.
The result is that no one who is 'volun-told' to DM sees any benefit in it. All they see is work, effort, an expectation of being judged, a certainty of failure and a constant desire to shove the whole problem onto someone else's shoulders. In the meantime they're sour, unhappy or lethargic - except for the real pricks, who see the dearth of DMs as a great banquet for their sadistic or self-gratification masturbation rituals.
I don't think the game is going away; I don't consider role-play as something sliding into oblivion. I do, however, see that there's a problem between those fearful to DM and those players who haven't the responsibility to step up and take their turn. I say that because, while we met people at the Expo who expressed discontent as being forced to run, we met more who saw we were selling a book on How to Run and responded, "We ought to buy this for Jeremy - he's a total shit at DMing."
In fact, some people did.
This is a problem. At the ground level. A problem no one seems to care about. A problem that is exascerbated by yet another system that does less and less for the general welfare. I can say without doubt that the return to 'old D&D' isn't about simplicity, it is about commonality. The need to find a game that nearly everyone understands, even if they don't play it or they consider it beneath them.
If you're a new DM and you're reading this, I offer this advice. Don't buy 5e. Don't buy 4e, 3e or 2e. Find the oldest, most universal system you can find and begin there. You may feel like you're a bit of a throwback, but as you venture your way through the rule-books, you'll find yourself with no end of people who will be able to give you advice. For while these toffs may preen themselves on their brand new systems they can't explain in 10,000 words or less, they can - most of them - remember how the original game works. And they can help you master it.
Perhaps, by chance, you'll find it isn't beyond your ken after all.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Retrospective, September 2010
Funny, I can't remember anything about what I was doing four years ago. I remember I had a few plans. I was going to write about the products behind my trade table, so I started a post on metals & minerals that became one of those posts with the most views ever (mostly because of people looking for metals & minerals, and not this blog). I also tried a completely failed effort at building a general database among several DMs - which would help to convince me afterwards that where it comes to a serious view on the game, I am alone.
"I wasn't envisioning that the material would go up on "my" website (The Escapist). I'm assuming material would go up on a to-be-named website, at another domain name, unaffiliated with The Escapist (wiki.DandDAcademy.com or whatever).
"It would simply run on spare bandwidth and capacity that we have on The Escapist - Basically we pay a lot of money every month for a server and database capable of handling a million people downloading videos on Wednesday morning, which means that the rest of the week we have lots of idle capacity, and there's nothing this wiki could do to put a dent in that."
I wrote posts about the random generation of maps, which I know someone did have use for as they told me a couple years later. I ranted against modules (nothing new), which would eventually lead to my making a deal with James Raggi and my attempt to run Death Frost Doom. But that's another month.
The most significant event of that September was my spitting in the face of Alexander of the Escapist - following an obscure offer on his part to somehow be part of the online magazine that he still runs (so far as I know). The initial meeting began with this post, in a conversation between Zak and I. Basically, Alexander offered,
"I wasn't envisioning that the material would go up on "my" website (The Escapist). I'm assuming material would go up on a to-be-named website, at another domain name, unaffiliated with The Escapist (wiki.DandDAcademy.com or whatever).
"It would simply run on spare bandwidth and capacity that we have on The Escapist - Basically we pay a lot of money every month for a server and database capable of handling a million people downloading videos on Wednesday morning, which means that the rest of the week we have lots of idle capacity, and there's nothing this wiki could do to put a dent in that."
I remember looking at that, four years ago, and looking at the website for the Escapist, thinking, "What an immense pile of crud." That was more or less it. Maybe there was an opportunity there, but somehow I couldn't see myself affiliated with a site that promoted spewed infantile entertainment. For free. I saw it (and still see it) as a sleazy attempt to exploit my material without offering me any real compensation, while practically guaranteeing that I would never be taken seriously. That's my name associated with that website - and while Zak has no trouble being one of the infantile crowd, or having everyone in the world know he wallows in the world of porn manufacture, I find myself seeking a somewhat better crowd of supporters.
There were, however, consequences. Many people who felt the jury was still out on me declared me guilty after that. Doors were closed. A flood of people directed from Zak's side of the community stopped coming around, stopped commenting. The first attempt at a data base would die a sour, lingering death and I would lose a lot of faith. Many of the bitter posts that came from me over the next year would have their roots in my sense that the community as a whole had it's head in a dark place.
That's changed. I've seen far too much positive support these last four years to question my decision. I don't know what the future holds - but it isn't being part of a joint effort. I wouldn't want it, knowing that I'm on the cutting edge. The only thing holding me back is time.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Tales from FanExpo 2014
I am back from the Expo, back in the comfort of my routine, reviewing endlessly in my head the events of the past six days. I can say with conviction now that I have spoken with the people. My daughter and I met hundreds of role-players, of every interest and sort: D&D, Pathfinder, Rifts, Traveller, Gurps, Vampire the Masquerade and many others. Not a single S&W player, however, and not one single person who mentioned Paizo.
By final count, we sold 62 books - 39 Guides and 23 How to Plays. On the whole, I'd guess we sold about 25% of the existing client base (that is, 1 in 4 people we spoke to). People came up to the table who never expected anyone would be there to talk about role-playing, so we caught a lot of people by surprise. It must be remembered that it was a FanExpo - not a game-based event - so we had to compete against a lot of product that had nothing to do with us. None of that kept us from being a success.
At times, it was so thick I couldn't text a sentence without two interruptions; at times, we went a hour or more without anyone approaching the table. It was not, for one second, boring. People told me to take a book - nonsense! I never had time to do more than check for comments on this blog.
We met one fellow - ONE! - who claimed he already "knew how to DM." No one else who spoke to us remotely considered themselves arrogant enough to know all there was to know about role-playing. The vast proportion of would-be and willing buyers were desperate for the book's purpose. They were plainly exhausted with the corporate agenda, with this genre vs. that genre, with glossy empty minded-content and so on. The fact that my book had no pictures was a selling point! Seriously. I actually sold one unsure fellow by demonstrating that the book lacked illustration.
On two occasions with long-playing grognards (both 30+ years in the game) I could see from their expressions that they wanted the book, that it was exactly what they'd been looking for - but they just couldn't believe that I wasn't bullshitting them. It was plain from their questions and from their repeated opening of the book to have another look. In the end, neither bought. They couldn't believe. I couldn't blame them. Anyway, once the word gets out, they'll come back and find it has what they've wanted. It will all be good in the end.
Here's what I did NOT find: people bitching that the game is supposed to be fun; people complaining that the book was in depth, heavy, too big or otherwise too academic; people arguing one type of genre or system over another; people who felt any need to embrace D&D Next; people who mentioned GNS Theory (one fellow I talked to had heard of it - no one else had, so I stopped mentioning it); people arguing dice vs. role-playing; or people bitching about girls in role-playing. In other words, none of the endless crap-festival tropes that come out of the online community exist in the real world. No one cares about those things. They just want to play - and they want as much help as they can get.
We talked to dozens and dozens of girls, many of whom ran games, many of whom bought either book, most of whom had a long history with role-playing and were anxious to talk about it. The girls told less war stories than the boys, but on the whole I have to admit that war stories in general were far less common than I expected. People wanted to talk about their issues, their limitations and the things they were trying to improve about their games. They wanted to express in the most real terms their sincere, enthusiastic desire to play in better campaigns.
I have never felt so validated as a writer.
Six months ago I struggled with one dilemma: did the community really want the sort of book that I was proposing? Certainly, there was very little reason to believe that they did, given online discourse. I had to believe in a silent majority, a reader and participant that fitted more accurately with the sort of person I'd met in my 35 years of gaming - even though I hadn't had very much personal experience with that person in the last two decades. I had stepped away from the community, concentrating on my players, and spending the time on this blog tossing out message after message screaming that the online rhetoric was propaganda. As the weekend progressed, it became encouragingly clear that I have been absolutely right about that.
People do not care about role-play vs. roll-play. They just care about playing. They do not care about inappropriate grammar or strawmen or derailing the conversation - because in the real world, the vast part of the community is exceedingly polite, all the time. They don't play in clubs or groups or organizations, they don't playtest for the WOTC and they don't know anyone who does. They play with their families and their friends, they seek the opportunity to play with people, they wistfully consider the days they used to have time to play - but they don't whore themselves out to anyone for the opportunity. It is tremendous, enlightening, reassuring - and of great motivational inspiration for me.
These are my people. They understand the way I think . . . and as it happens, I understand the way they think.
As the rest of you - those of you who are stuck in this board-group-association mindset - I think for the first time I don't need to say that your time has come.
I don't think that, really, you ever had a time. I don't think that the WOTC has ever actually mattered. I believe now that I've allowed myself to focus too much upon it because of the noise that it makes - but I have spoken to the people now and my mind is changed.
Traditionally, returning from an event, it is expected that I have some pictures. I most certainly do:
The rest of these are those my daughter took - so I haven't anything to add.
By final count, we sold 62 books - 39 Guides and 23 How to Plays. On the whole, I'd guess we sold about 25% of the existing client base (that is, 1 in 4 people we spoke to). People came up to the table who never expected anyone would be there to talk about role-playing, so we caught a lot of people by surprise. It must be remembered that it was a FanExpo - not a game-based event - so we had to compete against a lot of product that had nothing to do with us. None of that kept us from being a success.
At times, it was so thick I couldn't text a sentence without two interruptions; at times, we went a hour or more without anyone approaching the table. It was not, for one second, boring. People told me to take a book - nonsense! I never had time to do more than check for comments on this blog.
We met one fellow - ONE! - who claimed he already "knew how to DM." No one else who spoke to us remotely considered themselves arrogant enough to know all there was to know about role-playing. The vast proportion of would-be and willing buyers were desperate for the book's purpose. They were plainly exhausted with the corporate agenda, with this genre vs. that genre, with glossy empty minded-content and so on. The fact that my book had no pictures was a selling point! Seriously. I actually sold one unsure fellow by demonstrating that the book lacked illustration.
On two occasions with long-playing grognards (both 30+ years in the game) I could see from their expressions that they wanted the book, that it was exactly what they'd been looking for - but they just couldn't believe that I wasn't bullshitting them. It was plain from their questions and from their repeated opening of the book to have another look. In the end, neither bought. They couldn't believe. I couldn't blame them. Anyway, once the word gets out, they'll come back and find it has what they've wanted. It will all be good in the end.
Here's what I did NOT find: people bitching that the game is supposed to be fun; people complaining that the book was in depth, heavy, too big or otherwise too academic; people arguing one type of genre or system over another; people who felt any need to embrace D&D Next; people who mentioned GNS Theory (one fellow I talked to had heard of it - no one else had, so I stopped mentioning it); people arguing dice vs. role-playing; or people bitching about girls in role-playing. In other words, none of the endless crap-festival tropes that come out of the online community exist in the real world. No one cares about those things. They just want to play - and they want as much help as they can get.
We talked to dozens and dozens of girls, many of whom ran games, many of whom bought either book, most of whom had a long history with role-playing and were anxious to talk about it. The girls told less war stories than the boys, but on the whole I have to admit that war stories in general were far less common than I expected. People wanted to talk about their issues, their limitations and the things they were trying to improve about their games. They wanted to express in the most real terms their sincere, enthusiastic desire to play in better campaigns.
I have never felt so validated as a writer.
Six months ago I struggled with one dilemma: did the community really want the sort of book that I was proposing? Certainly, there was very little reason to believe that they did, given online discourse. I had to believe in a silent majority, a reader and participant that fitted more accurately with the sort of person I'd met in my 35 years of gaming - even though I hadn't had very much personal experience with that person in the last two decades. I had stepped away from the community, concentrating on my players, and spending the time on this blog tossing out message after message screaming that the online rhetoric was propaganda. As the weekend progressed, it became encouragingly clear that I have been absolutely right about that.
People do not care about role-play vs. roll-play. They just care about playing. They do not care about inappropriate grammar or strawmen or derailing the conversation - because in the real world, the vast part of the community is exceedingly polite, all the time. They don't play in clubs or groups or organizations, they don't playtest for the WOTC and they don't know anyone who does. They play with their families and their friends, they seek the opportunity to play with people, they wistfully consider the days they used to have time to play - but they don't whore themselves out to anyone for the opportunity. It is tremendous, enlightening, reassuring - and of great motivational inspiration for me.
These are my people. They understand the way I think . . . and as it happens, I understand the way they think.
As the rest of you - those of you who are stuck in this board-group-association mindset - I think for the first time I don't need to say that your time has come.
I don't think that, really, you ever had a time. I don't think that the WOTC has ever actually mattered. I believe now that I've allowed myself to focus too much upon it because of the noise that it makes - but I have spoken to the people now and my mind is changed.
Traditionally, returning from an event, it is expected that I have some pictures. I most certainly do:
 |
| He told us it was the first time he had ever tried make-up. Was a very frightening effect. |
 |
| Make it all herself - except for the stockings. Spectacular detail. Had never heard of Girl Genius, which was hard to believe; was very excited that there's a huge steam-punk community in Western Canada. |
 |
| Her own work; the horns were excellent. |
 |
| She made every inch of the costumes; he's only her 'dummy.' Married and they bought a copy of the book, were very excited by it. She wants customers, so find me and I'll put you in touch. We talked for about 20 minutes after the sale. |
 |
| These two were overjoyed that we recognized them - actually, tagged it from his dog ears first. Great pair, lots of fun. |
 |
| Agreed with us that there needs to be more evil and less nice Catwomen. Told her to threaten her boyfriend with the whip and he said, "She does anyway." |
 |
| It's not a con without Darth Vader on vacation in the south seas. |
 |
| We like Harley Quinn with the bomb. We saw hundreds with hammers. |
 |
| A sweet, sweet girl with a definite cruel streak. We liked her immediately. |
 |
| Game of thrones was making a huge appearance - quite a lot of whole cast groups wandering about. Had to keep this one for the girl-as-king - she totally pulled it off. |
 |
| Both these girls are over six feet. Which tells you how tall the captain is. They came over just to get their pic taken, then stayed once they learned what we were selling. The captain bought both books - has a very serious campaign - love to run in it. |
 |
| Sadly, the quality of the work doesn't come through the picture. Was deep and eye-popping. She was great about letting us look her over. |
 |
| This is Jerry. Let me talk about the book for nearly half-an-hour, asking questions and looking for more and more detail. Never did buy, though |
The rest of these are those my daughter took - so I haven't anything to add.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Busy
I know, you miss me.
Believe me, I miss writing. I am here at the Expo, where we are doing so well, we almost ran out of product yesterday - we left half our books back at the hotel. Today, we brought everything.
As I write this, my daughter is pitching to a Pathfinder player - and I had to interrupt this SENTENCE twice to sell a book.
Going home tomorrow. Maybe I'll have time to write soon.
Believe me, I miss writing. I am here at the Expo, where we are doing so well, we almost ran out of product yesterday - we left half our books back at the hotel. Today, we brought everything.
As I write this, my daughter is pitching to a Pathfinder player - and I had to interrupt this SENTENCE twice to sell a book.
Going home tomorrow. Maybe I'll have time to write soon.
Friday, August 29, 2014
The Unexpected
Well, we did very well on our first day. . . And against my will I'm learning to text. Yes, it's taking me a long time to write this, but I'm at least doing it with both hands.
There is something magic that appears in a role-player's eyes when they see something they don't expect - like people promoting a role-playing book in the middle of a fan dome. They see us and we can see their spirits warm. Then they head straight for us with their minds and hearts open.
It's wonderful.
There is something magic that appears in a role-player's eyes when they see something they don't expect - like people promoting a role-playing book in the middle of a fan dome. They see us and we can see their spirits warm. Then they head straight for us with their minds and hearts open.
It's wonderful.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
It's On!
Sitting here at my table at the Expo, texting this. 25 minutes before the event starts. Here we go.
Ah, for a keyboard!
Ah, for a keyboard!
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Stuff
I just have a little list of things I'm going to take to the Toronto FanExpo with me, just things that have been kicking around. I'm going to take the most money I can for them, as I don't care if I sell them or not . . . but here's a list of prices that eBay gives me:
$38 - $54 – Advanced Wizard The Fantasy
Trip (2 copies)
$15 - $26 – Adventure 8 Prison Planet
$27 - $31 – Adventure Module U3: The Final
Enemy
$10 –
Battle System Fantasy combat supplement
$27 – 1984 Fantasy Gamer (Dec/Jan 84,
Jun/Jul 84)
No price – HarnDex Glossary & Reference
(1983)
$11 – Map of Harn (1983)
$27 - $30 – Blackmoor (2004 reprint)
$142 – $350 – Chainmail (3rd edition)
Anything interesting?
Never Fight a Cornered Beholder
I'd meant to write this last week, but this and that got in the way. Hm. I'm leaving for Toronto tomorrow. 24 hours from now (7:38 am) I will either be sitting on the tarmac waiting to leave or I'll be in the air crossing the Alberta-Saskatchewan border.
There are several ways in which you can enhance or develop existing creatures into 'deeper' or more threatening monsters. I thought it might be helpful to review them and consider some of the effects of each, as a helpful overview in making new monsters and appreciating the aspects of old ones.
Let me pause first and explain that monsters are not targets. They can be used as such, and many a campaign will see them as nothing but video game pigeons to stand up and be shot down - hacked down, melted down - in order to measure the luck or success of the players. The stand-em-up, shoot-em-down process is the principle reason why combat is seen as boring in most campaigns, as little or no investment is made in making monsters squeal, bark, shout orders at one another or otherwise interact with the party during melee.
I don't know if the reader has considered this. Envision the players as participants in a football scrimmage, speaking the same language (as they would in my world) or not. Have one of the goblins on the other 'team' point at a player and shout, "You! You're going down, you bastard!" while another cries, "Your people killed my mother!" Another cries "GELF!" at the elf while another screams "Your mother was a human fucker" at the half-orc and the stage is very quickly set.
Most combats - even my own, when I'm hard-pressed for time - are played out in a sort of role-play cone of silence. I have found that it is always more effective to have creatures snort, yelp, bawl, bellow in pain, clamor, whoop with pleasure (try this after a character drops unconscious or dead) or otherwise make a racket.
The more personality, the better - so in considering how to create or enhance monsters, the reader should definitely keep this in mind. Statistics are far less interesting or meaningful to the players than purpose and behaviour.
Make monsters bigger. This is the most obvious and most employed tactic. No matter what it is, making it bigger makes it more interesting. All the giant forms of earth creatures employ this, while it is equally as much fun to double or triple the size of something already made huge. A 7 hit die giant crocodile is already 30 feet long - why not a 21 hit die titanic crocodile too long to be seen all at once?
I must admit I've never had any trouble with this sort of creature. Bigger is always better, even if the bigger expands to incomprehensible size. Players are amazed and effectively terrified by mass - just so long as there's still a chance of retreating or hiding when things reach dimensions of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I once had my party (with all their henchmen and followers in tow, a total of some 60 people) combat a roc with more than 1,000 hit points, so big that its most effective combat was landing, beating its wings and rolling about on the ground (1d20 incidental damage to everything).
If there is a limitation to this, it's that not everything can be BIG. It gets tiresome.
Make monsters smarter. This only works if you're the sort of DM that runs your smarter monsters differently than those that are dumber. I have seen many a campaign where a so-called 'genius' beholder uses a frontal attack like an orc running forward up a hallway. For me, any creature above extraordinary intelligence will interact with the party in only one of two ways. They may want to talk, in which case they're more likely to encourage the party towards an action rather than threaten them. If they wish to fight the party, they're more likely to do it through minions - sending wave after wave against the party until these run out. Whereupon the intelligent monster would make itself scarce. The only way that a party would ever likely encounter a beholder in my world would be if it were cornered.
I've had a party fight a beholder once. But I was very young and I never did think I did a good job of it.
I would hate to be a party fighting one in my world now. As I have grown smarter, so have my genius-level monsters.
Of course, I've tried creating a scale of tactical/weaponry advantages for very intelligent/high intelligent monsters, but I haven't quite incorporated that into my mindset. It's something that will come with time.
Smart monsters make for more role-play outside the normal character-vs-authority figure or character-vs-criminal dynamics. Monsters should have other motivations, even irrational motivations, that should serve to make the game more interesting. They want things other people don't want or feel offended by things that would never bother a human or demi-human. Both will need a DM to stretch their imagination.
Make a lot of monsters. If the individual monster isn't particularly dangerous, that's no problem - make sure they exist in great numbers. A few days ago I introduced the 'purple frog,' an ugly little beast that's only three inches long and therefore no particular threat. Naturally, the first inclination is to make it bigger, even if it is only goblin-sized; or alternately to give it an intelligence, since talking to a little ugly frog that's 3 inches long probably would make a party stop and think.
Alternately, we could make thousands of them.
Ever experienced an insect invasion? I remember a two-week tent caterpillar infestation when I was young - several communities in northern Alberta had one this year. Here's a nice short video for viewing. The experience is somewhat less than appealing, let me say. The sound of rain that can be heard is actually caterpillar droppings falling on leaves, while the crunching of caterpillars under car tires reaches a decibel level that can be heard fifty meters away. All one can do is escape - and still the occasional caterpillar can be found crawling over the carpet, on the window, poking through the garbage and so on. So much fun!
Imagine millions of completely harmless, completely normal purple frogs scampering underfoot continuously for two weeks of game time. Imagine a party unable to get free of them, unable to sleep at night, unable to step without crushing them, vomiting and taking damage from the smell, possibly incurring a disease, having to fight a maddened beast driven crazy by the infestation while the party slips and slides on purple frog guts. There are all sorts of places.
Of course, everyone knows to increase the number of orcs or kobalds as a party increases in levels - but true infestations hamper everybody.
More to come. I have other ideas, of course - above are simply the most common three things. I don't, however, have the time to continue. I promise to do so, along these lines, when I return. This is enough for today.
There are several ways in which you can enhance or develop existing creatures into 'deeper' or more threatening monsters. I thought it might be helpful to review them and consider some of the effects of each, as a helpful overview in making new monsters and appreciating the aspects of old ones.
Let me pause first and explain that monsters are not targets. They can be used as such, and many a campaign will see them as nothing but video game pigeons to stand up and be shot down - hacked down, melted down - in order to measure the luck or success of the players. The stand-em-up, shoot-em-down process is the principle reason why combat is seen as boring in most campaigns, as little or no investment is made in making monsters squeal, bark, shout orders at one another or otherwise interact with the party during melee.
I don't know if the reader has considered this. Envision the players as participants in a football scrimmage, speaking the same language (as they would in my world) or not. Have one of the goblins on the other 'team' point at a player and shout, "You! You're going down, you bastard!" while another cries, "Your people killed my mother!" Another cries "GELF!" at the elf while another screams "Your mother was a human fucker" at the half-orc and the stage is very quickly set.
Most combats - even my own, when I'm hard-pressed for time - are played out in a sort of role-play cone of silence. I have found that it is always more effective to have creatures snort, yelp, bawl, bellow in pain, clamor, whoop with pleasure (try this after a character drops unconscious or dead) or otherwise make a racket.
The more personality, the better - so in considering how to create or enhance monsters, the reader should definitely keep this in mind. Statistics are far less interesting or meaningful to the players than purpose and behaviour.
Make monsters bigger. This is the most obvious and most employed tactic. No matter what it is, making it bigger makes it more interesting. All the giant forms of earth creatures employ this, while it is equally as much fun to double or triple the size of something already made huge. A 7 hit die giant crocodile is already 30 feet long - why not a 21 hit die titanic crocodile too long to be seen all at once?
I must admit I've never had any trouble with this sort of creature. Bigger is always better, even if the bigger expands to incomprehensible size. Players are amazed and effectively terrified by mass - just so long as there's still a chance of retreating or hiding when things reach dimensions of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I once had my party (with all their henchmen and followers in tow, a total of some 60 people) combat a roc with more than 1,000 hit points, so big that its most effective combat was landing, beating its wings and rolling about on the ground (1d20 incidental damage to everything).
If there is a limitation to this, it's that not everything can be BIG. It gets tiresome.
Make monsters smarter. This only works if you're the sort of DM that runs your smarter monsters differently than those that are dumber. I have seen many a campaign where a so-called 'genius' beholder uses a frontal attack like an orc running forward up a hallway. For me, any creature above extraordinary intelligence will interact with the party in only one of two ways. They may want to talk, in which case they're more likely to encourage the party towards an action rather than threaten them. If they wish to fight the party, they're more likely to do it through minions - sending wave after wave against the party until these run out. Whereupon the intelligent monster would make itself scarce. The only way that a party would ever likely encounter a beholder in my world would be if it were cornered.
I've had a party fight a beholder once. But I was very young and I never did think I did a good job of it.
I would hate to be a party fighting one in my world now. As I have grown smarter, so have my genius-level monsters.
Of course, I've tried creating a scale of tactical/weaponry advantages for very intelligent/high intelligent monsters, but I haven't quite incorporated that into my mindset. It's something that will come with time.
Smart monsters make for more role-play outside the normal character-vs-authority figure or character-vs-criminal dynamics. Monsters should have other motivations, even irrational motivations, that should serve to make the game more interesting. They want things other people don't want or feel offended by things that would never bother a human or demi-human. Both will need a DM to stretch their imagination.
Make a lot of monsters. If the individual monster isn't particularly dangerous, that's no problem - make sure they exist in great numbers. A few days ago I introduced the 'purple frog,' an ugly little beast that's only three inches long and therefore no particular threat. Naturally, the first inclination is to make it bigger, even if it is only goblin-sized; or alternately to give it an intelligence, since talking to a little ugly frog that's 3 inches long probably would make a party stop and think.Alternately, we could make thousands of them.
Ever experienced an insect invasion? I remember a two-week tent caterpillar infestation when I was young - several communities in northern Alberta had one this year. Here's a nice short video for viewing. The experience is somewhat less than appealing, let me say. The sound of rain that can be heard is actually caterpillar droppings falling on leaves, while the crunching of caterpillars under car tires reaches a decibel level that can be heard fifty meters away. All one can do is escape - and still the occasional caterpillar can be found crawling over the carpet, on the window, poking through the garbage and so on. So much fun!
Imagine millions of completely harmless, completely normal purple frogs scampering underfoot continuously for two weeks of game time. Imagine a party unable to get free of them, unable to sleep at night, unable to step without crushing them, vomiting and taking damage from the smell, possibly incurring a disease, having to fight a maddened beast driven crazy by the infestation while the party slips and slides on purple frog guts. There are all sorts of places.
Of course, everyone knows to increase the number of orcs or kobalds as a party increases in levels - but true infestations hamper everybody.
More to come. I have other ideas, of course - above are simply the most common three things. I don't, however, have the time to continue. I promise to do so, along these lines, when I return. This is enough for today.
Monday, August 25, 2014
Horses, Robots & Humans
I like C.G.P. Grey. He's a professional educator and he's done a mess of very fine videos. He generally keeps to straightforward, direct subjects and as he does his homework, I appreciate him highly. A little more than a week ago, however, he released a 15 minute video that . . . well, watch the video in its entirety before I continue. It's well done and interesting, and shouldn't have any problem holding your attention.
As the youtube video presently has 17,741 comments, there's little point in my commenting there (though I did). If I'm going to address my problems with the video, there's little point in doing it anywhere except my own space.
Besides, I can stretch out here and write as much as I want.
Allow me to begin with a few stipulations. Everything that Grey says about technology is - to the best of my knowledge - true. 'Baxter' will replace jobs, people don't care where they get their coffee from, robots are getting cheaper and faster, there is no rule that states that better technology is guaranteed to make more jobs for humans, the statistics quoted are accurate, present-day 'unions' will not prevent the spread of technology, the stock market has been vastly rewritten by 'bots,' bots do research, bots write music, bots write books, computers are able to be 'creative' and technology is able to replace many 'talents.' And yes, the roboticization of culture is a problem.
I have a few quibbles. I'm only going to mention one. The 'original music' turned out by the program Emily Howell is boring. Insidiously boring. If you listen to some of it, you'll find it fits with Grey's and other assessments - it is complex and original and momentarily interesting. If you listen to it for more than five minutes, however, you'll quickly find yourself pushing it out of the front of your mind, while after an hour you'll realize you haven't been listening to it at all for nearly an hour. In this way, it is very like most of the human-made music you listen to, but it is 100% unlike the human music you listen to that you like. Music that you really, really like is infectious and dopamine-rich. I weep for the poor dumb bastard who gets a dopamine rush from Emily Howell. Actually, I weep for the bastard's family, friends and co-workers who have to live anywhere near him.
Very well, let's look at the 'problem' that Grey proposes: robots are cheaper and just a tiny bit better technically than humans, so they will replace human jobs, leaving many humans jobless and therefore possessing no way to make a living. There will be nothing for them to do, and therefore they will simply have to go. Like horses.
For those who haven't seen the video (though you should), Grey employs an analogy regarding the replacement of horses by the automobile, in which millions of horses were killed because they ceased to be a functional part of society. As humans cease to be a functional part, Grey alludes, they too will find themselves at risk of being treated as horses. As the point is stress several times, it's quite clear that the theme behind the video is to promote FEAR of technology. It tries to promote this fear very rationally and reasonably, suggesting that we need to deal with this issue before something really, really terrible happens. Because it will. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
There are a few relevant ways in which humans are very different from horses that are completely ignored in this analogy, however. The first is that the horses themselves had no actual part in the decision-making process surrounding the getting rid of horses. Horses did not invent the cars, they did not buy the cars, they did not find the cars superior and they were not in anyway empowered to resist or improve themselves in order to adapt to the sudden existence of cars.
Of course, some humans won't be empowered to stop the plans and progress of other humans, either. Some humans will make robots, other humans will buy robots, then implement robots, while many humans will not be considered or permitted an opinion on the matter. Of course, I say 'permitted' colloquially. 'Permitted' is a limited word that exists in a limited context, but for the time being let's just say that within the law, and according to the principles of respect for property and employment, workers will be fired and no one will care.
Unlike horses, however, these humans will understand what's happening. They will have a very clear understanding of the reason why they're now unemployed and why they and their families are starving. This is the second way in which humans are very different from horses. With horses, when we 'fire' them, we let them keep working while trying to sell them - and when that doesn't work, we take them into a nice building and kill them.
We don't do this with people. We inform them that they're no longer permitted to draw a paycheque and then we calmly expect them to wander away and figure it out for themselves.
That's where the whole horse/human thing breaks down - because one of the ways that huge numbers of unemployed, starving people figure it is to destroy everything and anything that contributed to their being unemployed and starving. And NONE of these people will give a shit about how many robots they destroy. Or what else they destroy in the process.
Finally, there's a third missing point in Grey's horse analogy. Horses are not consumers. We are already living in a society where very poor people are awarded ridiculous amounts of credit because it is the only way we have to incentivize a population that has lower and lower wages - and therefore less money to spend on products being made. When we are replacing all these humans in order to make more products more cheaply, what will these humans buy these products with? More credit?
It's interesting that Grey completely ignores this, despite drawing the connection between the prospective unemployment (45%) with the unemployment during the Great Depression (25%) - failing utterly to remember that the rich and powerful (the ones who would be replacing us with robots) had to be saved by a war - where the government bought things from them, even things the government didn't need, in order to stabilize the economy (J.K. Galbraith, economist during the Roosevelt administration, makes some fun points about that in this video).
And where did the government get that money? Taxes. Which large corporations - the kind to implement robots on a grand scale - don't pay. What are we going to do when the vast population has no taxes to offer to pay a government to give welfare to the rich to stimulate an economy based on consumers that have no money?
Well, they'll create more money from the air, of course. That always goes to good places.
Thus we have several valves here that must be considered, none of which are accounted for in Grey's video and none of which involve the replacement of humans with technology. What we have is a possible attempt by bean-counters with very short vision to replace humans with robots, only to be surprised horribly when these humans turn around and begin to destroy the country and every bean-counter in it.
Humans, see, are smarter than horses. We compete for survival much better than horses do. This is evident by the fact that horses are our slaves. IF the robots become the next form of competition against the survival of humans, anywhere, then the solution to the 'problem' becomes self-evident. Humans survive, the very dumb and lack-of-awareness robots do not. It isn't a question of, do humans win over robots, but how much pain and suffering do we plan to go through before the inevitable balance is reached?
We're already running pell-mell towards that balance - and by all accounts, at the way government is allowing business to run the system, we are already planning for a great deal of inevitable pain and suffering. Robots may be here right now as Grey says in his matter-of-fact statements (no argument there), but the coming war isn't going to be human vs. robot. It is going to be between humans that want robots and humans that only see robots as a threat.
Grey has it wrong. The humans aren't like horses. The robots are. The robots will be the ones that quietly die when we decide that for them. Unlike Skynet or whatever the hell the robots in the Matrix called themselves, robots are not going to suddenly 'become aware' and have a say. We'll experiment with them for awhile and then we'll decide just how much of them we're willing to tolerate.
As the youtube video presently has 17,741 comments, there's little point in my commenting there (though I did). If I'm going to address my problems with the video, there's little point in doing it anywhere except my own space.
Besides, I can stretch out here and write as much as I want.
Allow me to begin with a few stipulations. Everything that Grey says about technology is - to the best of my knowledge - true. 'Baxter' will replace jobs, people don't care where they get their coffee from, robots are getting cheaper and faster, there is no rule that states that better technology is guaranteed to make more jobs for humans, the statistics quoted are accurate, present-day 'unions' will not prevent the spread of technology, the stock market has been vastly rewritten by 'bots,' bots do research, bots write music, bots write books, computers are able to be 'creative' and technology is able to replace many 'talents.' And yes, the roboticization of culture is a problem.
I have a few quibbles. I'm only going to mention one. The 'original music' turned out by the program Emily Howell is boring. Insidiously boring. If you listen to some of it, you'll find it fits with Grey's and other assessments - it is complex and original and momentarily interesting. If you listen to it for more than five minutes, however, you'll quickly find yourself pushing it out of the front of your mind, while after an hour you'll realize you haven't been listening to it at all for nearly an hour. In this way, it is very like most of the human-made music you listen to, but it is 100% unlike the human music you listen to that you like. Music that you really, really like is infectious and dopamine-rich. I weep for the poor dumb bastard who gets a dopamine rush from Emily Howell. Actually, I weep for the bastard's family, friends and co-workers who have to live anywhere near him.
Very well, let's look at the 'problem' that Grey proposes: robots are cheaper and just a tiny bit better technically than humans, so they will replace human jobs, leaving many humans jobless and therefore possessing no way to make a living. There will be nothing for them to do, and therefore they will simply have to go. Like horses.
For those who haven't seen the video (though you should), Grey employs an analogy regarding the replacement of horses by the automobile, in which millions of horses were killed because they ceased to be a functional part of society. As humans cease to be a functional part, Grey alludes, they too will find themselves at risk of being treated as horses. As the point is stress several times, it's quite clear that the theme behind the video is to promote FEAR of technology. It tries to promote this fear very rationally and reasonably, suggesting that we need to deal with this issue before something really, really terrible happens. Because it will. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
There are a few relevant ways in which humans are very different from horses that are completely ignored in this analogy, however. The first is that the horses themselves had no actual part in the decision-making process surrounding the getting rid of horses. Horses did not invent the cars, they did not buy the cars, they did not find the cars superior and they were not in anyway empowered to resist or improve themselves in order to adapt to the sudden existence of cars.
Of course, some humans won't be empowered to stop the plans and progress of other humans, either. Some humans will make robots, other humans will buy robots, then implement robots, while many humans will not be considered or permitted an opinion on the matter. Of course, I say 'permitted' colloquially. 'Permitted' is a limited word that exists in a limited context, but for the time being let's just say that within the law, and according to the principles of respect for property and employment, workers will be fired and no one will care.
Unlike horses, however, these humans will understand what's happening. They will have a very clear understanding of the reason why they're now unemployed and why they and their families are starving. This is the second way in which humans are very different from horses. With horses, when we 'fire' them, we let them keep working while trying to sell them - and when that doesn't work, we take them into a nice building and kill them.
We don't do this with people. We inform them that they're no longer permitted to draw a paycheque and then we calmly expect them to wander away and figure it out for themselves.
That's where the whole horse/human thing breaks down - because one of the ways that huge numbers of unemployed, starving people figure it is to destroy everything and anything that contributed to their being unemployed and starving. And NONE of these people will give a shit about how many robots they destroy. Or what else they destroy in the process.
Finally, there's a third missing point in Grey's horse analogy. Horses are not consumers. We are already living in a society where very poor people are awarded ridiculous amounts of credit because it is the only way we have to incentivize a population that has lower and lower wages - and therefore less money to spend on products being made. When we are replacing all these humans in order to make more products more cheaply, what will these humans buy these products with? More credit?
It's interesting that Grey completely ignores this, despite drawing the connection between the prospective unemployment (45%) with the unemployment during the Great Depression (25%) - failing utterly to remember that the rich and powerful (the ones who would be replacing us with robots) had to be saved by a war - where the government bought things from them, even things the government didn't need, in order to stabilize the economy (J.K. Galbraith, economist during the Roosevelt administration, makes some fun points about that in this video).
And where did the government get that money? Taxes. Which large corporations - the kind to implement robots on a grand scale - don't pay. What are we going to do when the vast population has no taxes to offer to pay a government to give welfare to the rich to stimulate an economy based on consumers that have no money?
Well, they'll create more money from the air, of course. That always goes to good places.
Thus we have several valves here that must be considered, none of which are accounted for in Grey's video and none of which involve the replacement of humans with technology. What we have is a possible attempt by bean-counters with very short vision to replace humans with robots, only to be surprised horribly when these humans turn around and begin to destroy the country and every bean-counter in it.
Humans, see, are smarter than horses. We compete for survival much better than horses do. This is evident by the fact that horses are our slaves. IF the robots become the next form of competition against the survival of humans, anywhere, then the solution to the 'problem' becomes self-evident. Humans survive, the very dumb and lack-of-awareness robots do not. It isn't a question of, do humans win over robots, but how much pain and suffering do we plan to go through before the inevitable balance is reached?
We're already running pell-mell towards that balance - and by all accounts, at the way government is allowing business to run the system, we are already planning for a great deal of inevitable pain and suffering. Robots may be here right now as Grey says in his matter-of-fact statements (no argument there), but the coming war isn't going to be human vs. robot. It is going to be between humans that want robots and humans that only see robots as a threat.
Grey has it wrong. The humans aren't like horses. The robots are. The robots will be the ones that quietly die when we decide that for them. Unlike Skynet or whatever the hell the robots in the Matrix called themselves, robots are not going to suddenly 'become aware' and have a say. We'll experiment with them for awhile and then we'll decide just how much of them we're willing to tolerate.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Rank #1
Well, good news. How to Play a Character & Other Essays is sitting at #1 for the past month on Lulu's top 100 Games Books' list.
How to Run: an Advanced Guide to Managing Role-playing Games is #22.
How to Run: an Advanced Guide to Managing Role-playing Games is #22.
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Honest Questions
And honest answers, hopefully.
Hey, all.
I was hearing that you had gotten books, you were reading them, that things were great - and then nothing.
What's up? Is there any news?
Hey, all.
I was hearing that you had gotten books, you were reading them, that things were great - and then nothing.
What's up? Is there any news?
Friday, August 22, 2014
Full Circle
Last night, my partner Tamara was telling me about the events surrounding a game she's been involved with - that I'm not playing. She began in another campaign when I was working on my book and she's gone on with it, so that Wednesday's I get some private time to work on things while she adventures into the world of other DMs. It's good experience for her, as mine was the only campaign she'd previously played.
She was asking me about a DM's ruling, one that had annoyed her. Seems she had mis-fired her bow. The DM - without any tables, previously created rules or established framework of any kind - simply ruled that the arrow struck another character standing to the left of Tamara. Why? Well, the DM called it 'role-playing' - which failed in Tamara's opinion to justify the incident. There was some discussion at the table - apparently - and then it got dismissed by DM's fiat and their game continued.
It really bugged Tamara. I have a rule that friendly fire can occur with missile weapons. Roll a 2 on a d20, and IF there's a character standing in a 30 degree arc directly in front of you, then yes, you hit him or her in the back. But this was another character standing 90 degrees to the left, completely outside of where Tamara was aiming - and she wanted to know "What the hell? Why did he do that?"
I don't pretend to know the DM's motive. I would imagine he was trying to make the game more interesting, to use the randomness of the die to create tension by having something odd happen. That's my best guess. For my purposes, the incident serves as an example of why things that happen have to make sense.
It's very simple. Because the incident didn't make sense, Tamara's reaction is to a) immediately compare it to another world where there IS a rule that does make sense; and b) to distrust the DM's motives for running his game. Distrust in turn breeds disinterest, which only causes her to feel less immersive in the DM's campaign. Knowing she has an alternative campaign provides a greater reason to feel less committed to any campaign where random, non-rational decisions are made by the DM, encouraging her to simply stop going to games.
Will she bother to explain this thinking process to the DM? No. She will not. She's already tried to argue the point about the arrow when it occurred and she was shut down. Why would she bother to express to the DM the larger point of why the DM's world isn't working for her?
For most, it seems like such a minor issue. Okay, he made something happen, it was five seconds of game time, what's the big deal? The game isn't supposed to be about what's real, it's supposed to be fun. Right?
It surprises me that a culture that can scream at a television set because an umpire makes a marginal call about a ball moving 90 miles an hour over a plate in a completely different game can be so dismissive of a highly questionable call during a slow moving game in which the player is directly involved. It is all a question of degree. The DM that handles the game so casually that even an umpire in a company softball game would pale to think of it rarely understands or even considers the consequences of such rulings. It is as though the DM perceives that he or she has an inexhaustible well of ad hoc calls that they're entitled to make, upon which the player will make no judgement or have no negative reaction.
This mindset can derive only from cognitive dissonance - which I admit I find myself face-to-face with again and again where describing the behaviour of other people. Do they not realize the crops they're sowing?
The begged question becomes, "How many questionable rulings can a DM make before consequences occur?" But does it really matter? Would it help knowing that you had twelve or fifteen, knowing that if you weren't steadfast in never making a bad ruling that you'd eventually use them all up out of sheer laziness?
In fact, every bad ruling made is a potential character kill - if we define 'kill' in this case of the player deciding that enough is enough, I'm not coming back to that campaign. The only reasonable alternative is to get rid of the DM's fiat, embrace interchanges about rationality when they occur - to ensure that every member of the party understands why something has occurred - and to take the whole matter of ruling very seriously. As a DM, you do yourself a tremendous disservice if you make rulings which you cannot explain by a means less general than 'role-playing' or 'because.' You're driving players away from your table.
And because they will probably never tell you that's the reason they've left, you'll never know why. You'll never make the connection. You've treated them dismissively, and now that dismissiveness has come full circle.
Is this really what you want?
P.S.
Although I talk extensively in my Guide about Dungeon Mastering, this post has been an original point that was not included in my book. I said that I was inexhaustible.
She was asking me about a DM's ruling, one that had annoyed her. Seems she had mis-fired her bow. The DM - without any tables, previously created rules or established framework of any kind - simply ruled that the arrow struck another character standing to the left of Tamara. Why? Well, the DM called it 'role-playing' - which failed in Tamara's opinion to justify the incident. There was some discussion at the table - apparently - and then it got dismissed by DM's fiat and their game continued.
It really bugged Tamara. I have a rule that friendly fire can occur with missile weapons. Roll a 2 on a d20, and IF there's a character standing in a 30 degree arc directly in front of you, then yes, you hit him or her in the back. But this was another character standing 90 degrees to the left, completely outside of where Tamara was aiming - and she wanted to know "What the hell? Why did he do that?"
I don't pretend to know the DM's motive. I would imagine he was trying to make the game more interesting, to use the randomness of the die to create tension by having something odd happen. That's my best guess. For my purposes, the incident serves as an example of why things that happen have to make sense.
It's very simple. Because the incident didn't make sense, Tamara's reaction is to a) immediately compare it to another world where there IS a rule that does make sense; and b) to distrust the DM's motives for running his game. Distrust in turn breeds disinterest, which only causes her to feel less immersive in the DM's campaign. Knowing she has an alternative campaign provides a greater reason to feel less committed to any campaign where random, non-rational decisions are made by the DM, encouraging her to simply stop going to games.
Will she bother to explain this thinking process to the DM? No. She will not. She's already tried to argue the point about the arrow when it occurred and she was shut down. Why would she bother to express to the DM the larger point of why the DM's world isn't working for her?
For most, it seems like such a minor issue. Okay, he made something happen, it was five seconds of game time, what's the big deal? The game isn't supposed to be about what's real, it's supposed to be fun. Right?
It surprises me that a culture that can scream at a television set because an umpire makes a marginal call about a ball moving 90 miles an hour over a plate in a completely different game can be so dismissive of a highly questionable call during a slow moving game in which the player is directly involved. It is all a question of degree. The DM that handles the game so casually that even an umpire in a company softball game would pale to think of it rarely understands or even considers the consequences of such rulings. It is as though the DM perceives that he or she has an inexhaustible well of ad hoc calls that they're entitled to make, upon which the player will make no judgement or have no negative reaction.
This mindset can derive only from cognitive dissonance - which I admit I find myself face-to-face with again and again where describing the behaviour of other people. Do they not realize the crops they're sowing?
The begged question becomes, "How many questionable rulings can a DM make before consequences occur?" But does it really matter? Would it help knowing that you had twelve or fifteen, knowing that if you weren't steadfast in never making a bad ruling that you'd eventually use them all up out of sheer laziness?
In fact, every bad ruling made is a potential character kill - if we define 'kill' in this case of the player deciding that enough is enough, I'm not coming back to that campaign. The only reasonable alternative is to get rid of the DM's fiat, embrace interchanges about rationality when they occur - to ensure that every member of the party understands why something has occurred - and to take the whole matter of ruling very seriously. As a DM, you do yourself a tremendous disservice if you make rulings which you cannot explain by a means less general than 'role-playing' or 'because.' You're driving players away from your table.
And because they will probably never tell you that's the reason they've left, you'll never know why. You'll never make the connection. You've treated them dismissively, and now that dismissiveness has come full circle.
Is this really what you want?
P.S.
Although I talk extensively in my Guide about Dungeon Mastering, this post has been an original point that was not included in my book. I said that I was inexhaustible.
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