Artisans

Skilled craft workers who make or create things by hand that may be functional, decorative or describes manufactures made by hand-processing. Thus, artisans make house wares, leather work, clothes, foodstuffs, ceramics, glass & stoneware, metalwork and so on. An artisan is any individual who makes or provides services, but does not apply to unskilled manual laborers. Artisans at the top of their class are known as 'masters'; those who have been rated as adequate by guilds are known as 'journeymen,' while those in the learning process are apprentices. All master artisans in the setting, including those within the guild, are self-employed . . . journeymen may or may not, but on the whole will be mostly autonomous while working shoulder to shoulder with a master who owns the business in which they work.

Artisan encounters will always happen in a village, town or city - and for the most part, will be one-on-one meetings. Whereas most campaigns would see these as opportunities to blatantly sell players on committing themselves to an adventure scenario or quest, with the artisan begging the party to retrieve something, break into something, confront an enemy or some such, I perceive that none of those encounter tropes would be common or specific to artisans, as opposed to any person that might be met on the street. Artisans are not inclined to begin fights, organize themselves into gangs or see theft and melee as practical methods for expanding their reputation in the community. Artisans work at their trade: being makers and shop owners, working most hours each day in their own spaces, would have little time to frequent drinking establishments or chase people on the street begging for attention. As a result, most circumstances in which D&D "encounters" are thought to happen simply don't apply.

Characters and artisans would meet by chance, in the most obvious way: while purchasing things. A character moves from shop to shop, seeking bargains, the best equipment for the right price, equipment for the party (it may take two or three shops to find enough of a rare item) and so on. Some shop keepers talk; some do not. When a conversation is begun, it is done organically - a few words are spoken back and forth, both the character and the artisan find something they like about the other and the conversation begins. It is never about adventuring: it is about the exchange of thoughts, information, ideas. Moreover, it must be emphasized that the shopkeeper is as interested i what the character has to say as the reverse.

Each time the characters make a decision to do some shopping, when they pour over equipment lists (do not give an artisan encounter when a player knows what's wanted and specifically searches for one thing), ask the party if they appreciate that the hunting through shops in the market will take the whole morning or the whole afternoon. If an assent is given, "yes," have each player roll a d20 against their charisma. The player character that beats their charisma by the most will have an artisan encounter, by themselves (sternly inform the other characters not to give advice, though they can comment). If two or more characters tie, either roll it off or prepare to give more than one artisan encounter.

Artisan encounters may be brief, depending on the character. When they have gone long enough, have another customer require the artisan's attention, so that the conversation is cut off that day. Obviously, the player can end the conversation at any time.

Artisan-Character discussions are not set; however, the following topics will be typical, any of which can be used to gain the artisans favor (don't expect immediate bargains - but after 2-5 return visits a given artisan will 'save back' special items or may give away small items for free), which may mean opportunities for further exchanges. Presume that all artisan-character conversations are positive (charisma check was made). Artisans will no do things for the player, however, if asked, nor with the artisan ask anything of the player.

Subjects include the list below; there is no need to stick to any one subject or to cover any subject that doesn't seem relevant to the player's choice of dialogue. The artisan will:

• be interested in seeing anything the characters are carrying that is visually unusual, wishing to know where it has come from; in general, the artisan will be curious to know where the character has come from or what the character is doing in town. 
• be interested in showing off things of his or her own creation, not to sell it but to discuss how a particular thing was made. 
• express personal opinions on the state of the community, the town or city, the region or the whole country, being either disgruntled at the state of affairs, happy with them or doubtful if such will continue. The artisan will not commit treason but may express a number of blatantly uncomfortable viewpoints. Resist having the artisan make personal comments about the player character - race, creed, whatever - as the artisan still sees this person as a potential or paying customer. 
• give a positive opinion or suggestion about where else the character could look, something else the character should buy, something the character ought to see in town (because it is interesting) or worthwhile warning about a particular road or place in the area. 
• describe something the artisan did once that was very brave, particularly when speaking to an obvious fighter; the artisan will probably be looking for respect from the fighter while in turn offering it. 
• describe the effort he or she has taken to get the shop in order, to survive the economic circumstances and perhaps tell a tale or two about some difficulty that was overcome ("we had a fire two years ago, we're still coming back from it"). 
• draw the character's attention to the object they've chosen to buy as not one of the best in the shop, offering a better one in its stead (perhaps with a +1 bonus to save against random destruction). 
• discreetly express approval for the character's attractiveness or personality, flirting politely. 
• offer his or her name for the player to use in seeking out good accommodations or some other minor benefit (depending on how well the character plays the conversation). 
• warn the player about a local crime the player may be breaking without knowing it (carrying banned weapons, wearing a disallowed color, showing too much skin, etcetera), or any other thing the player might want to avoid doing in the area. 
• thank the player for coming to his or her shop, wishing the player the best in future endeavors. 
• make/tell a joke. 
• offer a wager. 

If the conversation is going well, ten minutes should be the cut-off point. If the other players are showing signs of fatigue at the conversation, cut it off sooner. Try to make the conversation at least a little relevant to the player's present concerns and adventure, but don't reward an obtuse, probing question with an answer and don't be heavy-handed and anvilicious in giving information. In other words, don't be the DM, be the artisan. Let the conversation progress as the artisan would - without an agenda but with vitality.

See Encounters

Crews

This post describes working parties for commercial ventures who work mines, ships, roads and more. For rules describing the effectiveness of crews in combat, see Crew Quality.

Crews are work gangs or classes of people who work together in a common activity, generally a structured or hierarchical organization. A location in which a crew works on land is called a crew yard or a work yard; upon the sea, a crew works aboard ship. The members of a crew are predominantly untrained laborers led by skilled laborers and overseers. Large camps will include one or two managers or administrators (scribes, with a staff), who will act under the orders of a governor, director or owner (who will virtually never be found on site).

Aboard ship, these upper positions will be held by mates, led by a boatswain (bo'sun), sailing master and captain. Specialty positions aboard a ship will be held by a pilot, ship's marksman, ship's carpenter or surgeon. As with land crews, the owner of the ship is rarely present, as the captain has been hired to act on the owner's behalf in the ship's commercial venture.

Crews differ in behavior regarding the quality of leadership, the form of occupation, the season (winter in a cold country or summer in a hot country tend to increase stress and potential violence) and degree of isolation. Land crews may be found hundreds of miles from the nearest civilization; seagoing crews, thousands of miles. Crews may control an entire island or valley, they may be working in the midst of a city or they could be responsible for miles of underground tunnels. Sea crews may be military- or trader-based. Land crews may parties committed to clearing land for agriculture, ditch diggers for irrigation or road builders, dredgers, sappers, miners, sawyers and tree cutters for fuel or for construction (including shipbuilding), quarry stonecutters or trappers/hunters.

There are three probable land crew encounters (among a host of unlikely possibilities):

• Speculators. 2-5 workers are encountered prospecting, exploring, tallying trees for cutting, marking the location of roads or other projects intended to be initiated in the future. The party will be tough adventurers, high minded and educated, most likely working for themselves or hired by others to traverse areas to learn if there is something there to be exploited. These groups are likely to be friendly but distrustful, presuming any party they meet is potential competition interested in making an enterprise of the same valuable land they've examined. As such, they will likely swap for equipment but will not give information on what they've seen or found. A ranger will almost certainly be the leader of these speculators; fighters, thieves, assassins, thieves, mages, illusionists and even a rare cleric may make up their number.
• Incomers. 5-30 workers who have been contracted to set up a working camp, prior to the existence of the camp itself. This may involve building ditches, chutes, minimal fortifications, setting up tents, laying trap lines, clearing trees, dredging river courses, cutting roads/trails and so on. Not all eventual camps will involve permanent dwellings, so that a group of incomers can easily be mistaken for camping bandits and vice versa. These groups will be experienced workers, who have fought enough creatures and threats that they will all have some combat training. They will be led by an overseer who will be 3rd or 4th level and at least 4-9 others that are 1st to 3rd level who will be ex-military of one kind or another. Incomers will work on building a camp from a few weeks to several months.
• Full Camp. Workers who are actively full-time on a commercial venture. Small camps of 10-60 workers are most common, but camp size can be as large as 300. Camps larger than 40 will typically have a few permanent dwellings; camps larger than 100 will manifest as villages. Camps larger than 300 will have transformed into permanent settlements, with other ongoing activities beyond the commercial venture that initiated the settlement's existence. The workers of full camps will be three quarters untrained, inexperienced workers; the remainder will experienced workers with some combat training. For every 10 members of the camp will be one of 1st level; the camp will be led by at least four overseers of 2nd to 3rd level and by an administrator of 6th level. Among the workers there may be a surprise, a higher level character who has taken work amidst poor circumstances, whose real experience is unknown to the others.

Crew encounters at sea will most likely consist of fishermen, who will take to the water in individual boats. Treat fishermen and their operations as a moving full camp, operating out of a nearby settlement. Some fishing crews on long-range fishing trips will encamp on the shore at night when able; larger fishing fleets will consist of dozens of vessels that may be bound for fishing grounds thousands of miles from their settlement origins.

Details regarding other ship activities, such as traders, pirates, patrols or explorer vessels will be dealt with on other pages in the wiki.

See Encounters

Bandits

Sometimes, it is about hammering down simple things.

Bandits are groups of nomadic humanoid wanderers reminiscent of more primitive bands, dwelling in regions where there is a sufficient capital to sustain a life of theft and predation. While lawless and prone to marauding behavior, not all bandits are necessarily malevolent. On the whole, those who turn to banditry do so as a reaction to oppression or hardship. Bandits often take no action whatsoever against the lower classes, preferring to prey upon elites of all forms - that is, those with money. Occasionally, some bandits ensure their safety by giving generously to local residents who have very little, helping to sustain their lives. In return, these residents will obstruct authorities seeking familiar bandit groups, providing safe lodging, giving false information or giving warning to the bandits that searchers are in the area.

Bandits recognize no authority but their own.

Bandit groups typically number between 10-60 combat-trained members (foragers), about three quarters of whom are males. In addition to this number, there are typically another 5-30 women and children that are kept hidden in some variety of fortified camp/lair, where the bandits feel they can safely return on occasion to reacquaint themselves with loved ones and store their gains. They are led by a bandit chief, typically of 4-5th level. Among the foragers, 3-24 will be 1st level; 1-8 will be 2nd; 1-4 will be 3rd. There is then a 25% chance of a sub-chief, who will be 4th level. 10% of bandits will be supported by a single shaman, guru or cleric.

There will be three sorts of encounters with bandits:

• Scouting party. 3-12 members are encountered on their return from a reconnaissance or a raid. There's a chance that the party will surprise this number, that some of them will be wounded and that they may be carrying anywhere from 250-1000 g.p. from the treasure they took (if this was a raid). A reconnaissance party will have been scouting a target; if the party chooses to parley, there's a small chance - if the party looks the right sort - that the bandits may ask the party to join in with them on a raid. They'll be moving during the day, camping at night.
• Encampment. 5-40 members will be camped, possibly waiting for raiders or a reconnaissance party to return, potentially celebrating before returning to their lair, more likely sustaining themselves with fishing, foraging, cutting trees, drying hides or other task necessary to sustain the whole bandit group. The season should matter; in fall and winter, the encampment will almost certainly be focused on supplies; in spring, reconnoitering; and in summer, raiding. There's a chance the party may surprise them. If the party chooses to parley, several of the bandits will slip out of the camp while the leaders talk, until a chance comes to feather the party with arrows while the encampment attacks and kills the players. Note that a bandit encampment, from the outside, will not look different from a working crew, except to a thief (who should roll a d12 - a number equal to or less than their level will reveal the truth).
• Ambush. The whole bandit group (10-60) will have decided that the party is worth raiding, or else they will be raiding a village, manor, caravan or some such the party has entered or associated themselves with.

Bandit camps are fervently sought after by authorities. Successful bandits who accumulate enough wealth will sometimes 'retire,' buying their way into the establishment, sometimes obtaining a pardon by bribes or through committing their men to an authorities' cause in times of war.

Bandits will have unusual knowledge of a given hinterland, making them invaluable as spies or smugglers. They prefer mounts in open country but will not use them at all in mountainous or forested regions.

See Encounters

Never Has the Tao Been More Tao

Following yesterday's post about shamanism and animism, I followed up with a game version of mantraism, on the wiki.  Mantras are the basis for most modern Asian religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and so on - and believe me, that is a long, deep rabbit hole that the average reader does not want to go down.  Eastern theology gives headaches to people who spend their lives studying it.

Still, I want to write about my work on mantraism (which I'll refer to without posting here), since I found it a brain bender for about eight hours yesterday.  I'll write about the trials and about some of the serendipity that arose from the content.

Job one was to make the content as simple as possible.  It would do no good to attempt an accurate representation of the use of mantras for game play, first because I don't want to spend the next ten years sussing it out and second because if I did it wouldn't be any good to players who didn't want to spend a year learning how to play it.  Any game rule has to be something that can be grasped in one or two sessions of explanation - which means throwing out considerable amounts of theology and nuance.  On the whole, that doesn't matter - no one playing D&D is attempting to obtain enlightenment . . . we're not being honest to the source material, we're being honest to the world we're building.  Priorities matter.  Therefore, if something in the content doesn't match up with what a real Buddhist or Jain believe, fuck it.

That said, we do want it to be recognizable as mantraism.  Whenever possible, we want to ascribe the correct definitions to things, even as we simplify them or leave out details that give them more nuance.  Throughout the wiki page, when I describe what something is, such as japa, reincarnation or the paths of accumulation or joining, these are directly from the source material.  I'm not making this stuff up - the reader should feel free to do their own research.

The value in adapting source material is that we can exploit the originality of that material without having to invent something from whole cloth - and at the same time, people familiar with the material can identify touchstones that are familiar and pleasant. The only people likely to be annoyed are true believers - who, I will say, are unlikely to be role-playing.  An actual Buddhist role-playing would be something like a Islamist taking a job painting Mohammed characters on store windows for Ramadan.  This joke will be clearer to those who understand Buddhism.

This is a fine line to walk already - the third element in the mix is that the content must be made practical for gaming.  That is, it must have some kind of effect that players can identify.  Mantraism is different from the religions I posted yesterday because, though it is the primitive form of philosophy that preceded the enlightenment of the east some 2766 years ago (the actual origin is contested - some argue it began with Hinduism and others that it existed for thousands of years before Hinduism) in that mantraism remains a fundamental basis for later religions.  This means that if a player chooses to be a Buddhist in my game (and I've had two of them in the last 8 years), what I write about Mantraism now has to also apply to what the character believes later.

Why does that matter?  Well, to me it matters because I haven't had a strong fundamental basis for how a Buddhist cleric would function.  What would matter to a Buddhist?  How would adventuring fit into the mix and how would the cleric perceive the long game where it came to increasing in power, focus and purpose?  Two days ago, this would have been very hazy and difficult to describe.  After the work I did yesterday, however, I suddenly find it crystal clear.  Right now, I think it would be possible for a player with no comprehension at all about Buddhism to quickly master the principles I've laid out and feel consequentially different from believing in a western-based faith (and most religions in D&D, whether those of the real world are played or not, are based on western polytheism or monotheism).

Note that I keep talking about Buddhism and not Hinduism, which is also mantra based.  That is because my Hinduism rules is yet going to need work.  Buddhism is much more an offshoot of mantraism - and it was mantraism that I outlined yesterday, not full on Buddhism.  That advancement will come later - but for the moment, everything that I've written about mantraism also applies to Buddhism, so in a sense we are talking the same thing.

So, the mantraism page on the wiki describes three basic points: 1)  thoughts empower action; 2) japa enables right thought; and 3) right thought places the individual upon a path that creates character class and produces game abilities.

1) In D&D terms, thoughts empowering action is equivalent to saying that thoughts empower magic. That is what we are talking about, yes?  Mantraism isn't a religion, it is a magical format that has magical effects.  This is the fundamental purpose to having a religion in D&D, that it creates some sort of power that interests the fantasy role-playing motif.  Without a magical effect, religion is utterly useless to the game except as fluff.  We don't need fluff, we need a principle that the players can play - so religion must be a form of magic.

2) Japa is the repetition of mantras.  If you're looking for your keys, you're wandering around the house saying, "Where are they?  Where the fuck are they?  Where are they?  Where are they?" - over and over.  This is a pattern that every human betrays in times of stress and in every culture.  Mantraism recognizes this biological constant and attempts to ritualize it: screaming about the keys helps you find the keys (theoretically), so we only ask that you scream about the keys with these exact words in this exact tonality this number of times.  That is japa.

3) As I proceeded along in my research, I discovered a strange serendipity arising.  The number of mantra repetitions, for instance, being 108 according to the source material.  How curious it was that 108 repetitions would take 15 minutes, when 15 minutes has been established for literally decades as the time it takes for a cleric to relearn a 1st level spell in my very old Vancian-based system!  How interesting it was that I seemed to be establishing a logical basis for the monk character traits as well as a form of non-spellcasting cleric!  How marvelous it was that the actual description of the Buddhist stage of supreme attribute helped define what a monk's abilities ought to be, more accurately that the clumsy telling of the original AD&D handbook.  I'd never heard of the four stages of the Path of Joining until yesterday and yet they fit right into my game system like a glove.

In particular, I enjoyed the meaning behind the Path of Accumulation.  At first, I resisted the description, since I supposed we were talking about some form of religious acquisition - but in fact we are talking about exactly the sort of acquisition that murderhobos in D&D like to do.  Players can be Buddhist and hack-slash lords at the same time, because mantraism and Buddhism begin with admitting that most persons are going to be involved in material accumulation - says so right on the tin.  This puts everyone on the First Path - including non-believers like you and me, who are merely members of the lesser stage.  One has to love an all inclusive religion like this.  EVERYONE is a Buddhist.  So the next time some effete says that we don't 'understand' Buddhism, we can spit right into his face and answer, "I understand fine for someone on the first path."

Nice.

I cut mantraism off at the end of the Path of Joining because I want it to remain primitive (it is designed for tech level 6, some readers will remember).  At a later time, I see that I will have to plunge into Buddhism again, completing a set of rules for the remaining three paths above the second - but later.  I'm resting for now.

Fetishes

I had great fun yesterday hammering down two magical/religious practices in my world in D&D terms: shamanism and animism.  Of the two, shamanism is more primitive; animism arises out of shamanism in areas of greater technology.  Both magics/religions are intended for cultures that are too primitive for spell or cantrip use - and so the rules for each had to both limit the amount of power that could be used while giving possibilities for how each could provide powers and abilities not associated with standard Vancian magic.  Both are described on the wiki and will provide plenty of reading not included here on the blog.  I recommend reading both pages through and comparing the one with the other (noting similarities and differences).

The strangest addition is Fetishism, which I'm going to post below - just because I think it is so damn interesting.  There may be some flaw in the rule that I'm missing, I hope someone will point it out to me if they see one that makes the ability way too powerful.  I stress that this would be primarily an ability for non-player characters . . . though, of course, it is almost certainly something that I would eventually add to my sage abilities in the future, so that players could partake.

Please forgive the disclaimer at the start of this.  I wanted to make clear the fundamentals of my perception of animism based on pre-European incursions and misinterpretations (which is what most of what we know about animism).

From the Wiki:

Fetishes are objects that are possessed of magical power, that enable the bearer to have power over others. The following is an attempt to separate this practice in my world from the corrupted and largely misunderstood development of 'voodooism,' or 'Vodou,' in later centuries, which is far, far from the practice that actually occurred in Old World primitive cultures. In creating rules for fetishism, I have chosen to ignore cheesy ideals that have long since become awful cliches in film and the Caribbean tourist trade. I simply am not interested in this, and don't feel it would be a good fit for my world - particularly as I am attempting to present many possible animistic regions, not just those of the West African slave states.

Retaining the idea of being able to affect others with fetishes, or talismans, the emphasis here is on positive effects. Fetishes, unlike shamanistic tokens, do not require the sacrifice of an animal or a humanoid - but they do require considerable skill in their creation. (note: this is a skill I would like to eventually add to the bard, but I do not have the necessary rules at this time].

The fetish talisman is created by the animist shaman as follows: the object must be made of a material that has been formed from a living creature: wood, wax or even dung are the most common materials. This is then fashioned in the form of a specific humanoid subject, though the likeness is not expressly important. The subject's hair must be cut directly from the humanoid's head, either willingly or without the subject's knowledge - hair taken by force will not serve. The figure must be made with cloth that the subject has worn more than once. Finally, once the talisman has been made, it must come into contact with the subject for the space of one round (12 seconds). Thereafter, the talisman/doll will serve as an effective animist fetish.

This empowers the animist shaman to perform two forms of control. The first transfers a condition or ability from the shaman to the subject; the second reverses this, so that a condition or ability is transferred to the shaman. Note that this transfer will last only as long as the shaman concentrates upon the fetish, so that in most cases it will not enable to shaman to take on powers that can then be used, since focusing on the use of that power will cause it to recede.

However, the shaman can bestow the subject with better ability stats (since the subject can take advantage of these, having no need to concentrate), a better to hit table (if applicable), a superior saving throw, greater morality and so on. Hit points cannot be transferred. However, were the shaman intoxicated, that could be transferred; likewise, the shaman could transfer an injury, taking it away from the subject to make the subject were more effective as a combatant, or giving it to the subject in order to cripple him. A disease could likewise be transferred. The shaman could drink poison and transfer that as well; or accept poison from the subject, empowering the shaman to save vs. the poison and survive it while the subject could be sustained before the effects of the poison was returned. There are numerous other ways in which the power of one individual or the other could be shared one way or the other.

Note that the effects of some circumstances, such as a fire or suffocation, could be not be transferred, as the animist shaman could not effectively concentrate on the fetish while on fire or, say, drowning. In general, if the experience is something that would suspend the concentration necessary for casting spells, the fetish cannot be used.

An animist shaman's magic can only support one fetish at any one time. To make another fetish requires that the prior fetish be destroyed, smashing it first with the hand and then setting it afire. This destruction does not affect the subject, as it is not what the talisman/doll experiences that is transferred, but what the shaman feels.

Animism is most common among tech 6 and tech 7 cultures, though there are cults of animism that exist in all cultures above tech 6.

24 Petards to Be Roasted Upon (or, How to Be a Player)

I have been looking for something like this for a long time.  I came across it Wednesday.  It is a book, called Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, written by Martin Seligman and edited by Christopher Peterson.  The core of the book is something that reads like ability stats for a player character . . . except that, in actuality, they're ability stats for the person who IS the player.

Specifically, Seligman is talking about strength of character.  Towards this ideal, he puts together a list of six core virtues that are in turn made up of 24 "character strengths" - which Seligman proposes are measurable.  I won't even try to explain this; I'll steal what Wikipedia says:

"Each of the twenty-four character traits is defined behaviorally, with psychometric evidence demonstrating that it can be reliably measured. The book shows that 'empirically minded humanists can measure character strengths and virtues in a rigorous scientific manner.' "

Once upon a time, I wrote a essay (later part of a book) called How to Play a Character.  I could take Seligman's work and quite probably write a completely different book, How to Be a Player.

The six core virtues, plus the character strengths inherent in each, are as follows:

• Wisdom & knowledge: creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, perspective.
• Courage: bravery, persistence, integrity, vitality.
• Humanity: love, kindness, social intelligence.
• Justice; citizenship, fairness, leadership.
• Temperance: forgiveness & mercy, humility/modesty, prudence, self-regulation.
• Transcendence: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, spirituality.

The whole provides a spectacular framework for the mind and the interrelationship of persons, without showing dependence on things such as status, physical prowess, personal glory or charisma. I personally feel the choice of strengths is a game-changer for what matters in terms of defining success not by measuring ourselves against others, but by measuring ourselves against our happiness and what others take from us.  But please don't imagine that I fully understand it, because I don't.  It would take months and months to understand it - but from what I've read so far, there's no question in my mind that what we want from players and DMs has been quantified - for the first time that I have seen.  The book is 12 years old, so none of this is new - but the internet is a big place and it is only by chance that I found it.

I want to look a little more closely at the strengths that Seligman describes and discuss their relationship to a player at a gaming table.  This seems like a good exercise for me and might help to explain why I'm excited about Seligman's book.  As I go through it, I'll put Seligman's words in italics (using only his emphasis, where applicable), then comment afterwards.

Creativity [originality, ingenuity]:  Thinking in novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it.

Basically, do different things.  That's a thousand times harder to do than say - and some people are naturally gifted towards this kind of thing.  Here's the point: if we assign the standard D&D 3-18 score to this character strength, or ability stat, then we have to acknowledge that most people will fit into the 10-11 range, some will have a creativity of 7 or 8 and some people will be damn brilliant creators with 18 points.  And just as it is stupid for a mage with a 7 strength to gird on a weapon and wade into combat, the thing to do here is to admit that our creativity may not be our strength.

That doesn't mean that a player with a low creativity isn't occasionally going to have a stellar moment.  Now and then, even someone with a 4 dexterity gets lucky with the die and pulls of a successful dex check.  It's only that an 18 creativity is more reliably creative.  The key here is not to try to pull the whole load for yourself.  The mage relies on the fighter to dig in and handle the strength stuff, right?  So where it comes to gaming, we shouldn't hesitate to ask the creative player for help - and take advice.  We can pick and choose from what we see; we can put in our own ideas, while stealing from people more eloquent or original than ourselves . . . the only thing we shouldn't do is try to pull the whole cart ourselves.  We will have other strengths - like a mage, we do things other than hacking and slashing.  We have to approach our playing style the same way.
But no, we won't be able to change our 'class' easily.  We can - but it will take more than a sheet of paper and dice.  It will take effort and commitment and years.  In the meantime, we need to apply our energy in the places where we excel.

Curiosity [interest, novelty-seeking, openness to experience]:  Taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering.

Again, some are going to be high in this trait and others won't be.  Personally, I have no idea why anyone with a low rating in this trait would be playing D&D at all . . . but social pressure, habit and sheer stubbornness make people do all kinds of things.  I don't have any advice on how to make an incurious person more curious; this particular problem has baffled me all my life, as a solution might be able to end social diseases like trash television, organized religion and professional sports (anyone want to get together to play baseball this afternoon, I'm totally there).

Those who are at least mildly curious might at least see the value in curiosity, and recognize that cats must be killed regularly for the good of the species.  If at all possible, we should strain ourselves to play a little higher up the curiosity scale from the points we possess - and to encourage others to do so.  Moreover, it would be better if the community overall embraced the idea that doing things the same old way is anathema to the experience of playing, the thrill of finding new angles on methods of play and the importance of not letting the game become stale just because once upon a time it was played in a particular way.  Clearly, those who advocate for simpler, shallower and traditional games have a very, very low curiosity rating: around a 9, I would guess.  It's hard to imagine anyone with a curiosity less than 9 even playing the game.

Open-mindedness [judgment, critical thinking]:  Thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; being able to change one's mind in light of evidence; weighing all evidence fairly.

This is something we're all doing, all the time, and something that enables the kind of curiosity I'm promoting to happen.  The only thing is, a great many of us are not doing this well.  We're deliberately weighing some evidence in preference to other evidence, such as our personal experience with 5e being more important than anyone else's experience with 5e.  We're very rarely able to change our minds in the light of evidence, such as those who claim role-playing is dying despite the proliferation of comic-cons, fan expos and so on where role-playing is always a highly promoted feature.  We're jumping to conclusions, such as arguing that alignment is necessary for a good game.  We're not examining things from all sides; we only see things from our side.  We're not thinking things through: we're grasping at the first visceral response we have when we hear or see something and flying headlong into it as the solution for our campaign: only to find, again and again, that it wasn't.

We need to step back and not search for simple answers, immediate solutions, supposed agents that will solve all our gaming problems or supposing that we have any means of judging the popularity or value of something without hard evidence.  We need to move ahead slowly, diligently, with our eyes and minds open, ready for an answer that will fit ALL the evidence, not just that we cherry pick because it suits the weather.

Love of learning:  Mastering new skills, topics and bodies of knowledge, whether on one's own or formally; obviously related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what one knows.

Here's the thing with Seligman's emphasis: it isn't enough that we keep reading and investing ourselves in more and more knowledge - we have to move away from our comfort zones.  We must read things about which we know nothing; we must read books and talk to strangers about things of which we know nothing - and then push our boundaries further by examining WHY things we don't like are liked by others, and strain ourselves to the utmost to embrace that like and make it part of ourselves.

Our capacity for doing this, particularly on the internet, is nigh impossible.  We are culturally minded, programmed, resistant to change, hateful of things we do not like immediately and we're both dismissive and disgusted with persons who do not recognize our personal right to be just as gawddamned ignorant as we want to be.  Still, love of learning is the acquisition of knowledge and knowledge is power.  And as much as we hate it, we know that being in a room with people who know something we don't know sucks.  That's the emotion we need to latch onto, as we break out of our small box and tentatively dare to listen quietly to a Katy Perry song (five or six times) or watch golf seriously.  Then, not fear the consequence.

Perspective [wisdom]: Being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to oneself and to other people.

Well, this is what I'm trying to do right now.  This is why I have readers.  This is why I'm trying to teach D&D classes and make a wiki and argue endlessly about things that I know bother people.  This is why I can't seem to contain myself to just D&D or just role-playing . . . and why I'm still at it, because I know that there still are others trying to make sense of the world and looking for a voice that can help answer that question.

The key of this trait is that it is proactive.  Listening or watching something is passive; jumping forward to express one's opinion is active - and it is a risk.  We will get spanked, we will encounter resistance, we will contend with apathy and mockery.  But as I depend on thousands of others in my life who were proactive enough to write books, make music, preach poetry, teach university classes, make documentaries and reach my consciousness in a hundred ways, I'm trying to do my small part in doing the same: and as I do, I learn better ways to do, I stretch myself and take greater chances and gain greater knowledge in how to convey what I believe and how better to understand what I believe as well.

Bravery [valor]: not shrinking from threat, challenge, difficulty or pain; speaking up for what is right even if there is opposition; acting on conviction even if unpopular; includes physical bravery but is not limited to it.

I find the key word in the above is 'shrinking' - as a DM, for so many years, I have seen players struggle with the game most of all because they do shrink from speaking their mind or standing up to bullies.  They worry that they will make a wrong decision or that whatever they do, it will somehow come back to bite them.  More and more these days, it seems to be a meme that experienced players are damaged or some other such thing by their previous experiences with DMs who behaved badly.  I hear this again and again.  I find it an enormous pity.

I don't want to rant, but I am finding it hard to go through this list and not concentrate on the negative aspects of NOT having these traits.  The positivity of the traits, for me, speak for themselves.  Who would argue that it isn't good to be brave or to love learning?  Yet in each case, as I continue, I can remember conversations online that seem to say exactly that.  I want brave players, players who correct me when I make mistakes, players who speak up for what they want to do in the game or who feel that the game has been made to suit their personal needs.  I always encourage players to speak up and I hope the same goes on in every game - and when there is someone who hasn't got a bravery of 13+, I hope that there is another player there to stand up for them.

Persistence [perseverence, industriousness]: Finishing what one starts; persisting in a course of action in spite of obstacles; "getting it out the door;" taking pleasure in completing tasks.

Aha, well, here's my whole approach in a nutshell.  I wrote in How to Run expressly about the pleasure of working and the value to be had there.  I encouraged with all my might for DMs to let go of the need to rebuild their campaigns from scratch year after year and just work on one world, period.  Persistence is all over the map where it comes to participants of the game: particularly with DMs, but with players too.  Unlike curiosity, where those without it are unlikely to play the game, there are plenty of DMs and players that have a persistence stats of 3 or 4.

It's a complicated game.  Players need to give it more than one night of play before quitting - but we don't live in a world where this can be explained.  At best, we can try to make they see how coming back for a second or a third session will help them feel more connected and involved.  That first session, like a first day at work, is a wash.  I know the player might not come back; but I try to make them feel safe and involved.  I try to encourage them to look to the future and not the present.  And whenever I can, I try to be as consistent a DM as I can be.  (Just now, with my life the way is it, that's been a joke; but I still hope to make this long dearth of gaming up to my players when things are sorted out for me).

Integrity [authenticity, honesty]: Speaking the truth but more broadly presenting oneself in a genuine way and acting in a sincere way; being without pretense; taking responsibility for one's feelings and actions.

Once again, will anyone argue that integrity isn't a good thing?  Yet when we are faced with players who use the premise of character-invention as a pretense for acting out like children or abusive assholes, what are we to think about their integrity stat?  A 7?  A 6?  Certainly not the 15 or 16 we'd prefer.  Granted, most people are not honest all the time, but I think we could agree on there being an agreement at our tables that the participants reserve the abusive character trait for the character and keep it wholly and completely out of the player's mouth.

But this is a problem with a 'role-playing' game, isn't it?  People take the stand that they want to play a role . . . and since they want to immerse themselves in the role, they want to speak as the character and act as the character to the nth degree.  Yet there's something about the choices certain players make about what sort of characters they want to immerse themselves into - and just exactly why they are so terrifically fascinated with revenge and murder fantasies or motivations surrounding theft and selfishness.

For any number of people to play a personalized, imaginative game together for any length of time, integrity must be more important than game.  This is why there have always been rules of conduct surrounding all inter-human games and relationships.  D&D is not special in this regard.  Those who cannot learn to play well with others do not deserve to play at all . . . and I find it strange that so many will argue that this isn't the case.

Vitality [zest, enthusiasm, vigor, energy]: Approaching life with excitement and energy; not doing things halfway or halfheartedly; living life as an adventure; feeling alive and activated.

And we certainly want these players at our tables.  Two or three vital players can be enough to drive forward a campaign regardless of who else might be playing - yet please, let us acknowledge that however much we want it, not everyone has a vitality of 17.  We are not all blessed with explosive energy.  The trial for most of us comes from not having the sufficient vitality today, because we're under stress, we're short on sleep or we haven't come up with a plan for the game like we'd hoped we'd have.  Sometimes it is simply a lack of faith in ourselves or some circumstance that seems a little hard to play out because we haven't that much experience with how a royal court or a naval vessel actually functions.

We should see, however, how training comes into this.  Like a cyclist or a songstress, we train and train each day to improve ourselves, our scope, our comprehension and our willingness to dig in and try, conditioning ourselves with knowledge, bravery, persistence and creative techniques, until we're ready to perform.  Vitality, like any other trait, can be trained into us.  We can become more vital by acting to improve everything about ourselves, from our health and behaviour to our comprehension and empathy with others.  We feel more like doing things when we're comfortable with things; and the act of playing or DMing is a steadily growing process of training ourselves to get better at a game we love.

Love:  Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated; being close to people.

There's nothing in this that will get a bigger belly laugh from a troll than the mention of love.  It is as though I should somehow be ashamed for saying that I love my players; that I do more than run them as a DM, I share with them, I feel pain with them, I understand their frustration and I am concerned about their experience in my world.  I want them to feel cared for - and there is nothing I find more reviling than the notion that I shouldn't feel this way about others I have spent hundreds of hours running in my game.

I do more as a DM than merely open the door and let the player in.  There is a commitment here: a recognition that I have adopted a responsibility for someone else's time spent, to ensure that it is treated with empathy and not disdain.  For those who would twist that concern into a joke I can feel only pity.  I find it highly probable that most role-playing games are formed of people who feel a love for one another like members of a family; unspoken, no doubt, because we've been taught by so much in this culture to fear exposing ourselves by confessing to any feeling for anyone that isn't wrapped up in a wedding and children - but that love is there, nonetheless.  Mark this and believe it: campaigns that last and last do so because that love is there, whether it is acknowledged or not.

Kindness [generosity, nurturance, care, compassion, altruistic love, "niceness"]: Doing favors and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them.

I have written from time to time about my willingness to be cold and insensitive in my writing; that without making people uncomfortable, there is no reason for them to change.  I have, to this point, already written a number of things that could easily not be considered kind.  I won't make an argument that my own kindness rating is extraordinary.  Yet I will say that the time this takes to write out a post like this, to bring to light the aspects of playing that we need to have at our tables, is a sacrifice.  This is as it may be; I feel that I am ready to do favors for others and to do good deeds as I am able.  I am here to help.  I take care of my players.

They, in turn, take care of me.  They have been coming forward for months and helping me sustain myself as best they can.  All people, everywhere, have to take care of one another to make life tolerable - it is no different at the gaming table.  Practices in role-playing that don't have kindness and consideration at their core don't belong.  The lack of these things will destroy any game - and all too often I find with strangers that there is no motivation whatsoever for consideration.  This is made even worse by philosophies like creating a character backstory, encouraging players with axes to grind to find a tacit approval for their failure to consider other the other players in what sort of backstory they're bound to write.

Social Intelligence [emotional intelligence, personal intelligence]: Being aware of the motives and feelings of other people and oneself; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what makes other people tick.

On the surface, this sounds like the perspective argument I made earlier.  There is a world of difference, however, between understanding another person's perception of the world and knowing how to deal with it appropriately - that is to say, positively.  Role-playing games have a reputation for drawing in people without a lot of positivity.  I'll say from my recent experiences with certain gaming clubs, the reputation is deserved; and I'll say from my recent experiences with individuals at gaming conventions that the reputation is very definitely not deserved.

The fact is that certain cultures promote certain behaviours - and those with poor attitudes or belief systems will drift into places where those things are tolerated, most commonly as a default.  The remainder will always hold people accountable for their behavior.  We are responsible, before going anywhere or doing anything, to acquire a maturity where it comes to speaking with other people - it is easy to go balls out to the wall on a blog, but in person the rules are different (this is a large part of the reason why people find me very different in person than they expected from my writings).  In person, we all have to give of ourselves if we want people to trust us or consider us worth their investment.  It's easier to do this and be sincere than most realize - sincerity comes from recognizing that our opinions mean nothing; it is our actions that count.

Citizenship [social responsibility, loyalty, teamwork]: Working well as a member of a group or team; being loyal to the group; doing one's share.

Please read this carefully.  Citizenship is more than paying attention to one's country or one's heritage.  It is addressing the problems of the world not only as individuals but as a group.  We are so caught up with what is best for us personally or our families, personally, that there is little room for seeing the bigger picture of my neighbor, my co-worker, the guy standing in line ahead of me, as all going through the same shit that I'm going through.  We've even come so far as to make feeling concern for the other fellow as a sign of degradation and perversion, as an opportunity for diminishing the argument that everyone here, right now, is suffering in some way and that everyone deserves to have that suffering reduced - which is made worse by the simple fact that we have the means of reducing it but we don't, for reasons.

Once again, I don't want to get lost in a big rant here.  I would be happy if four or five players at a table would just see the game in exactly these terms: we're in this together.  We're better if we pull together and we stop concerning ourselves with which one of us can kill more orcs or produce more hit points damage on demand.  As evidenced in the source material for this post, this isn't just something that matters to me, this is an expression of the general mental health of everyone.  Those with a low citizenship stat are killing this game, one table at a time; the rest of us must pull together and make it clear that games are played together, not individually.

Fairness: Treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice; not letting personal feelings bias decisions about others; giving everyone a fair chance.

This means that every new player has a right to get on board the campaign and be given an opportunity to master the game.  It declares that DM fiat, randomly generated and randomly applied, has no place in the game.  It means that your dearest friends are not somehow more deserving of godmodding than other people sitting at the table.

But it also speaks of justice.  Justice includes a fair assessment of another person's skills and behaviors and a reasonable restriction on those things.  It means that a person can be asked not to play.  It means that some people shouldn't be invited in the first place, not based on prejudice but based on the same principles that ought to apply to everyone: their willingness to be polite, to not act out, to respect others, to play the same game that others do and so on.  Everyone being held to this standard is justice and fair.  Bias happens when something only applies to some people and not others.  I see there's often a mistake made here, where it is presumed that some are more deserving of 'justice' because they have self-identified as needing more than what the average boy-bear or girl-bear needs.

Leadership: Encouraging a group of which one is a member to get things done and at the same time maintain good relations within the group; organizing group activities and seeing that they happen.

There I am as the DM, right?  Readying the game, pulling the game together, ensuring that the participants get along, taking responsibility for the event.  Yet more than this, everyone is a leader.  We lead by example, by addressing issues in ourselves before demanding these things from others.  I have struggled with every one of these character strengths, long before encountering this list.  I have had my bad times, had my failings, made my mistakes, screwed up, driven good people away from my games and behaved badly.

But it isn't about what we've done; we've all done wrong.  No person can pretend to have treated everyone fairly or well - and whatever we wish different about our pasts, we will live with those errors and bad judgments for the rest of our lives (if we have the capacity to be self-aware).  What matters is that we learn from those choices and not make them again.  We step up in future when before we shirked.  We dig in and do it right, as best we can, learning as we go.  We accept our limitations and ask for help in changing ourselves for the better of others, the ones we have the capacity to hurt.  Leading is doing this without being asked, without being threatened.  Leadership is doing it before others do, because we're brave enough or intelligent enough or kind enough to take that burden onto ourselves.

Forgiveness and mercy:  Forgiving those who have done wrong; accepting the shortcomings of others; giving people a second chance; not being vengeful.

And here we come to my lowest stat: I must have something like a 5 or 6 here.  I'm not forgiving.  I'm rarely merciful.  I feel ire at those who have done wrong and who will not change; and I am completely irrational where it comes to another person's shortcomings.  I will usually give people a second chance but after that, wow, am I ever ready to close the damned door forever.  My one saving grace is that I won't hunt the person down and destroy them . . . though when I was a child I often had fantasies about that.

This past year and a half I have been struggling to loosen up on all of this.  It isn't done overnight.  The tendency to drift into anger and impatience is always there with me and throughout this post I have found myself constantly doubting the value or reason behind it.  I did not invent these character strengths; I feel just as much at the mercy of their ethical inflexibility as the next fellow.  As I write through, I'm self-examining and finding again and again a tendency to go roaring off on some tyrannical position that I know isn't the right thing to do.  Here's the point, however: we are all weak in some capacity.  Forgiveness is my particular weakness.  Addressing it is perhaps the hardest thing I've ever had to do - and it has been forty years of consciously addressing it, since my childhood.  We should not feel bad if we have encountered our own demons through this exercise, however; we have demons. It's good to fight them.

Humility/Modesty: Letting one's accomplishments speak for themselves; not seeking the spotlight; not regarding oneself as more special than one is.

I'm fine with this one at the gaming table, where I get that the whole game can't be about me.  But outside gaming - and particularly with my writing - I tend to see the inter-personal realm as an arena without rules.  That is more than evident from this blog, where my anger and willingness to seek the spotlight and regard myself as special makes every post possible and draws attention.  My daughter and I like to see this as the "dance, monkey, dance" equation.  The monkey has to dance stupidly to get the attention - and once the stupid stops, so the attention goes away.

I'm in a quandary here: I don't become a writer, my lifelong dream, without a spotlight and without other people thinking of me as special.  Modesty brings obscurity and obscurity does not sell books.  Yet I understand the premise here: acting all special tromps on other people's dreams and wishes, wrecking their opportunities to enjoy the spotlight and feel special themselves.  So there is a balance that must be struck.

In D&D and in jazz, there are times when each participant deserves a solo, a moment where all the attention is on them.  This shouldn't translate into a whole game or even a whole evening, but most everyone wants the chance to shine - and those who don't want it should be pulled out into the sunlight occasionally to show them that it won't cook their flesh and destroy them.  So while we're basking in the pleasure of our own accomplishments, we should realize there is a time to stop talking about them - to let other people talk.  Hard as that may be for someone like me, who has a humility stat of probably 8.

Prudence: Being careful about one's choices; not taking undue risks, not saying or doing things that might later be regretted.

We all suck at this, don't we?  Oops, sorry, don't mean to haphazardly assume that everyone feels regretful of saying things we shouldn't have said.  I'm sure I shouldn't have written that.

Still, I do feel I'm getting a handle on this one, from two angles. One, I am saying less, recent posts about my personal life notwithstanding.  And two, I'm much clearer on the term 'regret.'  There is the sort of regret we feel where we know we've caused someone pain - and there is the regret we feel when afterwards it is thrown in our faces and we are ashamed.  Blogging on the internet has taught me to just not give a damn about the second one.  I don't feel ashamed when I'm forthcoming.  It isn't that I don't care what others think - it is that I'm dead sure that those who would see it as a bad thing are also those who want me to feel shame for daring to share.

I am always distrustful of those who use shame as a tactic to win battles.  I can understand evidence, even truth that hurts and makes us re-evaluate our ideals.  When I see shame in operation at a gaming table - where someone fails to make use of a skill or rolls a bad die, only to be vilified for it - my blood boils.  It is a completely visceral reaction.  It was trained into me by others who sought to make me ashamed for my intelligence, my proclivities, my interests (including D&D) and so on.  Game and be proud.  Make a mistake, kill a whole party and be proud.  We're all just doing our best.

I hate to redefine prudence like this, if that's what I'm doing.  I'm not sure if this was Seligman's intention or not; he defines prudence as 'common sense' and I have never found anything sensible in this world to be common.  Perhaps this is proof that my prudence stat is as low as my other temperance stats.  Perhaps as low as 3, since I cannot see another way of looking at prudence except to know what you're getting into and be ready for it.

Self-regulation [self-control]: Regulating what one feels and does; being disciplined; controlling one's appetites and emotions.

Yes, I probably have a low stat is this one, too.  I'm often reactive, often off the chain, often grossly involved in my appetites and emotions.  It must feel very different to wake up in the morning and not be caught in a tempest of passion, like I often am.  My only real experience with this is that I'm slowing down with age.  We couldn't call that "self"-control, however, could we?  More like actuarial control.

Still, I will argue that self-regulation is a good thing.  Every time I've been able to get on top of myself and steer me in a rational direction has proven a good step forward.  Doing it more often would be of terrific benefit for me - so yes, I will argue that we would all do a lot better if we could up our stats in this regard.  I am probably never in better self-control than when I am a DM or a player, as I am consciously aware of what I'm doing there.  Perhaps this is why I find DMing so exhausting - it is the act of shutting myself down over and over.  Just a guess, though.

We have all played with players who did not display self-control, or who could not in the least way.  It is exhausting for everyone.

Appreciation of beauty and excellence [awe, wonder, elevation]: Noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in various domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.

Here I find myself again on comfortable ground.  I fell in love with most things along these lines early in life and I continue to immerse myself in every opportunity to enable aesthetics to elevate my perspective.  I don't know how much I can say about it here that will be useful to the role-playing genre, except to argue that DMs ought to go the extra length to make their worlds more attractive; players ought to go the extra length to make their characters more pleasing.  Images, odes, dimension, fertility of imagination and so on - whatever can be embellished about the character, from the way they look to the small, seemingly incidental interests they have or the things they do.  I have always seen that some players devote themselves to these details while others just don't care - and while the adornment can be purposeless if it is not somehow applied to game play, the resistance against adornment is a form of self-denial, suggesting that players would rather not give dimension to their characters as this makes them somehow more disposable.

Gratitude: Being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen; taking time to express thanks.

For some, to give thanks is to acknowledge dependence - a circumstance which they cannot bear.  Of late, I have much reason to thank my readers: they have sustained me and supported me and there is not enough gratitude I can show them.  Sometimes, this gratitude is embarrassing, I grant that: but at the same time, I agree with Seligman that it is necessary.  Without gratitude there is no union, no meeting of individuals on a common playing field.  Because of the help I've received, I don't feel I've gotten here alone - and the acknowledgement of that is gratitude.

I think that most tables - certainly the players of mine - have a sort of mutual gratitude that exists between them, even if it isn't said.  Someone's character nearly dies and another player swoops in, grabs their body and takes it to safety; they bind the character's wounds and protect it.  After the battle, healing is cast and the beneficial powers of the party are shared - and although I don't hear a 'thank-you' spoken by the players (once in a while, perhaps), there is an inherent bonding that the players recognize.  They will do it in return, when the moment calls for it.  Often, as well, a party will show their gratitude for letting the most successful character in a battle choose first from the treasure.  These are forms of appreciation, even if they don't fit the standard motif.

Hope [optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation]:  Expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about.

Where it comes to players quitting the campaign or DMs quitting the game completely, it is hope that is lacking.  It is the certainty that this game isn't going to get better, that there's no way to make it better, that the skills don't exist to make it better . . . and without that expectation, the campaign crashes and burns.  DMs start games with plenty of hope - but without a frame to sustain that hope, without an understanding of how the game can expand and work more successfully, there is no future.

I've tried endlessly on this blog to point out new pathways of thinking, new possible games, new ways to look at adventure and DMing, new kinds of ways to look at playing and managing players - and always I run up against people who say the game should be "this" or that a given aspect doesn't have a place because the game isn't "that."  Such boundaries to game play - the idea that the game should be anything - are the killer of hope.  Hope can't be found in rules and restrictions.  Hope can only be found when its firmly believed that nothing can stand in the way of a game - or a world - that offers the opportunity to break rules and try something new.

Humor [playfulness]: Liking to laugh and tease; bringing smiles to other people; seeing the light side; making (not necessarily telling) jokes.

In case anyone thought that D&D shouldn't be fun, I beg to differ.  D&D is fun.  I contend only that it is "all" about fun, because it isn't.  I've never run a game where laughing, teasing, smiling, a smart remark, a pun or a joke wasn't part of the standard evening's entertainment - and I have never, ever, reprimanded someone for bringing hilarity to the table.

I have shut down people who have tried to use the game as a personal apparatus for their sense of superiority or whimsy, who derailed the game again and again to talk about themselves or tell long leading stories to set up one of their punchlines.  But it is easy in such situations to see that the game is fun only for the person telling the story; not for those listening.  Like everything else, the humor inherent in the game must be shared; it must be a moment where everyone is laughing, where the weirdness or coincidence of the game has sparked its own story, made its own joke.

In game, I am the straight man.  I don't tell the jokes - but through my gaming and my presentation, supported by the strangeness of the die and the bizarre circumstances in which the players find their characters, humor happens spontaneously.  Spontaneous humor is always the best, always better than someone who 'remembers a joke' or takes it upon themselves to be the party's clown, making a snark about everything, throwing endless shit at a wall and hoping something sticks.  Adults, I think, can tell the difference.

Spirituality [religiousness, faith, purpose]:  Having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose anjd meaning of the universe; knowing where one fits within the larger scheme; having beliefs about the meaning of life that shape conduct and provide comfort.

Save me from people who believes that spirituality has anything to do with a given religion.  It is much more universal than that.  We make up our minds about what to believe, what a game should be, how players should act, what our goals should be, where the game should be going, what rewards are justified and how to improve the experience from game to game through the joined discourse that binds our individual thoughts into a mutually held faith.  That's not religion, but it is a contract, one we retain for ourselves.  It is up to us, not a god, to decide how we will act with one another and what we will consider important; and it is up to us to revisit those decisions daily, whenever any of us feel that something should be changed.

Spirituality is a sacred duty to preservation of ourselves, unlike religion, which is the preservation of another group of individuals who are now all long dead.  Religion tries to calcify spirituality, to make us believe that if it worked for those people long ago, it will work for us.  I feel the steady death of religion is found in the speed with which our life experiences are changing, forcing us to find a present spirituality that will have meaning in the now, not the then.

Conclusion

I'm not happy with this work.  It's too long, too preachy, too full of obvious sentiment to be considered original work.  I only hope it helps to quantify the places towards which we should put our efforts in learning to be better players and better DMs.

I hope that from this people can see that the secret to being a good player is to be a good human being - and that the converse is equally true.  We can teach people how to play D&D; with time, they can become very good players.  But if a person isn't much of a person, in the greater scheme of things, then there's no reason to want them around long enough to test them out as players.  All we can say to them is, "Go off and change.  Come back afterwards and we'll take it from there."

Tech Levels on the Wiki

Looking for something to do after finishing my new trade pricing table, I started transferring the region tech level stuff to the wiki.  You remember that idea?  Well, it has not died on the vine; I wanted to get some distance on it, mostly because it is a very difficult headache.  Even the lower levels stuff, tech 5, makes a long page on the wiki.  The goal is to be a straightforward and direct as possible and to concentrate on how the tech level of an area will apply directly to the players.  That is why the first two headings are "Entities" and "Encounters."  The first describes the what the people are, how they're organized and numbered.  The second, what they're carrying and how they're likely to react to the party upon initial contact.

I can see with tech 6 how rapidly this expands, from one probable form of encountered group to four.  If I let this sort of thing progress geometrically like that, I'll have 36 group types to describe by tech 10.  Presuming I don't have 4,096 types (I'll leave it to the mathematicians in our audience to figure that one out).

That's a fine goal . . . and it would be great to have that many different possible groups that the players could meet in the world.  But like every other damn thing I dream up nowadays, it's a monumental task that I will never gawddamn finish (like sage abilities, that haunts me).  But the fun is in the journey, not the destination, right?

Anyway, like the Equipment Notes I wrote about a few months ago, that did eventually expand, it is another thing for the reader to keep a watch out for.  I'll be working on the tech tables for a time until something else takes control of my attention.  And yes, for those who are worried and wondering, I am working steadily on my miserable, rotten, frustrating, difficult, unthankful and yet curiously beloved book, the Fifth Man.

JB's Irk

Now that JB is back from Spain, I can make a few comments about this post he wrote back in June.  Once again, I find myself defending clerics.  As JB writes,

"Plenty of folks before me have decried the presence of clerics in D&D based on their lack of 'fit' with either A) their lack of fit with the game's sword & sorcery roots, or B) their inappropriateness to the game's murderhobo premise, or C) some other conceptual gripe. But have we considered the base conceit of the class? That a being (or beings) of divine power rather whimsically bestow magical powers on these mortal followers?"

From a theological point of view, such premises are fairly ridiculous.  This isn't a surprise: the creators of the game, from start to finish, have been wallowing about in the subject of clerics from the beginning because, apparently, it is just too damn hard to spend any time in a library.   Moreover, the decryers, I have found, are equally ignorant of the rather "fundamental" things such as thinking the game was EVER about swords, sorcery, murderhobos or the idea that various concepts of magic were intended to 'fit' together.  These are internet inventions, first sparked 25 years after the game, promoted by disgruntled ignorant slobs who also found library time a level above their mental capacities.

Suppose that we recognize, first, that an argument that begins with the premise "there is only one true sort of magic" is one that goes right up its own ass.  Magic, being an invention, can come in as many flavors as ice cream, if that's what we want.  Since when do we give any credence to the slob that needs to shout loudly, "Black licorice!  GROSS!", like we give a damn?

Okay, so we don't have a proper theological context for clerical magic.  Fair enough.  For my money, we don't have a proper theological context for most religious dogma.  In his post, JB spends quite a lot of time talking about the motivations of gods, the cosmological imbalance of gods and their miraculous gifts, the improbability of people not rushing out to all become clerics, the unimaginable solace that clericism offers and how this would completely unbalance the universe.  Here JB writes,

"Just think about having the power to heal yourself and your loved ones. How many of us have wished for such magical powers . . . so much more useful than the ability to throw a ball of fire. Forget raising the dead . . . let me just fix my sprained wrist or my chronic back ache. Let me just cure my wife's cancer. It's not like the requirements for the cleric class are so difficult to make. In B/X there are none (just give up using edged weapons? hell, that's easier than quitting nicotine). Even in AD&D the class is open to any human with a WIS of 9+ . . . that's barely 'average.' "

Just roll this in your mind a bit and I will come back to it.

On the whole, I'd argue that JB's point of writing the post is one I fully agree with.  I, too, am irked by the 'fluff' behind the class.  I, too, have never liked the idea of gods consciously granting a cleric the power that the cleric has.  I say deliberately on my wiki that the cleric must to pray to acquire spells - but I don't say what actually happens.  Let's say for the sake of argument that the gods sweat magic and that clerical prayer is a way of globbing it up out of the cosmos.  This makes the gods blissfully unaware that the cleric is even praying - and as such, doesn't invoke any of JB's arguments that the gods be personally concerned with what the cleric does.  If we dispense with the 18th-19th century conception of Greek and Norse legend (though I loved Tanglewood Tales as a boy), we can stop thinking of gods as corporeal beings that mortals can understand - and it gets even easier to suppose that the gods just don't give a shit.  Then, like in the Real World, the clerics in power can make up whatever justifications (bullshit) they want for how theology works and there's no voice to correct them.

The only reason why the inventors of role-playing imagined Gods caring came about because of the need to straitjacket players into alignments.  The Gods cared about what the paladin or the cleric did, so the DM could punish the player as a way of restricting the player's free will and balancing the unreasonable powers that came from being able to raise the dead and using a +5 holy avenger with twice the bonus.  But all that DM punishing the player scheme came about as a need for man-boys to swagger at the top of the table and dictate their anti-player agency agendas.  Alignment was shit from the beginning, shit from end-to-end, and every part of the game's rules that came about as a means to adapt alignment to player action has been central to the crap-fest that has defiled the game's potential for four decades now.  JB's irk originates with the will of some people to invent a theological basis for what player behaviour OUGHT to be, based on dogma, so-called roots, inflexible premises and arguments that what 'fits' is more important than what works.  The internet simply took all the back-ass myopic two-dimensional thinking and ran with it right into the brick wall that inevitably became 4e.

Look at that quote above about helping your loved ones.  JB unfortunately ignores a lot of details about having the power to heal people.  For one thing, having a 9 wisdom is enough for a player in the game, because it is a game, but we have to assume that if we're describing a real place, a person has to have more than a 9 wisdom.  It didn't take that much intelligence to be a priest in the 15th century and yet they got lots of benefits.  Why wasn't everyone a priest?  Because it took training and the schools were full.  Because we didn't just train anyone.  Because even if we became a priest, we didn't get to decide what district we'd be pushed into.  None of that matters to players, because we're making a GAME here - but being a cleric in a real D&D world would probably mean being told to let people die even if you could heal them - just as clerics in the real world were admonished for giving away money, daring to live in poverty, not raising money for the holy mother church and so on.  Yes, you can heal your family - but you're not allowed to have a family because you're a priest.  And if you dare get one, or help one without our permission, we'll cast another spell called excommunication and then the god sweat won't help you.  So suck on that, would-be cleric.

These are the sorts of realities that are always ignored about how religions actually work because these are the details deliberately withheld from the common man.  Priests have no doubt been raping little children since the 6th century - but its only with enforced transparency that we now know it happens.  Churches have always deliberately deprived the poor and the needy, but they got away with it all those centuries by inventing lies like the money is being spent on God or that money doesn't matter because we can't spend it in heaven.  Very convenient, that.  We gloss over these details because we live in this century - we're used to thinking that everyone has the right to the same privileges and the same treatment.  We presume that if it only takes a 9 wisdom to get something, its an automatic get - after all, apart from ability, what other possible obstacles could there be?

Lots.  Lots and lots and lots.  JB rightly says that only a deluded, hard-cased fool would walk a godless path in a cleric-magic universe.  He misses completely that even if the fellow were aware and brilliant, he could still be forced to walk a godless path in a cleric-magic universe, because even in a cleric-magic universe, fuck you.  We don't care if you eat, we don't care if your chronic back ache hurts, we don't care if your wife died yesterday.  These spells are for GOD, not for you.  Your dead wife is in a better place and your chronic back ache will help remind you to be humble.  Now excuse me, I have extremely expensive cloth to buy so I can have my vestments remade for this year's Day of the Dead.


If you read this post and liked the sentiment of defending clerics, or that there's always the chance of a reasonable way of looking at something that's unfairly disparaged, and you'd like to see me go on writing posts like this, donate $5 or some such consideration through my blog or become a Patreon supporter, giving me some small stipend a month that you won't notice affecting your bank account.

Bard Artworks

Daniel Osterman of Shards, Sidh, & Sorcery and I were collaborating on a concept for bards creating artworks that would have an effect upon their environments or upon gazers/listeners of said art.  He's put up a list of 50 possible effects on his blog that the art could cause - and it is certainly a step in the right direction.

Personally, I think that bards should have the ability to create artworks.  I haven't had much luck in creating rules for this in the past - but with Daniel's help, I have an new angle on the process.

It basically works on the principle that while art can have a strong effect on a person's consciousness, this effect is often temporary.  For example, I remember many times when a particular song came on the radio (one I didn't own) and my world stopped.  I would stop whatever I was doing and just listen.  Music can be all possessing, particularly when it speaks in a particular way about what's going on around us.  It can seize hold of some people - including me - and make us dance in public, not caring what anyone else sees or thinks.

But it also passes.  That image on our puter, the art we bought at the convention six years ago, those things are still precious; but they don't have the same impact they had once.  In a way, art is like a magic spell in slow motion, with a very long casting time and an equally long duration . . . but like any spell, the effect eventually dissipates.

So what is needed is a set of rules that compares the level of the bard with the amount of time taken to produce the artwork, which is then used as a guideline to determine the specific effect of the art, how much and how long.

Take one of Daniel's suggestions, that the art shortens construction time.  We can imagine a set of workers building a temple who have already seen the statue that will feature as the temple's central focus.  Enamored with the statue, they are encouraged as a group to work doubly hard and more congenially to complete the structure, to protect the statue, giving it a home and pleasing themselves.

If the building is itself an artwork, then this can have a similar effect on the town: increasing the honesty of the residents, increasing their productivity, decreasing crime, encouraging martial spirit, expanding donations to the poor and the church, as well as thinking of the authorities with inheritances, causing a whole region to become more powerful economically and militarily.  All from one statue promoting one building.  This would help explain the whole period of cathedral building in Europe in D&D Game terms.

There's also the actual development of the work to be considered.  The cathedral is impressive each time an element is added - it doesn't depend on the whole work being finished (so long as the work is evident and ongoing).  The same is true of the statue; visitors could go and look at the progress of the statue each day, seeing elements that improved their lives, similar to the way we see serial artworks like television or movies with sequels.  Therefore, unlike spells, the casting itself breeds a sense of positive expectation, like players anxiously expecting the moment the mage will get into position and readiness to launch a given spell (an tension-building experience that was completely destroyed by the fast-food style of spell implementation that came with later game editions).  With really great artworks, this is something to consider.

I should also think there need to be rules about experience with art when long periods of time have passed.  Used to be, before the internet, when I would only hear a favorite song or see a favorite movie with months, even years, of denial.  The longer the denial, the more powerful the re-acquaintance.  We need rules for that - and those rules still have to take into account that even if we haven't been to Mecca for ten years, we have been there before . . . so no matter how good the second experience is, it won't be the first experience (unless something has changed about Mecca).

Those are a lot of details to be worked out, without a lot of random tries being attempted and a lot of game-play mistakes made.  But this is what I love about game design.  We could do this!  How?  No idea.

Plans for Encumbrance

Complaints about encumbrance:  bookkeeping, looking up the weight of things, keeping track of arrows and other missiles thrown or fired, re-calculating every time money is collected or spent, figuring out adjustments due to strength and other elements, the total lack of benefits from having LESS stuff in order to get exactly the same effect as ignoring encumbrance has given.

It is this last that is the killing feature for anyone who has ever proposed actually using this rule.  The immediate effect is NOT to increase the player character's power but to restrict it.  Your character that used to move 5 hexes per round now moves 2.  Why?  Because we've decided not to ignore all that weight your character is carrying, the weight that has been carried since the beginning of the campaign.  Sorry.  Your move is crap now.

I have managed to wean my players onto the penalty of carrying too much weight by having movement linked to armor.  More protection = less movement.  Now that I want to change that by bringing in encumbrance as a thing, my players are likely to be less resistant to the policy.  They already know that no one moves at full movement rate unless they're prepared to strip down to only their clothes and a weapon or two.

The bigger problem for my players is the tracking - and this is a problem for everyone.  It is impossible with pencil and paper, especially if what's wanted is a proper account of where the encumbrance is - hips, shoulders, backpack, saddlebag, pack animal, etc.   Otherwise, what is the point?  Once players have been encouraged to believe that carrying something on their person is going to be a hassle, they'll get smart enough to realize that shuffling off their backpack before a fight will make them move faster . . . and that's the sort of thinking I want them to have.  It shouldn't be a question of "now you are loaded, you're screwed," it should be, "now that I'm loaded, what can I ditch at an opportune time that will make me not-loaded?"

Many make the mistake of thinking that encumbrance is a yearning for realism.  Realism, while nice for museum curators, means nothing to me.  I am interested in game - which means that any rules about encumbrance must be a game unto themselves, thereby adding to the role-play experience.  I want players who take a hand axe into combat because they know they can throw it right off and move faster.  I want players who choose a club for a proficiency because they know that if they really need to, they can discard it and lose nothing valuable.  I want players who choose what goes in their backpack not in terms of what fits, but in terms of what can be lost forever without it mattering much.  I want players who realize that no everyone can take a grapple, because they weigh 7 lbs. a piece and that's a lot of excess weight just in case its needed.  I want players who think.

Ah, but that paperwork.  That is something else entirely.  That is why I plan to take the price table and build an encumbrance table out of it.  All through making the price table I very carefully assigned weights to everything.  The next stage is to take those and build them into drop down lists that the players can pick from, then assign a number of things carried and have the weight of those things automatically calculated, along with all those other excessive details that no one wants to keep track of.  Fire an arrow?  Just change the number on your excel sheet.  Add 375 coins?  Just change the numbers.  Want to take it out of your backpack and put it in your saddlebag?  Change the location tab and instantly see the effect.  Easy peasy.

Yes, it means using a computer.  Horrible things, with buttons.  Aw.

It will mean some work and some time, but I should have something workable along those lines soon - the hard part, the weights themselves, have all been assigned.

The Senegalese Slave Trade

Once again, control of the internet, the power to write.  It's been three long days of moving, moving and moving.  So, Senegal.

The Senegal river basin is a fuzzy dividing line between the Sahel and savanna south of the Sahara Desert and the thicker rainforests of Gambia, Guinea and Ghana.  In the 8th century, the Senegal was visited by new traders and religious pundits, those that were carrying the message of Islam.  This was a message that was received well by some groups south of the Sahara, notably the Fulani, who had come from Morocco and the east in the 5th century (not all the Fula peoples, but we'll get to that in a bit).  The encroachment of Islam was slow; took centuries, but it was steadily clear by the 15th century that most of the people north of the jungle were largely Muslim, while most of those south of the savanna had remained animists.

Like every other part of the world, west Africa was in a state of continuous empire building.  It has only been in the last fifty years that we are getting a clearer picture of what the south Sahara was like in the hundreds of years before the Europeans came.  On the savanna, the Ghana Empire was followed by the Sosso, the Kanem, Mali, the Songhai and the Bamana Empires.

In the forests were the Akan Kingdoms, the Yoruba, Dahomey and Benin.  These empires and kingdoms rose and fell, they attacked one another, they battled one another - in short, they did their best to exterminate each other.  Just like humans did everywhere.

Then the Europeans came.

Now, I'm not interested in the modern world here, so I'm only going to talk about the first few centuries of European interest.  In terms of territory, that would amount to very little.  The Europeans did not fare well away from the coast in Africa.  Unlike South America, the biology of Africa is far more diverse and far, far older (remember that most of the American environment is comparatively more recent, not only in terms of humans but in terms of most animal species there).  Africa is thick with little buggies, successfully overcome by countless generations of Africans, just waiting to kill soft white Europeans.  The Europeans in America may have brought smallpox to the natives, but Africa had dysentery, typhoid, blackwater fever and trypanosomiasis, all waiting to destroy would-be adventurers well into the 19th century, if the well-prepared natives didn't kill them first.

As such, the Europeans clung to the coastline.  Portugal, France and England favored the lower Senegal, Gambia and Casamance valleys; the Dutch, Danish and Spanish - along with other French and English - favored the Ivory, Gold and Slave coasts (truth in advertising).  There they did a lively trade, very much in slaves.

While once upon a 1970s a group of Hollywood producers envisioned white people catching Kunte Kinte with nets, chasing black people through the jungles like animals, the bargaining was a much colder affair.  If the Yoruban animists of the forests fought Mande Islamists hundreds of miles to the north and won, they would bring their captured Muslim prizes south and sell them at places like Fort Anthony, Acra or Caran.  And if the Mande won, they'd take their animist prizes west and sell them at places like Goree, Ziguinchor and James Island.  And because the Europeans could sail all around the coast from Nigeria to the Canaries, they were ready to pay for whatever the market could provide.

Note how the Europeans conceive of the long river that easily
shuffles the slaves along the Islamic corridor ("Negroland"), where
the river conveniently splits into the Senegal, Gambia and Casamance
all at the same time.

This is why the slave trade went so well for the Europeans.  As far as gathering slaves, they needed only to build a fort on the coast and wait for other black tribes to bring in their enemies.  It should be remembered that whatever horrors the Europeans committed (and those horrors were far, far greater than the greed of black African traders), it was blacks that made the trade possible in the beginning.

The trade was made illegal among most European nations by the early 1800s (the Portuguese in Brazil and the plantation Americans were long-time holdouts, with the Brazilians finally outlawing slavery the year after the American Civil War ended (1866).

The providing of slaves meant something to pay off the traders, which meant textiles, liquor and manufactured goods (including weapons, of course) flowing south from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the Americas and then sugar, tobacco, cotton and whatever other raw materials the Americas could produce flowing back to Europe.  For two centuries, this triangle made Europe the richest most powerful political force on earth, not to mention the added impetus for overcoming things like disease, navigation, enemy aliens and other 'problem-solving' methods that were employed in order to keep the guns, liquor, slaves, sugar and tobacco flowing.  The pressure to remove obstacles from the paths of the traders - and the competition between mariner states to get a bigger share - built the western pattern of science, medicine, politics and economic drive we have inherited.  Of course, we still have these triangles - but they are interwoven triangles and quadrangles that bind the hands of states beholden to rich assholes, enabling the horror show in Zaire, Colombia and Indonesia to go on and on.

Coming back to D&D, faced with a world like this, in the big scale of our world as it was, there's little the players could do.  They might seize a backwater for a time, even make it civilized, but the overall buying, trading and misery would simply continue unabated.  This is part of the reason why people don't like slavery in their campaigns (though I doubt they've given it this much thought): there's no cure for it, not that a party can bring about.  The only real cure was centuries of time and a steady re-evaluation of racism and human value.  At any one moment in time, however, the party just feels helpless.

Most don't want that helplessness to invade their 'fantasy' game.  I'm different that way.  I don't see fantasy as fuzzy bunnies and roses; I see it as a methodical, institutionalized investigation of the human soul, dark sides included.  Then, when we step out of the game chamber, we can appreciate the light that is the modern world with context, hope, satisfaction and perhaps a greater resolve.