Writing the Wiki

These last days, I've been happily plowing through page after page on the Authentic Wiki.  It is still smaller than the old wiki, and there remain a great many dead links, but I feel that the material is better than it was.  I'm rewriting old descriptions, tagging content for correction and addition later, adding many more links to the material to allow for more referencing and slowly adding images to pages to enhance the experience.

A search tells me there are 745 content pages that are active.  As I make a link to anything that sounds like it could be added as a page later, just like wikipedia, I have identified 1,561 pages that are wanted -- monsters, spells, sage abilities, places, features and so on.  I'm adding more all the time.  Naturally, the very idea of this is overwhelming ... and can be disheartening.

The difference between my present management, however, and what was always true about my desire to "get my game in order," is that now I can factually measure the depth of what needs to be done.  These were things I was always going to do, as far back as those first heady days when a map was a dozen kingdoms and fifty cities.  Because I was never going to be satisfied with the simplistic rules provided by basic D&D, I was always going to address writing details about food, freight costs and planes of existence.  It is better that the field of things needing attention is getting straightened out; that now there are reminders that I've never written a detailed description of a dungeon door or the macuahuitl.   Where once, these would have slipped my mind, to be forgotten as projects for years at a time, now steadily there's a knowledge that yes, I will get to everything, eventually.  There's comfort in that.

If we scratch the surface of those wishing for simple games, without rules and with plenty of DM fiat, we'll find a DM that doesn't care that much about anything.  I think most of us have been stuck with such a DM, if only for brief periods.  It falls into the same category as teachers who don't care about education, or babysitters who don't care about children, or cops that don't care about public service.  These people exist in every profession -- and they always have pat answers that explain away their apathy and why they continue in those jobs.  It's the money or the power, or the relative status.  There are plenty of doctors around trading on the prestige of being a doctor, leaving a wake of bodies behind them who did not get the proper treatment or who were treated prestigiously right into the grave.

It probably seems gauche to compare DMing with the responsibilities of doctoring; nothing I do is life-threatening, and there's an argument to be made that I'm just a big ol' man-boy who hasn't grown up yet at 56 (in three weeks).  That argument could be reasonably made about any entertainer who continues to perform, from professional clowns to stage hands, who don't want to give up the theatre even though their most responsible job is to pull the scenery cords on cue.  That doesn't sound very important; but when you're in the seats watching the play, it's annoying as all hell if some hand doesn't responsibly perform that piddly service at the right moment.  A life may not hang in the balance -- but as a culture we abhor people who can't or won't do their jobs well.  It just takes one shitty barista working at a Starbucks to consistently ruin your morning for weeks at a time.
So, though I have taken a step back to evaluate, and question my role, and my writing here, and what this does for my soul and where I mean to go, I do want the reader to understand that I am deeply conscious of the absence of material appearing here, on this blog.  I take this blog as seriously as my campaign; and in my mind, as seriously as you'd like your barista to be in getting your coffee made right ... and even as seriously as a doctor being sure not to mix up your medications.

To my mind, the most valuable service I can provide is to candidly set out rules for things that no one ever considered might be necessary or inspiring; and to set in stone details that have always been fuzzy at best.  It can be tedious.  I am at my best when I put down every other distraction and just write rules.  The wiki can be surprisingly satisfying, though it takes time to build a wave of changes that begins to make what feels like a difference.  I may have 1,500+ pages to write; but I have also written 700+ good ones.  I began codifying my stuff on a wiki only five years ago; and twice in that time I've had to endure an upheaval, putting real organization out of my reach.  My two former platforms were "meh" and "simply awful," these being my options at the time.  Now I finally have an excellent platform, with no memory or use limits whatsoever.  I feel confident and encouraged that whatever work I do, it will last and build over time.  That matters, because the system is as responsible as I feel.

Please continue to put up with me.  Please feel free to offer direction, so long as it's positive and it reflects this same responsibility I've been describing.  I want to continue to provide good, solid material for my readership.  I simply don't want to shout at the wind.  It is the feeling that this is what I've been doing that brought about this present reassessment.

Very well.  I'm good for now.

Setting Up

The campaign is getting off to a slow start.  I haven't heard from either Embla or Engelhart yet; I imagine it is the unfamiliarity of playing on the wiki.  Since the discussions will be going on behind the scenes, so that we don't step on each other's toes while we talk, I'm going to be translating relevant material to the forward page following each day.  I hope it won't be too hard to keep up with that.

Mostly we're chatting about making sure the rules are understood and how the numbers are calculated.  It is truly nothing that doesn't happen at every table as players get settled in.  As far as I know, Pandred and Vafrandir are more or less ready to go.  We're just waiting on the others.

The Coming

I've been thinking about my grandchild, who is due in 9-10 weeks.  We do not know if it is a boy or a girl, my daughter and her husband agreed not to be told.  We live very close to one another, and we are close, so no doubt the child will spend a lot of time with us ... and that will undoubtedly mean the child will grow up watching me work on my computer, and ask, "What are you doing, grandpa?"

To which I'll answer, "I'm writing."  And the child will ask, "About what?"  And I'll probably answer, "D&D," assuming I'm not writing about something else at the time.  And as the child grows up, he or she will get used to me sitting her and writing, knowing that if he or she wants attention, they can come sit on my lap or pull my wrist to get me away from the computer, just like my daughter did 28 years ago.  I don't mind taking breaks, see.

And as I eek into my 60s, and the child eeks into his or her precocious years, they'll start to become conscious and learn to read, and the subject of my playing D&D with come around.  And ten years from now, as I'm still figuring out what I want to do with this blog, being 66, and the child rolls into his or her tweens, they'll start to read me.  They may even one day read this post.  They'll learn to play the way my daughter has, and the way I think is right ... and then the poor child will unfortunately visit some other group of gamers and discover what a horrible, crappy version of D&D that everyone else plays.

It should be understood.  If you grow up and watch your father get drunk every night, as my mother did, that makes you believe things about being an adult.  If you grow up and watch and watch your father build an enormous cabin from the ground up with his two hands, as I did, it gets into your head and you begin to think you can build big things too.  And if you watch your father spend day and night pounding keys, laser focused on something that matters to him, as my daughter did, this makes you think that focus and work is a good thing.  Well over half of parenting is what you do every day.  If that's going off somewhere else, disappearing, to a place that your child never fully understands because you hate your job and you don't like to talk about it, that child is going to grow up with a skewed, corrupted idea of what work is, no matter how many times you make the child eat their peas or sit up straight, or stop swearing.   My daughter never "rebelled" against me, because I was always on her side; something she always knew.  That mattered a lot more than policing her bedtime.

My daughter grew up looking at my back, as I sat in a corner with a computer in front of me.  If she hadn't been able to come over and grab me, and pull me away, that would have been a terrible childhood for her.  But though she could pull me away, she began to understand as she got into her tweens that what I was doing really mattered to me; and because of that she also understood why it was fine to just let me keep working.  She wanted that; because she began to understand that she had things to do as well, and that having those things to do mattered to her.

If you think it's terrible that I'm a monster online, who seems as though he has to be right all the time, who snaps back at people who disagree with him -- the same people who should know by now that I buy ink by the barrel and that I don't do things casually -- then imagine what the intensity looks like to a 4-year-old.  I cannot possibly be the monster that some people online imagine that I am ... else my daughter would be a monster too.  It should be evident to anyone who's heard her speak that she isn't.

I'm dedicated.  I'm in love with my work.  If I seem to be an asshole half the time, it is in part because I think about this work constantly, and study it constantly, whereas most of my critics don't.  If I seem to be crazy, it is because I'm focused.  Children recognize this instinctively.  Children like taking things seriously.  It is adults who want to make everything frivolous and silly, because they've learned to equate "serious" with their hated jobs.  Children have nothing to compensate for; when they play at anything, they play so seriously it hurts.  That's what we all used to do when we cared about things.

What happened to so many of us?

The more serious I am, the more seriously my grandchild will see what I do.  And the more seriously he or she will treat this game, once they come to know it.  More's the pity, because while he or she comes to take the game seriously, the more certain it will be that he or she will butt heads against those who don't.  I'm raised someone just like me; I'm being given an opportunity to contribute to doing it again.

Get ready.  In 20 years, having been raised around my daughter, my son-in-law and me, you people out here in the internet should be worried.  You think I'm a tyrant.

Just get ready.

Game Wiki Good to Go

Hello.  The campaign wiki has been set up.  It is located here: http://adventure.alexissmolensk.com

All four players should have received your passwords and user names.  The wiki should be populating throughout the globe, though I understand this may take between 3-24 hours for overseas, so do not worry if you can't get on yet.

Ask questions here or on the wiki, as you like.

Illumination's Effect on Missile Weapons

This table is from the Authentic wiki, and details the range of thrown and fired missile weapons according to the number of 5 foot hexes.  For game purposes, a missile weapon cannot be thrown at a range of 1 hex, because it is supposed that the enemy would be close enough to foul your attempt, since at that range you would be in hand-to-hand combat.  At a range of 2 hexes, "point blank" (and I suppose I could call it "close" range), the attacker is +1 to hit with the weapon.  At short range there is no adjustment; the attacker is -2 to hit at medium range and -5 to hit at long range.  These are not my adjustments; they were invented for AD&D.

So, for example, if the character were to throw a hand axe at  7 hexes, that would count as medium range.  7 hexes would be short range for a crossbow and it would be long range for a short hammer, which is essentially a carpenter's hammer.  This difference in range is a factor in balancing the decision to take one weapon over another when a character selects their proficiencies.

These adjustments assume the light of day and that has always been an insurmountable problem: what, for example, is the range on a light crossbow underground, when the party is carrying a lantern which illuminates to a distance of 30 ft.?  The light of that lantern does not just come to an end, so that everything is in full dark beyond that distance.  Anyone who has been outside at night, or in a very large enclosed room in the dark, like a gymnasium, knows that as eyes adjust, and as reflection from the far walls begins to affect the scattering of visible light, that the distribution of light is not a fixed distance from a lantern or torch.  Presumedly, there is some light out there; and if there is light, there ought to be some chance of seeing an enemy move, and of hitting that enemy.

[likewise, how is infravision managed beyond the nominal limitation of 60 ft., as described in AD&D?  I don't know if 3e or 5e addressed this problem; but I still question how infravision, which exists in natural light, even if we can't see it, diminishes with distance]

But how is this diminishment of light managed?  For the most part, it isn't; we accept the premise that fighting in the dark will be hand-to-hand, and that if someone is standing outside the range of light or of infravision, that they cannot be attacked with missile weapons.  I'm unsatisfied with this, not least because having stood outside in starlight in the country, without so much as a porchlight in the distance, while conducting amateur astronomy so that I am out in it for hours, it has been perfectly feasible to see across a field of wheat and see someone stepping out of the trees there.

The problem would be to identify individual ranges for each weapon for proposed levels of illumination; such as, "dusk," "full moonlight," "dim moonlight," "starlight" or "full dark," the last of which would be under overcast skies, or in dense forest conditions, when it becomes so dark that one can barely see their hand in front of their face.  I've experienced that many times.

That's a lot of tables and I think would be impossibly inconvenient.  What would be needed is a shortcut of some kind.  Which, insanely, I've invented.

As visible light diminishes, the quantifiable range of missile weapons declines.  The Modifier Adjustment Table, below, provides a proportional conversion for how a given range in combat hexes is affected as the intensity of light diminishes.

The adjustments indicated above are not meant to affect the actual distance that a weapon can be aimed or fired. Instead, the adjustment indicates how the distance should be treated when rolling to hit. All weapons suffer a penalty to hit according to their range, indicated on the missile ranges table. Ranges are divided into point blank, short, medium and long. In full light (FL), weapons thrown or fired at point blank range are +1 to hit; for short range, there is no adjustment; medium range gives a -2 penalty; long range, a -5 penalty.

For example, a warhammer normally has a short range of 3-5 hexes and a medium range of 6-8 hexes. However, if we imagine the combatant is throwing the hammer in full moonlight conditions (FMC), then according to the table above, a range of "3 FL" equals 4 FMC.  The thrown hammer would still be treated as "short." However, a range of 4 FL equals "6 FMC," so that the medium-range penalty of -2 is applied. A range of 8 FL counts as "13 FMC," so the hammer would be -5 to hit.

"13 FMC" refers only to the difficulty to hit and is not a measure of the weapon's actual range! A warhammer in full light has a maximum range of 11 — and so some may misconstrue the Modifier Adjustment Table to mean the hammer cannot be thrown at 8 hexes in FMC. It only means that the range modifier is adjusted, not the actual range. The hammer would still be able to be thrown to a distance of 11 hexes, but would count as being long range between 8-11 hexes.

Where FL indicates a range spread, such as "28-30," then anything in that range is adjusted as shown.

Where a dash (–) appears on the chart, regardless of the weapon's possible range, count any attempted attack at that distance in those light conditions as a miss. The indicator means that at this distance, nothing whatsoever can be seen; this applies as much to the casting of spells as it does to missile weapons.

I trust that's clear enough.  Let me know.

Incidentally, the same chart helps establish details in situations where the party is meeting someone in the dark, or the distance at which encounters under these conditions would be engaged.

Literally Insane

Heh.

It's important to have a reputation that people online can respect.

Charging Rules

This is my third post today, so do be sure to look down the list to see what else I've written.  In this case, I'm writing to see that I've "mostly" completed my adjusted charging rules.  I'm definitely happier with these than I was with my previous attempt, though the convoluted nature of the rules reflects the convoluted problem of having to deal with fast moving things interacting in a turn-based combat system, without simplifying the opportunity to charge into something that isn't worth doing or doesn't feel particularly special.

Gygax approached the problem by ignoring movement entirely, which has resulted in the number of players in my game world over the past 40 years making consistent use of the charge rule equal to statistically zero.  I don't think I've had any player ever use the DMG rule more than four times, and in some cases that describes an 8 to 10-year-campaign.  It just wasn't very useful.

My last attempt at the rules never received any interest from any player.  I blame lack of trust or interest.  I don't imagine this one will get used much either, unless I start using it all the time.

This was brain-breaking to write.  I yearn for easier rule problems.  I will have to put together a page on attacks of opportunity, specifically to deal with the reality that an 8 ft. pole arm and a 13 ft. pike would be recognizeably able to commit an AoO against an opponent that was 2 or 3 hexes away.  Something to think about when moving into attack defenders armed with such weapons.  They've never been given their due in the D&D combat system, but I think that is seriously about to change.

Hm.  It isn't even noon yet.

Design for Choice

I received a terrific comment today, unfortunately from an anonymous reader.  As it was made on a post I wrote in 2011, I felt it needed to be reposted where more people would see it:

"I've been using this [advice from the post] for a while now and XP from damage dealt & received has changed the tenor of my game. Additionally XP for treasure instead of plot, the norm by the time when I started playing, really makes a different game. XP for plot points tethers players to the railroad. I've found my group more creative and empowered. The XP helped solved a persistent issue of players refusing to flee when outmatched by bad rolls or unbalanced encounters. Their logic was that all encounters had to be defeated in a railroad like fashion and if they couldn't win then they never could.

"Anyway from all the rules I've adopted this has had the greatest effect."

However I'm re-evaluating the purpose and point of my writing at present, I will continue to argue that adverse changes to the game, such as denying experience for gold or providing experience for plot, makes the game worse, not better.

When making rules for game play, the goal is to shape the player's options so that they have MORE choices, not less.  Experience for hit points caused and taken increases the choice of fighting or running, and when its right to do so, while experience for solving plot points excludes all possible choices except one.  This is bad game design, no matter how many stupid DMs insist that it isn't.

More Planning

Next Question, regarding "The As-Yet Unnamed Campaign."  I am offering three options; I will break any ties but won't vote.

1) Pick up where the Juvenis Campaign left off, with the present party (logic be damned) facing an ice toad in front of a gate in the snow.

2) Explain the resolution of that adventure and restore the party back to Stavanger.

3) Explain the resolution of that adventure and begin the campaign somewhere else.

Please vote.  I'm good with any of the three.  Regarding somewhere else, please give a general indication of where you'd like that "else" to be.


With regards to the proposition of DMing, you'll never find an easier opportunity to take the reins and get experience.  With an online campaign, you have many minutes to think about what you're going to say; you have players in this venue who will understand, better than any other players you'll ever have, the uphill climb you're facing, who will be empathic with your situation; and you will have help, not only from me, but most likely from the players.  So when you say, "I'm not ready yet," this is a Big chance for you to be ready, like you've never had and you won't ever have.

Think about it.

The Online Campaign, Proposed Again

Let's seriously discuss an online campaign.  At present, I have two volunteers, Engelhart and Pandred, who have already agreed to play, both of whom have characters already.  Obviously, I would like to make a shout out to Embla, Rob, Lothar and Mikael, to learn if any of the other established players would like to take part.

Following that, I'd like to hear from others who feel they have the time.  I am only interested in persons who spend a lot of time on computer, and are willing to check and update their interest in the campaign on an hourly basis, specifically during those times when we are reasonably expecting to communicate with one another.  D&D is a collaborative game.  Online, it cannot be played in a fashion that the participants check into the campaign once or twice a day.  If we were to regularly play between 8 a.m. EST and 4 p.m. EST, then I would expect players to check on their phones or computers on average every 30-45 minutes during that time.

Alternatively, we could agree on a set period of time, 3-4 hrs per week, when everyone involved gave 90% of their attention to the game.  I am not set up for visual contact, but at the same time I would be fine with people playing music, watching something or playing a video game while we played at these set times, so long as one eye was constantly on the game, so that no question asked needed wait more than 30-45 seconds for a response.  Even in text, such a turn-around time could get a great deal done in a few hours.

At this time, I am ready to set up and run just Pandred and Engelhart.  I would expect that others would be likely to join in once we were started, and I'm quite able to run two people.  A third, obviously, would be Much better.

Take note; while I would expect participants to willingly read the Authentic Wiki, to understand the rules, I would also be more than willing to teach.

On another point, it's been suggested to me that I set up others to act as DM in some capacity.  I see it as promoting the idea of advising others while they run players in the online campaign.  That would be interesting, but it would involve trust and quite a bit of bravery, since it would still be on the internet and public and all.  I'm open to exploring that possibility as a means of teaching people to DM better.  Write and let me know what you think.  Could you run a small, agreed upon sequence of dungeon rooms with me whispering in your ear in messenger, while you actually performed as DM, knowing that you could rely on my support behind the scenes?

Attack of ... ech, I can't say it.

Ages ago, back in December 2019, I ran into a frustrating problem with my combat system, in that the combatant's movement was ridiculously slow (the post was not on this blog) compared to the actual speed with which humans walk or run.  I had considered fumbling around with the length of the round, but that created other problems, so I shelved the problem.

I believe I have a solution now.  And gawd help me, it involves using parlance from 5th Edition.  I know!  It makes me a little sick.  Worse, it is to solve the same sort of problem that the 5e rule is intended to solve ... except, of course, 5e makes such a hash of it that no one knows when the rule applies and when it does not.  I hope to do better; which is why I'm parading it here.  I've just been adding it to my Authentic Wiki (on a page that needs more work); but I'm hoping that people will tell me: (a) that the language makes sense and doesn't need more correction; (b) that is still isn't clear enough, and where the language is clumsy; and (c) if the notion is stupid and unworkable.  I expect honesty.

I'll skip republishing the first part, which can be read here.  If you find the writing too small, increase the zoom on your page; the wiki's print will reformat so you can read it more easily.

I've increased the speed with which characters can move by adjusting the number of hexes per action point cost.  Here's a link to action points (AP) you can follow if you need to.  You will probably also want to understand the melee rule as well.  These rules all mesh together to provide the best possible tactical movement freedom for players I can provide.

From the wiki:

"Prior to movement, the player announces their stride as "stride-n" or "S-n," with "n" indicating the number of hexes per AP they wish to move. The stride used in the previous turn is not considered. Characters may adjust their stride mid-turn one time."

Essentially, the character has 1 AP.  If they move warily, they will travel 1 combat hex (5 ft).  If they hurry at a walk, they can travel 2 or 3 combat hexes.  If they run, they can travel 4 or 5 combat hexes.  And if they sprint, they can travel 6 to 8 combat hexes.  That really lets them zip around the combat map, while coming much closer to real speed.  A character with 5 AP can move 40 combat hexes, or 61 meters/67 yards in the space of 12 seconds.  Not the Olympics, but I intend to add sage abilities that would let characters move faster still.  This would be an "ordinary" 17th c. healthy person running.

Here's the section featuring the 5e rule using a parlance that I tried hard to sidestep, but the English language offered me no alternatives:

"A Wary stride allows a combatant to travel freely within reach of an enemy without provoking an attack of opportunity. However, if any combatant indicates that they are travelling at a walk, run or sprint during combat, then after the expenditure of 1 AP in travelling, that combatant must pause after having moved that number of hexes while the DM assesses whether or not there are any enemy combatants who are able and willing to attack that combatant by missile or hand-to-hand. This attack does not allow the enemy to travel from one hex to another; nor does it subtract from the enemy's ability to attack in the enemy's next turn. It is a "free attack," and thus an "attack of opportunity." No enemy can attack if they are at that moment engaged in melee. If the travelling combatant is not within one hex of the enemy, the enemy's attack must be a missile attack. Each enemy is allowed only one attack of opportunity. Attacks against walking combatants are done at +1; against running combatants at +2; and against sprinting combatant at +3. This reflects the moving combatant's lack of awareness due to their speed of travelling.

"Once the attack of opportunity is resolved, the travelling combatant then continues their move, using the remainder of their AP.

"If a combatant finishes their move at a walk, run or sprint, then during the enemy's turn, all attacks against that combatant receive the attack of opportunity bonus as already described (+1, +2 or +3)."

Horrific, ain't it?  But damn it, I have to call the rule something.

Concerns

This past week I have been deep in thought.  I am concerned that I am giving over a lot of energy towards the agenda of teaching others a deeper philosophy of DMing and D&D.  I am concerned about how much time I am spending doing this.  I am concerned about the lack of enthusiasm I am feeling towards creative writing, or working on my game world, or completing much larger projects that really matter to me.  I am concerned about the lack of back and forth between my "students" and myself.  I am concerned that blogging and writing has become about money and not about the things I love.

I have been unable to express these concerns I'm having, even to myself.  I have been turning these matters over in my mind, guessing at whether or not I am having doubts about nothing; or that my doubts have more to do with the stress of these specific times, what with disease, isolation, worry about my family, concern for my pregnant daughter or the eye surgeries my partner Tamara has had to endure (two so far, and there will now be a third).  Perhaps none of this has to do with blogging, or my relation to the internet, or with my writing.

Watching what's happening to America is distressing.  I'm married to an American, who is glad she is not in America right now.  She feels like she is safe in a life boat, here in Canada, watching the Titanic sink ... and hearing the screams and twisted metal of the ship as it sinks.  We were so lucky.  She received her permanent status here on February 25th, after 14 months of legal processes, just weeks before the March shut down.  We feel sick at the thought that if we had started just a little later, or if matters had dragged out a little more, she would be in Canada now without any expectation of medical services.  Instead, she's been able to have the cataracts in both her eyes managed at no cost to us except medications.  It took two surgeries to complete the work on her first eye; the doctor said he hadn't seen anything as bad as that since he had done work in Vietnam in the 1960s.  For us, this was the result of having to wait so long until the work could be done.  But at last, it is done, and she can see again, clearly, for the first time since 2018; since a year ago, she's been clinically blind.  Yet thank gawd she is here, in a civilized country, where we are battened down with government support and all our bills paid; with no threat that we'll be evicted, where we're relatively safe from Covid as we barely leave our home.

There's simply no way not to look at the disaster south of the border except with alarm.  Every long phonecall and videochat consists of an hour-long conversation in which friends and family express their stunned horror and bewilderment, at the government there, the stupidity, the utter indifference, the rolling outrage at how science and hospital personnel are treated, the deaths.  We watch and comment on the tallying of deaths like football scores and the ludicrous voiced imaginings that the tolls being counted are actual numbers or that they'll somehow go away.  Even as vaccine trials prove promising, very few will say with honesty that an available vaccine for millions of people is still probably 9 months to a year away.  And jeebus gawd.  The president.  The fucking president.  I took a vow not to talk about him, but what an unholy fucking mess of a human being.  It's exposed every crack and flaw in the political system, which careens towards a failed election that is sure to be full of fakery, fabrication and perfidy.  It's gone beyond anyone "winning" ~ as it's now impossible to obtain truth from the number of votes cast and counted.  There are too many crooks, too many swindlers and racketeers and miscreants who do not believe in the system for anything except villainy to thrive.  This is what comes of repeating that such is the greatest country in the world, while mercilessly pursuing selfishness, racism, graft and ego over the common welfare.  My country, whom no sane person here describes as the "greatest" anything, welcomed my wife, a foreigner, and undertook to care for her because one of its citizens cared for her.  America has undertook to care for no one, not its children, not its people, not even its dead.  It is impossible to stand outside and watch, and not wonder why the people in the streets do not shoot back at the cops.  Or why there are not hundreds of thousands surrounding the White House and kicking down the fences.  I'm old enough to remember a million people on the lawns in Washington protesting the deaths and murders that resulted from the Vietnam War.  What has happened to America, that even its starving and destitute no longer care enough to fight evil for the sake of the country?

I have the time to flip on Twitter and the News and watch this lurching brigade of lies; and because I don't want to bury my head in the sand, I want to be informed.  It is nevertheless soul-rending to watch ... and to see Americans furiously wave their flags and do nothing.  To see ten thousand messages urging other Americans to get out and vote while pretending those waters aren't already muddy, making clear the denial, the desperation, the sad praying, wallowing, bawling conviction that American values will somehow save the day and come November, everything will suddenly revert itself and be all right.  The pretence that this is all the fault of one man, and not a million "citizens" who have rushed to exploit the system, so that when that one man is gone, the sun will shine again, sickens me.  Sometimes, hope is not a good thing, nor the best of things.  It seems to me that stubborn, blind hope is the worst of things, if it keeps a defender's hand from taking up a gun while "hoping" the bear tearing apart the child will yet change its mind, and stop without being driven off.

I'm not able to push these thoughts out of my mind as I settle in to explain, again, how best to dungeon master a game.  I'm not emotionally free as I tell DMs to stop cheating the dice, knowing that cheating has become a raison d'etre for people, not for the reasons they give, but because cheating is everywhere in the culture arguing with me.  I can't forget that when I tell players and DMs that they need to follow the game's rules, that I'm speaking to people who live in a civilization unable to keep itself from pointing weapons at children or embracing the principles of ratfuckery in what should be a sacred exercise.  I feel ridiculous, knowing people who agree wholeheartedly with this shift in principles are reading my blog, laughing at my absurd notion that a 17 should be read as a 17 and not a 15 or a 4 as it would be convenient to do, for the sake of "story."  Why should they care?  The underlying principle of justifying any deceit, because gawddamn, "We need this die to swing this way right now," trumps any contrary position.  Yes, "trumps" it, as in, what I selfishly need right now is more important than any other thing in the universe, including any self-respect I may have had before deciding to treat double-dealing and false-heartedness as virtues.

In the face of it, what am I accomplishing when I write about D&D?

I don't know.  I've been promoting my patreon for a couple of years now and I honestly can't tell if I'm taking money under false pretenses, as I've apparently failed to convince anyone of running a D&D game properly, or if I'm not charging enough money to compensate for my time and frustration.  I pound a drum and present fifty arguments for why a particular game rule or strategy will cripple and distort the playability of a campaign, discussing point-by-point why it is abusive to players, and not in the spirit of the game, only to visit the blog site of some long-time and supportive reader to find them making an extensive new version of said piece-of-shit game rule.  What am I doing here?

I heard last night that people do not approach problems like scientists, searching for evidence and then arriving at a conclusion based on that evidence.  Instead, they approach problems like lawyers, having already decided the conclusion and then seeking specifically that evidence that supports that conclusion.  This sounds accurate to me, describing virtually everyone I know.  Yet, while a scientist can easily work alone, a lawyer expects to argue with another lawyer.  Furthermore, the lawyer must submit to a judgment, in which a judge will say to the lawyer, essentially, "You're full of shit."  The lawyer must then accept that judgment, and move on.  No philosophical lawyer ever has to submit to a judgment; they are free to go on forever with their treasured cause, gathering more and more shit in piles to defend that cause, explaining virtually everything that is said by everyone on the internet.

I am sick of arguing with lawyers.  I can handle some shyster at my table, as he or she must submit to my judgment.  But some boob on the internet who has only the argument that "Holmes wrote this" only exhausts me.  Who is this Holmes and what did he accomplish outside of writing a cheap, second-rate version of an already existing game?  I've also written such versions; I've run the game longer than Holmes or Gygax did, I've written more and better words than either of them ever had and I've worked in other fields beyond game design.  I'm a cheap hack, but so are they.  That's why, when I support my arguments, I turn to legitimate, recognized experts in other fields and apply their expertise in game-design, psychology, learning and problem-solving in their words, then translate this to D&D.  I am not pulling arguments out of my ass.

What good does it do?  I change someone's mind about this or that specific thing, but that's about all.  People want to be lawyers.  They want to hedge and prevaricate, resisting the implications of how any one thing ought to affect everything.  All right.  They can do as they wish.  But then, what I am doing here?

For nearly 30 years, I worked on my game and designed scenarios for naught but me and my players, a very small audience.  I had stepped out of that bubble briefly in the 80s, only to find rather a lot of ignorance and incompetence, along with adult people who played what I thought to be a silly, childish game.  Where my players in my campaign were playing out scenes that could have been written by Dumas, Hugo or Dickens, these runnings had all the depth of The Famous Five and Tintin.  I lost all interest in communicating with these people, so I quietly returned to my game and my world and continued to work happily for the next 22 years.

I spend a lot of time on this blog, and on others, teaching people how to run and how rules work.  These things do not afford me anything.  I already know how to run.  I already know how the rules work, and why they do.  The time I don't spend rehashing old arguments and finding new ways to outline them is time I could spend working on my game world, my creative writing and myself.  I teach myself new things just about every day, figuring out some new rule, measuring some detail, or sketching out a useful and practical application.  Teaching is fun and its useful, but it is a waste of time if the students can't learn or won't learn.  A teacher in a classroom expects a student to raise their hand once in awhile to ask a question.  I'm lucky if I get two or three questions a month.  That's well and good, as I expect no one to change their behaviour on my account ... but I can certainly change my behaviour on my account.

It offers me very little to go on as I have been doing.  To date, I know of no person who is running my ruleset as is, or is interested in doing so.  That is a piss-poor record for a teacher.  When I encouraged people to come help me with my recent wiki, I had eight people who rushed forward to "help."  I was not treated like a teacher, or like the source of the knowledge being manipulated.  Volunteers bulled their way in, tried to push me into doing things their way, grew upset and hurt when I smacked them around for their lack of respect for the person who had worked on the material for decades ... and then evaporated rather than submit to a subordinate position.  Each of them, I'm sure, feels very differently about how those events played out, but none of them opened a dialogue with me to properly settle upon a division of labor and none of them stayed with it.  They're all gone now, with not a word in months.  And mind you, these are people who continue to support me on Patreon, some with a rather expensive tone.  So, I'm patiently working on the process alone, as I have done for a long time, marvelling that people who proclaim my genius and wherewithal haven't the willpower to endure my direction even a little bit.  The work is tedious, exhausting and most of the time, apparently useless, as I haven't any knowing of whether or not anyone ever goes there.  Worse, I'm unable to tell if a stranger to this blog could find the wiki and even understand it.  There are so many holes in the work, so many flaws, that it will probably be three or four years before the grammar and layout is sufficiently edited and made useful for game play.  That is very distressing and disheartening; yet it is at least one thing I feel does contribute to my personal sense of value.  My game and my players will use it, even if no one else does ~ and though it takes years, my players will never carp at the wiki's insufficiencies.  They will ask me to work on a particular thing, and because I want to provide service to my players, I will work on that thing if asked.

On the whole, rather than go on blogging, I'd like to renew the process of running online.  I enjoyed that, and it felt like D&D.  Those people who played were seriously engaged ~ the connections were real and purposeful.  I had the ability to be creative and to be a DM, rather than merely writing about it.  The audience was negligible, apart from the actual players, true enough.  I suppose it has to be that way.

I'm not interested in writing about D&D for entertainment's sake.  If the goal is to write posts that can be read over a cup of coffee, only to be forgotten, then I might just as well write about film or politics, as there is a much larger audience for those subjects than for D&D.  I could write a ten-part series on The Umbrella Academy, nitpicking every scene and discussing the relative merit of the players, explaining the tropes being used, the plot-stealing elements and taking screen shots of character expressions, then go and do the same for Fargo, the Watchmen and Billions, all popular shows with millions of fans, who could argue and bitch at me about my opinions in the exact same way that D&D fans do ... with as much actual purpose being accomplished, if we're talking entertainment and the possibility of my raising money for patreon.  I'm a good writer, and I'm observant, so some people will hate what I write and some people will love it ... and to the point, more people, if my goal is to be an entertainer or a money-maker.

No teacher teaches to entertain.  But teachers do quit and decide to do other things.  This is in my mind and I am concerned with these thoughts.

I can't go on doing this.  There must be more fulfilling things I can do with my energy and my talent.  It is all very well for another D&D blogger to think, "What makes him so special?"  This is not the only content I know how to write.  D&D is not the only substantial thing I am knowledgable about.  I wanted to write about D&D because I wanted to teach, to make people see that there are better ways to view this game than to lapse into the same old crappy original books written 40+ years ago.  Whenever I read someone holding these books up as examples of credibility or direction, I am unable to see anything except willful, stubborn ignorance.  I am tired of arguing with it.  Nothing related to official D&D, in any capacity, can ever be said to have been of quality.  We play as best we can by cherry-picking bits and pieces from upteen sources and our own personal experience ... and it has become such a habit with us that we're unable to recognize a legitimate answer when we see or hear it.  I'm done discussing it.

I'm not sure just now what I'll do with this blog, or any of them.  For the time being, I'm disinterested in writing any "observational" content about D&D.  I think I'll suspend advice posts, though the advice is remarked upon occasionally.  That leaves posts about what am I'm doing with my world.  Those posts have never been very popular.  I'm willing to answer questions, which I like doing, but I'm not getting them much.

That doesn't give much reason for anyone to continue supporting me on patreon.  Frankly, there is so little contact that I receive from my supporters that I wonder sincerely why anyone supports me there.  Look at this:

On December 2, I was ranked 656th.  My present rank doesn't show a drop in support, only a comparative drop with others.  I have very loyal patrons, and very few compared with others around my status.  I also have the quietest, most humble patrons on the planet.

I have to assume this is a combination between my being (a) an asshole, ready to argue my position so vociferously that even my supporters are afraid to approach me; and (b) I am so absolutely "out there" with my writings that even my supporters have no idea how to even address what I say.  For 12 years I have written post after post discussing this issue, trying to convey what it is like to communicate constantly inside a bell jar ... even one that is supported as well as it is.  The stats above are terrific.  There are 174,634 patreon pages with at least 1 patron, at the time I'm writing this.  That puts me in the 85th-90th percentile.  That's really something, particularly given that I'm not writing about the latest video game or pop culture, but about a nerdish 40-year-old game, about which I hate almost everything.  I look at these numbers and I don't see failure; I see spectacular success.  Just imagine how well I'd be doing if I wrote about something popular.

I don't think I want to.  At least, not presently.  I'd rather just play the game, on or off-line.  I'd rather work on the wiki, or maps, or some other part of my game.  I'd rather work on longer, denser efforts, such as either of the two books I have in the works, projects I've abandoned ... or new ideas I have bounding around inside.  I'm really starting to hate this dynamic of shouting into the voice in the hopes of receiving two comments.  Or none at all.

I'm hungry for more than that.