Rounds 10 Through 13

Okay, I've been asked twice, so ... in my weakened condition, here are two rounds.

Here are things as they stood at the End of Round 10:

Moving around the field clockwise, from the bottom (as I always have), the cleric has healed his compatriots and they are getting ready to get out of range of the goblin slingers.  They will deal with them later, after they have rejoined their group.

In the bottom left corner the combat between the elves and the hobgoblins goes on as ever.  However, the arrival of the 9th level Lord (Karl, NPC) and the 6th level illusionist (Penn, Player Character), are definitely starting to turn the tide.  The second wave of hobgoblins have arrived from the wall make hardly any difference, and every time the elf bowmen shoot it makes a BIG difference.

The battle at the West Wall (left side) is another thing entirely.  You may notice that the mastodon (Pony) is suddenly alone, whereas before there were cavewights and goblins surrounding it.  There has been, between rounds, a fireball - the Queen drow elf sacrificing her own minions with her wand of fire as she runs towards the northeast tower (you can notice a considerable displacement if comparing the last image from the last combat post with the above image.  The Pony has failed its morale check upon this fireball, and is now running (as indicated by the arrow).  The hippogriff Hathor continues to defend its held master, the 7th level ranger (underneath the hippogriff), as a 7th level hobgoblin fighter continues to do damage to it.  And meanwhile the glaivers still try to break through the wall, and past the drow elf Prince who is holding the gate.  He is just now being met by Ty, a 6th level fighter (NPC), who will simply overbear in the next few rounds and push the much lighter drow elf from the doorway.

The battle royale at the north gate, the top of the map, gets more and more harried as the goblins and hobgoblins are clearly outflanking the left end of the human defendors.  It looks horrifically bad, and has the party up at this part of the map pretty much beside themselves.  The only thing really keeping them going at this point is the bard, who is singing like hell and creating the equivalent to a prayer spell to all within 60'.

To the right, you can see the cavalry arranging themselves, but they have not yet started to charge (moving at normal speed at the moment).  The three horsemen who were left behind are joining into their ranks, while there is one horseman moving at triple speed at the top of the map, vying to rejoin.

You may also notice two small figures at the upper left, to the left of the combat just mentioned - these are marked as B1 and B2.  They are a pair of brownies, lately conjured by the 9th level druid with the spell, conjure woodland beings.

You may also notice that the 6th level thief, Ivan, is on the Northwest Tower.  As a matter of fact he is inside it, fighting a hobgoblin and a 4th level goblin fighter.  They can be seen because, by convention, it is easier to pretend they are one floor lower than to create another tower layout for them to fight inside of.

This leaves the Southeast Wall.  The passwall has been cast (as I remember, we had recalculated out the length of time the mage had spent casting the spell, which was not known when I saved the end of the 9th round - if this does not jive with the description on the last post.  This is the nature of D&D, and I am remembering things in the order that they happened).  A host of hobgoblins has leapt from the wall (12' high) to fight on the ground, rather than open the gate, and to try to cut off the zombies marching into the created hole.  And meanwhile the glaivers here are dispensing with the last of the dire wolves. 

Then, at the End of Round Eleven:

There is little to say about the battle between the elves and hobgoblins.  Deaths occur on both sides and, if anything, the hobgoblins are keeping Lord Karl out of the main battle.  The lines have sorted themselves out, with the cleric Helmut rushing in from right.

The mastodon makes a convenient second hole as it leaves the fortress at the West Wall.  Hathor the hippogriff has been stunned and will soon die if it does not escape - which to do it must both survive one round without being stunned and abandon its master.  The ranger is definitely sweating (the ranger is played by my daughter, by the way, so I'm sweating a little bit also).

Ty has pushed back the prince and the glaivers are making some headway.  More goblins are coming, and the battle is by no means won.

Ivan is handily killing off his opponents inside the tower, and the brownies are approaching - they are heading for the ballista on the tower's top, which is in the process of being loaded (9 rounds to go for all ballista).  The flanking movement goes on.  Various points are coming together.  The Queen is climbing the stairs of the NE Tower, and the cavalry is thundering up the hill behind the goblin slingers, who are just now releasing a volley into the defenders (remember that the gray areas are slopes, from the fortress down as one moves outwards).  Things were getting unaccountably exciting at this point.

To the SE Gate - the orange line in front of the wall is a web spell, cast by the Mage Garalzapan, trapping most of the hobgoblins and making it very easy to kill them.  However, zombies move awfully slowly, and I personally felt it was a mistake to let them go through the opened wall first.  Not my decision.

You will notice, every dire wolf is dead.

Now, I'm sorry to say, but what with things getting exciting, I failed to save the End of Round 12 ... I was pretty pissed about it at the time, I have to say, but that's how it goes.  So we pick up again with the End of Round 13:

Many changes.

The hobgoblins are thinning at the lower left, as the elves deal with them - even though most of these elves are low on hit points and are only using daggers.  Never downplay an elf.  The standard bearer for the hobgoblins, you may notice, has pulled back towards the SW Gate again.  Telling detail, that.

At the West Wall, things are going fairly well.  The hippogriff has recovered and flown away, while a glaiver (directed by the players) sacrificed himself that Falun (the ranger) might live and recover.  I felt that was fair ... Falun is a rather attractive elf.  This round shows that a second drow elf has appeared (coming from the West Tower), named 'the Verger', and is helping to press the attack by the goblins.  Meanwhile, a group of glaivers has made good use of the second hole made by the mastodon (which would still, technically, be on the map but was removed to make things simple, as it is only running away), and are rushing to support the first breech.  So things are looking better.

The North Gate.  This is the worst part about forgetting to save that round.  So much has happened.  The Queen let loose a fireball in round 12 on the bard, ending the bard's song, while the druid (by use of a wall of fire, only just dispelled by the Queen in round 13) and his animal friends (a black bear named 'Snuggles' and a sabre-toothed tiger named 'Nibbles') tore nicely into what goblins were left over.  At the same time, the cavalry ripped through the goblin slingers and into the back of the goblin/hobgoblin line, doing tremedous damage.  The party was quite expectedly happy at this point.  I believe that Nibbles has failed his morale check and is fleeing - he has not been with the druid long and does not have a good morale.  Note that more goblins, and a drow elf called 'Youth' are still at the North Gage, which has still be jammed open by the druid's earlier use of warp wood.

Ivan is finishing off his opponents inside the NW Tower, and the two brownies are now attacking the goblins on the top.  So all around a good round for this part of the combat.

Finally, at the bottom right, the attack at the SE Wall has stalled.  The zombies are fighting the hobgoblins, while the 6th level Monk (Shalar), who has done little in this combat except kill dire wolves, has decided to climb the East Tower and fight whatever is there.  We know, of course, that it is a 7th level goblin fighter, waiting for him.

So there you have it.  The equivalent of four rounds of bloody mayhem.  In light of my recent posts, I suppose the gentle reader thinks I ought not to enjoy such things, but remember - this is all just pretend.  The real deal is something else.

The Tone of This Blog

It chanced to occur that, beginning with Thursday of last week, my body decided to stab my brain brutally in the sinal cavities, resulting in my becoming annoyingly unhealthy for several days. As such, the diatribe against a particular video wound up remaining front and centre on this blog longer than I had ever intended.

And this brings to mind a comment I received on the blog, discussing the inappropriateness of adding this material to ‘a gaming blog’ - if that is what this is. I have never actually used that phrase to describe this blog in any of the hundreds of posts I have made.

There is, in publishing, a strong sentiment towards what is called ‘responsibility towards the reader.’ It has been front and foremost in all of the five magazines I have worked for since 1989. This responsibility is usually framed as respect given to the reader - particularly the subscriber - in exchange for years of loyal patronage. It is actually a euphemism to describe the magazine’s fear of losing the reader’s money.

You see, in fact, corporate firmly believes that if the money can be made elsewhere, from some other reader, the ‘loyal’ readers can go fuck themselves. Problem is, corporate rarely has any other plan to drum up other readers, so they think it best to appear to suck up to those readers they already have.

Now, there are certain readers, the letter writing kind, who manage to get their names into the magazine, who cotton onto this whole responsibility to the reader philosophy, and use it as a bludgeon to get what they want … i.e., to influence the editorial policy of the magazine. And occasionally there are those weak and gutless corporate types that run scared from such readers. But that’s the nature of business.

I am not, as it happens, running a business. I am writing a blog about D&D (and very occasionally upon other games) because I enjoy the game and because I want to write about it. I will in almost every case write about D&D on this blog, because that is my desire. But I will warn the gentle reader … I feel no responsibility to anyone except myself. I write this blog for my pleasure. I will often post things which I know others will also enjoy, and I will sometimes post things that I feel ought to be posted by someone, on principle. I will often rant when I am angry, and very rarely something that makes me angry will have very little to do with gaming.

In this particular case, I chose to post this particular rant on this blog because war, and the activity of war, is a pet subject of many people who play wargames or role-playing games. As such, I knew I would get some response, and get some response I did. If I ever feel that there is something else that strikes at the heart of my general readership, I will do it again.

I think most of my readers have come to expect from me a rather wide perspective on what makes this ‘gaming blog’ tick. I only wish to make perfectly clear that if the label applies to me, it is sheer chance - it is not a responsibility I feel I need accept.

If I Had ...

I should be writing about D&D, and participating in my online blog; but instead I feel a deep, unqualified fury. And I have to post about it.

I see something like this and I find myself remembering Bruce Cockburn:

"Here comes the helicopter - second time today
Everybody scatters and hopes it goes away
How many kids they’ve murdered, only God can say
If I had a rocket launcher...I’d make somebody pay.”

Wikileaks, who found, decoded and released the video, calls it ‘collateral murder.’ And they are dead right.

As it happens, this particular video identifies the quality of ‘heroes’ ... and the worshipful status of homeland soldiers ... from the United States. The origin of these soldiers is the least significant thing about the video - except that, to be these soldiers, they need to be from a qualitatively technological war state, one that can afford billion dollar helicopters capable of delivering instant death to anyone walking the streets with a shoulder strap. If you walk the streets in an occupied country (and what country isn't?), don’t carry anything - particularly anything that might have the shape of a tube or a black box. To do this is to award any soldier high in the air a warrant for justifiable homicide.

The youtube copy of this video (which may not be there tomorrow, because seriously, who expects youtube to keep it on their site?) includes a comment from just that sort of person who watches this and smugly confirms the justice in it:

"... As far as the crew was concerned they was (sic) part of an armed group that had a rocket launcher and Kalishnikovs and was shadowing a US unit in contact from the right flank. War is war ... I’m sure plenty would have done it better, in hind sight and not having to deal with the fog of war.” 

Yes, fog. Can anyone remember how it happens that sometimes a cop will kill a young child who is carrying around a toy pistol? I can’t recall any cop who afterwards will shrug, and mutter, “fog of street crime. What could I do?”

The video demonstrates that it took less than sixty seconds for these airmen to observe, interpret and ultimately confirm for themselves that what they had guessed at was precisely what they wanted to see. Men, in a street, who were easy targets. It is particularly telling that, when the men are concealed by the building early on - through no action of their own, but merely because the air vehicle was turning in a circle - the airmen grew furious and anxious, hating that they had to wait seconds for the targets to again come into view. It is evident when the targets do come into view again, that they are clearly paying no attention to this war machine making its rounds above them. Where then does this anxiousness come from? From itchy fingers and itchy souls, clearly.

Naturally, when they gain the confirmation they need to open fire - from commanders who see no more than the airmen can see - the butchery is accomplished in rather short order. It is nice to have the sort of tool that can lay down this level of groundfire, to do it from a comfortable place high above the screaming and the smoke, where the blood and the pain need not be quite so evident ... after all, backslapping is all the better accomplished without the distraction that would make someone question their motivations, or reconsider the higher value of what’s being done here.

Although, as it happens, someone has reconsidered those things.

Would that in creating the machine, we could create the responsibility necessary to use the machine ... something which in this case has been the product of typical military thinking: “this is my helicopter, this is my cock ... and I use them for the same fucking thing.”

If you are reading this, and you are or have been in the military, please do not write a comment to defend the position of war, or of the importance of killing the enemy before the enemy kills you. Watching this, I wanted the cool, comforting sight of a rocket trail to rise out of the clouds and blast these fucking airmen into another state of existence. If there had been an enemy, I wish sincerely that they had brought along a Strela 2, to aid them in carrying their wounded from the battlefield ... a long held consideration granted in war by civilized persons. For those people who would fight a total war, or for those people who would answer on this blog condoning a total war, I will hold tightly to my wishes for rocket launchers to be standard equipment for mastering you.

If, on the other hand, you are or have been in the military, and you have the heart of many of those I have met, you are hanging your head in abject and unmitigated shame, for what your profession has become, for what your service is now tainted by, and for what failures you and your fellow participants in previous wars have brought about in making this a military practice condoned by any trained officer anywhere in the world.

Do not promote to me the sacrifices soldiers make for my country.

Reveals

If you are following my online campaign (and there’s no reason you should be), you will have just witnessed a thud as a major plot became evident at the instigation of the character - you can see it here. Basically, it has just been revealed that events happening last year, that involved opening a hellgate in the town of Dachau (and which had the characters taking a peripheral part in) was all to arrange for two dopplegangers to be placed into the roles of town mayor and - what is not stated on the link - the chief of the guard.

I have been sitting on this plot point for more than a year ... literally, since I began arranging the reveal, which just happened, with a post I wrote on February 25, 2009. In that post, I included a quite common bit of description (spelling corrected):

”And above that, a third notice, which reads, “The Lord Mayor’s election is to take place on the 24 May 1650. The following citizens have been nominated to date: The competant Lord Mayor Martin Folkes. The competant Councillor Erich Kinski. The competant Patrician Eduard Johannsen. The experienced Patrician Eberhardt Hornung.”

Therein began the tale. All four of the gentlemen have been accounted for, and the party has been adroitly moved into the political sphere of one of them. When I ran this campaign, with other people, last spring, I dropped bits and hints from time to time … but it would have been very hard to see just what I was doing behind the scenes, just from those hints. If the party had seriously chosen to investigate, there would have been stronger clues. But it never happened that way.

If the one character in the campaign, Delfig, had not returned to Dachau, chances are that I would never have revealed any of this, EVER. That is the thing about a sandbox campaign:

Sometimes, you never get to know.

As a writer, I am mentally sitting on a number of plots that I have never written, for novels that I plan to write someday, and even for novels which I have given up on and which I will never write. I think about what a particular character will do, and how points A and B will come together … and as a novelist, it is my work, my art, to carefully install the various complicated clues into a work in order that when the reveal comes in chapter 17, the reader will think, “Ahhhhhh!”

Where D&D is mainly different is that, most of the time in my sandbox campaign, I’m not able to make the reveal. I set the clues, I add the various descriptions here and there - they are in turn ignored or forgotten by the party - and I am all ready to show that the small insignificant scribbling on the third floor of the house where three goblins were killed was really a sign that will lead the way directly to …

When the party changes its mind, loads up and leaves town, and never finds out what that scribbling was all about.

This would, I imagine, drive most people to drink. I find, however, I am enormously comfortable with it.

I simply put that little piece of information on the shelf, where one day I may get to use it again somewhere else, or where I may forget about entirely. Or I may, like the books I have conceived of but which I will never write, take the thing down again while I’m sitting at a bus stop or waiting for a film to start. I’ll roll it over in my mind and wonder if it was really as good as it could have been. I’ll investigate the angles and try to improve on them. And when I’m satisfied that it’s taught me something, I’ll put it back and move on.

Nothing worthwhile is ever wasted. Even if I am the only one who will see it.

There are other combinations of clues and connections which I have in mind, both for my online parties and for my offline. Some of these I will carry right to my grave. Some of these I will think about explaining to someone, somewhere - because I like them that much. Most of the time that I do that, however, I find myself a bit dissapointed with the response. I think they’re good reveals. Within the framework of an adventure, I’m sure the party would find them good reveals. But outside that framework -

Well, they are just plot points. No big deal. Just another bit of another story, where the listener has nothing invested.

Just now, if the gentle reader has not been following the campaign, very little will be thought of in terms of the emotional effect that Delfig is undergoing, right now.

But to Delfig - that “Ahhhhh” moment was everything.

I am wondering how it will come out.

UPDATE:

I had wanted to emphasize more upon how it is that a DM must keep hidden many of the twists, turns and so on that are in his or her brain when running a sandbox campaign rather than a single-shot adventure - how keeping mum can last for months, even years ... but I suppose I concentrated too much on the event at hand.  Overall, I had wanted to start a discussion on why its best to keep our mouths shut.  Even when that's hard to do.

I Won't Always Lose

Between the discussions about creating adventure hooks and how to run a sandbox, there’s something I’ve failed to mention. Yes, it is true that in one capacity, as DM I act as blind justice ... but there is another role that a DM must perform.

I am the enemy.

Where it comes to the party competing to survive, it does well to remember that part of the responsibility of the DM is to create circumstances in which the party will not survive.  This is not to say that I would deliberately kill a party, out of the blue ... but now and then it happens that a series of decisions that a party makes leads them either to success, or to death.  As a DM, I am responsible for creating both possibilities.

It is not merely creating a maze for rats that leads them to cheese.  It is not even that some parts of the maze have little razor blades that will cut off the occasional rat's head (that kind of trap occurs, of course, but it is heavy handed and not what I'm talking about).  It is that occasionally as DM I'm entitled to play mind games that will increasingly lead the rat further and further into parts of the maze where there may be no hope of ever finding the cheese - and players have to protect themselves against that.

Many DMs will present a sort of game that is similar in design as a parent teaching a child to play chess.  The moves are shown, but the parent is careful not to win too handily.  The parent intentionally makes false moves, to encourage the child.  Gradually, the parent draws the child further along, encouraging the child's interest, until the child is ready to play 'for real.'

But for many D&D campaigns, 'for real' never actually happens.  Many DMs cannot bring themselves to kill characters ... even if the character well and truly deserves to be killed.  Instead, change after change is made to the campaign, like a DM making false moves, until the DM successfully 'loses' ... as that is really the point for many people who play this game.  That the DM should lose.  Philosophically, everyone loses if the players don't 'win.'

True enough.  But I don't agree that the DM should play with the intention of losing.  I don't want my campaign to descend into a series of false moves that encourage the success of the child.  The players in my game are not children, and they ought to know what they are doing when they make decisions.  I urge them to remember that somewhere, at some point down the line, I absolutely will kill them.  No matter how much they love their characters, no matter what level their characters are, no matter how I know them personally or what effect that might have emotionally.  This is a game.  And I will, if I am pushed into a corner by a player's continued bad playing, well and truly kill that player without remorse.

I repeat: I am the enemy.  The player plays against Me, when he or she plays in my world.  I am the force of nature that must be overcome.  I will always provide the opportunity for the players to make the right moves - and indeed, to make right moves that I never conceived of, as more often happens.  But I am perfectly conscious of what is the wrong move, and when it is made, the game is lost.

If the game cannot be lost, there is no game.

Parental Abandonment

“Single Parent Rule:” RPG characters with two living parents are almost unheard of. As a general rule, male characters will only have a mother, and female characters will only have a father. The missing parent either vanished mysteriously and traumatically several years ago or is never referred to at all. Frequently the main character’s surviving parent will also meet an awkward end just after the story begins, thus freeing him of inconvenient filial obligations.

The last three words are the kicker - parents, and family in general, are plainly something that we'd like to ditch where it comes to our imaginations.  Good thing, too, since Mom probably wouldn't approve of gouging out that goblin's skull and using it and your favorite dagger to play snag-the-eye-socket when things get dull.  When I write novels I tend to whack off both my protagonists parents before the story starts, mostly because I don't like my own parents and I'm not interested in creating an ersatz functional family.  It helps my characters retain their rugged lone wolf natures, people going it alone with a fuck-you attitude towards others.  Much like any group of D&D players.

I pretty much hate family stories, in film or literature, since they tend to be very preachy.  RPGs are proof-positive that players believe happiness can be obtained without needing family ... either the one that spawns us, or one we might spawn.  I offer this piece of advice, as something the gentle reader should never do as a DM: if you want to curse a female character in a party, make her pregnant.  The player will not be amused.  And that, dear friends, is a social commentary on many, many levels.

(I did have a player who did get married, and did have children, and the campaign running long enough for that player's children to grow into young adults.  But this is extraordinarily rare in my experience).

In recognition that we in western society clearly hate our parents and will happily identify with orphans and abandoned children in film after film, have a look at the truly impressive list of children's stories, from Disney, Pixar and Don Bluth, where parents are non-existent or clearly an afterthought.  This goes on and on, in live action children's films as well as animations ... we are programmed from the age of four to fantasize about discarding our parents.  Why, look at the three great children's stories of English literature: Peter Pan, the Wizard of Oz and Alice of Wonderland.

Adventure begins when the parents are gone.

That's really all I have to say on the subject.  I can hardly encourage players to think more about their imaginary mothers and fathers, now can I?  Who would, anyway?  I mean, unless your father is the King of the Land ...

But then a thought does occur to me.  What would anyone say to a starting adventure for a party being the intentional murder of the character's rich, wealthy parents, in order to usurp the family business, or merely to obtain for themselves a nice compensation.  Yes, that's right Marvolo ... your father is rich, very rich, and he has been a bastard to you all your life - your mother too!  Don't you remember, your mother killed your dog Rex ... and fed his to the corpse to the pigs?  For ten years, you've hated them, despised them, thought of all you could do with their money.  And now today, this very morning, your master has declared there's nothing else he can teach you.  Today you are a first level thief!

Naw.

Civil Service

Ah, the bureaucracy. The force against change. The body of creatures that comes into existence as the size of the state expands, and who are needed to communicate the commands of the state’s overlords to the people - and in turn, to see to it that those commands are followed. And if they are not followed, then it is also the bureaucracy’s purpose to bring down punishment.

A hideous entity, as we all know far too well. This is the face of the government, for whom we do not vote and towards whom there is little sympathy or affection when it happens that they “are just doing their jobs.” It is, probably, fairly unpleasant work - which helps explain why people untainted with any humanity manage to find themselves part of the cogs and wheels that crush out the happiness of poor citizens such as ourselves.

My apology to any civil servants reading this. Pffft. Like there would be.

Any large political entity is greatly dependent upon its civil service, and even in terms of medieval cultures, those empires or political states possessed of a great bureaucracy stood head and shoulders above the anarchy of their enemies. Venice’s civil service was markedly greater than Genoa’s (the reason given is typically the demand for greater civil engineering on Venice’s part). The Ottoman Empire’s bureaucracy was profoundly organized - the Vizier, the master of the bureaucracy, would become nearly the equal of the Sultan within the state. China, of course, became the behemoth of bureaucratic states - where the civil service grew to such eloquence and far-reaching power that it strangled the state’s vitality. And it is understood that Poland’s steady demise from the vast kingdom that occupied much of Eastern Europe is understood to result from a failure to develop any proper bureaucracy. Tax collectors, inspectors, adjudicators, officers, recruiters, ministers and scribblers cannot be dispensed with where it comes to managing the people, the maintenance of empire, armed forces, courts, infrastructure and so on. No matter how you see it, the state cannot operate otherwise.

But where are these people in D&D?

There are always guardsmen and soldiers. And taxes are collected. And a city ordinance or two might not permit a player to carry a weapon within the confines of a town. But quite honestly, a DM would rather there was no such thing as a bureaucracy. It gets in the way of, well, everything.

Hell, even a bar fight would be more fun if the town didn’t get involved.

There is a strongly held philosophy by many players of D&D - that if it represents something we don’t like about the real world, we don’t want it as part of the game. “I am not here,” would say a number of players, “because I like reality.”

This would be the strongest argument against incorporating any sort of bureaucratic influence into your campaign. Do not, the argument would go, saddle my fun with restrictions created on how I might arm myself, or move freely about the kingdom, or the largest city of that kingdom. Do not fetter me with unnecessary taxations - an occasional toll or fee is fine, but don’t ask my character to add up all of his worth and pay a property tax! Do not insist that I explain my actions or behaviours to government lackeys or insidious officials who demand to know why I’ve decided to fortify my recently purchased inn with chained monsters or rocket firing ballista. Put no courtiers or other bootlicks between me and the local sovereign, nor guilds between me and whatever monopoly I wish to impose upon the local community. I am here to have fun, damn it! I am not interested in wasting my time with a lot of inconvenient paperwork and calculation. This is supposed to be fantasy, is it not?

Yes, I guess it is.

For many people who dream that their fantasy might incorporate a little more thinking and a little less bloody mayhem, I’ve no doubt that they fail to see how the above position does little to help. Of course, many like bloody mayhem - and are prepared to play week after week with that and nothing else. My present party and its ongoing mass battle would be - I hope - a temporary example (woe to me if they get a taste for it), as it has been going on since January. In such a case, frivolities such as state business goes very far to getting in the way of all that fun.

But if you would have intrigue, the gentle reader could do no better than to incorporate a little bureaucracy into the campaign. There is little need to bribe anyone if all the doors are open, no? And for what reason do you spy, if there are no carefully collected papers gathered, if no special bureau exists that will create, store and conceal said papers? What is the value of an overheard word between two knowledgeable servants of the state, if there is nothing more to the state that taking in taxes and giving it to the army?

It is a difficult point to make, but hear me out. A character’s sheet will explain all that the character is able to do, and that is augmented by all that a character is able to plan. But a campaign is not predicated upon what a character can do, but upon what that character cannot do. When you create a closed door, you create a desire to pass through that door. When you create an inconvenient, abusive and seemingly all powerful authority, you create the desire to resist that authority. All that is necessary to boil the blood of your players is one simple answer, to all they wish to accomplish:

Say NO.

No, you can’t do this because this group does not allow it. No, you cannot travel there, it isn’t permitted. No, you are not allowed to wear this, only sanctified people may. No, you can’t. No, you’re not good enough. No. No. No.

Say this enough times and you will create a frustrated, angry group of players who may - if they have no imagination at all - quit playing in your world. And you may find it necessary, upon telling the party 'no' one more time, to have some fellow a few feet away, hiding in a doorway, say: “psst ... want to get in?”

Bureaucracies make the best villains. No one minds when they get torn down.

Still Loving Combat

Before reading this, you'll want to go here.  You'll find the pictures here much clearer.

It's my offline party urging me to write this post - I would probably just forget about it, because this is a fair bit of formatting to get this ready ... but what the hell.

Here is the mass combat at the end of Round Four:

Something bad has happened; the end of the third round showed a group of men, at the bottom of the map, rushing towards the south wall with ladders.  This image shows those men largely obliterated, some of them shown in white to indicate they are stunned and unable to do anything.  A fireball exploded in the middle of them, and so much for that assault.

The elves in the bottom left still waiting for the rush of hobgoblins from the SW Gate.  The mastodon (Pony) and the 7th level ranger, Fayln, mounted upon her hippogriff are managing to hold off the mass of goblins centering in on them, plus one cavewight (much like an ogre) and a yellow figure marked 'Prince.'  This last is a drow elf (I don't play night/day rules for drow).

The interesting part of the battle is what is going on at the N Gate ... where all hell is breaking loose.  The cavalry which hit the goblins in round 3 are pulling out now (the leader, marked Neema, is a 5th level paladin).  Meanwhile, hobgoblins that were on the wall have leaped to the ground (it is a wooden wall, 12' high); and goblins are still streaming from the main gate - although the druid, shown as Pikel, has warped wood to force the gate to remain open, so that when the goblins are killed the gate can be entered freely.  Over the next ten rounds, he will wonder about this strategy ... but there was no way to warp the gates shut, for once he was close enough to warp them, they were already open.  Meanwhile, the cavewights have dropped off the wall and are attempting to flank the party on the party's left.

At the SE Gate, the dire wolves are playing havoc with the zero levels ... this is just the beginnings of that combat.

Now, there were some technical errors when it came to saving files at this point; accidentally saving over files or failing to save at all.  So this next round is technically halfway through round 6 - so the party has gone twice since the last map, but the enemy has only gone once.  Thus the enemy are about to move:

The remnants of the ladder carriers, led by the 9th level lord of the forces aiding the party, and his 7th level cleric henchman, now rush towards the elves to help them against the hobgoblins.  If the reader will notice, midway up the map on the left is a figure, Penn, who is a 6th level illusionist, also moving to help the elves ... so things are not as dark there as they may seem.

Midway between the elves and the mess at the N Gate, the glaivers who have been hurrying all this time have finally reached the hole left behind by the mastodon.  Fayln and Pony continue to fight the good fight.  Some of the cavalry have gotten bogged down fighting hobgoblins in front of the wall ... three pass through the glaivers as they rush forward.  The rest of the cavalry have reformed and are now rounding outside the walls, looking for their next charge.

At the N Gate, the 1st level mage (Falcon) has managed to sleep two cavewights and two others, relieving some of the pressure ... the line grows longer, as the remaining enemy continue their attempt to outflank the good guys.  This is the sort of thing, I think that would be very difficult to portray using most mass combat rules.

Note the single figure, Ivan, to the left of the combat at the north gate.  This is a 6th level thief, who has managed to successfully hide in shadows (no need to move silently) and is going quite unnoticed.  He's about to do something stupid.  Please take note the group of slingers who were upon the wall, who have now leapt off and are hurrying to provide support for the enemy ...

As it happens, at the SE Gate, that party is doing quite well with the dire wolves.  In addition, the party's 8th level mage (transformed with a candle of invocation into 10th level), Garalzapan, has let go a fireball at the E Tower - and eliminated everyone there except for one lone goblin (who happens to be 7th level, and now quite weakened).  As such, the mage is no longer invisible.

This next map is the end of the 8th Round, so there have been 2 and a half rounds passed since the last map:

Starting as ever with the bottom left, a group of slingers has dropped off the south wall and have been harrassing the blue-colored humans fighting with the elves.  However, they have managed to kill a goodly number of hobgoblins (the Lord breaking his arm in the process).  This has resulted in a few more hobgoblins, all they could spare, rushing forward from the wall - and even if this doesn't wipe out the elves, it will prove to keep this group busy for awhile.

Some evil has befallen the Ranger; she failed a save vs. Hold person, and is now struck immobile.  Her hippogriff, 'Hathor', defends her body, but a hobgoblin champion (7th level) has moved in for the kill.  Meanwhile, Pony has been reduced to 2/3rds of its hit points, beset by two cavewights, and although the glaivers are pushing through the wall they are finding themselves beaten down by the Prince, who is attacking twice a round now.

As well, note a yellow figure to the right and lower down from Hathor, marked 'Queen' ... this is the frightful figure in this keep, another drow elf of indeterminate level.

This brings us to Ivan, who has chosen to approach the tower, and to climb it, intending to slaughter the hobgoblin crossbowmen inside.  Crazy.

The line at the N Gate has gotten longer, and finally the hobgoblins and goblins are successfully working around the line of glaivers.  Much of the force of the party is dependent upon the bard (Lyrial), whose playing through this has given +1 to hit and damage for the party, and -1 to hit and damage for the goblins, hobgoblins and cavewights ... but that is starting to slip.

Now, while it appears that the cavalry is running away, in fact they are simply slowing and wheeling - this is the first part of the turn.  At the speed they were going they could not turn more than 60 degrees a round ... but now the front has slowed to a crawl, and it readying itself.  Note the three cavalry from before who freed themselves in the 6th round have been struggling to catch up with the main body.

And finally, the dire wolves are mostly gone.  The mage is moving forward so that he will be in range to caste pass wall, which will open up the interior of the fort to the party`s attack (particularly the zombie`s under the control of the party`s sixth level dwarven cleric, Widda).

Very well, one more round, and then I am spent: this is the end of the 9th round:

Still the elves are fighting hobgoblins, and not much has changed.  The slingers on top of the hill to the right of the elves are keeping those four pinned down ... it just takes too long to climb the hill, and the cleric is attempting to restore to consciousness one of the others.  But although the battle looks like its ground down, things are about to shift against the hobgoblins (the Lord`s bad luck can`t run forever).

Inside the fort, on the west wall, the glaivers are still being chewed up by the Prince, while the ranger Fayln is getting very nervous.  It doesn`t look like the glaivers are going to reach her in time, does it?  Note that the Queen has paused, and hasn't moved from her place.  Heh, heh, heh.

The slaughter continues unabated at the N Gate, on and on ... with no seeming end to goblins rushing out to be ground down.  But steadily, the party is winning on the right flank, and losing badly on their left.  It looks now like things are sliding out of control ... ah, but look to the right!  Neema and the cavalry have turned around, and are now about to ride right at that group of slingers moving down the hill to support the enemy's right flank against the party's left.

And lastly, the SE group is mopping up the dire wolves and starting to move towards the wall.  Next to the mage, Garalzapan, it reads: "Throwing Pass Wall 1 round cast" ... very soon there will be an opening for the zombies to force their way through ...

And Still Again ...

Why quit now?

At the present, this does represent all those parts of the map which I have formatted; there is still an extensive area of the Arabian subcontinent, Pakistan, Afghanistan and a fair chunk of India which I had finished, but as of last summer I had decided to change the precise size of the hexes; I found to my chagrin, long after starting the map, that the hexes weren't quite symmetrical after all.  All that is shown on the map below has been formatted on the new hex design since last July.  As you can see, I was unemployed.

The 60-degree bend I've talked about on other posts is now very evident, particularly in the odd 'hook' made by the eastern end of the Mediterranean, up and around Anatolia (western Turkey).  As I've said, this does make the appearance of the map slightly odd - but it has no particular effect on campaigning.

The large blank area on the left side of the map, with a few pink blotches, is the empty Sahara desert, ringed on the north by the south shore of the Mediterranean.  The large pink area on the right side of the map is China.  The western end of the Himalayas can be seen in the purple mass at the bottom right ... this being the dividing line between Afghanistan (the north part of which is shown) and Sinkiang.  The empty white oval in the China part of the map is Takla Makan.

I particularly like that this map shows desert, more interestingly in the yellow splotch in the center, which is the Ust Urt Plateau and the Kara Kum Desert.  The two green lines going through the desert are the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya (Oxus) rivers.  Startling, are they not?  One of my favorite regions - D&D wise - is the patch of greenery on the south shore of the Aral Sea, the large blue body of water to the right of the Caspian ... assuming the gentle reader can identify the Caspian.  I realize than many are really not that familiar with the Earth.

I can say that I am much more familiar with the Earth now than when I began this map five years ago.  I have been explaining both on this blog and off it that map-making this fragment of the planet has been like adventure hiking from country to country.  This is for me, too, the first sight I've had of everything massed together into one file (so far as it has been up to now), and I'm just stunned.  But it is a bigger thing to me that now I have a remarkable conception on how all these lands fit together, not just geographically, but also in terms of how trade moves between one region and another.  The map above describes in intimate detail the various passes, river shortcuts, circuitous routes around deserts and so on ... I feel I have walked these very roads.  If I needed any inspiration to go on with this project, that would be enough.

So, it will probably be awhile before I'm able to be this impressive again.  Eventually I'll run out of ways to effectively show-and-tell.

Competence Zone

I'm enjoying writing these, so ...

"Logan's Run Rule:" RPG characters are young.  Very young.  The average age seems to be 15, unless the character is a decorated and battle-hardened soldier, in which case he might even be as old as 18.  Such teenagers often have skills with multiple weapons and magic, years of experience, and never ever worry about their parents telling them to come home from adventuring before bedtime.  By contrast, characters more than twenty-two years old will cheerfully refer to themselves as washed-up old fogies and be eager to make room for the younger generation.

Some weeks ago, upon attending the horrendous local convention, I did notice that the age of most players was upwards of thirty ... and quite a bit upwards of thirty.  My friend Carl of Three Hams Inn has written the same about PAX, but his blog doesn't seem to have an archive that I can search, so I can't find the relative post ... but you have to believe me.  The DM's all seem to be forty.  There are younger players out there, I'm sure - but they don't seem to make themselves known.  Even those players who drift through the local gaming store hereabouts seem, at their youngest, to be in their 20s (what the hell, they play 4e anyway).

So the cliche, at least in regards to RPG players identifying themselves as free teenagers who don't have to pay attention to their parents, seems something that applies to consoles.  Some of those 40-year-old players are probably still living in their parents basements - or, as in one case I know, in their parent's house now that the parents are dead - but they've moved past the rebellious stage.  They're doing their mom's laundry because it keeps mom happy.

However, yes.  Characters in the game are still very young.  I've never known anyone who started players at tenth level who suggested that those characters should be in, say, their thirties.  It is still assumed that these brand new tenth level characters are young - as seen by the artistic depictions of players.  My offline players are all in their early twenties, and massively into hardcore anime (the nasty stuff, where characters wash their hands in the guts of other characters - none of that Inuyasha shit), and so yes, all the depictions of their characters on their sheets or desktops are fourteen-year-old girls and guys.  It disappoints them when I say that their new mage is in his late thirties, or that the dwarven cleric is old.  But no matter - because they forget all that when it comes to playing their character anyway.

The whole issue is locked closely into the perception of charisma that goes along with the game.  Bad enough that virtually every depiction of a character is an image that has at least a 15 charisma (my online campaign subverts this, for the most part) ... but unquestionably, every character who speaks to an NPC does so with the expectation that they will be a) respected on account of their level; or b) respected on account of how carefully the player has decided to shape the words they use in roleplay.  Invariably, a 10-charisma character, speaking to the local innkeeper, will leap in with, "My good man, be a good fellow and see to it that my friends and I are set up with good drinks, a fair bit of entertainment and of course some excellent venison ... be quick and I'll ensure your efforts are well paid!"

No one wants to approach a bartender with, "Uh, I'm a ... I was thinking ... is the ale ... uh, good?  Can I get some?"

Some people, playing a 7 or lower charisma, might try, "Gods, what a dump. Got any ale that isn't piss?"  Which is, of course, fun - but this low-born loquaciousness immediately evaporates when the character is faced with someone, or something, capable of re-fashioning the character's spine into a deck chair.  Too much bad charisma is not good for one's health.

I think people would rather be beautiful, and they would rather be accepted as beautiful - and throughout the culture, young is beautiful.  Even the 40-year-old wants to be 16 again, this being a fantasy of older persons since forever - and in a way D&D, as it and the players age, becomes more and more a venue for that.  I would expect to see, in another twenty years, the game played in old age homes as a nostalgic way to get reacquainted with youth.  They learned it in high school ... when again they're forced into a social living environment, they can revisit the game again.

No doubt, a given portion of the population finds this cliche intolerable. I'm not one of them.  I am much more attractive in my mind than I am in reality, and as my forty-fifth year dwindles away I am much younger in my mind also.  I still view 22-year-old fetish fuel pump jockeys in leather and chain bikinis pretty much as I did twenty years ago ... only now, I know if I actually met one they'd look at me and think, "Why is that old fart hanging around here?"  Once upon a time, this would have been closer to, "What the hell does that geek want?"  So my expectations aren't any lower, they're just redirected.

Thus, I don't look at my player's representations of themselves and say, "Isn't that a little much, given that your face was cut up very badly in that run-in with the pedaphile treant?"  No, I just look at the image and say, "Cool."

Philosophy

Last night, I spent five hours playing an obscure, simple-graphics video game based entirely upon the difficulties of logistics - the game is Patrician III, and the point is to ship products from one city to another, occasionally battling pirates, building up the city populations and taking on quest-like missions. My particular history with the game comes from my peculiar fascination with logistics, and an effort to create a sensible, effective methodology for the movement of my ships. It is not as easy as it sounds. For the most part, I did not succeed last night, though I had a few new ideas (which all failed), and the result was pretty much a waste of my time ... that is how it felt when it ended, at any rate.


So why, the gentle reader might ask, should I bridle my intellect for the purpose of solving a private game, where there are so many things that need solving, and working upon, where it comes to D&D? I might ask that myself. The simple answer might be that I needed a rest from D&D, but on a profound level, I have to ask why that might be ... usually, when I am tired of a particular aspect of D&D (maps, my trade tables) I work on other aspects of D&D (reworking the spell lists, my biological monster table). These are the things I normally cut my teeth upon. They are what keeps my world from being a fragmented, irrational cacophony of rules, instead being a cohesive whole.

What I am saying is this: while it might be all very well for the reader to forgive me, or me to forgive myself, this is not how things get done. And getting things done is important to me. One might say I live for it.

The name of this blog, the Tao of D&D, has been given some small bit of criticism, in that the blog itself has done nothing to relate D&D to the traditional Chinese philosophy of the Tao ... which apparently some early readers were hoping I would do. Why, I can’t guess. True, D&D is as much as a manifestation of ‘tao’ as the corn on my mother’s left foot, but any attempt I might make to correlate the game, or indeed this blog, with the universal concept of yin and yang, or the pursuit of Te, would undoubtedly descend into the same sort of pretentious mess that I occasionally read elsewhere when people attempt to make such connections between Tao and home cooking, or Tao and the maintenance of motorcycles (book title notwithstanding), or Tao and NASCAR racing. I’m just not going to do it.

But before it was a philosophy, ‘tao’ was a word ... and I am pretentious enough not to call this blog ‘The Way of D&D’ when I have a perfectly good foreign word to use instead. Nyah.

D&D is a philosophy, however, to me at least. It is not a game. It is not a past-time, or something I do because I am unable to do something else that is held to be ‘cool.’ Nor is it something I do whimsically. I am not sure that I ever, from the first time I played, ever viewed this game in any way except dead seriously. To play this game is a way of making my mind think, upon established lines and within established boundaries. It is not something I do according to the dictates of others. It does not draw from me a deep and abiding respect for those who may have created the game, and it does not compel me to seek the respect of others. It is not those who play this game, it is the game itself. I would work on the game if there were no players. I would create tables if there were no dice to roll upon them.

As crazy as that might sound, I know there are others out there who understand me perfectly.

Philosophy is generally understood to be a manner by which one attempts to understand the universe - but I must argue that this is a position taken of philosophy only by a very small percentage of those people for who the subject matter is a living, breathing thing. That is because, having hit upon a particular understanding, it is human nature to run with it. To create a lifestyle, and to act in accordance with what is believed to be understood. A stoic does not spend his waking hours studying the values of stoicism against the values of other philosophies. No. One is a stoic, one acts as a stoic, one thinks as a stoic and one views the world as a stoic. There will likely be the pursuit of greater knowledge, knowledge that might cause one to put aside their stoicism and move on ... but in the meantime, the view of the world will be settled.

To state that again: I do not spend my waking hours considering the values of D&D against other pursuits; I am aware of other pursuits; in many cases, I give my time to those things also. But in many ways the principles of D&D and the principles of those other pursuits coincide. I am creating; I am ordering my world; I am sacrificing my time to make a better world; I am displaying the effort for the benefit of others in the way of performance; and I am taking the pleasure of that performance to myself, being made to feel complete by it. This is the same process I undergo when I am writing, when I am public speaking, when I am debating and yes, when I am participating in sex. I perform, and I submit to the performance of others. It is all part of the same continuity.

For those of you who might be reading this, wondering if I intended at all to write about the history of philosophy, or its application into the processes of the game itself, do not be alarmed. I have not finished yet.

If the gentle reader were to invent a culture of ‘D&D players’ to be placed imaginatively in a valley or an enclosed plateau, it would help very little to describe their number, or their facial features, or the color of their hair; it would be difficult to get the sense of how this culture behaved from descriptions of their history, or the art they enjoyed, or the common texts that they read. What would make the difference would be a description of how the interacted with each other: consciously gathering together in furtive groups, in which there was often much emotional unrestraint; violence stemming from arguments over the correct way to behave when in said little groups; and distrust of strangers or those who did not understand the purpose of said little groups. Few physical activities, none of which would be organized, and a dependence on some other peoples to provide this little culture with food and drink - which they would not cultivate themselves. Highly intellectual - but also highly dismissive of the ways of the world outside of their valley ... certainly a terrific hatred for particular varieties of social behaviour. We are describing here a necessarily isolated society, with rigorous social behaviour and yet a pervasive anarchy in terms of organization - and a dependent society, which could not expand easily, without falling prey to its own weakness. How might a party interact with such a culture?

Philosophy has been the impetus for the creation of cultures and micro-cultures (such as that described above), some of which have existed within the framework of traditional religions (the Jesuits, the Mennonites or the cabalists), and some completely outside of religion. In eastern culture, philosophy displaced almost entirely the influence of the polytheistic religions of China and elsewhere. Buddhism, which is far more a philosophy than a religion, swept like a fire through northern India and China a millennia before the differing philosophy of Islam would rewrite the Christian religion - the latter an example of religious philosophy at work.

This is the technological revolution represented by philosophy - the possibility to reshape a given culture in order to better fit the practices of its people to themselves or to their environment. Stoicism was a natural result of the increase in complex social systems; science the natural result of the increase in knowledge; and magic ... well, magic would be the natural result of the availability of power, would it not?

As you scan through the cultures of your world, as you have chosen them, reflect upon how an agricultural society would need to suit its outlook to its dependence upon the weather and upon water. Or how a hunting society would suit its outlook to its dependence on the moon (or moons) at night, and upon the difficulty in hunting whatever animals you’ve created for them to hunt. If mastodons, how does the massive supply of food change their habits, or their number? How would an isolated agricultural society perceive the arrival of strangers, as opposed to a hunting society. A hindrance, or a help? A drain upon their existing food, or the promise of more food? How are such conditions a reflection of how the society looks upon themselves ... charitably or heartlessly ... and how well is the reader, as DM, able to fully comprehend philosophies of life other than his own? It is that comprehension of other philosophies that makes for the best DM.

I say that I live for the game, but part of that is knowing that there are many cultures who do not - and they, too, must be represented in my game. Merchants must despise those who try to cut into their income; soldiers become superior and annoyed by the petty needs of citizens; musicians grow to love company that encourages them to play, while eschewing those who throw taunts; thieves want the easy pickings that come from corrupt societies; clerics want the easy donations that come from frightened and obedient societies; monks seek solitude and contemplation; assassins depend on chaos and distraction; where a society is on the ascendant, those who make havoc are persecuted violently; where a society is on the descendant, those who preach piety or tolerance are mocked and humiliated. There are hundreds of kinds of accepted, ‘normal’ behaviours, to be found in hundreds of social systems. Each philosophy for living in that system seems, to the people who inhabit the system, just and correct. The party is challenged when its perceptions of right and wrong falls opposite to that of the society they find themselves a part of.

This began with my discussing my five hours of fruitless problem solving. Well my life has been in large part the essaying of fruitless efforts - because I’m never sure when fruitless may become fruitful. None of the suggested perspective above will come easy ... because we are, as beings, locked into our philosophy. We are comfortable there because that is what we have found that works for us. Stepping out of that comfort, and challenging ourselves to create a world that is not like ourselves - that is bloody hard. Much harder than doing math for five hours. The sort of hard that makes your players stare blankly at you as you try to outline this mythical perception of the universe your NPCs have, like you’re a moron for proposing such a thing.

But ignore the look. Forget what the players think of your ideas. They are your ideas, and they deserve to be coddled along ... all the more so because they were NOT your ideas three days ago. And you are unfamiliar with them. And you’re not sure yet how to put them in the mouths of NPCs. No worries. This is the game. It forces you to learn new things, and to be things you never were before, and it forces you to do it in front of others.

I love this game.

Orphan's Plot Trinket

"Cubic Zirconium Corollary": The aforementioned mysterious girl will be wearing a pendant that will ultimately prove to be the key to either saving the world or destroying it.

How old is this?  Old.  When Plautus was writing Three's Company plays in the third century BCE, this was old.  (Seriously.  Three's Company.  Go look it up.)  And as it was good enough for a host of brilliant writers (including Victor Hugo or Somerset Maugham), I shouldn't go too far in dissing it here.  The plot device is just too damn useful ... and frankly, I wouldn't be above it myself.

I don't have any fault that a pendant would ultimately, somehow, make the difference in the adventure - but does it have to be the only exceptional bauble mentioned in the entire campaign?  Yes, this is a gem, and this is a necklace, and this is a pendant that is made of a substance you have never seen, with a weird and deeply compelling glow, that apparently serves no special purpose whatsoever.

Oh come on.  We're not idiots.

If you will use this device (and I encourage its use), please try to remember that repeating the presence of the item over and over tends to destroy the 'surprise' element that is inherent in the device's inclusion.  We don't need to be told every time the girl is mentioned that she is also wearing the pendant; it doesn't have to glow; it doesn't have to have any special characteristics at all.  In fact, don't even mention the thing, at least not until Act III, when it should be accidently discovered and given some purpose that actually closes the player's mind on the subject.

NOT, I might add, having it said that "Oh, this thing?  I don't know where it came from, or what it's for ... but I've had it since birth ..."

Why not just hang a neon sign around the girl's neck?  Try instead, "It's a piece off my mother's ring - pretty, isn't it?"  Say it with a really dumb voice and you might get that past the players.  Even, "I bought it three months ago for two gold pieces - the vendor said it wasn't real."  In other words, make the presence of the thing believable.  You are not, after all, Charles Dickens.

Here's another thought.  Make it a red herring.  Make the damn thing actually have no value whatsoever.  Then you can pump it up to your heart's delight, and laugh fit to kill watching the party trying to insert the thing into every crack and crevice from the top of the dungeon to the bottom.  Until finally they show it to the big bad at the end, who takes it and says, "This?  They sell these six for a copper in Xjjaytt!" before unconcernedly tossing it aside.

Sometimes there's no trouble with the cliche.  It's all in how it's played.