I had never intended to wait two weeks before speaking about the poll, though I think I'll leave it up until it's done. Probably there won't be much movement on it after today. I think its funny that there are more people who would be willing to answer a questionaire in order to play than there are actually people interested in playing. A strict sociologist would have set up a number of questions, so I have no one to blame but myself. At the same time the poll answers some questions I've been curious about the last couple of months.
There were a number of problems with the last online campaign, which time and distance have helped me sort out in my head. I'll talk about them below:
1) Pace. The campaign moved very slowly. A single small event could take three to five days, while anything that was bigger in scope would take a month to play out. This was especially poor when nothing really was happening, such as when the party was travelling from place to place. Parties in my experience have a tendency to treat travel in the game as a sort of 'time out,' allowing for random encounters to get in the way and provide a little interest, but not particularly enjoying the whole "go here see this" kind of gaming. Online, this tended to sink into a state of great dullness, with a great deal of work for me as I described this thing, then the next thing, then the thing after that, without much value in it.
2) Missed Opportunities. As a tactic I like to provide a lot of description of things in order to make them seem more real, but if I press hard on this it can slow even an offline game down. I notice that my style of gaming requires players who can recognize clues in the description and act upon them. Such as, if I mention a cliff overlooking the town, it is an opportunity for exploring. If I mention an extended dockside, there are opportunities for smuggling. If the party runs into four of the king's soldiers in a casual situation, at an inn, say, it is an opportunity for doing them some kind of favor in exchange for access. But if the party only sees a cliff, a dockside or four soldiers, and never makes any connection of how they can be turned to the benefit, nothing happens. If players sit on the edge of the box and just look at the sand, or swirl the dry surface with their feet, nothing happens. A player has to dig into the soft, moist sand underneath ... and this often didn't happen in the online campaign.
3) Exhaustion. Between (1) and (2) I felt exhausted before the end of the campaign. I was tired of writing exposition, and I felt like I was going to have to plunk monsters right in front of the party to get others engaged. Problem was, even when I did this, the low level parties would simply move away to avoid getting killed. Which brings us to -
4) Lack of Engagement. I'm not clear why, but it seems too much emphasis was put on survival at first level than upon achievement. I am not opposed to caution, or care, but as I wrote at the time, there seemed to be a great deal of sheer cowardice on the part of many of the players in the campaign. They tended to see their imminent death in every potential action, as though I would simply step up and kill them without warning, on the slightest, silliest provocation.
This may have been the ominous quality I have as DM of presenting things in their harshest, least trustworthy appearance. If I describe a rock face, I'm almost certain to pick words that would suggest that rock face is upon the verge of collapsing any moment. By nature I tend to describe nature in its coldest possible form, since I firmly believe that beauty in nature is a deception we practice in order to hide all the death going on there. Right now, as the leaves begin to turn, people will get into their cars and drive hither and yon about the country to view the spectacular colors death yields ... and very few will remark or even consider it is due to a mass withering. For D&D, I like describing the world as a deadly place. Unfortunately, for the online campaign this seemed to convince people to treat their characters as though they themselves were about to be killed by said rock face.
While it would be interesting to play an online game that included my having Russian hitmen on a payroll who would show up at your house and off you permanently if your online character died, I haven't quite obtained the necessary diplomatic immunity this would entail. So I am, and was at the time, baffled by the degree of irrational cowardice I saw many of the players embrace rather than take a real risk with their character. Playing is a proactive sport.
5) Timing. Without question the more successful campaign was very much aided by the main players having access to their computers between noon and 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The campaign tended to die after 6 p.m., and players who could not get access to their computers except in the evening were hard put to stay 'in the beat' of the campaign's activity. To do so would have required a very rigorous effort to write their actions every day at a set time (say 8 p.m.) so they could be predicted ... but when this wasn't done it proved very inconvenient. For myself, I found that by 9 or 10 p.m. EST I no longer had any interest in the campaign at all that day, and did not want to sit down and write out more description or answers to questions that wouldn't have bothered me to do so earlier in the morning. When I knew that no answer would be immediately forthcoming - as it often was with events during the day, when I could answer a question and expect to get a response within 30 minutes - I just didn't care. And if I left the answer to the next morning, then I wouldn't hear from the evening person until 9 or 10 that night, if at all that day. This was absolutely brutal in the Greek campaign, and was certainly the reason for its death.
6) Lack of Purpose. I made the error at the beginning of all the campaigns in thinking that if I offered the new players an opportunity to pick their point of origin in my world, they would pick places they knew very well, and for which they would have specific goals in mind. For example, if I were asked what part of my existing world I would like to start in, I think I would ask to begin in Dalmatia, on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea. I would venture into the mountains there to kill or slaughter whatever beasts presented themselves, and probably the Turkish overlords as well, in order to raise the capital to purchase a ship in Ragusa; I would take steps to be recognized by Ragusa, Venice or Genoa as a trader, with merchant access to one of those cities, and then turn pirate to plunder whatever Ottoman shipping I could. I'd choose an island in Greece as a haven, slowly raising capital until I had enough to purchase a immense collection of books, which I would steadily have moved to Oslo or Sweden, with the intent to begin a great university there and to become a player in the government there. Why those places? I don't know, exactly. It just sounds like fun.
I wouldn't expect anyone to live out my fantasies. But I presumed that if a player wanted to start in any particular place, they would know the place well and begin moving towards improving their lot in life with their knowledge. This did not prove to be the case. Players tended to remain very passive, waiting for something to happen, which I then created in order to showcase some of my running styles. I showed how first levels could be pulled into a huge magical conflagration without killing them; I presented enemies which were not insurmountable foes; I created a quest that did not require entering a dungeon and getting a bauble; I set up factions and put the players in the middle. Most of the time this was a dismal failure.
Of course I blame myself, but only because I yielded and attempted to set up circumstances in which the players would play. I should have let them sit there at the Inn for months. The more I pampered them, the more they failed to create their own scenarios or move after their own dreams. It is hard not to railroad when the players sit and wait for you to build the tracks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These, then, where the worst problems. Personality conflicts occurred, but these are inevitable. The principle missing element was ambition. Offline, this can be accepted for awhile, and handled more easily. Online, with the game experiencing a necessary isolation, it was absolutely intolerable. Eventually it destroyed my interest in playing.
I wouldn't be interested in playing with a group of people who wanted to try things for a few weeks and then quit. The problem here IS the slowness of the campaign. It takes six weeks to accomplish which might be covered in one three hour session. If you see yourself playing four 6-hour sessions to get a good idea of what a person's world is, that's a year online.
Now, who wants to change their mind?
Friday, September 2, 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Market Research First
I'm just running a small poll to see if results should indicate my seriously thinking about this. Found on the side bar, if the gentle reader can spare the time.
Please view Tao's Campaign if you need information on what I've done before.
Please view Tao's Campaign if you need information on what I've done before.
Replaceable Parts
My grandfather was born in the Pripet Marshes, the same marshes that split the Nazi invading forces in Operation Barbarossa, in 1886, in the south part of Belarus, or Byelorus as it was spelled then. Byelo is Russian for "white," and so he came from what is called White Russia, the literal translation of the country's name. He was only two generations before me, but his being quite old when my father was born (50) has meant that in the three generations between him and I there have been 125 years. That reaches back quite a ways.
My grandfather came to Canada at the age of 15, and thence dwelt in the wilds that then comprised the lands north of Toronto, that which is now the fringes of Algonquin park. What he did there is not well known to me; I have it on good authority that he did a lot of hunting right up to the point where Canada entered the First World War against the Kaiser. His hunting had given him a mastery, and he spent four years in the trenches of Europe as a sniper, one of those fellows who sits and waits and waits and sits until someone lifts his head up a little too high ...
After the war he drifted around at odd jobs, finally meeting my grandmother sometime in the late 1920s. They had three children ... my two aunts and my father, who was born in 1936. Not long after my father was born, my grandfather and my grandmother, who had never seen eye to eye on anything, separated. They were never divorced, but to the best of my knowledge they did not see each other again. But my father would visit my grandfather in the summers, and from him learned all about hunting and fishing, and the ways of the wilderness, and in this way some of that information was passed down to me.
As the decades passed, my grandfather became more and more reclusive, climbing higher and higher into the Canadian Rockies. Much of the land in Canada - more so at that time - is available for squatting, and that's what my grandfather became by the time I knew him. He lived in a little shack about the size of an office cubicle, 5,500 ft. above sea level, which had an iron stove he had hauled up himself and a bed. He grew fruit on trees he had planted. He fished in a kayak he had made himself. Once a year he would climb down into town where he would buy materials - not food - for his hobbies, and deliver his mail. He wrote articles about birds that were published in national magazines. He painted pictures which were sometimes locally shown, though my grandfather was never present. Beyond paper, canvas and some pigments for his oils, virtually everything he used in his daily activities he made himself, including the fishing line he used.
I mention all this because I believe it offers an insight that is nearly always lacking in the mind's eye of the players of D&D. Life was certainly hard. But more importantly, life was something that was managed almost universally by people who made for themselves everything that was needed. They fashioned their own clothes, tanned and cut their own leather, made their own wooden tools and even forged their own metal. An ordinary cotter could not hope to buy even a hammer head that was already made, but he could buy pieces that could be heated with charcoal he had made himself and beaten with stones until it adopted a useable shape. Perhaps not the clean, perfect edge of a manufactured craftsman, but serviceable in a community where there were no craftsman. And once that tool was made, it would cared for and passed from generation to generation, for two hundred years if need be, to be ultimately used by every family of the village.
We are such instruments of massive consumption that we can hardly reckon with an outlook like this. If the axle on a character's wagon breaks along a stretch of country road, naturally the character thinks to head for the next town, pay out a few coins and return with the replacement axle. It is viewed in exactly modern terms, only the missing gasoline that runs your car is replaced with the word axle and all goes on as before.
Only that was impossible. Without having the cart present, no person anywhere could make an axle to fit the cart. Even with the cart present, the carter can't simply fit the right axle in place and have you on your way. He would have to make a tailored axle to fit your tailored cart, and that would take him quite a lot of time. And no, he would not consent to come along with you to fix your cart twenty miles away.
Then what? Abandon the cart? We are so lock-stepped into the consumerist framework of mind that it doesn't occur to us that the characters would never have left the cart in the first place. They would never have thought, "get a new axle." They'd have made one. Then and there, with their own hands. It would not have occurred to them that they were unable to make an axle on their own ... not because they were naturally more proficient in that day and age, and more knowledgeable about such things, but because they had no template of a perfectly working axle in their minds to stop them from putting together an axle that would be - by our standards - a piece of shit.
When I say my grandfather made his own kayak, what immediately leaps to one's mind is a marvelously fashioned instrument lovingly crafted by my grandfather's hand. This conception is aided by museums, which present most every object from the past as a work of art, often clouding the issue by 'restoring' them to their past glory ... when in fact we have no certainty about what that glory might have been. And anything that wasn't a work of art didn't survive from the age of its construction, because over time it ruined with use. My grandfather's kayak was awful! It leaked ... just enough to make it uncomfortable for you and me, sitting in a cold lake, with our sensibilities, but not enough to sink it. My grandfather did not care. He could not make a better kayak with his abilities, and that didn't matter. Even into his 80s he was tough as nails, and if it got a little watery in the bottom while he sat and fished for four hours, what of it?
You and I, gentle reader, would attempt to make an axle for our cart only by absolute necessity ... and if we did make one that worked, we'd hate it with every turn as it bumped and ground along, with our minds full of what a perfect axle would feel like. This was not the conception of those living before the age of replaceable manufactured parts. They did not care. They had no 'perfect' axle to compare it with. This was the best axle they themselves could make, and if it jostled and shook, what of it?
It is not only that replaceable parts weren't available, it is also that the consumerist world they made possible had not yet come into existence. People often ask me about certain items on my equipment list, like clothes or tools, being irrationally expensive ... but in fact most people did not buy goods from town. Except that my grandfather could not make his own linen in the BC mountains, which he needed for paint canvas, or that he could not make his own paper for writing, he would have had little - if any - reason for coming down to civilization. His medieval ancestor in the Pripet marshes would not have, for there were no magazines to print articles, and no galleries to display his work, and no mail to distribute it to others. Even as a mountain man his life bore the stamp of the consumerist society.
(yes, aware of the pun)
I have been running the game for more than thirty years, and every player still thinks of no other means of obtaining goods except to buy them. Very rarely, if pushed into unusual circumstances, a player will fabricate something, but how often will they in the middle of town. Does a bard with very little starting income, staring at the frightening costs for instruments, think of buying a simple blade and whittling a pipe to play? No. The cheapest instrument is chosen from what is there and the silver is spent. A fighter knows a club is the cheapest weapon, but does the fighter ask me if he can make his own wooden shield? Does a thief haunt the local blacksmith for bits of metal and twist his own lockpick? Does a paladin buy red paint and mark his own clothing? No. Because in our minds it would look awful. Crusaders in every film, even those where the participants are covered in feces, still wear clothes where the seams are straight and every fold is perfectly tailored. The armor never has an explicit dent or bend in it. The squeaking from the cart remains at a carefully selected decibel so as not to disturb the dialogue. The coconuts have been neatly cut by a band saw.
We are trained to think this is normal. It isn't. It is modern, but it is far past normal when viewed from the perspective of human history. There are no replaceable parts. There are no uniforms, because nothing is uniform. But it is something you will have a great deal of trouble getting out of your head.
I am betting you won't be able to.
My grandfather came to Canada at the age of 15, and thence dwelt in the wilds that then comprised the lands north of Toronto, that which is now the fringes of Algonquin park. What he did there is not well known to me; I have it on good authority that he did a lot of hunting right up to the point where Canada entered the First World War against the Kaiser. His hunting had given him a mastery, and he spent four years in the trenches of Europe as a sniper, one of those fellows who sits and waits and waits and sits until someone lifts his head up a little too high ...
After the war he drifted around at odd jobs, finally meeting my grandmother sometime in the late 1920s. They had three children ... my two aunts and my father, who was born in 1936. Not long after my father was born, my grandfather and my grandmother, who had never seen eye to eye on anything, separated. They were never divorced, but to the best of my knowledge they did not see each other again. But my father would visit my grandfather in the summers, and from him learned all about hunting and fishing, and the ways of the wilderness, and in this way some of that information was passed down to me.
As the decades passed, my grandfather became more and more reclusive, climbing higher and higher into the Canadian Rockies. Much of the land in Canada - more so at that time - is available for squatting, and that's what my grandfather became by the time I knew him. He lived in a little shack about the size of an office cubicle, 5,500 ft. above sea level, which had an iron stove he had hauled up himself and a bed. He grew fruit on trees he had planted. He fished in a kayak he had made himself. Once a year he would climb down into town where he would buy materials - not food - for his hobbies, and deliver his mail. He wrote articles about birds that were published in national magazines. He painted pictures which were sometimes locally shown, though my grandfather was never present. Beyond paper, canvas and some pigments for his oils, virtually everything he used in his daily activities he made himself, including the fishing line he used.
I mention all this because I believe it offers an insight that is nearly always lacking in the mind's eye of the players of D&D. Life was certainly hard. But more importantly, life was something that was managed almost universally by people who made for themselves everything that was needed. They fashioned their own clothes, tanned and cut their own leather, made their own wooden tools and even forged their own metal. An ordinary cotter could not hope to buy even a hammer head that was already made, but he could buy pieces that could be heated with charcoal he had made himself and beaten with stones until it adopted a useable shape. Perhaps not the clean, perfect edge of a manufactured craftsman, but serviceable in a community where there were no craftsman. And once that tool was made, it would cared for and passed from generation to generation, for two hundred years if need be, to be ultimately used by every family of the village.
We are such instruments of massive consumption that we can hardly reckon with an outlook like this. If the axle on a character's wagon breaks along a stretch of country road, naturally the character thinks to head for the next town, pay out a few coins and return with the replacement axle. It is viewed in exactly modern terms, only the missing gasoline that runs your car is replaced with the word axle and all goes on as before.
Only that was impossible. Without having the cart present, no person anywhere could make an axle to fit the cart. Even with the cart present, the carter can't simply fit the right axle in place and have you on your way. He would have to make a tailored axle to fit your tailored cart, and that would take him quite a lot of time. And no, he would not consent to come along with you to fix your cart twenty miles away.
Then what? Abandon the cart? We are so lock-stepped into the consumerist framework of mind that it doesn't occur to us that the characters would never have left the cart in the first place. They would never have thought, "get a new axle." They'd have made one. Then and there, with their own hands. It would not have occurred to them that they were unable to make an axle on their own ... not because they were naturally more proficient in that day and age, and more knowledgeable about such things, but because they had no template of a perfectly working axle in their minds to stop them from putting together an axle that would be - by our standards - a piece of shit.
When I say my grandfather made his own kayak, what immediately leaps to one's mind is a marvelously fashioned instrument lovingly crafted by my grandfather's hand. This conception is aided by museums, which present most every object from the past as a work of art, often clouding the issue by 'restoring' them to their past glory ... when in fact we have no certainty about what that glory might have been. And anything that wasn't a work of art didn't survive from the age of its construction, because over time it ruined with use. My grandfather's kayak was awful! It leaked ... just enough to make it uncomfortable for you and me, sitting in a cold lake, with our sensibilities, but not enough to sink it. My grandfather did not care. He could not make a better kayak with his abilities, and that didn't matter. Even into his 80s he was tough as nails, and if it got a little watery in the bottom while he sat and fished for four hours, what of it?
You and I, gentle reader, would attempt to make an axle for our cart only by absolute necessity ... and if we did make one that worked, we'd hate it with every turn as it bumped and ground along, with our minds full of what a perfect axle would feel like. This was not the conception of those living before the age of replaceable manufactured parts. They did not care. They had no 'perfect' axle to compare it with. This was the best axle they themselves could make, and if it jostled and shook, what of it?
It is not only that replaceable parts weren't available, it is also that the consumerist world they made possible had not yet come into existence. People often ask me about certain items on my equipment list, like clothes or tools, being irrationally expensive ... but in fact most people did not buy goods from town. Except that my grandfather could not make his own linen in the BC mountains, which he needed for paint canvas, or that he could not make his own paper for writing, he would have had little - if any - reason for coming down to civilization. His medieval ancestor in the Pripet marshes would not have, for there were no magazines to print articles, and no galleries to display his work, and no mail to distribute it to others. Even as a mountain man his life bore the stamp of the consumerist society.
(yes, aware of the pun)
I have been running the game for more than thirty years, and every player still thinks of no other means of obtaining goods except to buy them. Very rarely, if pushed into unusual circumstances, a player will fabricate something, but how often will they in the middle of town. Does a bard with very little starting income, staring at the frightening costs for instruments, think of buying a simple blade and whittling a pipe to play? No. The cheapest instrument is chosen from what is there and the silver is spent. A fighter knows a club is the cheapest weapon, but does the fighter ask me if he can make his own wooden shield? Does a thief haunt the local blacksmith for bits of metal and twist his own lockpick? Does a paladin buy red paint and mark his own clothing? No. Because in our minds it would look awful. Crusaders in every film, even those where the participants are covered in feces, still wear clothes where the seams are straight and every fold is perfectly tailored. The armor never has an explicit dent or bend in it. The squeaking from the cart remains at a carefully selected decibel so as not to disturb the dialogue. The coconuts have been neatly cut by a band saw.
We are trained to think this is normal. It isn't. It is modern, but it is far past normal when viewed from the perspective of human history. There are no replaceable parts. There are no uniforms, because nothing is uniform. But it is something you will have a great deal of trouble getting out of your head.
I am betting you won't be able to.
Nagging Questions
I do hope to write another post later today, but for the moment I wanted to address a negative response someone - can't remember who - gave me about the complete lack of need for my trading tables in the MMORG world. They weren't needed, went the response. They've been created already, and exist right now in online games like EVE.
I am not familiar with MMORGs. I've never played one. I don't have any interest in playing one. But I know that some of my gentle readers have, and I would like to have some questions answered.
1) Do online MMORGs which make use of economic frameworks, like EVE, have the value and price of materials in those frameworks affected by the distance the miners, farmers and acquisitors of raw material wealth are from depots where those goods are sold?
2) Is the value and price of manufactured things participants in the game want to buy affected by the distance they are in the game from the source of the raw materials needed for manufacture?
3) Is it, rather, that all materials and manufactures acquired or paid for in the game have one single static price, regardless of where that material is obtained, or where that material is manufactured?
If (3) is correct, then NO, no existing economic system in an MMORG has anything like the system I've built for D&D, which means I do have something to sell. If (3) is not correct, please identify the game and provide me with information on how I can play it. I may need to take my first step into that culture.
Thank you.
I am not familiar with MMORGs. I've never played one. I don't have any interest in playing one. But I know that some of my gentle readers have, and I would like to have some questions answered.
1) Do online MMORGs which make use of economic frameworks, like EVE, have the value and price of materials in those frameworks affected by the distance the miners, farmers and acquisitors of raw material wealth are from depots where those goods are sold?
2) Is the value and price of manufactured things participants in the game want to buy affected by the distance they are in the game from the source of the raw materials needed for manufacture?
3) Is it, rather, that all materials and manufactures acquired or paid for in the game have one single static price, regardless of where that material is obtained, or where that material is manufactured?
If (3) is correct, then NO, no existing economic system in an MMORG has anything like the system I've built for D&D, which means I do have something to sell. If (3) is not correct, please identify the game and provide me with information on how I can play it. I may need to take my first step into that culture.
Thank you.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Master Class
I have considered the possibility of Dungeon Mastering being taught as a fine arts course, and from that consideration has grown a picture in my head that I'd like to share. The scene, if you will, is similar to drama courses I once took. We have a large room with a black floor, made gray with the dust from people's shoes. There are benches arranged in tiers along one wall, where up to sixty persons might sit and watch the proceedings. The ceiling is 12 feet high, without any panels to soak up the sound, with an open framework where spotlights might be hung and pointed at a performance. Ducts, pipes and vents, along with the outer walls of the room, are painted black to give the illusion of greater space. There are no windows. In the middle of the floor is a large table, with five chairs arranged around it. One chair is isolated from the others. On this chair sits a 'master in training.' The other four chairs have 'players in training.' On successive days, the participants change roles in order to each experience the game from differing points of view, playing all possible character classes as well as adjudicating the game.
A group of ten other students sit on the benches awaiting their turn. In a 90-minute class, three groups will each participate for 30 minutes; the remaining time is spent watching, learning and not speaking.
Circling the table where the students participate is the professor, called the 'Director' to emphasize the performance aspect of the game. He holds a yardstick menacingly. He watches the students with the vicious patience of a bird of prey, descending upon their errors with the emotion that ... well, that I remember my acting coaches and performance directors having. In particular one Mr. Phil Edie, loathed, feared and - by some of us - greatly loved.
We worked very hard for him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Director: Again!
DM: You find yourselves in a small, quiet town on the edge of the Kingdom of Yarl. Beyond the fields of the town begins the area of wilderness known as the -
Director: Why have you put them there? (student begins to explain and is cut off) No! It is the worst sort of cliche! It shows no sign of thought whatsoever. You must awaken the players. You must invest them into the game from the beginning. If you do not give them something purposeful to do, they will drift from the game and despise you! Make them feel alive and they will reward you. Choose another setting and start again.
DM: (closing his eyes and taking a few breaths) The town is not quiet, it is large and busy and is right now experiencing the effects of a nearby volcano, which is dropping bombs of acid-infused rock among the citizens. The lava is beginning to flow through the streets ...
Director: What are you doing!? (Catches his breath, appears to be suffering from a heart attack) No, no, no, NO! You are railroading the party. You're giving them only one possible response ... they might as well not even be playing the game! Is that what you want? To make them puppets on your string? You must never, ever do this! They must be allowed to choose their own destiny, and that does not begin with the crisis as it is ongoing! Did they not have an opportunity to move and choose their lives before the actual eruption of the volcano? Not to speak of the simple truth that you have chosen an event that is hardly likely to happen to any person in the whole of their lives! This makes it precious, a worthy experience to be built up to, not to be exploited like a cheap magician's trick. You must not weaken your own presentation by grabbing for the climax at the beginning. These are players who have not yet met your world. There must be introductions. There must be formalities. Invest them slowly. Now, again!
DM: (clearly rattled) You meet each other together on a road. It is ... a crossroads. During the course of an evening you arrive one by one, deciding to rest there while it becomes dark ...
Director: Good. Continue.
DM: Getting to know one another.
Director: (turning to the benches) At this point a poor group of players will waste time with fruitless words about how this elf would not speak with this dwarf or how their character is a lone wolf or some other banter while it is quite clear that they will be together as a party because this is the game. I want it understood that this nonsense will not happen in this class. (hammers end of the ruler upon the floor) If you will learn anything it is that we are not mawkish children making poor jokes to emphasize our own importance! (looks back at the DM) Continue.
DM: You agree to set a watch through the night in pairs for safety, and since none of you have any animosity for the others -
Director: Be careful in dictating the characters of the players; they may take no direct action, but yet have animosity. Allow the players to decide their emotional states. Continue.
DM: Pardon me. The night passes without incident between you four ... (brightening as something is thought of) ... but one thing does happen. Throughout the night a small herd of cattle moves towards you.
Player 1: How many?
DM: There are nine that you can see.
Player 1: Nine is not much of a herd.
Director: Do not quibble. It wastes time. Continue.
DM: The cattle sleep much of the time but slowly gravitate towards the crossroads.
Player 2: We keep an eye on them.
DM: As the sun begins to rise, you can't help noticing the cattle have no one tending them.
Player 3: Where is this crossroads? What's the land like? Pastures and farmland?
DM: Neither. All four of you can testify to there being no nearby manor house, nor farm, nor known pasture in any of the four directions you've come.
Director: Excellent. Continue.
DM: The land is sort of a bottom land, with one road following the course of the small stream and the other cutting across the low valley. The ground off the road is a little soggy. The cattle's feet are sinking into it.
Player 1: So who do the cattle belong to?
DM: You don't know. They -
Director: Stop. You've said enough. Let the players ask questions. Do not give more information than is necessary.
(a long pause as the players look at each other without speaking, or being certain what to do)
Come then, put yourselves in the position. You are in a medieval setting, the cattle represent a measure of property, which at present appears to be unclaimed. What do you do?
Player 4: Steal them?
Director: Avoid assumptions. You are not certain at this time that they belong to anyone. You must think in the terms of someone in that situation. You would not say 'steal,' which is reserved for actively arresting the cows from a herder. You would say -
Player 4: Take them.
Director: Yes.
Player 2: Are they tame?
DM: Yes.
Director: No. This cannot be learned from looking at them. The DM should not answer questions of this nature. (to the player) You must ask a question which can be answered with your eyes, or take an action which gives information in some other way. (to the DM) You must not give information that they cannot know given the effort they have made thus far. (to all the players) What must you do to determine if the domestication of the cattle?
Player 1: Go towards them.
Director: Do not tell me, tell the DM!
Player 1: We go towards the cattle.
Director: NO! Do not decide the actions of the other players! Speak only in terms of what your character does. Nothing more. You cannot decide ahead of time what others will do. You may either ask them to go with you, or go alone. Continue.
Player 1: I go towards the cattle. What happens.
DM: The cattle remain peaceable. They seem tame.
Director: Very good. Continue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That's enough I think, to get across the idea. Carl, you may have something there. I could see this being an effective training in performance technique, both from the point of view of players and DM. A class like this would rankle me, but I can see how keeping at it would improve me ... if nothing else it would help cut down on the sloppiness of my delivery, which does tend to degrade if I'm not full of energy and crisp of mind.
I suppose some would find the occasional thing the Director attacked as something not deserving of attack. And I think that probably people wouldn't like him very much. I never attended a drama class that didn't have a few people who were there because they thought drama would be "fun." They failed to recognize that entertainment is a very hard, very unforgiving industry, evident in the acidity of reviews and the often outright condemnation by sitting audiences, particularly while the performance is going on. People who in their normal habit of living would argue that the greatest virtue is compassion have no compunction whatsoever about booing performers who have not put in the time and effort to achieve anything less than a brilliant performance, nor a writer who has made the mistake of being only mildly humourous.
Fun is Work. When there has been no work, it is not fun. D&D often gets away with it because the people sitting around the table are friends, and being friends we make our own fun. But then it is not the D&D, is it? So how can you claim to love the game if you will not suffer for it?
A group of ten other students sit on the benches awaiting their turn. In a 90-minute class, three groups will each participate for 30 minutes; the remaining time is spent watching, learning and not speaking.
Circling the table where the students participate is the professor, called the 'Director' to emphasize the performance aspect of the game. He holds a yardstick menacingly. He watches the students with the vicious patience of a bird of prey, descending upon their errors with the emotion that ... well, that I remember my acting coaches and performance directors having. In particular one Mr. Phil Edie, loathed, feared and - by some of us - greatly loved.
We worked very hard for him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Director: Again!
DM: You find yourselves in a small, quiet town on the edge of the Kingdom of Yarl. Beyond the fields of the town begins the area of wilderness known as the -
Director: Why have you put them there? (student begins to explain and is cut off) No! It is the worst sort of cliche! It shows no sign of thought whatsoever. You must awaken the players. You must invest them into the game from the beginning. If you do not give them something purposeful to do, they will drift from the game and despise you! Make them feel alive and they will reward you. Choose another setting and start again.
DM: (closing his eyes and taking a few breaths) The town is not quiet, it is large and busy and is right now experiencing the effects of a nearby volcano, which is dropping bombs of acid-infused rock among the citizens. The lava is beginning to flow through the streets ...
Director: What are you doing!? (Catches his breath, appears to be suffering from a heart attack) No, no, no, NO! You are railroading the party. You're giving them only one possible response ... they might as well not even be playing the game! Is that what you want? To make them puppets on your string? You must never, ever do this! They must be allowed to choose their own destiny, and that does not begin with the crisis as it is ongoing! Did they not have an opportunity to move and choose their lives before the actual eruption of the volcano? Not to speak of the simple truth that you have chosen an event that is hardly likely to happen to any person in the whole of their lives! This makes it precious, a worthy experience to be built up to, not to be exploited like a cheap magician's trick. You must not weaken your own presentation by grabbing for the climax at the beginning. These are players who have not yet met your world. There must be introductions. There must be formalities. Invest them slowly. Now, again!
DM: (clearly rattled) You meet each other together on a road. It is ... a crossroads. During the course of an evening you arrive one by one, deciding to rest there while it becomes dark ...
Director: Good. Continue.
DM: Getting to know one another.
Director: (turning to the benches) At this point a poor group of players will waste time with fruitless words about how this elf would not speak with this dwarf or how their character is a lone wolf or some other banter while it is quite clear that they will be together as a party because this is the game. I want it understood that this nonsense will not happen in this class. (hammers end of the ruler upon the floor) If you will learn anything it is that we are not mawkish children making poor jokes to emphasize our own importance! (looks back at the DM) Continue.
DM: You agree to set a watch through the night in pairs for safety, and since none of you have any animosity for the others -
Director: Be careful in dictating the characters of the players; they may take no direct action, but yet have animosity. Allow the players to decide their emotional states. Continue.
DM: Pardon me. The night passes without incident between you four ... (brightening as something is thought of) ... but one thing does happen. Throughout the night a small herd of cattle moves towards you.
Player 1: How many?
DM: There are nine that you can see.
Player 1: Nine is not much of a herd.
Director: Do not quibble. It wastes time. Continue.
DM: The cattle sleep much of the time but slowly gravitate towards the crossroads.
Player 2: We keep an eye on them.
DM: As the sun begins to rise, you can't help noticing the cattle have no one tending them.
Player 3: Where is this crossroads? What's the land like? Pastures and farmland?
DM: Neither. All four of you can testify to there being no nearby manor house, nor farm, nor known pasture in any of the four directions you've come.
Director: Excellent. Continue.
DM: The land is sort of a bottom land, with one road following the course of the small stream and the other cutting across the low valley. The ground off the road is a little soggy. The cattle's feet are sinking into it.
Player 1: So who do the cattle belong to?
DM: You don't know. They -
Director: Stop. You've said enough. Let the players ask questions. Do not give more information than is necessary.
(a long pause as the players look at each other without speaking, or being certain what to do)
Come then, put yourselves in the position. You are in a medieval setting, the cattle represent a measure of property, which at present appears to be unclaimed. What do you do?
Player 4: Steal them?
Director: Avoid assumptions. You are not certain at this time that they belong to anyone. You must think in the terms of someone in that situation. You would not say 'steal,' which is reserved for actively arresting the cows from a herder. You would say -
Player 4: Take them.
Director: Yes.
Player 2: Are they tame?
DM: Yes.
Director: No. This cannot be learned from looking at them. The DM should not answer questions of this nature. (to the player) You must ask a question which can be answered with your eyes, or take an action which gives information in some other way. (to the DM) You must not give information that they cannot know given the effort they have made thus far. (to all the players) What must you do to determine if the domestication of the cattle?
Player 1: Go towards them.
Director: Do not tell me, tell the DM!
Player 1: We go towards the cattle.
Director: NO! Do not decide the actions of the other players! Speak only in terms of what your character does. Nothing more. You cannot decide ahead of time what others will do. You may either ask them to go with you, or go alone. Continue.
Player 1: I go towards the cattle. What happens.
DM: The cattle remain peaceable. They seem tame.
Director: Very good. Continue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That's enough I think, to get across the idea. Carl, you may have something there. I could see this being an effective training in performance technique, both from the point of view of players and DM. A class like this would rankle me, but I can see how keeping at it would improve me ... if nothing else it would help cut down on the sloppiness of my delivery, which does tend to degrade if I'm not full of energy and crisp of mind.
I suppose some would find the occasional thing the Director attacked as something not deserving of attack. And I think that probably people wouldn't like him very much. I never attended a drama class that didn't have a few people who were there because they thought drama would be "fun." They failed to recognize that entertainment is a very hard, very unforgiving industry, evident in the acidity of reviews and the often outright condemnation by sitting audiences, particularly while the performance is going on. People who in their normal habit of living would argue that the greatest virtue is compassion have no compunction whatsoever about booing performers who have not put in the time and effort to achieve anything less than a brilliant performance, nor a writer who has made the mistake of being only mildly humourous.
Fun is Work. When there has been no work, it is not fun. D&D often gets away with it because the people sitting around the table are friends, and being friends we make our own fun. But then it is not the D&D, is it? So how can you claim to love the game if you will not suffer for it?
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Vizzini Before He Croaks
Vizzini: You only think I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
I am here to say, I do not have an answer to the question of how to be a better DM. I don't. I can give suggestions on what to do here or there, how to present a given adventure, how to present yourself as a DM, how to care a little more, how to control your party a little better, why you should take it seriously and what you should expect back from your players. But all this is fluff. It is filler. It is cosmetic, and while it will help with momentary problems in your sessions, it won't make you a better DM if you are not already acceptable. This is why I said in the previous post on this subject that I'm sitting in the back feeling the bile rise in my throat. I am watching the professor write notes on the blackboard, I am watching the other students diligently copying the notes, I am watching everyone feel they are growing and changing as people, and I am not seeing anything grow or change. I'm seeing 30 years of this bullshit - don't believe for a second that it has started with the internet - and after all this time I am hearing and seeing the same repeated statements all over again. Dance like this, sing like this, wave your arms like this and everything will be wonderful.
Bleh.
Allow me to leap to a something tawdry that some of us might know from experience. My first wife Michelle, who rests in peace, lived and breathed music. Her father had been a music teacher in a high school and Michelle had embraced the lifestyle as early as it is possible. Training in french horn and flute, she began in marching bands - something she adored - at the age of eleven, and continued touring and marching throughout her teens. Every year she marched in a little event around here we call the Calgary Stampede, which means that I was probably in the crowd one July when my wife of ten years later went marching by. Life is funny.
When she entered university it was to obtain a music degree, which she pursued with vigor, particularly theory and composition, while continuing to play in orchestras and in her own band. She was a punk rocker in leather mini-skirt and torn top lo about 1982, and I am sorry to say I did not know her in that period. Suffice to say she was eclectic, driven, highly intellectual and wonderfully confrontational. I have never enjoyed arguments as much as I did with her.
Part of her training and drive involved spending much of her existence incorporating Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians into her knowledge base. Let me put that better: she effectively reduced the books into a rich paste which she was then able to introveneously inject directly into her brain. If you have not opened these books, let me explain that this is not light reading. This is extraordinarily heavy material. It is the bible of music. And of course Michelle owned a copy.
I very much respected my wife's knowledge of music, and I learned a very great deal about it. But that isn't important right now. What is important is the story that goes along with all this knowledge.
It happened one Christmas several years after our marriage that Michelle received a gift from my parents: a coffee table book gotten from the local big box store about ... yes, embarrassingly, music. In nice big lettering with lots of pictures. Michelle was polite about it, but that book and my parent's stupidity became a topic of conversation very often in the years afterwards, for which I cannot blame her. They knew perfectly well the level of her investment and knowledge, but that didn't matter in the fluffy world of their middle-class sensibilities. "She likes music," they thought to themselves. "Let's get her a book about music."
What's really baffling about it is my father, who is an engineer and rockhound, acquired at a very early age Dana's manual of mineralogy, which also is not a light book. If I had bought my father for Christmas a Big Book of Rocks, he would not have been amused and I doubt very much he would have been polite at all. He should have known better.
My point to all this story is that there comes a time when a little bit of knowledge just isn't enough to make reading worthwhile. After thirty-two years of playing and reading and studying and building my world and securing players and changing to suit players and re-evaluating my goals and rifting through unbelievable tons of written crappy material about RPG's (which, I am not sorry to say, the authors of which did not impress their names upon my brain), I am hopelessly and disasterously past the Big Book of GM Challenge. It's crap from end to end not because it's wrong, but because it isn't new. It is flabbergastingly difficult to explain to people that while the Big Book is pretty and full of accurate little facts, it is full of accurate little facts I acquired some twenty years ago and which no longer hold the magnificent quality of original thought they did when I was very young. It is therefore useless to me. It gives me nothing. It is dead weight.
This was my point with the goldfish essay a couple of weeks ago. The massive horde of bloggers about are still wanking themselves with this material, even while claiming they've played the game for twenty years. Really? Twenty years and this isn't shit you know already? You know, it only takes 8 years to become enough of a doctor that you can split my chest and operate on my heart. And after 20 years, you're just now learning to stand up and use your whole body to conduct a session? Holy crap.
I am here, waiting for someone to tell me something I don't know. I'm patient. And while Vizzini laughs and tells me what's what and how much of a fool I am, I'm perfectly aware of the location of the iocane powder and that he's going to tip over any moment. Change is coming. When it does, I'll be happy about it.
But O gentle reader, who's content with the way things are ...
You're already dead.
I am here to say, I do not have an answer to the question of how to be a better DM. I don't. I can give suggestions on what to do here or there, how to present a given adventure, how to present yourself as a DM, how to care a little more, how to control your party a little better, why you should take it seriously and what you should expect back from your players. But all this is fluff. It is filler. It is cosmetic, and while it will help with momentary problems in your sessions, it won't make you a better DM if you are not already acceptable. This is why I said in the previous post on this subject that I'm sitting in the back feeling the bile rise in my throat. I am watching the professor write notes on the blackboard, I am watching the other students diligently copying the notes, I am watching everyone feel they are growing and changing as people, and I am not seeing anything grow or change. I'm seeing 30 years of this bullshit - don't believe for a second that it has started with the internet - and after all this time I am hearing and seeing the same repeated statements all over again. Dance like this, sing like this, wave your arms like this and everything will be wonderful.
Bleh.
Allow me to leap to a something tawdry that some of us might know from experience. My first wife Michelle, who rests in peace, lived and breathed music. Her father had been a music teacher in a high school and Michelle had embraced the lifestyle as early as it is possible. Training in french horn and flute, she began in marching bands - something she adored - at the age of eleven, and continued touring and marching throughout her teens. Every year she marched in a little event around here we call the Calgary Stampede, which means that I was probably in the crowd one July when my wife of ten years later went marching by. Life is funny.
When she entered university it was to obtain a music degree, which she pursued with vigor, particularly theory and composition, while continuing to play in orchestras and in her own band. She was a punk rocker in leather mini-skirt and torn top lo about 1982, and I am sorry to say I did not know her in that period. Suffice to say she was eclectic, driven, highly intellectual and wonderfully confrontational. I have never enjoyed arguments as much as I did with her.
Part of her training and drive involved spending much of her existence incorporating Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians into her knowledge base. Let me put that better: she effectively reduced the books into a rich paste which she was then able to introveneously inject directly into her brain. If you have not opened these books, let me explain that this is not light reading. This is extraordinarily heavy material. It is the bible of music. And of course Michelle owned a copy.
 |
| It will only take 15 or 20 years before you're thoroughly familiar with this. |
It happened one Christmas several years after our marriage that Michelle received a gift from my parents: a coffee table book gotten from the local big box store about ... yes, embarrassingly, music. In nice big lettering with lots of pictures. Michelle was polite about it, but that book and my parent's stupidity became a topic of conversation very often in the years afterwards, for which I cannot blame her. They knew perfectly well the level of her investment and knowledge, but that didn't matter in the fluffy world of their middle-class sensibilities. "She likes music," they thought to themselves. "Let's get her a book about music."
What's really baffling about it is my father, who is an engineer and rockhound, acquired at a very early age Dana's manual of mineralogy, which also is not a light book. If I had bought my father for Christmas a Big Book of Rocks, he would not have been amused and I doubt very much he would have been polite at all. He should have known better.
My point to all this story is that there comes a time when a little bit of knowledge just isn't enough to make reading worthwhile. After thirty-two years of playing and reading and studying and building my world and securing players and changing to suit players and re-evaluating my goals and rifting through unbelievable tons of written crappy material about RPG's (which, I am not sorry to say, the authors of which did not impress their names upon my brain), I am hopelessly and disasterously past the Big Book of GM Challenge. It's crap from end to end not because it's wrong, but because it isn't new. It is flabbergastingly difficult to explain to people that while the Big Book is pretty and full of accurate little facts, it is full of accurate little facts I acquired some twenty years ago and which no longer hold the magnificent quality of original thought they did when I was very young. It is therefore useless to me. It gives me nothing. It is dead weight.
This was my point with the goldfish essay a couple of weeks ago. The massive horde of bloggers about are still wanking themselves with this material, even while claiming they've played the game for twenty years. Really? Twenty years and this isn't shit you know already? You know, it only takes 8 years to become enough of a doctor that you can split my chest and operate on my heart. And after 20 years, you're just now learning to stand up and use your whole body to conduct a session? Holy crap.
I am here, waiting for someone to tell me something I don't know. I'm patient. And while Vizzini laughs and tells me what's what and how much of a fool I am, I'm perfectly aware of the location of the iocane powder and that he's going to tip over any moment. Change is coming. When it does, I'll be happy about it.
But O gentle reader, who's content with the way things are ...
You're already dead.
Intermission
Vizzini: I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
Roberts: You're just stalling now.
To all the poor, sad, disgruntled, unsatisfied, ignored people who have taken the time to comment on this blog and who have not seen their genius presented. You have an alternative. You may take your grievances regarding what I have not published, and therefore have not acknowledged, here. In this magical place, you can whine, piss and moan to your heart's delight, and you shall be bouyed up by your fellow complaintants as a good and steadfast intellect of the highest degree. There, every concocted truth about the motivations and character of the author of this blog shall be accepted with the sincerest belief, as can only be known about a person who has never been met. I encourage your participation there.
I don't want you here. That's a terrible sentiment, I know, to have about my fellow human, but it is true. Last week I made a series of propositions that led to an enlightening, enjoyable discourse between persons who felt inclined to write long, long posts presenting their points of view. It was refreshingly lacking in bullshit. This is because the bullshit was removed by me. I am in love with moderated comments, knowing now that it doesn't seem to stop the SMART people from commenting here. I also know now that the dialogue doesn't get sidetracked by attempts to politically 'spin' the topic, or degrade into semantic nonsense, or philosophical sophistry. How wonderful that is.
So take a shuffle off to Buffalo. Take the A-train. Go anywhere else. Please. Because no, there's no soapbox for you here.
Roberts: You're just stalling now.
To all the poor, sad, disgruntled, unsatisfied, ignored people who have taken the time to comment on this blog and who have not seen their genius presented. You have an alternative. You may take your grievances regarding what I have not published, and therefore have not acknowledged, here. In this magical place, you can whine, piss and moan to your heart's delight, and you shall be bouyed up by your fellow complaintants as a good and steadfast intellect of the highest degree. There, every concocted truth about the motivations and character of the author of this blog shall be accepted with the sincerest belief, as can only be known about a person who has never been met. I encourage your participation there.
I don't want you here. That's a terrible sentiment, I know, to have about my fellow human, but it is true. Last week I made a series of propositions that led to an enlightening, enjoyable discourse between persons who felt inclined to write long, long posts presenting their points of view. It was refreshingly lacking in bullshit. This is because the bullshit was removed by me. I am in love with moderated comments, knowing now that it doesn't seem to stop the SMART people from commenting here. I also know now that the dialogue doesn't get sidetracked by attempts to politically 'spin' the topic, or degrade into semantic nonsense, or philosophical sophistry. How wonderful that is.
So take a shuffle off to Buffalo. Take the A-train. Go anywhere else. Please. Because no, there's no soapbox for you here.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Well Water
There comes a point in making a stand when a writer realizes there is little left to say ... but this is not the end of writing. Political pundits know that if their theme is to be adopted, that theme must be pounded on the rock until it is soft and pallatable for ordinary minds. People shall accept free trade as a doctrine, and daily I shall write articles which presents the matter of free trade from positive direction after positive direction. People who do not know what free trade is shall believe me because they know me, and they shall willingly speak my doctrine to others who know them. Go to that well and draw, my dear friends. Draw and draw, for it takes a lot of well water to wash a brain.
This last week I have watched the buckets come up and I have read much praise for water's taste. We have the written word on how to be a better GM, and the critics are in favor. This shall surely hail a change in game playing across the land, for the true knowledge on how to better run your games is but a mouse click away. There never need be any lack of a great GM ever again.
Or it may be a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
When hair conditioner was first advanced on the market back in the 1950s, the marketing department discovered that women didn't believe the product worked because it was far too simple; women were used to the trials and tribulations of hair salons. It was necessary to create a ruse, and women were told that the product needed to remain in their hair for 30 minutes to get the full effect. The lie worked. Women everywhere sat with their hair wrapped, moisture dripping uncomfortably down the backs of their necks, to give enough time for the product's effect - even though that effect in reality took only a minute. People will believe anything if it is presented as rational.
Will reading about how to be a better DM actually make you a better DM? No, probably not. Will it make you believe you are a better DM? Almost certainly.
For most good folks, this is enough. We all live in a cloud of dubious certainty, and belief is a comfortable blanket we can pull around ourselves and feel snuggly and warm. Belief can carry you through the darkest times; it can reshape and revitalize misery; it can justify the continued slavery to a job that has brought you nothing for twenty years; it can work wonders with love; it gives solace to the dying.
Reality can offer very little in kind. It will not wrap you in a blanket, it will wrap you in barbed wire. It will not wake you up in the morning and get you to work. It will not give you a good sex life. It is virtually impossible to define and it is in constant dispute due to its flagrant disregard for belief. Becoming a better DM in reality is a very hard thing, taking years and sweating effort, and is much harder than believing you're a better DM, which can be accomplished by reading a few hundred words and saying that its true.
The only snag is that other people are rarely prepared to buy into your belief strategy. If you sit down at your gaming table with the statement, "I am a better DM today!" You will more likely be met with doubt and derision than with backslapping and approval. Selling your belief to other people pulls with it a full bucket that feels like the work you associate with reality. "Oh yeah?" they ask. "Show us." And in that demand is implied the insistence that some kind of real change is demonstration. Call it, I don't know, 'proof.'
You may have gleaned a gimmick or two from the recent compilation of belief strategies, and you may apply it to your upcoming or recent session, and it may ge a cry of approval that may very well seem like proof. Gimmicks have a shelf life, however; and by the next running that shelf life may have run out. Three or four runnings down the road, your gimmicks will all be gone and unless there was real change, you will have gone back to running the same dry campaigns you ran prior to your 'great improvement' as a DM. That's all right, however ... you'll believe, and your players will believe, that you're pretty snappy now. That one terrific session you ran will echo in their heads for months, and will carry you through a lot of dry times. And no doubt that'll be good for your ego.
All this said ... the question of how to make you a better DM in reality, that I can't answer. Carl, who regularly comments on this blog, often calls for an answer to that. But in all the time that's passed since I began playing, I haven't figured out yet what makes me a good - or a bad - DM.
Let's conjecture a university course in the subject, which I would have probably attended if it had been on the curriculum. It would probably be slotted into the social sciences; I feel belongs in the humanities department, but that isn't really important. As long as it's not 'Business.' I can imagine myself in the class with forty or fifty others, half of them with at least some experience of the game, a quarter thinking that "dragons" meant a survey course on mythology and a quarter there just to get their credit requirements - computer programmers, probably, or jocks told by their chums that D&D meant "Ds for Dummies."
The prof comes into the room, writes his name on the blackboard - Mr. Chundley - and goes into his introduction. There will be a midterm and a final and there will be a 2,500 word essay on the social relevance of D&D. Each will count for one third of the total grade. No, there will be no actual playing of the game during the course, but we are "encouraged" to take part in as many games as possible in order to get a full sense of the game. The jocks groan, the game players nod enthusiastically, the mythologists check their schedule to see how fast they can dump this course for something else ... and I sit in the back and feel my bile rise in my throat.
Naturally, if we're dealing with what is substantially a complicated context-oriented performance art, the last thing we would want to do is have anyone actually perform. That would involve standing to the side and criticizing people as they ran the game. Hands up, those of you who would care to learn to be a better DM by running the game in an auditorium full of well-meaning critics who were encouraged to shout at you during your presentation. Mind you, I said "well-meaning" - not trolls anxious to put you off your game, but persons who have legitimate, well-founded oppositions to what you're trying to do.
Cue laughter. What in this game represents a "well-founded opposition?" Anyone?
We're all old hands at the blogosphere, the sniping, the derision, the pompous superiority, the dismissive carping and so on ... most of it to be found right here in this post. What's missing here is the slobbering praise, the wanking approval and the excited presentation of the very ordinary.
Oops ... that was more dismissive carping, wasn't it? Sorry. It's a hard habit to break.
Call it what you will, the last thing we have represented in the D&D 'field' is a well-founded anything. D&D is, for those following around the blogosphere like puppies, a survey course, taught without play and taught be people who think "social relevance" is a measureable quality in the superiority of the game and its participants. You can't teach something if there's nothing standardized enough to be taught. All we really have is what people believe, and you don't teach beliefs.
You sell them.
This last week I have watched the buckets come up and I have read much praise for water's taste. We have the written word on how to be a better GM, and the critics are in favor. This shall surely hail a change in game playing across the land, for the true knowledge on how to better run your games is but a mouse click away. There never need be any lack of a great GM ever again.
Or it may be a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
When hair conditioner was first advanced on the market back in the 1950s, the marketing department discovered that women didn't believe the product worked because it was far too simple; women were used to the trials and tribulations of hair salons. It was necessary to create a ruse, and women were told that the product needed to remain in their hair for 30 minutes to get the full effect. The lie worked. Women everywhere sat with their hair wrapped, moisture dripping uncomfortably down the backs of their necks, to give enough time for the product's effect - even though that effect in reality took only a minute. People will believe anything if it is presented as rational.
Will reading about how to be a better DM actually make you a better DM? No, probably not. Will it make you believe you are a better DM? Almost certainly.
For most good folks, this is enough. We all live in a cloud of dubious certainty, and belief is a comfortable blanket we can pull around ourselves and feel snuggly and warm. Belief can carry you through the darkest times; it can reshape and revitalize misery; it can justify the continued slavery to a job that has brought you nothing for twenty years; it can work wonders with love; it gives solace to the dying.
Reality can offer very little in kind. It will not wrap you in a blanket, it will wrap you in barbed wire. It will not wake you up in the morning and get you to work. It will not give you a good sex life. It is virtually impossible to define and it is in constant dispute due to its flagrant disregard for belief. Becoming a better DM in reality is a very hard thing, taking years and sweating effort, and is much harder than believing you're a better DM, which can be accomplished by reading a few hundred words and saying that its true.
The only snag is that other people are rarely prepared to buy into your belief strategy. If you sit down at your gaming table with the statement, "I am a better DM today!" You will more likely be met with doubt and derision than with backslapping and approval. Selling your belief to other people pulls with it a full bucket that feels like the work you associate with reality. "Oh yeah?" they ask. "Show us." And in that demand is implied the insistence that some kind of real change is demonstration. Call it, I don't know, 'proof.'
You may have gleaned a gimmick or two from the recent compilation of belief strategies, and you may apply it to your upcoming or recent session, and it may ge a cry of approval that may very well seem like proof. Gimmicks have a shelf life, however; and by the next running that shelf life may have run out. Three or four runnings down the road, your gimmicks will all be gone and unless there was real change, you will have gone back to running the same dry campaigns you ran prior to your 'great improvement' as a DM. That's all right, however ... you'll believe, and your players will believe, that you're pretty snappy now. That one terrific session you ran will echo in their heads for months, and will carry you through a lot of dry times. And no doubt that'll be good for your ego.
All this said ... the question of how to make you a better DM in reality, that I can't answer. Carl, who regularly comments on this blog, often calls for an answer to that. But in all the time that's passed since I began playing, I haven't figured out yet what makes me a good - or a bad - DM.
Let's conjecture a university course in the subject, which I would have probably attended if it had been on the curriculum. It would probably be slotted into the social sciences; I feel belongs in the humanities department, but that isn't really important. As long as it's not 'Business.' I can imagine myself in the class with forty or fifty others, half of them with at least some experience of the game, a quarter thinking that "dragons" meant a survey course on mythology and a quarter there just to get their credit requirements - computer programmers, probably, or jocks told by their chums that D&D meant "Ds for Dummies."
The prof comes into the room, writes his name on the blackboard - Mr. Chundley - and goes into his introduction. There will be a midterm and a final and there will be a 2,500 word essay on the social relevance of D&D. Each will count for one third of the total grade. No, there will be no actual playing of the game during the course, but we are "encouraged" to take part in as many games as possible in order to get a full sense of the game. The jocks groan, the game players nod enthusiastically, the mythologists check their schedule to see how fast they can dump this course for something else ... and I sit in the back and feel my bile rise in my throat.
Naturally, if we're dealing with what is substantially a complicated context-oriented performance art, the last thing we would want to do is have anyone actually perform. That would involve standing to the side and criticizing people as they ran the game. Hands up, those of you who would care to learn to be a better DM by running the game in an auditorium full of well-meaning critics who were encouraged to shout at you during your presentation. Mind you, I said "well-meaning" - not trolls anxious to put you off your game, but persons who have legitimate, well-founded oppositions to what you're trying to do.
Cue laughter. What in this game represents a "well-founded opposition?" Anyone?
We're all old hands at the blogosphere, the sniping, the derision, the pompous superiority, the dismissive carping and so on ... most of it to be found right here in this post. What's missing here is the slobbering praise, the wanking approval and the excited presentation of the very ordinary.
Oops ... that was more dismissive carping, wasn't it? Sorry. It's a hard habit to break.
Call it what you will, the last thing we have represented in the D&D 'field' is a well-founded anything. D&D is, for those following around the blogosphere like puppies, a survey course, taught without play and taught be people who think "social relevance" is a measureable quality in the superiority of the game and its participants. You can't teach something if there's nothing standardized enough to be taught. All we really have is what people believe, and you don't teach beliefs.
You sell them.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
S&T
While everything I did not need to learn was learned in Kindergarten - the most idiotic statement ever made - it was there I acquired my taste for something that has remained central to my life ever since. It is central to most of our lives, though I don't think we realize it. I am speaking about the habit of show and tell.
In education, it is merely an exercise in public speaking, and for some people not a very fun exercise. But it is hardly restricted to the classroom, as we were all thrilled every time we had something new we could take to school and show off. It is a kind of prestige, one that carries forward into adulthood with the acquisition of cars, electronics, golf clubs, houses and vacation pictures. The same practice applies to pregnancy and the birthing of children, the day we graduate from university, the new job we've been hired onto, the relics we bring back from war zones and even the gravestones we buy to anxiously show our loved ones where we want to be buried. Having something new and then showing it, or telling about it, is the best kind of buyable status there is. For ten minutes we have something that someone else does not, and we want to enjoy that brief measure of satisfaction.
Obviously, a thing that brings satisfaction to others is ten times better than something that brings satisfaction only to ourselves. Vacation pictures, and telling about vacations, are the absolute worst ... not only do we listeners NOT get to see anything, we are forced to hear stories about something we'd much rather be doing that what we are doing right now. Our only real response is to tell about OUR vacations, thus evening the score.
Things that do bring satisfaction to others are far superior ... and I think those things can be divided into two categories: things we purchase and things we create. There are things that are awarded, such as medals and trophies, but while these convey status I don't think they necessarily bring satisfaction.
Most everything that can be purchased by me can be purchased by you, and that is what we think of when we see a new boat or some marvelous new gadget ... unless, of course, we can't afford it - and then the first thing we want to know is can we borrow it. If that fails, we just don't care. We're listening to the other person go on and on thinking, Get the thing out of my face, all right?
Things that we create fall into a whole other measuring standard. You can show me the crappiest blender in the world that you purchased and my opinion will be that I wouldn't buy one. But show me a crappy blender that you built yourself and my first thought is more likely to be, "Wow, you built a blender?" Only after that, when it proves to be pretty crappy, will I think, "Why did you build a crappy blender when you could buy a new one?"
Believe it. This same thought process can be applied to virtually any creative work that has a counterpart in the world. Build your own anything and it will be compared with that same thing done by somebody else. It doesn't matter if you laid your own driveway and it cost you $35 because you did it with stones you found in the nearby mountains. It will look strange and people will raise their eyebrows at you and feel all superior and shit. It is only ten years later that they'll look again at that driveway and think of it as 'folksy.' Right off, they'll think you should have spent more.
Then there are the creative things that can't be bought. They exist nowhere in the world except in your possession. Some of these things, such as a novel you've written or a sculpture you've carved, still have a bit of that "measured vs. the good stuff you can buy" feel. That is, unless you've sculpted or written something really profound. On the other hand, there are things you make yourself that cannot be bought. There is simply no place anywhere in the world for you to go where that thing can be obtained.
Your world is one of those things.
Even if I can measure your world against my world, both of us being D&D players, the fact is that my world and your world will never exist in the same time and space. When we sit down around the table to listen to you be the Dungeon Master, my world ceases to exist. And as you show and tell the various features about your world, presenting them to us so we can oooh and aaah about what's new and different, you are maximizing the satisfaction not just for yourself, but for us as well.
We hope you are, at least. We hope you haven't worked all week in order to flount your world in a superior, fuck-us fashion that makes us feel unnecessary and uncomfortable in your self-aggrandizing fantasy. In the fight against that, , I and many others have written hundreds of thousands of words decrying the DM's-world-as-my-vacation-photographs.
I still get excited before a running. I have this mess of things I've created and am ready to spring on my players - I will show them and tell them what they see, and watch the fall out at they tackle the new quandaries I hope to create for them. I have new rules to talk about and new bits of my world I've created. Knowing I get to talk about them, and knowing others are interested, it is that moment in Kindergarten when I brought a preying mantis in a bottle, all three inches of it crouched in its horrific splendor.
I admit, though, that some of the thrill at the outset of a new D&D running is robbed by my having this blog to talk about things first. This blog is S&T in perfect harmony ... post a map, a table, news of some kind, a bit of knowledge from the past or even some other person's contribution to the blogosphere and tell ALL about it. And doing so without any concern about anyone's facial expression, or shuffling feet or nodding eyelids. I don't see any of that. I can tell and tell until my fingers get tired and if people don't want to listen any more, they can skip off and I'm none the wiser. You have to love this formula.
Now I will take myself off, and think of something else that's new, and conjecture on how best to tell about it tomorrow. The classroom awaits.
In education, it is merely an exercise in public speaking, and for some people not a very fun exercise. But it is hardly restricted to the classroom, as we were all thrilled every time we had something new we could take to school and show off. It is a kind of prestige, one that carries forward into adulthood with the acquisition of cars, electronics, golf clubs, houses and vacation pictures. The same practice applies to pregnancy and the birthing of children, the day we graduate from university, the new job we've been hired onto, the relics we bring back from war zones and even the gravestones we buy to anxiously show our loved ones where we want to be buried. Having something new and then showing it, or telling about it, is the best kind of buyable status there is. For ten minutes we have something that someone else does not, and we want to enjoy that brief measure of satisfaction.
Obviously, a thing that brings satisfaction to others is ten times better than something that brings satisfaction only to ourselves. Vacation pictures, and telling about vacations, are the absolute worst ... not only do we listeners NOT get to see anything, we are forced to hear stories about something we'd much rather be doing that what we are doing right now. Our only real response is to tell about OUR vacations, thus evening the score.
Things that do bring satisfaction to others are far superior ... and I think those things can be divided into two categories: things we purchase and things we create. There are things that are awarded, such as medals and trophies, but while these convey status I don't think they necessarily bring satisfaction.
Most everything that can be purchased by me can be purchased by you, and that is what we think of when we see a new boat or some marvelous new gadget ... unless, of course, we can't afford it - and then the first thing we want to know is can we borrow it. If that fails, we just don't care. We're listening to the other person go on and on thinking, Get the thing out of my face, all right?
Things that we create fall into a whole other measuring standard. You can show me the crappiest blender in the world that you purchased and my opinion will be that I wouldn't buy one. But show me a crappy blender that you built yourself and my first thought is more likely to be, "Wow, you built a blender?" Only after that, when it proves to be pretty crappy, will I think, "Why did you build a crappy blender when you could buy a new one?"
Believe it. This same thought process can be applied to virtually any creative work that has a counterpart in the world. Build your own anything and it will be compared with that same thing done by somebody else. It doesn't matter if you laid your own driveway and it cost you $35 because you did it with stones you found in the nearby mountains. It will look strange and people will raise their eyebrows at you and feel all superior and shit. It is only ten years later that they'll look again at that driveway and think of it as 'folksy.' Right off, they'll think you should have spent more.
Then there are the creative things that can't be bought. They exist nowhere in the world except in your possession. Some of these things, such as a novel you've written or a sculpture you've carved, still have a bit of that "measured vs. the good stuff you can buy" feel. That is, unless you've sculpted or written something really profound. On the other hand, there are things you make yourself that cannot be bought. There is simply no place anywhere in the world for you to go where that thing can be obtained.
Your world is one of those things.
Even if I can measure your world against my world, both of us being D&D players, the fact is that my world and your world will never exist in the same time and space. When we sit down around the table to listen to you be the Dungeon Master, my world ceases to exist. And as you show and tell the various features about your world, presenting them to us so we can oooh and aaah about what's new and different, you are maximizing the satisfaction not just for yourself, but for us as well.
We hope you are, at least. We hope you haven't worked all week in order to flount your world in a superior, fuck-us fashion that makes us feel unnecessary and uncomfortable in your self-aggrandizing fantasy. In the fight against that, , I and many others have written hundreds of thousands of words decrying the DM's-world-as-my-vacation-photographs.
I still get excited before a running. I have this mess of things I've created and am ready to spring on my players - I will show them and tell them what they see, and watch the fall out at they tackle the new quandaries I hope to create for them. I have new rules to talk about and new bits of my world I've created. Knowing I get to talk about them, and knowing others are interested, it is that moment in Kindergarten when I brought a preying mantis in a bottle, all three inches of it crouched in its horrific splendor.
I admit, though, that some of the thrill at the outset of a new D&D running is robbed by my having this blog to talk about things first. This blog is S&T in perfect harmony ... post a map, a table, news of some kind, a bit of knowledge from the past or even some other person's contribution to the blogosphere and tell ALL about it. And doing so without any concern about anyone's facial expression, or shuffling feet or nodding eyelids. I don't see any of that. I can tell and tell until my fingers get tired and if people don't want to listen any more, they can skip off and I'm none the wiser. You have to love this formula.
Now I will take myself off, and think of something else that's new, and conjecture on how best to tell about it tomorrow. The classroom awaits.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
This Is Fun For Me
I'm afraid that most of my fascination these last two weeks has been the mapping of India. I must admit, I am amazed that I am that far in this project. I started just to the left of the middle of the map above, with a region called Voronezh, a county during the time of the Renaissance. Steadily and slowly I added one region at a time, moving in a general outwardly spiralling circle for a number of years before deciding just to work on whatever seemed best. As a favor to a friend, after I complete India it's my plan to finish the remainder of the Mediterranean Basin. I'm researching the cities and towns of France now so I'll be able to start that late in 2011/early 2012. The research is the time-heavy part, to be honest. I've got the actual mapmaking down to a science, so I can set down 10 to 50 hexes a day without much trouble. Admittedly, France is a great deal more dense than India, so the individual hexes will go slowly, but once the actual ground is researched completely, it will just go tickety-boo.
I wanted to add the above map as a rejoiner to the one added last week. It includes a lot of parts that were on this map, but it has been somewhat updated and at any rate it looks good to group parts together. It helps with the general perspective.
The gentle reader may not be aware that all of the above map is listed in detail on the Same Universe Wiki, on this page. The map compilation above, and the one posted last week, were formed entirely from the maps on the wiki, copying them one by one and shrinking them consistently before overlapping them together. None of this is from my private files, so anyone could do what I've done above for their own benefit. The pleasant thing about the maps I've done is that they are all the same size, in the precise same scale. Here and there I've found there's a slight error where the maps overlap ... wrong color used on one map or the other, and in one case the actual wrong hex designated on one of the two maps. If you look carefully you can find the discontinuity in the South Sahara on the Arabian map. Eventually I'll get around to fixing this sort of thing, and reposting those maps on the Wiki.
This map above lines up with the other map as well, as below. I've had to shrink both maps down to get them into blogger, but you can see if you save it and blow it up that the map hexes fit seamlessly (or as near as is reasonable).
This should look really great when I get India done. I have so far mapped the Punjab & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Nepal, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. For those who might know the region, I'm presently working on Maharashtra, which is central India west of Mumbai (Bombay). I am having a great time, as India is one of those places you never can get a great map for, and the landscape is therefore unfamiliar to me. Thus, I am learning immense things about where the rivers flow, how this shapes the history of the country, where the natural chokepoints are for trade and military ventures ... all that sort of really cool stuff.
I did slap around some people (they know who they are) about my maps. I think the most important thing in the game about having a map, whether you invent your own world or not, is the sense for the BIG PICTURE you get. It's all very well to know the road between the town and the dungeon and the other temple, but if you want your world to flesh out and come alive, the great scheme of human movement cannot really be understood without a top down view of considerable proportions. Measure the maps above, and ask yourself if we really understand how large this world is, or how varied is its possibility for adventure, or how immeasurably the facets of the world jostle one another for power.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
The Crumbling Spectre of Age
So it turns out, after seeing the appropriate doctors yesterday, that I do not have cancer. The growth that has appeared on my back in the last year is benign, and I am told it is nothing to worry about. Well this is good news.
It does highlight the conversation I had with my offline players two weekends ago that there is a foreseeable upper limit to how long I can practicably play D&D as a dungeon master. No, I'm not talking about my death. But with my 47th birthday being in three weeks, I realize that it is harder and harder to keep in my head the level of detail necessary to manage as many as eight or nine players at one time. It gets harder to pull their attention back to the table, it gets harder to get as animated as I need to get to compel the excitement of the events going on, and in particular it is a drain and a half to manage the many, many little rules that go into a combat. My memory is starting to go; facts which I knew solidly ten years ago slip my mind now, such as the ranges of spells or what it takes for a 6 HD creature to hit AC zero, or the saving throw for a 3rd level fighter. These are things I used to know once without needing a book. Now I find I must look them up.
The upper limit for DMing, I am guessing, would be about 60. I might do a little after that, with very small, patient parties who don't mind if their doddering old referee nods off once or twice while the party debates on and on about the best way to enter a difficult fortress. I trust they won't mind that I have to pee seventeen times in a night, or that it takes longer for me to get to the bathroom and back again. Perhaps I can have some kind of monitor mounted on my walker that will allow me to digitally run the game from the toilet.
I think I'll be able to play into my 80s. Oh, I might need some whippersnapper to add up my experience points or nudge me into action when its my turn to roll to hit, but I'm sure the grandchildren won't mind their grandfather's little idiosyncracies. I should still be able to strategize for a few intense minutes before getting distracted by my aching hips. The young'uns will appreciate the many stories I have to tell about flame wars on the internet or my detailed, lost-when-the-computer-fried trade tables. How could they not?
Unlike the hapless inventors of the game, I do plan to live into my 80s, even my 90s, despite my recent scare. My theory is that Cheetos are effectively little age-stealing bombs, lethal in combination with Mountain Dew, causing many to die in their 60s. We'll see how that goes.
Then again, I could die of a brain embollism at any time, lance in hand.
It does highlight the conversation I had with my offline players two weekends ago that there is a foreseeable upper limit to how long I can practicably play D&D as a dungeon master. No, I'm not talking about my death. But with my 47th birthday being in three weeks, I realize that it is harder and harder to keep in my head the level of detail necessary to manage as many as eight or nine players at one time. It gets harder to pull their attention back to the table, it gets harder to get as animated as I need to get to compel the excitement of the events going on, and in particular it is a drain and a half to manage the many, many little rules that go into a combat. My memory is starting to go; facts which I knew solidly ten years ago slip my mind now, such as the ranges of spells or what it takes for a 6 HD creature to hit AC zero, or the saving throw for a 3rd level fighter. These are things I used to know once without needing a book. Now I find I must look them up.
The upper limit for DMing, I am guessing, would be about 60. I might do a little after that, with very small, patient parties who don't mind if their doddering old referee nods off once or twice while the party debates on and on about the best way to enter a difficult fortress. I trust they won't mind that I have to pee seventeen times in a night, or that it takes longer for me to get to the bathroom and back again. Perhaps I can have some kind of monitor mounted on my walker that will allow me to digitally run the game from the toilet.
I think I'll be able to play into my 80s. Oh, I might need some whippersnapper to add up my experience points or nudge me into action when its my turn to roll to hit, but I'm sure the grandchildren won't mind their grandfather's little idiosyncracies. I should still be able to strategize for a few intense minutes before getting distracted by my aching hips. The young'uns will appreciate the many stories I have to tell about flame wars on the internet or my detailed, lost-when-the-computer-fried trade tables. How could they not?
Unlike the hapless inventors of the game, I do plan to live into my 80s, even my 90s, despite my recent scare. My theory is that Cheetos are effectively little age-stealing bombs, lethal in combination with Mountain Dew, causing many to die in their 60s. We'll see how that goes.
Then again, I could die of a brain embollism at any time, lance in hand.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Ode to the Defrocked
This is just a little addendum to Friday's post about computer programmers. I am still getting comments from programmers who feel it is very important that I don't have this completely stupid opinion about what programmers are and what their motivations are. For some reason it is important that this blog, as opposed to the 1.69 million results that turn up on google when you search "programmers suck," doesn't exist in error ... I guess I have a lot more influence than I ever guessed at, since its so important to change my position.
(Incidentally, the first page on that search, Why Programmers Suck, is worth a read)
So, programmers being annoying, not news. I need to add a little aside that its a telling bit of interest that most of the programmers who wrote comments that never saw the light of day (and a few that did) never argued, "I am not an asshole," but more along the lines, "programmers have to be assholes because everyone else in the world is so stupid." I'd say about 90% of the negative responses felt that somehow clients not knowing how to explain what they want justified just about any response a programmer wanted to give, well, anyone.
This was not true of every programmer. At least half of those programmers who answered expressed a desire not to be that way themselves, admitted that a fair portion of programmers do tend to have those characteristics in some degree, and that it was something that should change. All of these comments were without exception published.
It's very easy to identify with one's profession and get upset and defensive when it's attacked, but the bigger reality is that every profession is rife with a particular kind of prick, pissant, prig or phucker. I could write blog posts about writers, actors, directors, engineers, journalists and editors that would be no less harsh and condescending ... only none of those things, in this case, applied to the problem in question. That problem is that for D&D to move forward from the Dark Ages (pencil & paper) is has to embrace new technology and the tools that technology offers. And the only way this will happen is if programmers who play D&D get out of their fixed, flat, fucked thinking patterns.
Some expressed a wonder that I should attack programmers since so many of them played D&D and were likely to read my blog. As if to say, I shouldn't attack the backgrounds of anybody unless they are the kind of people who would never read it. Of course I know there are a lot of programmers in D&D. Which brings up the bigger point. Why, if D&D is a programmer-rich pasttime, has so little been done to improve the game with the programmer's tools?
I don't know. Far too many programmers who play D&D either really aren't very good programmers, or they really suck at D&D. Because anyone who was good at both, and who possessed a solid, nail-it-to-the-fucking-wall work ethic, would have gotten on this thing done two decades ago. Or maybe the brainwashing about what D&D ought to be - this stupid concept that computerization is anti-imagination, for instance - has polluted the minds of good programmers into thinking their dabbling wouldn't be appreciated. Either way, I felt I needed to shake that part of the community up - and the best way is to first make them very uncomfortable. It is in being forced to defend ourselves that we are forced to think about what IS defensible. It is way to compel people to examine themselves, and THEN return an argument. The result is that some will rush to the keyboard, start hammering out an answer and freeze, realizing, "I don't have an answer for that."
Not everyone, of course. A lot of people just drum out the same old beat without thinking about it. But I don't need to make everyone think. Just a few will do nicely.
So if the gentle reader can't understand why I would approach these subjects in this manner of confrontational brutality, there it is. Some will always argue that a gentle prodding and suggestive post is more effective, but its been proven that the more respect you give the status quo, the stronger the status quo gets. The solution is to spit on the status quo, take the heat and let others realize that it's not really that hard to hock up a few big ones themselves. As it goes on, the status quo seems less and less oppressive and meaningful, and change begins to occur.
That is where the energy comes from, O Gentle Reader. From the knowledge that it takes energy to change the world. It can't be done from your lounge chair.
(Incidentally, the first page on that search, Why Programmers Suck, is worth a read)
So, programmers being annoying, not news. I need to add a little aside that its a telling bit of interest that most of the programmers who wrote comments that never saw the light of day (and a few that did) never argued, "I am not an asshole," but more along the lines, "programmers have to be assholes because everyone else in the world is so stupid." I'd say about 90% of the negative responses felt that somehow clients not knowing how to explain what they want justified just about any response a programmer wanted to give, well, anyone.
This was not true of every programmer. At least half of those programmers who answered expressed a desire not to be that way themselves, admitted that a fair portion of programmers do tend to have those characteristics in some degree, and that it was something that should change. All of these comments were without exception published.
It's very easy to identify with one's profession and get upset and defensive when it's attacked, but the bigger reality is that every profession is rife with a particular kind of prick, pissant, prig or phucker. I could write blog posts about writers, actors, directors, engineers, journalists and editors that would be no less harsh and condescending ... only none of those things, in this case, applied to the problem in question. That problem is that for D&D to move forward from the Dark Ages (pencil & paper) is has to embrace new technology and the tools that technology offers. And the only way this will happen is if programmers who play D&D get out of their fixed, flat, fucked thinking patterns.
Some expressed a wonder that I should attack programmers since so many of them played D&D and were likely to read my blog. As if to say, I shouldn't attack the backgrounds of anybody unless they are the kind of people who would never read it. Of course I know there are a lot of programmers in D&D. Which brings up the bigger point. Why, if D&D is a programmer-rich pasttime, has so little been done to improve the game with the programmer's tools?
I don't know. Far too many programmers who play D&D either really aren't very good programmers, or they really suck at D&D. Because anyone who was good at both, and who possessed a solid, nail-it-to-the-fucking-wall work ethic, would have gotten on this thing done two decades ago. Or maybe the brainwashing about what D&D ought to be - this stupid concept that computerization is anti-imagination, for instance - has polluted the minds of good programmers into thinking their dabbling wouldn't be appreciated. Either way, I felt I needed to shake that part of the community up - and the best way is to first make them very uncomfortable. It is in being forced to defend ourselves that we are forced to think about what IS defensible. It is way to compel people to examine themselves, and THEN return an argument. The result is that some will rush to the keyboard, start hammering out an answer and freeze, realizing, "I don't have an answer for that."
Not everyone, of course. A lot of people just drum out the same old beat without thinking about it. But I don't need to make everyone think. Just a few will do nicely.
So if the gentle reader can't understand why I would approach these subjects in this manner of confrontational brutality, there it is. Some will always argue that a gentle prodding and suggestive post is more effective, but its been proven that the more respect you give the status quo, the stronger the status quo gets. The solution is to spit on the status quo, take the heat and let others realize that it's not really that hard to hock up a few big ones themselves. As it goes on, the status quo seems less and less oppressive and meaningful, and change begins to occur.
That is where the energy comes from, O Gentle Reader. From the knowledge that it takes energy to change the world. It can't be done from your lounge chair.
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