Last night I somewhat lost it upon a comment made which included a link to a 3rd edition set of tables about the weather. I retracted the comment after it had been up for about ten minutes, realizing that I had over-reacted. It's only that what with the intensity with which I approach problem solving on this blog, I see it as downright insulting when some flimsy, little thought out solution is proposed. I have written about this recently, both here and here - hell, one of those posts is only five weeks old ... but even consistent readers of this blog don't seem to get it.
When I ask for something 'simple,' I can see the gentle reader doesn't understand. I want systems that work like pistols. You pick the pistol up. You point the pistol. You press your finger against the trigger. And a huge amount of energy is released, resulting in the desired effect.
There is nothing at all 'simple' about a pistol. There are quite a number of details which come together in order to cause the effect with as much accuracy, as much effect - and as much safety for the user - as possible. Pistols are, if you will excuse the term, extremely granular in their make-up. To you or I, using a pistol is a matter of getting used to the pull and improving our aim. To a gunsmith, it is much, much more.
What I find constantly proposed to me are ideas which are supposed to go BANG! but which in fact are a total failure at hitting the mark. If I roll a table that says 'rain' and I say 'rain' to the players, and they have heard me say 'rain' fifteen times in just this running, the table is, to wit, a piece of crap. If the table requires that I 'make up shit' in order to make the table appear really impressive, then the TABLE is a piece of crap. I may be a marvelous creator, but I don't want a table that depends upon me being a marvelous creator. I have a fuck of a lot of things to create to make a running happen, and it would be nice if some of the load could be taken on by a table that fucking works.
And this is what pisses me off about the later editions altogether. Not because I'm a big edition guy - fuck, I change everything about the game! It's barely AD&D anymore. I obviously have no troubles with alterations to the original game. You just won't catch me claiming any 'Old School' status ... all that's a lot of bullshit anyway. No, really, I don't care about the fact of revamping, redesigning or reimagining the game of D&D. I do it every damn day. What I care about is that the revamp and the redesign was done by IDIOTS. It is still being done by IDIOTS. Idiots who think 'simple' means the pistol is two pieces of metal that are tied together with string and have a kind of L-shape. They are missing the fucking point. They are always missing the fucking point. And people who wave these tables at me, thinking this is as good as it gets? IDIOTS.
I am not looking for half measures. I am not looking for pistols that sometimes work, or have some effect as clubs when they don't work, or which require I dance around and shout "I hit it! I hit it!" when nothing in fact actaully left the barrel of the gun. In general, if you are the sort of IDIOT who thinks sending me some dumbfuck link to someone's dumbfuck half-measured jerk-assed effort at the subject is helpful, please, oh please get your head out of your ass.
When I want to make a table about the weather, I do NOT start with other people's tables from RPG. Some of you IDIOTS may not know it, but in actual fact meterology is a science, and has had quite a terrific amount of effort gone into it to produce some rather elaborate descriptions of a wide variety of observable phenomena. Meteorologists, it may amaze some of you to know, are actually aware that not all Rain is simply Rain. They are in fact busy defining the multiple characteristics of rain, and more to the point they've gone to the bother of writing all that shit down. Obviously, we can't expect paid employees of a game development company to bother reading about all those observations and characteristics, but since I'm not being paid I actually CAN. And I DO. As much as possible. And when I read that there's some other complex, weird, unexpected detail in all that material, I don't go, "Well, that's just too complicated, I better just skip that" ... oh no! No, what I think is, "That's fucking cool, how do I work that in?"
But I am alone in this. Utterly, completely alone. That is more than clear. But I don't care. Because this is the future of this hobby ... not your kindergarten tables and your L-shaped pieces of metal you point at each other shouting BANG BANG to compensate for the pieces of metal not actually doing anything. Obviously, I don't expect the IDIOTS to get on board with this, but ...
If the rest of you people who most of the time have brains could just use them a tiny fraction more, and STOP sending me crap from the RPG universe, I would be a whole lot less annoyed.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
If We Could Have Real Weather...
If we could bring ourselves back to a discussion of the weather for a few moments, I'd like to discuss a difficulty in presentation that I've had for ... practically ever, or at least since I began to be as granular as I am with the game.
How do you retain the sense of the time period while giving information about what the weather is like? If you want the slightest degree of verisimilitude, you can't just tell the players the exact temperature, or the dew point, or the number of millimeters of rain. How would they know these things? The thermometer hasn't been invented for most worlds, and it certainly isn't widespread in by 1650 (when my world takes place); a number of thermometers have been created by individuals, but there's no set scale yet - Fahrenheit isn't born until 1686. Oh yes, of course you can just tell the players ... but somehow this kills the romance of the situation, as does any circumstance where you incorporate too much scientific precision into a game whose time period doesn't possess it.
I have tried to express temperature in terms of its general feel: the weather is brisk, or cool, or warm or very hot. Rain can be described as light, moderate or heavy. The wind as light, blustering or strong. However, it is probable as the gentle reader considers those words, some of them have specific, measured meanings ... we know, for instance, that a 'gale-force wind' has a wind speed of 39-46 mph., or 62-74 km per hour. We can look at the Beaufort Scale and see that the wind will cause "moderately high waves with breaking crests forming spindrift, that some twings will be broken from trees, and that cars will be forced to veer on roads. Progress on foot is seriously impeded."
But what does that mean, exactly? It's defined very well for meterologists, but what precisely is the effect on player characters in the game? Can they still travel? How far? How difficult is it for them to set up camp - how long does it take? Can their tent withstand the wind or no? What about if they set it behind this pile of rocks here, or between these trees? How is combat effected? How far can an arrow be considered accurate, or how far can you still throw a hand axe? If there's debris in the air, what's the visibility? How different is it now that its autumn as opposed to spring? What would it be like if this were winter? How much food do I need to eat if I have to work in this weather? And so on and on and on.
The fact of the matter is that weather is largely ignored for RPGs and VGs because these questions are relatively unanswerable. Even today, we retain a media where staged, filmed scenes do not feature so much as a stiff breeze (which is what, exactly, on the Beaufort scale?) ... even those filmed by David Attenborough for his Planet or Life series. Cameras don't operate well, visibility spoils the clearness of shots, damaged equipment is ridiculously expensive to replace and so on. We might get a shot of a lighthouse getting slapped by wave after wave, but these things are filmed from a distance, widescreen, and not from some idiot standing on the rocks waiting for the wave to come on. At any rate, watching it filmed tells us virtually nothing about actually experiencing the event. It's just interesting.
If the players are going to experience the event, vis a vis the game, it would be nice if they could have some sense of what it meant. Unfortunately, mere descriptions are subjective and little more than window dressing. I can say the weather is brisk, but it means different things to different people and if it doesn't stop them from travelling twenty miles today, what the hell do they care? Even if it means they only travel 18 miles, so what? It's just math to them ... it has no visceral impact, and because of that it remains fluff.
Weather is not fluff. Weather kills people, weather is dangerous, weather affects everything about being outdoors. Yes, we can create some table that describes how much damage a particular weather causes (more math), but that doesn't really bring home the feeling that the sky turning grey and the winter coming has huge implications for the party's probable well-being. It doesn't often enter into their calculations for safety and so on.
Worse than the weather turning bad, however, is the weather turning for the better. Consider: we human beings are immensely effected by the prospect of finding ourselves outside on a nice day. It changes everything about our moods. It is a wonderful, terrific thing ... but in D&D, it is utterly meaningless. Again, it has zero influence over the actions of a party. They can try to appreciate the description, even roleplay up to it, but it's an empty effort and well we all know it. I can make a nice day as a DM on a whim, and well the party knows it.
So we come against the other really annoying thing about weather. There is always, always a feeling on the behalf of parties that the DM is really just fucking with us. Why is it raining? Is there any purpose to it other than fixing things the way the DM likes? If we're really running a sandbox, why is it the sun disappears so conveniently before we have to march off to Xanadu? Why is it the rain is exactly as heavy as it is? How come the mud is just this deep that my cart gets bogged into it? My, my, aren't the gods heavily invested in making sure the weather is a hazard for us personally.
Seriously, don't you feel this way in real life? How bad is it that you know the motherfucker behind the screen is doing it on purpose.
If the DM has an adventure pre-planned, even in a sandbox setting - where presumably its something that's waited in that copse of trees since the DM postulated it three years ago - can you tell that the weather was rolled randomly? Is that DM ready to run that awful, pre-ordained frozen village where there's three inches of frost on everything in the SUMMER, too? Or have we insufferably insisted that it's never summer on this particular hill, which of course goes unnoticed by the 21st level druid that manages this particular continent? Probably the latter. Rain and snow are such wonderful mood-setters, we can't give them up just because they're not in season, right?
I could really use a set of clear, precise rules on the effects of a particular temperature, or a particular intensity of precipitation, or of a particular wind speed, on a party and its doings, in such a way that when things do come together to form a nice day, it's noticeable. That would be very nice.
Eventually I'm going to figure out how to make that happen.
How do you retain the sense of the time period while giving information about what the weather is like? If you want the slightest degree of verisimilitude, you can't just tell the players the exact temperature, or the dew point, or the number of millimeters of rain. How would they know these things? The thermometer hasn't been invented for most worlds, and it certainly isn't widespread in by 1650 (when my world takes place); a number of thermometers have been created by individuals, but there's no set scale yet - Fahrenheit isn't born until 1686. Oh yes, of course you can just tell the players ... but somehow this kills the romance of the situation, as does any circumstance where you incorporate too much scientific precision into a game whose time period doesn't possess it.
I have tried to express temperature in terms of its general feel: the weather is brisk, or cool, or warm or very hot. Rain can be described as light, moderate or heavy. The wind as light, blustering or strong. However, it is probable as the gentle reader considers those words, some of them have specific, measured meanings ... we know, for instance, that a 'gale-force wind' has a wind speed of 39-46 mph., or 62-74 km per hour. We can look at the Beaufort Scale and see that the wind will cause "moderately high waves with breaking crests forming spindrift, that some twings will be broken from trees, and that cars will be forced to veer on roads. Progress on foot is seriously impeded."
But what does that mean, exactly? It's defined very well for meterologists, but what precisely is the effect on player characters in the game? Can they still travel? How far? How difficult is it for them to set up camp - how long does it take? Can their tent withstand the wind or no? What about if they set it behind this pile of rocks here, or between these trees? How is combat effected? How far can an arrow be considered accurate, or how far can you still throw a hand axe? If there's debris in the air, what's the visibility? How different is it now that its autumn as opposed to spring? What would it be like if this were winter? How much food do I need to eat if I have to work in this weather? And so on and on and on.
The fact of the matter is that weather is largely ignored for RPGs and VGs because these questions are relatively unanswerable. Even today, we retain a media where staged, filmed scenes do not feature so much as a stiff breeze (which is what, exactly, on the Beaufort scale?) ... even those filmed by David Attenborough for his Planet or Life series. Cameras don't operate well, visibility spoils the clearness of shots, damaged equipment is ridiculously expensive to replace and so on. We might get a shot of a lighthouse getting slapped by wave after wave, but these things are filmed from a distance, widescreen, and not from some idiot standing on the rocks waiting for the wave to come on. At any rate, watching it filmed tells us virtually nothing about actually experiencing the event. It's just interesting.
If the players are going to experience the event, vis a vis the game, it would be nice if they could have some sense of what it meant. Unfortunately, mere descriptions are subjective and little more than window dressing. I can say the weather is brisk, but it means different things to different people and if it doesn't stop them from travelling twenty miles today, what the hell do they care? Even if it means they only travel 18 miles, so what? It's just math to them ... it has no visceral impact, and because of that it remains fluff.
Weather is not fluff. Weather kills people, weather is dangerous, weather affects everything about being outdoors. Yes, we can create some table that describes how much damage a particular weather causes (more math), but that doesn't really bring home the feeling that the sky turning grey and the winter coming has huge implications for the party's probable well-being. It doesn't often enter into their calculations for safety and so on.
Worse than the weather turning bad, however, is the weather turning for the better. Consider: we human beings are immensely effected by the prospect of finding ourselves outside on a nice day. It changes everything about our moods. It is a wonderful, terrific thing ... but in D&D, it is utterly meaningless. Again, it has zero influence over the actions of a party. They can try to appreciate the description, even roleplay up to it, but it's an empty effort and well we all know it. I can make a nice day as a DM on a whim, and well the party knows it.
So we come against the other really annoying thing about weather. There is always, always a feeling on the behalf of parties that the DM is really just fucking with us. Why is it raining? Is there any purpose to it other than fixing things the way the DM likes? If we're really running a sandbox, why is it the sun disappears so conveniently before we have to march off to Xanadu? Why is it the rain is exactly as heavy as it is? How come the mud is just this deep that my cart gets bogged into it? My, my, aren't the gods heavily invested in making sure the weather is a hazard for us personally.
Seriously, don't you feel this way in real life? How bad is it that you know the motherfucker behind the screen is doing it on purpose.
If the DM has an adventure pre-planned, even in a sandbox setting - where presumably its something that's waited in that copse of trees since the DM postulated it three years ago - can you tell that the weather was rolled randomly? Is that DM ready to run that awful, pre-ordained frozen village where there's three inches of frost on everything in the SUMMER, too? Or have we insufferably insisted that it's never summer on this particular hill, which of course goes unnoticed by the 21st level druid that manages this particular continent? Probably the latter. Rain and snow are such wonderful mood-setters, we can't give them up just because they're not in season, right?
I could really use a set of clear, precise rules on the effects of a particular temperature, or a particular intensity of precipitation, or of a particular wind speed, on a party and its doings, in such a way that when things do come together to form a nice day, it's noticeable. That would be very nice.
Eventually I'm going to figure out how to make that happen.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The Power! The Absolute Power!
O gentle reader, turn aside and find what else there is to read - this will be of little interest altogether. I shall speak today of the Great Insane Distance Table. Almost three years ago, it looked like this.
Today, after some redesigning of the table and adding another two hundred cities to it, the table looks like this:
Italy added 117 cities all by itself.
Two years ago, I began a spreadsheet for calculating the distances between these cities, one that included features that would check my work. The features were largely necessary due to a problem I was having with excel. In order to find the shortest distance betweeen cities, the calculations ran bang into problems with 'circular references' ... which ignorantly I believed was an unchangeable condition of excel, and which I wrote off to my being unable to program and being forced to use this archaic, annoying system in order to handle my issues.
How wrong I was.
Yesterday, I stumbled across an interesting feature of Vista excel. For those who might have excel, you click on the Office Button (the one in the upper left corner), on Excel Options, and then on Formulas. In the upper right corner you will find a box for 'Enable iterative calculation' ... which the reader will take note does no make direct reference to circular references, and for that I'm obviously an idiot for not knowing intuitively that they relate to one another. Yes, you can find the relationship in the Help menu. Have you ever used a Help menu?
If you click this box, and you set the maximum iterations to 1, with no change at all, circular references just go away. They cease to matter. And at this point you can calculate everything, even putting in box A1 "=B1" and putting in B1 "=A1". Try it. Try it without the iteration change, and then try it with.
As a result, yesterday two years of work went 'poof!' as I redid it all in about seven hours. And as I redid it, stunned as I was to find it was really this easy, and that I'd been unaccountably stupid for two years, I found all my concerns about the other 700 cities (estimated) that I had planned to add going up in smoke as well. Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Knowledge is the game changer.
So I am a very happy camper today. A little abashed, but that goes with the territory.
If I can just put up a very small bit of the spreadsheet, the former problem might be a little more evident:
Today, after some redesigning of the table and adding another two hundred cities to it, the table looks like this:
 |
| For future reference, Pinerolo is on the far left, and is pink on the edge of the table, and Croftshelm is on the far right, in dark green. |
Italy added 117 cities all by itself.
Two years ago, I began a spreadsheet for calculating the distances between these cities, one that included features that would check my work. The features were largely necessary due to a problem I was having with excel. In order to find the shortest distance betweeen cities, the calculations ran bang into problems with 'circular references' ... which ignorantly I believed was an unchangeable condition of excel, and which I wrote off to my being unable to program and being forced to use this archaic, annoying system in order to handle my issues.
How wrong I was.
Yesterday, I stumbled across an interesting feature of Vista excel. For those who might have excel, you click on the Office Button (the one in the upper left corner), on Excel Options, and then on Formulas. In the upper right corner you will find a box for 'Enable iterative calculation' ... which the reader will take note does no make direct reference to circular references, and for that I'm obviously an idiot for not knowing intuitively that they relate to one another. Yes, you can find the relationship in the Help menu. Have you ever used a Help menu?
If you click this box, and you set the maximum iterations to 1, with no change at all, circular references just go away. They cease to matter. And at this point you can calculate everything, even putting in box A1 "=B1" and putting in B1 "=A1". Try it. Try it without the iteration change, and then try it with.
As a result, yesterday two years of work went 'poof!' as I redid it all in about seven hours. And as I redid it, stunned as I was to find it was really this easy, and that I'd been unaccountably stupid for two years, I found all my concerns about the other 700 cities (estimated) that I had planned to add going up in smoke as well. Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Knowledge is the game changer.
So I am a very happy camper today. A little abashed, but that goes with the territory.
If I can just put up a very small bit of the spreadsheet, the former problem might be a little more evident:
Believe me, this table just goes on and on. Every market has a column along the top, and every market has its own row, plus a row that describes its distance from the top listed city through each of the cities through which that market is connected.
Thus, if we look at the table, the first column lists Pinerolo, which is a city in northwest Italy near the modern border between France and Italy; in 1650 it was under the jurisdiction of the French King (shown here as 'FRA/'). The first row lists ALT/Croft - Croftshelm ... which is a city in extreme east modern Kazakhstan. In 1650 virtually no one lived here, and the actual city - modern Oskemen - was not founded until 1720. Thus, in my world, I have named the nonexistent city 'Croftshelm' in the region of 'Croft' and designated it Dwarven ... but that's not important now.
The table shows the distance FROM Pinerolo TO Croft (it's important to remember that the top line is the origin and the side is the destination) as it is through Semey or through Verny. Verny is south of Croft, and the shorter road from Pinerolo through Verny actually requires you to go through Semey (to get to Verny from the south requires going through Babylon and the Persian Gulf, and is just too far) so the road from Semey is the shorter route. To get to Semey you travel from Pinerolo down the Po Valley to the Adriatic, to Constantinople, then through the port of Cherzeti in Crimea to Tsaritsyn (modern Volgograd), up the Volga, then up the Kama, through the Ural mountains, down rivers to the Irtysh and then up the Irtysh river until you reach Semey itself, which is the highest navigable point on that river ... and thence overland to Croftshelm.
The table shows this will equals 129.8, which is the number of days travelled, so while the route is slightly more than four months. This includes time for loading, unloading, climbing hills and through passes, etcetera, etcetera. It is an estimate, and on foot without a wagon the distance isn't quite that far.
How do I know these are the distances? The grey number beside 'Croftshelm from Semey' on the table is a calculation. It takes the distance from Pinerolo to Semey and adds 4.5. Previously it has taken the distance from Pinerolo to Sibir (which is further down the Irtysh River) and added 11.6 (the distance from Semey to Sibir). Sibir is 9.3 days from Boloine Ob, which is 1.8 days from Yobat, which is 5.8 days from Eykhoth (modern Sverdlovsk/Ekaterinburg), which is 16 days through the Ural Mountains from Great Bolgar (modern Perm), which is 9.6 days from Sirk on the Volga, which is 2 days above Samara, which is 3.6 days above Volki, which is 1.7 days above Saratov, which is 4.1 days above Tsaritsyn, which is 17.1 days from Cherzeti overland and through the disembarkation port of Azov. Cherzeti is 10.7 days over the sea from Constantinople, which is 2 days from Kallipolis on the Dardanelles Strait, which is 5 days from Corinth, which is 1.7 days from Patras on the north Peloponnese, which is 4.7 days from Valona in Albania, which is 1.3 days from Brindisi, which is 17.3 days from Commachio, which is 1.1 days from Ferrara on the Po River, which is 2.6 days from Pavia, which is 0.7 days from Alessandria, which is 0.5 days from Asti (note the thickness of trade cities in northern Italy), which is 1.8 days from Turin and which is, at last, 1.3 days from Pinerolo.
Each of these distances is a calculation, and each calculation is added together to create the shortest distance between A to B to C and so on ... from Pinerolo to every other market in my world. And THEN there are calculations for every other market to every market ... I estimate more than 700 total markets in areas that have been mapped, including the Netherlands and India which have not been added to the above graph posted. And each new city takes longer than the last one.
Most of the work done to date has required manual tweaks, since if I calculate from Pinerolo to Turin and from Turin to Pinerolo, I get a circular reference and I'm stopped. But no more! I'm free, I tell you. I'm free!
As of yesterday, every calculation is automatically done, and I am master of the world again.
Incidentally, if you will remember this post, all these calculations are simply to determine what the availability of a particular item is in a particular market, depending on how far that market is from where your character is standing. So in Croftshelm, a reference to a product produced in Pinerolo is divided by 129.8. So if it is one reference to, say, perfume, that reference is worth 0.007704 in Croftshelm. This is not very much. If the only perfume in the world were made in Pinerolo, you'd have only one chance in 129.4 of even finding it ... and what with the other things that are done to perfume before it is made into perfume, it would probably be more than a thousand times more expensive.
Just food for thought.
Friday, October 7, 2011
The Reason I Dungeon Master
On Sunday, JB at B/X Blackrazor posed a perfectly fair question, one which I don't think I've answered in these last three years. Why would someone want to be a DM?
(of course, he said "GM," but let's not quibble)
And in the midst of his long post he threw a shout-out at me:
It's inaccurate in detail, and its inaccurate in proposing why I might do all this, but I don't fault JB. He doesn't know me, and from the outside, that's probably what it looks like. However, I actually don't "create" a world. I really only interpret the actual world, and this is what makes it living and breathing ... the fact that the players can visualize a living/breathing Germany because Germany actually exists, there have been references to Germany all their lives, they've met and seen German people, and so they can imagine the German background without my needing to create it. All I have to do is map the place.
And as far as knowing how many plots of land are available, I actually have no idea at all. But I do know, from investigating the actual world, what lands will grow mustard and what won't, and generally speaking there's always some uncultivated land somewhere, or someone willing to sell, so if you want a plot we can do a deal. But I don't have to have the number of plots nailed down to make that work.
In any event, this living/breathing thing is not, repeat not, the reason I DM. The world and the environment are just tools, like the dice or the rules, intended to provide guidelines for the
carrying on of the game. The setting is only one part. It is only the stage. The rules are only the atmosphere and the boundaries of behavior, like gravity and human limitation applies to the actors. And the dice is the undefined element. All together, however, its just window-dressing. And while I might work hard to make the window-dressing attractive, I don't delude myself into thinking the window dressing is enough. I'm not making a film in the Transformer's franchise.
I run a game as a DM for similar reasons that I'll write a play for public viewing, or stand up to give a reading at a local event, or enter a political forum to present an opinion. I am seeking to create a visceral response to an act of intellect on my part - preferably, a carefully intended visceral response, to cause the audience to respond with the emotion I want them to have. This might be horror at something I'm reading; this might be a laugh from a carefully set up joke, or series of jokes as part of the performance; it might be dead silence, as people wait breathlessly for my next word. It might be a feeling of warmth and coming together, particularly if I am the MC at a wedding. It might be release and hope, if I am giving a eulogy. Whatever the circumstance, I am giving it my all to bring other people towards a place of personal emotional and intellectual growth. And whenever I can do that, I feel immensely satisfied.
This isn't an unusual or unique goal. Tell a joke. Give praise. Describe a past event of your life. Shout at someone. No matter how you may express yourself, your desire is to see registered in their face an understanding of what you believe and who you are. You want them to laugh. You want them to beam. You want them to listen to things that matter to you. You want them to hear you. And in doing those things, you feel important. You feel as though you matter. You feel important.
Going to the degree I go to in order to DM a game isn't necessary for most people. A few drinks at the bar with friends, a momentary success on the golf course, managing a lucrative sale or enticing an investment ... that is enough for most people to feel special and important. I've never felt that. Too much of it is easy. Or a matter of indifference to me.
I like the feel of hitting a softball out into the distance and over the heads of the fielders; I have big, round shoulders and a powerful swing, and fair hand-to-eye coordination, so I can get a good leverage on the ball and whack it a mile. The moment of impact between bat and ball is satisfying ... but only momentarily. I've hit it that way many times, and I don't feel any particular validation in it. For a long time, remembering that I had once been young and clumsy, before I had grown into my full size, I enjoyed my increased performance as an athelete. But it was fleeting, and doesn't do me much good now as I slide further into middle age ... and at any rate I'm driven more by intellectual satisfaction than emotional. I would rather change a person's mind than make them run after my hit ball. The former is more challenging, more satisfying in its conclusion, and I think better for the world altogether ... since, after all, I generally think I am right and that most other people are wrong. If I can give them cause to mend the error of their ways, not by appealing to them emotionally but by hammering them with argument, I feel I've truly accomplished something.
But you cannot separate entirely emotions from the intellect. We as beings think with both heart and mind, and always one of the two serves as the best possible guide to the one lagging behind. If I want an intellectual response to a play, I fill my play with emotions. If I want an emotional response from an entreaty, I apply reason and meaning by the use of words. You can't change a person's mind with facts alone; you must encourage them to set aside their fear and be brave.
This, then, is the reason I Dungeon Master. I have the opportunity to provide an arena for conflict. I can fill the arena with spectacle, to encourage anticipation, frustration, anguish, joy, triumph or whatever my players will have, as though chosen from a menu. The players are free to practice ambition, charity, deceit, beneficence or greed. They can be villainous or virtuous. And with each response, with each reaction, with each insistence that they will carry forth this plan regardless, with every angry respite against a world that does not treat them as well as they insist on being treated, I smile and chuckle and enjoy the fact that these players just don't quit. They want more, they'll fight for more, they'll demand more, and as they work the dice against me they'll GET more.
Every time I lose, I win.
No other artistic endeavor I've ever involved myself in provided such a wide-ranging opportunity for emotion and personal success, for me or the 'audience' of players. It's only drawback is that the audience is so small, and that I've never found a way to make money at it ... so I'd never have to do anything else.
(of course, he said "GM," but let's not quibble)
And in the midst of his long post he threw a shout-out at me:
"For some DM's this may be as "simple" as drawing a dungeon map and stocking it (random or not) with challenges and loot. For some (like Alexis over at Tao of D&D) it might mean creating an entire living-breathing world of society and customs and economy and trade routes and knowing how those things interact so that when players say, "I want to be a mustard farmer," he knows how many plots of land are available for cultivation."
It's inaccurate in detail, and its inaccurate in proposing why I might do all this, but I don't fault JB. He doesn't know me, and from the outside, that's probably what it looks like. However, I actually don't "create" a world. I really only interpret the actual world, and this is what makes it living and breathing ... the fact that the players can visualize a living/breathing Germany because Germany actually exists, there have been references to Germany all their lives, they've met and seen German people, and so they can imagine the German background without my needing to create it. All I have to do is map the place.
And as far as knowing how many plots of land are available, I actually have no idea at all. But I do know, from investigating the actual world, what lands will grow mustard and what won't, and generally speaking there's always some uncultivated land somewhere, or someone willing to sell, so if you want a plot we can do a deal. But I don't have to have the number of plots nailed down to make that work.
In any event, this living/breathing thing is not, repeat not, the reason I DM. The world and the environment are just tools, like the dice or the rules, intended to provide guidelines for the
carrying on of the game. The setting is only one part. It is only the stage. The rules are only the atmosphere and the boundaries of behavior, like gravity and human limitation applies to the actors. And the dice is the undefined element. All together, however, its just window-dressing. And while I might work hard to make the window-dressing attractive, I don't delude myself into thinking the window dressing is enough. I'm not making a film in the Transformer's franchise.
I run a game as a DM for similar reasons that I'll write a play for public viewing, or stand up to give a reading at a local event, or enter a political forum to present an opinion. I am seeking to create a visceral response to an act of intellect on my part - preferably, a carefully intended visceral response, to cause the audience to respond with the emotion I want them to have. This might be horror at something I'm reading; this might be a laugh from a carefully set up joke, or series of jokes as part of the performance; it might be dead silence, as people wait breathlessly for my next word. It might be a feeling of warmth and coming together, particularly if I am the MC at a wedding. It might be release and hope, if I am giving a eulogy. Whatever the circumstance, I am giving it my all to bring other people towards a place of personal emotional and intellectual growth. And whenever I can do that, I feel immensely satisfied.
This isn't an unusual or unique goal. Tell a joke. Give praise. Describe a past event of your life. Shout at someone. No matter how you may express yourself, your desire is to see registered in their face an understanding of what you believe and who you are. You want them to laugh. You want them to beam. You want them to listen to things that matter to you. You want them to hear you. And in doing those things, you feel important. You feel as though you matter. You feel important.
Going to the degree I go to in order to DM a game isn't necessary for most people. A few drinks at the bar with friends, a momentary success on the golf course, managing a lucrative sale or enticing an investment ... that is enough for most people to feel special and important. I've never felt that. Too much of it is easy. Or a matter of indifference to me.
I like the feel of hitting a softball out into the distance and over the heads of the fielders; I have big, round shoulders and a powerful swing, and fair hand-to-eye coordination, so I can get a good leverage on the ball and whack it a mile. The moment of impact between bat and ball is satisfying ... but only momentarily. I've hit it that way many times, and I don't feel any particular validation in it. For a long time, remembering that I had once been young and clumsy, before I had grown into my full size, I enjoyed my increased performance as an athelete. But it was fleeting, and doesn't do me much good now as I slide further into middle age ... and at any rate I'm driven more by intellectual satisfaction than emotional. I would rather change a person's mind than make them run after my hit ball. The former is more challenging, more satisfying in its conclusion, and I think better for the world altogether ... since, after all, I generally think I am right and that most other people are wrong. If I can give them cause to mend the error of their ways, not by appealing to them emotionally but by hammering them with argument, I feel I've truly accomplished something.
But you cannot separate entirely emotions from the intellect. We as beings think with both heart and mind, and always one of the two serves as the best possible guide to the one lagging behind. If I want an intellectual response to a play, I fill my play with emotions. If I want an emotional response from an entreaty, I apply reason and meaning by the use of words. You can't change a person's mind with facts alone; you must encourage them to set aside their fear and be brave.
This, then, is the reason I Dungeon Master. I have the opportunity to provide an arena for conflict. I can fill the arena with spectacle, to encourage anticipation, frustration, anguish, joy, triumph or whatever my players will have, as though chosen from a menu. The players are free to practice ambition, charity, deceit, beneficence or greed. They can be villainous or virtuous. And with each response, with each reaction, with each insistence that they will carry forth this plan regardless, with every angry respite against a world that does not treat them as well as they insist on being treated, I smile and chuckle and enjoy the fact that these players just don't quit. They want more, they'll fight for more, they'll demand more, and as they work the dice against me they'll GET more.
Every time I lose, I win.
No other artistic endeavor I've ever involved myself in provided such a wide-ranging opportunity for emotion and personal success, for me or the 'audience' of players. It's only drawback is that the audience is so small, and that I've never found a way to make money at it ... so I'd never have to do anything else.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Serendipity Squared
The world is a better DM than I am.
I don't know how much value my non-players will get out of this post. I know that I feel I should write it, if only because it demonstrates to the nth degree the extreme unlikeliness of the world. Unlike most who are limited only to their own imaginations, or to what they can scour from purchased modules and adventures, I have this world that keeps surprising me again and again with its combination of unexpected fact and marvelous continuity.
Here is the story, as concise as I can make it. Some long time ago, about four years in fact, the party went through this adventure that resulted in reuniting an Amazon princess with her Father (see, I can do traditional), a quest which involved a certain amount of unreality and inter-plane contact. In turn, the party was granted the privilege of having reality slightly altered so as to give them a single-hex piece of land all their own, anywhere within the area I had mapped up to that time. After a great deal of discussion, the party agreed upon Transylvania, and I parked them in a wild bit of territory in eastern Transylvania, part of modern Covasna. The map upon which I based my world did not have any significant town in the hex, so that made it a wilderness land, not administered strongly by the Transylvanian Kingdom. I wrote generally about the hex in this post, two years ago.
After a long time looking around for any additional information about the hex's geography or history, I had come to the conclusion that there wasn't much of anything - frustrating as that was. So I've been faking it for quite awhile.
The party went off and did this and that, journeyed into the far north to regain two comrades lost due to a bad incident involving a Deck of Many Things (love that item), returned, fought a large army of hobgoblins, goblins and a few drow elves (who dwell deep, deep under the Carpathian mountains, the party discovered), and got settled into their little fiefdom. Destroying the hobgoblin/goblin army was seen as a great boon to the King of Transylvania, and the designated owner of the party's fiefdom, the mage, was made a land graf over the same area, essentially the least significant of minor nobility.
Then I began starting the adventure the party is on now, the crux of which at this point revolves around their finding a way to contact and return the Avars, who 'stepped out' some ten centuries ago into another plane of existence, to aid them in fighting some other creatures helping the God Xalmoxis accomplish some nefarious purpose.
And now, a piece of information comes to light that is marvelously unexpected.
It is important to understand the time frame. Fief given 4 years ago. Circumstances leading to seeking the Avars begun about 9 months ago. Choice of Avars as the missing race in question chosen entirely at random.
A couple of days ago, I am looking through old folktales looking for inspiration on how to bring about the awakening of the Avars, which I'm not entirely clear about yet. And in the process I stumble across a reference to the son of Attila the Hun, Csaba, and his relationship to a Hungarian tribe, the Szekelys.
Well, I know that Transylvania is occupied mostly by a Hungarian-Romany peasantry ruled by a German aristocracy, so anything Hungarian is of interest to me, so I click on the link and look at the Szekelys. And I find the wikipedia page.
Now, on this page I find the description that they "are a subgroup of the Hungarian people, living mostly in the Szekely Land." Now, I've never heard of the Szekely Land. And I am a major geographical buff ... I know all kinds of worthless junk about all kinds of places in the world, and for something to get through the cracks is very unusual - as anyone who knows me can tell you. Moreover, I've been reading shit about Romania for four years, and I can't recall ever having heard ANY reference to Szekely LAND. I might have stumbled across the peoples before, and paid no special attention, but that word LAND would have rung a major bell with me, as that is a huge fascination of mine. But nope, never heard of it.
Guess, just guess, where Szekely land is.
Yep, extending from Covasna through Harghita and into Mures and Neamt.
On the map above, you can identify the Carpathian and Southern Carpathian mountains by where the areas marked off by the white lines get much larger , in a sort of backwards L through the center of modern Romania. The area above and to the left of those larger subdivisions is Transylvania.
Well fuck, I am thinking. The party has been there for four years and I'm only learning about the Szekely's NOW? I could have been building campaigns all this time ... should have been building campaigns. I feel sheepish and more than a little stupid.
But what the heck, I know now. And it doesn't destroy the continuity, since the party is in league with the German aristocracy, and was never in league with the peasantry anyway. Good enough, I'll start bringing the Szekely culture into the picture, now that I know.
So who are these Szekelys? Well, there's a lovely link on the wikipedia page, History of the Szekely people. Good place to start.
But then, you go down that page to where you find "Speculations and theories today," and there's a huge bomb right here, tailor-made for my campaign and the party itself.
Theory number 4 for the origins of the Szekely people: "Szekelys were descendents of the Avar people, whose Kaganate was liquidated by Charlemagne and Khan Krum in the early 9th century, who relocated to Transylvania in the 12th century."
THUMP.
Now, I said in the linked post above about the Avar campaign that I wasn't using the real world time frame, and that the Avars were disappearing in the 7th century. But it's reasonable to assume that some Avars disappeared in the 7th century, and that the remaining Avars were then destroyed in the 9th, and so on. I did say, after all, that the information the party had about the "last Avars" was a myth.
What this means, for those who haven't jumped forward into the future, is that the party has the opportunity to return the forefathers of the very people over which the party has nominal authority, gain the adoration and respect of the Szekelys, possibly unite them, establish themselves as religious and secular leaders over a whole group of people occupying a 5,000 square mile area, sue for autonomy from the Transylvanian King (probably not independence), and then use an army raised of Szekelys (I estimate casually between two and five thousand fighting men) to carry out further adventures.
And people say the End Game in D&D is boring.
You know what? You go to the store and buy another 32 page piece of shit from a vendor. I will stick to running world history. It is just too fucking amazing.
I don't know how much value my non-players will get out of this post. I know that I feel I should write it, if only because it demonstrates to the nth degree the extreme unlikeliness of the world. Unlike most who are limited only to their own imaginations, or to what they can scour from purchased modules and adventures, I have this world that keeps surprising me again and again with its combination of unexpected fact and marvelous continuity.
Here is the story, as concise as I can make it. Some long time ago, about four years in fact, the party went through this adventure that resulted in reuniting an Amazon princess with her Father (see, I can do traditional), a quest which involved a certain amount of unreality and inter-plane contact. In turn, the party was granted the privilege of having reality slightly altered so as to give them a single-hex piece of land all their own, anywhere within the area I had mapped up to that time. After a great deal of discussion, the party agreed upon Transylvania, and I parked them in a wild bit of territory in eastern Transylvania, part of modern Covasna. The map upon which I based my world did not have any significant town in the hex, so that made it a wilderness land, not administered strongly by the Transylvanian Kingdom. I wrote generally about the hex in this post, two years ago.
After a long time looking around for any additional information about the hex's geography or history, I had come to the conclusion that there wasn't much of anything - frustrating as that was. So I've been faking it for quite awhile.
The party went off and did this and that, journeyed into the far north to regain two comrades lost due to a bad incident involving a Deck of Many Things (love that item), returned, fought a large army of hobgoblins, goblins and a few drow elves (who dwell deep, deep under the Carpathian mountains, the party discovered), and got settled into their little fiefdom. Destroying the hobgoblin/goblin army was seen as a great boon to the King of Transylvania, and the designated owner of the party's fiefdom, the mage, was made a land graf over the same area, essentially the least significant of minor nobility.
Then I began starting the adventure the party is on now, the crux of which at this point revolves around their finding a way to contact and return the Avars, who 'stepped out' some ten centuries ago into another plane of existence, to aid them in fighting some other creatures helping the God Xalmoxis accomplish some nefarious purpose.
And now, a piece of information comes to light that is marvelously unexpected.
It is important to understand the time frame. Fief given 4 years ago. Circumstances leading to seeking the Avars begun about 9 months ago. Choice of Avars as the missing race in question chosen entirely at random.
A couple of days ago, I am looking through old folktales looking for inspiration on how to bring about the awakening of the Avars, which I'm not entirely clear about yet. And in the process I stumble across a reference to the son of Attila the Hun, Csaba, and his relationship to a Hungarian tribe, the Szekelys.
Well, I know that Transylvania is occupied mostly by a Hungarian-Romany peasantry ruled by a German aristocracy, so anything Hungarian is of interest to me, so I click on the link and look at the Szekelys. And I find the wikipedia page.
Now, on this page I find the description that they "are a subgroup of the Hungarian people, living mostly in the Szekely Land." Now, I've never heard of the Szekely Land. And I am a major geographical buff ... I know all kinds of worthless junk about all kinds of places in the world, and for something to get through the cracks is very unusual - as anyone who knows me can tell you. Moreover, I've been reading shit about Romania for four years, and I can't recall ever having heard ANY reference to Szekely LAND. I might have stumbled across the peoples before, and paid no special attention, but that word LAND would have rung a major bell with me, as that is a huge fascination of mine. But nope, never heard of it.
Guess, just guess, where Szekely land is.
Yep, extending from Covasna through Harghita and into Mures and Neamt.
 |
| Who fucking knew? |
On the map above, you can identify the Carpathian and Southern Carpathian mountains by where the areas marked off by the white lines get much larger , in a sort of backwards L through the center of modern Romania. The area above and to the left of those larger subdivisions is Transylvania.
Well fuck, I am thinking. The party has been there for four years and I'm only learning about the Szekely's NOW? I could have been building campaigns all this time ... should have been building campaigns. I feel sheepish and more than a little stupid.
But what the heck, I know now. And it doesn't destroy the continuity, since the party is in league with the German aristocracy, and was never in league with the peasantry anyway. Good enough, I'll start bringing the Szekely culture into the picture, now that I know.
So who are these Szekelys? Well, there's a lovely link on the wikipedia page, History of the Szekely people. Good place to start.
But then, you go down that page to where you find "Speculations and theories today," and there's a huge bomb right here, tailor-made for my campaign and the party itself.
Theory number 4 for the origins of the Szekely people: "Szekelys were descendents of the Avar people, whose Kaganate was liquidated by Charlemagne and Khan Krum in the early 9th century, who relocated to Transylvania in the 12th century."
THUMP.
Now, I said in the linked post above about the Avar campaign that I wasn't using the real world time frame, and that the Avars were disappearing in the 7th century. But it's reasonable to assume that some Avars disappeared in the 7th century, and that the remaining Avars were then destroyed in the 9th, and so on. I did say, after all, that the information the party had about the "last Avars" was a myth.
What this means, for those who haven't jumped forward into the future, is that the party has the opportunity to return the forefathers of the very people over which the party has nominal authority, gain the adoration and respect of the Szekelys, possibly unite them, establish themselves as religious and secular leaders over a whole group of people occupying a 5,000 square mile area, sue for autonomy from the Transylvanian King (probably not independence), and then use an army raised of Szekelys (I estimate casually between two and five thousand fighting men) to carry out further adventures.
And people say the End Game in D&D is boring.
You know what? You go to the store and buy another 32 page piece of shit from a vendor. I will stick to running world history. It is just too fucking amazing.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Economics
Before I get started on this annoyingly misunderstood technology - and that it is a 'technology' is where I will start - first I'll suck up some of the maximum blogger-approved space on this blog by embeding the following video:
I hope you all take the time to actually watch it. And let me say that if it leaves you thinking that one side is right and the other is wrong, then go back and watch it again, because you clearly have not understood a fucking thing.
I've been writing my way through Civilization IV, accepting as 'technologies' the various elements from the tech-tree of that game. A method of organization is a technology as much as a tool or a machine. Technologies exist to solve problems, which occur as the result of some social element getting out of control. For example, increased food supplies in late 17th century Europe caused a population spike, which encouraged the growing of more food, which put pressure on public lands and created the need to define ownership of said lands where no need had previously existed, which inspired John Locke to write about what ownership was, which helped kicked off a greater investigation amongst intellectuals about the rights and privileges of individuals, which we call the flowering of liberalism. The problem was social pressure; liberalism was a technology proposed to address that problem.
Very often we are given to believe that technologies are things that sit around in existence waiting to be discovered ... and sometimes we propose or imagine that this or that technology could have been incorporated seamlessly in any period of human history, such as pistols in the late Roman Empire, or motorcars in feudal Japan, or the printing press in pre-Hyksos Egypt. We assume that if we had the paper and the actual know-how, that Cheops could have presided over a spectacularly educated Nile civilization. We conveniently forget that the principles of writing long essays haven't been conceived of yet; or that the sum of human knowledge was so small that it could have been printed on presses in the space of a few afternoons. We think, no problem, people will INVENT those things as soon as they have the technology. We fail to recognize that a printing press that does not address a society's need for a printing press is really only a large piece of junk, which would more likely be dumped in a Nile-fed bog before it inspired a civilization-changing revolution.
In some of the discussions I've had in the past about my trade system, I've heard arguments advanced about how economics work, or what's right and wrong about economics, and the 'law' of supply and demand, etcetera, etcetera, and I've shaken my head in wonder at the hopelessly entrenched perception people have of this era and how it works ... and how it defines how every era must of worked. That every era is the same, and that human beings are substantially the same beings regardless of the age in which they live, is a liberal fantasy which I hope some of these civilization posts have been able to dispel in some small part. We'd all like to think we could walk up to a Roman, wave a hand and then share a beer with him or her just as though we were all down at the pub on an ordinary Friday night. We have proof the Romans knew what beer was, so the rest of the supposition simply follows from there. If they had beer, they clearly had Friday nights, with the end of a long week being time to party.
And thus it follows that if there were people producing objects, and people buying objects, an economy existed that must have followed the principles laid out by Adam Smith in the late 18th century, or by the two fellows depicted in the video above. These ancient peoples just didn't know it, goes the argument ... but those 'laws' were there, unquestionably.
That Adam Smith was describing his time, or the peculiar circumstances arising from the Industrial Revolution, in which production and demand soared due to a wide array of political, cultural, biological and technological influences, is irrelevant - goes the argument. We human beings are who we are, and that will never, EVER change.
Economics as a social science was developed in the ensuing century with all the accuracy and rationale to be expected of people who did not have the resources to know what the hell they were talking about. And today there is an abundancy of misinformation defining the actions and behavior of both economists and the "practical men" who believe in economists that can't hope to be measured except in the certain truth that rulemaking for either Hayek or Keynes only creates chaos and suffering. At this point, "leaving the economy alone" is a euphemism for changing all the regulations currently in place ... which is funny, since "fixing the economy" also means changing all the regulations currently in place.
A medieval world has no such conceptions. "Regulation" was a principle in which a seller's wares, if proven to be worthless or improper, meant the use of physical force in order to have the money returned, along with physical force to ensure the disappearance of said seller from the general community. This ranged from beatings to slavery to prison to death, depending on the quality and social danger presented by said worthless goods. You might get away with selling a blind mule. But if the saddle you sold leads to the death of a child, don't count on outliving the child long.
The idea that laws needed to be passed to ensure the quality of goods and services simply did not exist. Guilds controlled the quality, and did so at the end of a stick or a rope, as need be.
"Debt" was something states practiced - and which nobility took a part in, being responsible for states or parts of states. Ordinary individuals did not take out 'loans,' and certainly not from a bank. Starting capital was provided by guilds, the former taking a percentage of your wages through most of your life, in decreasing or increasing amounts, as circumstances warranted. A "bank" existed only on the largest possible level ... and when huge banks failed, as the Fuggers, the Medici and others certainly did, the "economy" did not rush to rescue them with capital. Wealthy individuals went belly up, some were killed or left penniless, while new financial wizards took their place, and the poor continued their lives unaffected. If the country was overrun for lack of funds for an army; if the local lord was forced to bargain slaves and goods as a tribute to maintain independence; the ordinary person had little or no say in the exchange. Persons were seized, lands were seized, material was traded and the "economy" went on exactly as before. People raised food for themselves and their lord, they lived miserable, non-materialistic lives, and the bourgeois did not exist.
The world's reaction to modern economic crises is based upon one simple criteria which did not exist in the medieval world: COMFORT. Specifically, the comfort of the modern consumer, which is based upon the cultural structure that promotes comfort in every aspect and circumstance of your life. Governments now exist to ensure your comfort, and they campaign with arguments that they will ensure your comfort. And as long as you are comfortable, in some job, with enough money to buy the elements of your comfort, media and furniture and housing and the like, you will continue being passive and ignorant about both your economy and your government. Producers struggle to make profit in the industries that bring you the very most comfort possible, and the richest producers are those who create things which you in your comfort-driven lifestyle perceive that you CANNOT live without: transport and distraction, both of which are fed by the production of stored kinetic power.
No one cared to provide either to your medieval counterpart. There was nothing to be gained in providing either, and in most cases it was impossible to provide either. Your medieval counterpart was expected to get along anyway. Unsurprisingly, your medieval counterpart did, with less comfort and less likelihood of success.
The modern economy panders to you. No one pandered to your medieval counterpart. If you cannot recognize the difference in how that economy must have worked, no amount of wordage I could throw at you will.
Bonus Question: Why is the economic structure of EVE not a representation of a primitive economy?
I hope you all take the time to actually watch it. And let me say that if it leaves you thinking that one side is right and the other is wrong, then go back and watch it again, because you clearly have not understood a fucking thing.
I've been writing my way through Civilization IV, accepting as 'technologies' the various elements from the tech-tree of that game. A method of organization is a technology as much as a tool or a machine. Technologies exist to solve problems, which occur as the result of some social element getting out of control. For example, increased food supplies in late 17th century Europe caused a population spike, which encouraged the growing of more food, which put pressure on public lands and created the need to define ownership of said lands where no need had previously existed, which inspired John Locke to write about what ownership was, which helped kicked off a greater investigation amongst intellectuals about the rights and privileges of individuals, which we call the flowering of liberalism. The problem was social pressure; liberalism was a technology proposed to address that problem.
Very often we are given to believe that technologies are things that sit around in existence waiting to be discovered ... and sometimes we propose or imagine that this or that technology could have been incorporated seamlessly in any period of human history, such as pistols in the late Roman Empire, or motorcars in feudal Japan, or the printing press in pre-Hyksos Egypt. We assume that if we had the paper and the actual know-how, that Cheops could have presided over a spectacularly educated Nile civilization. We conveniently forget that the principles of writing long essays haven't been conceived of yet; or that the sum of human knowledge was so small that it could have been printed on presses in the space of a few afternoons. We think, no problem, people will INVENT those things as soon as they have the technology. We fail to recognize that a printing press that does not address a society's need for a printing press is really only a large piece of junk, which would more likely be dumped in a Nile-fed bog before it inspired a civilization-changing revolution.
In some of the discussions I've had in the past about my trade system, I've heard arguments advanced about how economics work, or what's right and wrong about economics, and the 'law' of supply and demand, etcetera, etcetera, and I've shaken my head in wonder at the hopelessly entrenched perception people have of this era and how it works ... and how it defines how every era must of worked. That every era is the same, and that human beings are substantially the same beings regardless of the age in which they live, is a liberal fantasy which I hope some of these civilization posts have been able to dispel in some small part. We'd all like to think we could walk up to a Roman, wave a hand and then share a beer with him or her just as though we were all down at the pub on an ordinary Friday night. We have proof the Romans knew what beer was, so the rest of the supposition simply follows from there. If they had beer, they clearly had Friday nights, with the end of a long week being time to party.
And thus it follows that if there were people producing objects, and people buying objects, an economy existed that must have followed the principles laid out by Adam Smith in the late 18th century, or by the two fellows depicted in the video above. These ancient peoples just didn't know it, goes the argument ... but those 'laws' were there, unquestionably.
That Adam Smith was describing his time, or the peculiar circumstances arising from the Industrial Revolution, in which production and demand soared due to a wide array of political, cultural, biological and technological influences, is irrelevant - goes the argument. We human beings are who we are, and that will never, EVER change.
Economics as a social science was developed in the ensuing century with all the accuracy and rationale to be expected of people who did not have the resources to know what the hell they were talking about. And today there is an abundancy of misinformation defining the actions and behavior of both economists and the "practical men" who believe in economists that can't hope to be measured except in the certain truth that rulemaking for either Hayek or Keynes only creates chaos and suffering. At this point, "leaving the economy alone" is a euphemism for changing all the regulations currently in place ... which is funny, since "fixing the economy" also means changing all the regulations currently in place.
A medieval world has no such conceptions. "Regulation" was a principle in which a seller's wares, if proven to be worthless or improper, meant the use of physical force in order to have the money returned, along with physical force to ensure the disappearance of said seller from the general community. This ranged from beatings to slavery to prison to death, depending on the quality and social danger presented by said worthless goods. You might get away with selling a blind mule. But if the saddle you sold leads to the death of a child, don't count on outliving the child long.
The idea that laws needed to be passed to ensure the quality of goods and services simply did not exist. Guilds controlled the quality, and did so at the end of a stick or a rope, as need be.
"Debt" was something states practiced - and which nobility took a part in, being responsible for states or parts of states. Ordinary individuals did not take out 'loans,' and certainly not from a bank. Starting capital was provided by guilds, the former taking a percentage of your wages through most of your life, in decreasing or increasing amounts, as circumstances warranted. A "bank" existed only on the largest possible level ... and when huge banks failed, as the Fuggers, the Medici and others certainly did, the "economy" did not rush to rescue them with capital. Wealthy individuals went belly up, some were killed or left penniless, while new financial wizards took their place, and the poor continued their lives unaffected. If the country was overrun for lack of funds for an army; if the local lord was forced to bargain slaves and goods as a tribute to maintain independence; the ordinary person had little or no say in the exchange. Persons were seized, lands were seized, material was traded and the "economy" went on exactly as before. People raised food for themselves and their lord, they lived miserable, non-materialistic lives, and the bourgeois did not exist.
The world's reaction to modern economic crises is based upon one simple criteria which did not exist in the medieval world: COMFORT. Specifically, the comfort of the modern consumer, which is based upon the cultural structure that promotes comfort in every aspect and circumstance of your life. Governments now exist to ensure your comfort, and they campaign with arguments that they will ensure your comfort. And as long as you are comfortable, in some job, with enough money to buy the elements of your comfort, media and furniture and housing and the like, you will continue being passive and ignorant about both your economy and your government. Producers struggle to make profit in the industries that bring you the very most comfort possible, and the richest producers are those who create things which you in your comfort-driven lifestyle perceive that you CANNOT live without: transport and distraction, both of which are fed by the production of stored kinetic power.
No one cared to provide either to your medieval counterpart. There was nothing to be gained in providing either, and in most cases it was impossible to provide either. Your medieval counterpart was expected to get along anyway. Unsurprisingly, your medieval counterpart did, with less comfort and less likelihood of success.
The modern economy panders to you. No one pandered to your medieval counterpart. If you cannot recognize the difference in how that economy must have worked, no amount of wordage I could throw at you will.
Bonus Question: Why is the economic structure of EVE not a representation of a primitive economy?
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Year One, Then Year Two
UPDATE: It is true that the Same Universe Wiki, launched back in 2011, failed to get off the ground, largely due to difficulty in navigating a home-built platform. Such are things with computer programs, I trust that people understand. Dear reader, please take note that the child of the SUW, Tao at Wikispaces, is doing very well and has a total of five editors working on it.
The below is left unchanged for the sake of historical posterity.
Alexis, August 2015
It is just about a year since the first steps were taking to developing the Same Universe Wiki ... which has been a troubling project from the beginning. It began due to some posts I wrote about getting the community to work together (here, here and here), describing how it might be done and what it might try to accomplish. Not surprisingly, the message was not well received in the beginning and in the last year, that circumstance has not changed.
Carl and I went ahead with the wiki and built the thing up. I then went ahead and put more than 200 pages of general description, some useful and some not, hoping others would add maps or descriptions of their worlds, for the general benefit of the community. And, not surprisingly, they didn't do that. There have been a number of reasons, mostly having to do with my involvement and concerns about my attitude. Someone else with the same idea might have done better overall with contributions, being a nicer and fluffier person. This I don't doubt.
Motivation was never my intent. If I wanted to motivate people, I'd invent some conspiracy, pump that conspiracy up to eleven and get people really scared about the end of RPG's, and then use that fear to encourage people to 'save' their hobby. My personal plan was just to see if there was anyone brave or tough enough to take me on. I'm convinced now there isn't.
So ... there's no sense in wasting any more time with this. If I'm going to have a wiki that is going to be all me (and I still like the idea), then there's no point in presenting it as if it is something for everyone. It might as well just be called Tao's World or something like that. And with all due respect to Carl, who is very busy these days climbing the Great Ladder of success, I'll have to search for some technical source I can control. But the wiki idea is too convenient, and there's too many visual problems with blogger to just put material on this blog.
I don't know what steps I'm going to take in this direction at this time. It is part of the reason why I haven't been contributing further to the wiki (though I have things to put there). I suppose I'll have to go look at the system Wikipedia offers.
Haven't got much else to say. Been working on researching the cities of France, still mapping India and still developing my background generator for characters. Those are the upfront projects these days ... that and starting the online campaign, which is a time sucker for sure. Fun, though. I remember how much fun it was the first time around, and it feels good to have that again. I guess I just needed a long break.
The below is left unchanged for the sake of historical posterity.
Alexis, August 2015
It is just about a year since the first steps were taking to developing the Same Universe Wiki ... which has been a troubling project from the beginning. It began due to some posts I wrote about getting the community to work together (here, here and here), describing how it might be done and what it might try to accomplish. Not surprisingly, the message was not well received in the beginning and in the last year, that circumstance has not changed.
Carl and I went ahead with the wiki and built the thing up. I then went ahead and put more than 200 pages of general description, some useful and some not, hoping others would add maps or descriptions of their worlds, for the general benefit of the community. And, not surprisingly, they didn't do that. There have been a number of reasons, mostly having to do with my involvement and concerns about my attitude. Someone else with the same idea might have done better overall with contributions, being a nicer and fluffier person. This I don't doubt.
Motivation was never my intent. If I wanted to motivate people, I'd invent some conspiracy, pump that conspiracy up to eleven and get people really scared about the end of RPG's, and then use that fear to encourage people to 'save' their hobby. My personal plan was just to see if there was anyone brave or tough enough to take me on. I'm convinced now there isn't.
So ... there's no sense in wasting any more time with this. If I'm going to have a wiki that is going to be all me (and I still like the idea), then there's no point in presenting it as if it is something for everyone. It might as well just be called Tao's World or something like that. And with all due respect to Carl, who is very busy these days climbing the Great Ladder of success, I'll have to search for some technical source I can control. But the wiki idea is too convenient, and there's too many visual problems with blogger to just put material on this blog.
I don't know what steps I'm going to take in this direction at this time. It is part of the reason why I haven't been contributing further to the wiki (though I have things to put there). I suppose I'll have to go look at the system Wikipedia offers.
Haven't got much else to say. Been working on researching the cities of France, still mapping India and still developing my background generator for characters. Those are the upfront projects these days ... that and starting the online campaign, which is a time sucker for sure. Fun, though. I remember how much fun it was the first time around, and it feels good to have that again. I guess I just needed a long break.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
No Solutions Necessary
Thing about this campaign, there are days when it is just too busy over there. Damn, I love a good fight.
In the link, if you have the patience to read through the fight, you can see that I've given the party a very tough enemy on the outset of the campaign. Here we're dealing with three first levels and a second level, with a low level NPC providing very little help, fighting a giant crab that appears to weigh about a ton.
Too much? I don't think so.
I make no pretense about the party being able to win. I warned the party ahead of time that the crab would be BIG, I provided a setting and I offered up a logical reward and a whole lot of fishnet. I had no idea in doing so what they'd even use the fishnet for. I had no prior idea how they would succeed in killing the dangerous foe, nor how they'd do it.
You see, as a DM running a sandbox, I don't have to plan any of that. It's none of my business.
Reading lately this post from Dreams in the Lich House, the general sense seems to be (not saying it definitely is) that there is something not quite kosher about the use of plot hooks in a sandbox campaign. I disagree, in part for the reasons I gave in the comment section of the linked post, but also because the real sin isn't the plot hook, it is the plot solution. This is the DM's having an idea of how the hook should be addressed - as opposed to, say, how the players feel like addressing it.
For example. Suppose that the party learns that there's a slavering, nasty half-orc rapist in a small neighborhood gobbling up young girls. The DM's solution is that the players find the rapist, rid the neighborhood of him and become heroes.
On the other hand, maybe the party grabs a young girl, stakes her out in the square at night and waits for the half-orc to turn up (killing the occasional townsperson who makes a pain of themselves by appearing). When the half-orc does, they give it the girl, and promise many more girls if the half-orc will come along with them as a friend.
Some DMs will be horrified. Some will punish the party by having the half-orc be unbalanced so that it tries to kill the party in their sleep. But some DMs will think its great, and will only ruin the situation if the party falters on their promise to keep the half-orc fed on young girls. See, the thing is, the young girls are themselves imaginary, and nothing is actually lost or gained in the game by deciding to play it that way. But some DMs don't like that. They think every player should see opportunity the way THAT DM sees opportunity. But opportunity is a movable feast.
So I try to give the opportunities without thinking up the solutions ahead of time. I hadn't thought of any way the net might be useful ... I just figured a fishmonger would have a net and would bring it along in case it was useful. But then, I didn't TRY to think of a use, either. It's better if I don't. I want to keep an open mind, and the mind's front lawn works best when it isn't tramped over repeatedly.
Anyway, the combat is proving to be a good time. No word on the victor yet. There may not even be one.
In the link, if you have the patience to read through the fight, you can see that I've given the party a very tough enemy on the outset of the campaign. Here we're dealing with three first levels and a second level, with a low level NPC providing very little help, fighting a giant crab that appears to weigh about a ton.
Too much? I don't think so.
I make no pretense about the party being able to win. I warned the party ahead of time that the crab would be BIG, I provided a setting and I offered up a logical reward and a whole lot of fishnet. I had no idea in doing so what they'd even use the fishnet for. I had no prior idea how they would succeed in killing the dangerous foe, nor how they'd do it.
You see, as a DM running a sandbox, I don't have to plan any of that. It's none of my business.
Reading lately this post from Dreams in the Lich House, the general sense seems to be (not saying it definitely is) that there is something not quite kosher about the use of plot hooks in a sandbox campaign. I disagree, in part for the reasons I gave in the comment section of the linked post, but also because the real sin isn't the plot hook, it is the plot solution. This is the DM's having an idea of how the hook should be addressed - as opposed to, say, how the players feel like addressing it.
For example. Suppose that the party learns that there's a slavering, nasty half-orc rapist in a small neighborhood gobbling up young girls. The DM's solution is that the players find the rapist, rid the neighborhood of him and become heroes.
On the other hand, maybe the party grabs a young girl, stakes her out in the square at night and waits for the half-orc to turn up (killing the occasional townsperson who makes a pain of themselves by appearing). When the half-orc does, they give it the girl, and promise many more girls if the half-orc will come along with them as a friend.
Some DMs will be horrified. Some will punish the party by having the half-orc be unbalanced so that it tries to kill the party in their sleep. But some DMs will think its great, and will only ruin the situation if the party falters on their promise to keep the half-orc fed on young girls. See, the thing is, the young girls are themselves imaginary, and nothing is actually lost or gained in the game by deciding to play it that way. But some DMs don't like that. They think every player should see opportunity the way THAT DM sees opportunity. But opportunity is a movable feast.
So I try to give the opportunities without thinking up the solutions ahead of time. I hadn't thought of any way the net might be useful ... I just figured a fishmonger would have a net and would bring it along in case it was useful. But then, I didn't TRY to think of a use, either. It's better if I don't. I want to keep an open mind, and the mind's front lawn works best when it isn't tramped over repeatedly.
Anyway, the combat is proving to be a good time. No word on the victor yet. There may not even be one.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
What About the Noodle Breaking?
Just running through some plans for the future development of this proposed idea from last May, and it occurs to me that limiting the attrition damage to people is a big damn mistake. After all, it is not only people that fall and break and get damaged and cease functioning when a party staggers their way through a forbidding landscape. So does their stuff. Picks break from use, tents tear from winds, handles snap, gourds split and so on. In the bigger picture, the hulls of boats and the axles from wagons stress steadily over time and with heavy use, until they too give out.
The boat that sits in the harbour, even in a storm, does not do the work of a boat that beats the waves for months at a time. Yet when have you ever seen a ship damage table that didn't involve a storm or a battle? Do you not think the crew is kept busy steadily repairing ropes and sails, and not just from the last gale?
So what is needed is a clear structure on how hit point damage to characters is marked side-by-side with damage to their goods and equipment, from pots to sandle-straps ... and then what is needed is a rational, convenient method of maintaining that damage which is as easy to effect as returning lost hit points.
I don't have it, but this is one of those posts where I declare the problem, and then I go away and think about it.
The boat that sits in the harbour, even in a storm, does not do the work of a boat that beats the waves for months at a time. Yet when have you ever seen a ship damage table that didn't involve a storm or a battle? Do you not think the crew is kept busy steadily repairing ropes and sails, and not just from the last gale?
So what is needed is a clear structure on how hit point damage to characters is marked side-by-side with damage to their goods and equipment, from pots to sandle-straps ... and then what is needed is a rational, convenient method of maintaining that damage which is as easy to effect as returning lost hit points.
I don't have it, but this is one of those posts where I declare the problem, and then I go away and think about it.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Playing By Committee
Occasionally I'm going to post something about a D&D party that isn't the one on-line. This is one of those occasions.
Let me just say first of all that I would love to post 'content' everyday. It would be marvelous to have a new map, or a new table, that I could trot out and amaze everyone and piss off a few others ... but the reality is that it takes more than a day to churn out the kind of maps and tables that I consider worth creating ... that is, more than seven lines and two columns. More often than not, it takes more than a month to create a good map, and really a lot of time to come up with and create a good table. 'Content' isn't like simply writing my opinion for twenty minutes. And yet I like posting something every weekday on here. I don't want to post other people's crap, I don't want to post pictures, I don't want to post things that have nothing to do with D&D and I don't want to post about old modules and box art from shit produced 30 years ago. So what you get is my opinion. Luckily, I have a lot of opinions. Three and a third years now and the opinions are still coming.
Today the opinion is about an annoying habit that I see from players, one that stems from the language they use. It is a defensive mechanism, one that is designed to protect players, and I am certain that many a DM has fallen into its trap.
See if you can recognize it.
Player 1: What do we do, then?
Player 2: I think we ought to get together on having some kind of plan. How high is the fortress?
DM: It's on the top of the hill overlooking the sea, perched upon a 75 foot cliff that surrounds the fortress except where a very narrow cut descends from the landward side.
Player 2: How narrow?
DM: About four or five feet. It is not used for moving supplies - those are raised to the fortress by a rope that raises a large box.
Player 2: Does anyone have any ideas?
Player 3: We could climb up the side, perhaps at night.
Player 1: My father was a mountaineer and I have experience at that. We would need to get some equipment.
Player 2: We'll get it.
Player 3: Are there many guards?
DM: You have no idea. You can't tell from the ground.
Player 3: Maybe we should ask around the village. Perhaps someone knows how many guards there are, or has been up there and seen.
Player 4: We might watch to see if they carry torches. It's not night yet, right?
DM: No.
Player 1: I'm for climbing up.
Player 3: Me too.
Player 2: Great. If we're agreed we should get what we need and get started.
(All players look at the DM and wait)
DM: So, what are you going to do?
Player 2: What we said. We're going to climb up the mountain at night.
At this point, I usually sit, and wait, and the players start up again about their plans. They work more things out about what they're GOING to do, making no actual statements about doing any exact thing at this time. Virtually every idea is spoken of in the future tense, not in the present tense, and it becomes quite plain after twenty or thirty minutes that the party is waiting for the DM to say, "Okay, it's night, and you're climbing up the side of the fortress."
Only problem is, that's NOT for the DM to say. Until the party actually says, "We wait for night," the amount of time that is passing should be considered real time ... since in fact the players haven't actually done anything. They haven't said they go to the market to buy equipment, they haven't looked up any persons in the town, they haven't actually said they go to the foot of the cliff and so on. The tactic is a player trick to push the DM into editing all that for the sake of keeping the game moving ... and thus putting the responsibility on the DM for what was, and what was not gathered. Really clever players will try to argue that they did get this or that (past tense) before suddenly being on the side of the mountain, and the DM will realize that he jumped forward a bit too fast and now has to compensate the player. If the DM really isn't on the ball, the party can fuck around with him or her quite a bit this way.
Sometimes, I'll make a point in the running to tell the party that no time has passed and that they haven't done anything ... to encourage them to stop talking constantly in the future tense. Sometimes I'll sit and do nothing, waiting for them to say, "is it night yet?" so I can answer, no, it's about five minutes later than when we all discussed what we were going to do. And sometimes the party won't seem to notice, and I'll have a lovely forty-five minute or hour break in the middle of the running as they talk and talk and talk about the future. What a lovely thing is the future. It doesn't actually require the party DO anything.
I think we naturally do this as people, waiting for time to push us into activity, thinking mostly about how we're going to go to the gym or work or to the store ... and most of the time we're not really active about something until we're pushed by the clock into doing it. Uh oh, it's seven, if I don't get going now there won't be time to get back. And so we get into the car and go. Finally.
I really enjoy a party that doesn't 'plan' quite so much. And it moves the game along better when the player doesn't turn to others and say, "we should go there" but instead, without waiting for the others, says, "I go there." This will usually get the others to say, "Me too," and the activities will begin. If there's any need for a deeper plan, someone else in the party can say, "No, wait, don't yet."
But nine times out of ten a party makes plans when no actual plan is necessary. Why would one need a plan to buy equipment? Or get started on a journey. When the question "where?" is settled, don't mumble about what you ought to buy or have or get ... just go get it. Take charge of your character's actions - not everything needs to be a committee meeting.
It just wastes time.
Let me just say first of all that I would love to post 'content' everyday. It would be marvelous to have a new map, or a new table, that I could trot out and amaze everyone and piss off a few others ... but the reality is that it takes more than a day to churn out the kind of maps and tables that I consider worth creating ... that is, more than seven lines and two columns. More often than not, it takes more than a month to create a good map, and really a lot of time to come up with and create a good table. 'Content' isn't like simply writing my opinion for twenty minutes. And yet I like posting something every weekday on here. I don't want to post other people's crap, I don't want to post pictures, I don't want to post things that have nothing to do with D&D and I don't want to post about old modules and box art from shit produced 30 years ago. So what you get is my opinion. Luckily, I have a lot of opinions. Three and a third years now and the opinions are still coming.
Today the opinion is about an annoying habit that I see from players, one that stems from the language they use. It is a defensive mechanism, one that is designed to protect players, and I am certain that many a DM has fallen into its trap.
See if you can recognize it.
Player 1: What do we do, then?
Player 2: I think we ought to get together on having some kind of plan. How high is the fortress?
DM: It's on the top of the hill overlooking the sea, perched upon a 75 foot cliff that surrounds the fortress except where a very narrow cut descends from the landward side.
Player 2: How narrow?
DM: About four or five feet. It is not used for moving supplies - those are raised to the fortress by a rope that raises a large box.
Player 2: Does anyone have any ideas?
Player 3: We could climb up the side, perhaps at night.
Player 1: My father was a mountaineer and I have experience at that. We would need to get some equipment.
Player 2: We'll get it.
Player 3: Are there many guards?
DM: You have no idea. You can't tell from the ground.
Player 3: Maybe we should ask around the village. Perhaps someone knows how many guards there are, or has been up there and seen.
Player 4: We might watch to see if they carry torches. It's not night yet, right?
DM: No.
Player 1: I'm for climbing up.
Player 3: Me too.
Player 2: Great. If we're agreed we should get what we need and get started.
(All players look at the DM and wait)
DM: So, what are you going to do?
Player 2: What we said. We're going to climb up the mountain at night.
At this point, I usually sit, and wait, and the players start up again about their plans. They work more things out about what they're GOING to do, making no actual statements about doing any exact thing at this time. Virtually every idea is spoken of in the future tense, not in the present tense, and it becomes quite plain after twenty or thirty minutes that the party is waiting for the DM to say, "Okay, it's night, and you're climbing up the side of the fortress."
Only problem is, that's NOT for the DM to say. Until the party actually says, "We wait for night," the amount of time that is passing should be considered real time ... since in fact the players haven't actually done anything. They haven't said they go to the market to buy equipment, they haven't looked up any persons in the town, they haven't actually said they go to the foot of the cliff and so on. The tactic is a player trick to push the DM into editing all that for the sake of keeping the game moving ... and thus putting the responsibility on the DM for what was, and what was not gathered. Really clever players will try to argue that they did get this or that (past tense) before suddenly being on the side of the mountain, and the DM will realize that he jumped forward a bit too fast and now has to compensate the player. If the DM really isn't on the ball, the party can fuck around with him or her quite a bit this way.
Sometimes, I'll make a point in the running to tell the party that no time has passed and that they haven't done anything ... to encourage them to stop talking constantly in the future tense. Sometimes I'll sit and do nothing, waiting for them to say, "is it night yet?" so I can answer, no, it's about five minutes later than when we all discussed what we were going to do. And sometimes the party won't seem to notice, and I'll have a lovely forty-five minute or hour break in the middle of the running as they talk and talk and talk about the future. What a lovely thing is the future. It doesn't actually require the party DO anything.
I think we naturally do this as people, waiting for time to push us into activity, thinking mostly about how we're going to go to the gym or work or to the store ... and most of the time we're not really active about something until we're pushed by the clock into doing it. Uh oh, it's seven, if I don't get going now there won't be time to get back. And so we get into the car and go. Finally.
I really enjoy a party that doesn't 'plan' quite so much. And it moves the game along better when the player doesn't turn to others and say, "we should go there" but instead, without waiting for the others, says, "I go there." This will usually get the others to say, "Me too," and the activities will begin. If there's any need for a deeper plan, someone else in the party can say, "No, wait, don't yet."
But nine times out of ten a party makes plans when no actual plan is necessary. Why would one need a plan to buy equipment? Or get started on a journey. When the question "where?" is settled, don't mumble about what you ought to buy or have or get ... just go get it. Take charge of your character's actions - not everything needs to be a committee meeting.
It just wastes time.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Odd Bits from Oddbit - Me and Subjectivity
I've had a bit of a back and forth on Oddbit's blog lately on the subject of secondary skills and just how far they go. The subject matter was subjectivity - the difficulties of perspectives, the player's vs. the DM's, and how the overall matter is generally a pain in the ass in role-playing games. On Oddbit's post this naturally moved towards a discussion of how one adjudicated the matter of player skills ... which is how the secondary skills discussion in the comments section started.
Subjectivity is unavoidable from the moment a world steps beyond the video game simplification of the game, and yes, it is a pain in the ass. However, I feel I must address the point of conflicts as they arise in my game between how the players interpret what they can and can't do, and how I interpret what they can and can't do.
As a DM, I am open to debate on many subjects ... and I have backed down from positions on many occasions when a strong and rational argument was offered. I'm not a huge fan of players who will try to argue everything, but I'm open to questioning my judgement on certain things.
What things? Simple. Things which have not been previously established.
I treat my world like a Judge treating the Law. Every decision I make, no matter how minor, no matter how immaterial it may seem at the time, establishes a precedent. Whenever possible, I try to record these precedents in some form - though admittedly a lot of them are accepted generally among my players and me. If I have declared the precedent in the past, the present argument must address that precedent ... and so must I. The player's best argument will always begin with, "You said this on this day when we were doing this" ... thus reminding me of the rule I made and giving me the information that lets me remember having made the rule.
Having been reminded of it, 19 times out of 20 I will back down and let things continue as they have been. 1 time out of 20 I won't, because I've come to believe the previous judgement wasn't helping the game.
If I did this all the time, switched positions again and again, I'd be a lousy DM. I must admit that my memory isn't what it was, and I am making errors about my past rulings because I'm getting old and that IS bothering my players. A nice thing about having an online campaign is that EVERYTHING gets written down and that should help my consistency in my offline games as well.
Putting myself on the shelf for the time being, however, Oddbit's position is fair ... and without question the vast majority of rule changes that have been implemented - like skills sets, for instance - probably have been because the majority of DM's are incapable of consistency and therefore have to be managed. In other words, we keep changing the game, edition to edition, because DMs are in general pretty crappy judges.
But rules make crappy judges too, because rules are not flexible. Oddbit makes this point on his post with the example of John Doe and Orc McGee (go read it). The reason the LAW depends on Judges is because the Law is a very crappy way to run a society ... unless you accept precedents, which throw out the law given the situation. Just as life is far more complicated than any law could be governing it, rules in a roleplaying game are thoroughly inadequate for play. You can dumb down the world to make the rule system fit, but then your players can't do anything they want. And if the world is complicated, the rule system will fail again and again. If you play 'by the rules' you have either a straightjacket or a complete mess.
The only possible solution is the DM ... and that brings us back to the subjectivity of one person's opinion vs. another's. How many times have you had an argument about what an 10 intelligence lets you 'know?'
To me the answer is simple. It is the DM's world. It is the DM's rule. If the DM thinks you can't do that with an 8 strength, then you CAN'T. Period. And the longer the DM has been running, and establishing precedents for his or her world in his or her own head, the less likely the chance is the DM will ever have a change of mind. And if you don't like it, there's not much you can do about it.
Naturally, a lot of people resent that. Rules lawyers resent that. In an egalitarian society, there are to be restrictions on the DM's power to make ad hoc decisions about the game, blah blah blah ... a positively ridiculous position when you think about it. You're going to try and force a person to run a world the way you think it should be run, from an argument you've read in a book written by a person who isn't even present? Good luck. You might as well argue your friend Jeremy read an article in a magazine that says the Judge has rocks in his head ... hoping the Judge will agree with you.
Subjective it may be, but there is an absolute in the maelstrom - that's the DM's role. To cut through the subjectivity and say, "here, that's the stop." And playing in that DM's world means playing within the boundaries the DM sets for that world.
Naturally, you'll want to play with a DM that's more open minded and less interested in pushing around the players. In the meantime you can call the DM subjective - but that's really just tough shit.
Ah, a metaphor about subjectivity. I remember being invited to 'stir up' an English Class taught by a friend of mine, Paul, who was having trouble getting his students into discussions. I was long out of university by then, and way past having much concern for willful ignorance, and Paul knew it.
The book being taught was Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, which is a tale about a depressed, numb fellow who, apart from his other failings, is engaged to be married to a girl named Betty, described by the author of the book as having a personality like a kitten mewling annoying in a drawer. Throughout the book Betty is an awful, annoying person one wouldn't like to know ... but several of the girls in Paul's class had somehow decided that Betty was in fact a strong willed person doing in her best in a bad situation. Without a doubt, completely ignoring the text in order to apply their own subjective opinion about the character ... which, I am sorry to say, is not the point of reading literature. The idea is to understand the author's perception of a given character and LEARN from it. If you graft your own opinion onto everything you read, you might as well not bother reading at all. My friend Paul knew this, but being a gentle-minded Britisher he did not have in him to slap his students around. Being a vicious, cold hearted Russian, I did it gladly, quoting again and again from the text and winning no friends that day. However, Paul gratefully told me a week later that his class was now alive with real, meaningful debate. His class, of course, never knew their professor and I were friends. They never had any idea why I was there.
Forgive me for digressing. I haven't told that story in awhile. My excuse for doing so is to point out that having an absolute standard imposed by a human person is more important than having a wishy-washy standard. I wasn't being a prick to Paul's class that day by imposing my standard - I was being a prick by imposing Nathanael West's standard. You know, the author. Without whom the book would not exist.
As a DM of my world, without whom it would not exist, I don't generally have to be a prick. I do, however, have to have a rigorous standard that I myself must adhere to, running after running. I cannot allow myself to shift and change capriciously. If this is true today, it must be true ten years from now. I must accept it as law just as my players must. That is enormously difficult. But my world is a pile of incomprehensible shit if that's not what I do.
Perhaps you've run in a world like that?
As usual, none of this makes me look good. My saving grace can only be that the world itself is an enormous pleasure to run in ... which I think it is because my players know what to expect from me. True, I am an asshole. But I'm a predictable asshole, and one that listens and considers first and foremost how my judgment will affect the world's playability. I'm an asshole that isn't thinking of myself first.
I only think of myself first when I write.
Subjectivity is unavoidable from the moment a world steps beyond the video game simplification of the game, and yes, it is a pain in the ass. However, I feel I must address the point of conflicts as they arise in my game between how the players interpret what they can and can't do, and how I interpret what they can and can't do.
As a DM, I am open to debate on many subjects ... and I have backed down from positions on many occasions when a strong and rational argument was offered. I'm not a huge fan of players who will try to argue everything, but I'm open to questioning my judgement on certain things.
What things? Simple. Things which have not been previously established.
I treat my world like a Judge treating the Law. Every decision I make, no matter how minor, no matter how immaterial it may seem at the time, establishes a precedent. Whenever possible, I try to record these precedents in some form - though admittedly a lot of them are accepted generally among my players and me. If I have declared the precedent in the past, the present argument must address that precedent ... and so must I. The player's best argument will always begin with, "You said this on this day when we were doing this" ... thus reminding me of the rule I made and giving me the information that lets me remember having made the rule.
Having been reminded of it, 19 times out of 20 I will back down and let things continue as they have been. 1 time out of 20 I won't, because I've come to believe the previous judgement wasn't helping the game.
If I did this all the time, switched positions again and again, I'd be a lousy DM. I must admit that my memory isn't what it was, and I am making errors about my past rulings because I'm getting old and that IS bothering my players. A nice thing about having an online campaign is that EVERYTHING gets written down and that should help my consistency in my offline games as well.
Putting myself on the shelf for the time being, however, Oddbit's position is fair ... and without question the vast majority of rule changes that have been implemented - like skills sets, for instance - probably have been because the majority of DM's are incapable of consistency and therefore have to be managed. In other words, we keep changing the game, edition to edition, because DMs are in general pretty crappy judges.
But rules make crappy judges too, because rules are not flexible. Oddbit makes this point on his post with the example of John Doe and Orc McGee (go read it). The reason the LAW depends on Judges is because the Law is a very crappy way to run a society ... unless you accept precedents, which throw out the law given the situation. Just as life is far more complicated than any law could be governing it, rules in a roleplaying game are thoroughly inadequate for play. You can dumb down the world to make the rule system fit, but then your players can't do anything they want. And if the world is complicated, the rule system will fail again and again. If you play 'by the rules' you have either a straightjacket or a complete mess.
The only possible solution is the DM ... and that brings us back to the subjectivity of one person's opinion vs. another's. How many times have you had an argument about what an 10 intelligence lets you 'know?'
To me the answer is simple. It is the DM's world. It is the DM's rule. If the DM thinks you can't do that with an 8 strength, then you CAN'T. Period. And the longer the DM has been running, and establishing precedents for his or her world in his or her own head, the less likely the chance is the DM will ever have a change of mind. And if you don't like it, there's not much you can do about it.
Naturally, a lot of people resent that. Rules lawyers resent that. In an egalitarian society, there are to be restrictions on the DM's power to make ad hoc decisions about the game, blah blah blah ... a positively ridiculous position when you think about it. You're going to try and force a person to run a world the way you think it should be run, from an argument you've read in a book written by a person who isn't even present? Good luck. You might as well argue your friend Jeremy read an article in a magazine that says the Judge has rocks in his head ... hoping the Judge will agree with you.
Subjective it may be, but there is an absolute in the maelstrom - that's the DM's role. To cut through the subjectivity and say, "here, that's the stop." And playing in that DM's world means playing within the boundaries the DM sets for that world.
Naturally, you'll want to play with a DM that's more open minded and less interested in pushing around the players. In the meantime you can call the DM subjective - but that's really just tough shit.
Ah, a metaphor about subjectivity. I remember being invited to 'stir up' an English Class taught by a friend of mine, Paul, who was having trouble getting his students into discussions. I was long out of university by then, and way past having much concern for willful ignorance, and Paul knew it.
The book being taught was Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, which is a tale about a depressed, numb fellow who, apart from his other failings, is engaged to be married to a girl named Betty, described by the author of the book as having a personality like a kitten mewling annoying in a drawer. Throughout the book Betty is an awful, annoying person one wouldn't like to know ... but several of the girls in Paul's class had somehow decided that Betty was in fact a strong willed person doing in her best in a bad situation. Without a doubt, completely ignoring the text in order to apply their own subjective opinion about the character ... which, I am sorry to say, is not the point of reading literature. The idea is to understand the author's perception of a given character and LEARN from it. If you graft your own opinion onto everything you read, you might as well not bother reading at all. My friend Paul knew this, but being a gentle-minded Britisher he did not have in him to slap his students around. Being a vicious, cold hearted Russian, I did it gladly, quoting again and again from the text and winning no friends that day. However, Paul gratefully told me a week later that his class was now alive with real, meaningful debate. His class, of course, never knew their professor and I were friends. They never had any idea why I was there.
Forgive me for digressing. I haven't told that story in awhile. My excuse for doing so is to point out that having an absolute standard imposed by a human person is more important than having a wishy-washy standard. I wasn't being a prick to Paul's class that day by imposing my standard - I was being a prick by imposing Nathanael West's standard. You know, the author. Without whom the book would not exist.
As a DM of my world, without whom it would not exist, I don't generally have to be a prick. I do, however, have to have a rigorous standard that I myself must adhere to, running after running. I cannot allow myself to shift and change capriciously. If this is true today, it must be true ten years from now. I must accept it as law just as my players must. That is enormously difficult. But my world is a pile of incomprehensible shit if that's not what I do.
Perhaps you've run in a world like that?
As usual, none of this makes me look good. My saving grace can only be that the world itself is an enormous pleasure to run in ... which I think it is because my players know what to expect from me. True, I am an asshole. But I'm a predictable asshole, and one that listens and considers first and foremost how my judgment will affect the world's playability. I'm an asshole that isn't thinking of myself first.
I only think of myself first when I write.
For Interested Parties
If I get some time, I'll write a real post later. In the meantime, the campaign continues. Just putting this forward as an example of material I think is important where it comes to giving some campaign background. Earth history, of course, gives me solid opportunities for some very deep intrigue.
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