Continuing on with units from the game of Civilization, we come to the warrior. This, some might say, is more akin to representing the adventure party than the scout ... and yes, they serve more or less the same function. The scout enters a village and learns from it; the villagers offer the scout coin or technology of their own free will. The warrior, on the other hand, marches in and seizes it, while possibly destroying the inhabitants.
I find myself often considering elements of the game which seem to interest no one else ... in the historical sense, for instance, how did the classes derive? Obviously, there were not always paladins or illusionists; these things required advancements in technology both religious and educational (I've already written about how religion was a technology). Even the fighter has skills that obviously didn't exist prior to the existence of fashioned tools.
But then, I run the real world, and thus my world is fitted with a time of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man, these things not deriving from a magical impulse but rather magic itself being fashioned after effort and invention. Many fantasy worlds simply get around such issues by having the world - and the creatures in it - poofed into existence by magic and the gods, as neatly as the Bible does it. No need to worry about whether or not there were ever cavemen ... there clearly weren't, since man was conceived from the forehead of the DM.
This does bring up a case in point that some may not have grasped, that IF my world did derive from evolution (which I claim it has) and IF gods exist, which is necessary for clerics to have spells, then how does one reconcile the Biblical account of creation with word-of-God statement that I just made about evolution? How indeed?
I don't know, I suppose no one cares but me. I keep mysteries like that close to the chest, in the hopes that someday a party player might have a philosophical bent and might point out these little discrepancies ... and therein lies a most unusual adventure.
The warrior, then, is the result of a technological development. The difference between a proficiency and a non-proficiency results from a methodology of training. How is it the fighter has a d10 for hit points as opposed to a d8 or a d6? Training. Evaluation by a teacher followed by practice to harden, quicken and elasticize the body to make it swing the club so as to cause greater damage. Who improved the training so that four weapons could be learned, and no more than four lessons in the beginning, recognizing the efficiency of that number? How was the groundwork laid so that a level could be gained, and with levels multiple attacks? A steady, slow development of methodology.
In effect, then, the invention of the fighter class (surely the first class) was in turn the invention of the level itself. In my world, it is the ideal that hit points are a buffer between the combatant and the actual damage done by the weapon - that the hit points are the exhaustion experienced by the participant as the fight continues and as the combatant parries the enemy. My sword blocks your blow, so that you in effect 'miss' ... but the next time my sword blocks your blow, I feel the energy of your blow sweep down my arm and through my body. Even though your weapon doesn't touch my skin, I suffer 'damage' because the blow has helped exhaust me.
I recognize many people do not see hit points in this fashion.
Thus, I perceive your training as a fighter affects you this way. You begin with a certain number of hit points that result from your mass - a d8, say, if you weigh 160 lbs. As you train your way to first level, you begin to gain additional hit points that result from your fighter training. This takes years, but as you train, the instruction takes hold and you increase in hit points. Some, the instruction doesn't do very well, and you gain but 1 hit point beyond your mass (but you're still a 1st level fighter); others do better, gaining 4, 6 or 8. It depends on the individual. The player character is considered unusual, and starts with 10, the maximum. Constitution is added to this, and that is the result of training too.
Then, as you march your way through the wilderness, destroying monsters and villages (or whatever you're doing), you gain practical experience. As you do, there is a nagging in the back of your head, where things your instructors taught you just didn't, or couldn't, sink in until you got into the real world. You fight for awhile, and then one day you realize that you're dropping your sword every time you try to do this ... you realize how stupid that is, and you change your behavior. Suddenly, you're able to stop things from getting a handle on you, and overall you feel less exhausted with each combat. Congratulations, you've just gone up a level.
It begs the question, if the fighter comes into existence with the advancement of warrior training (circa 6-10 thousand years ago), when do the other classes emerge? The cleric seems obvious - with the discovery of meditation, of course. But where does the mage emerge. How early is the development of the thief (surely, very early). What technology produces the assassin, or the monk? Wouldn't the monk also be meditation?
The trick is to recognize that while the ability of the individual to swing a sword does not automatically equal the invention of the training necessary to swing the sword better, the presence of wealth that can be stolen does not automatically produce the thief. Nor does the process of killing in itself produce the assassin. It was necessary for an imaginative development to be made, that encouraged groups of people to do more than steal or praise or hit with the open hand - there had to be a motivation to STANDARDIZE the manner in which those things were done. Standardization resulted from hit-and-miss exploration, which in turn resulted in individuals discarding some techniques in favor of better techniques.
This is how development happens - when there's a joint recognition that a particular manner is obviously inefficient or impractical. This occurs even with D&D editions. A final 'right' answer will always emerge.
Sometimes, this takes a very, very long time.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Monday, September 9, 2013
"Hey, we're friends. Right?"
There are quite a number of people who believe that a DM can 'step down' and converse with the other players at the table as just 'one of the group,' and that they have no special status at the moment they themselves declare, "In this particular matter, I have no special status."
It is something akin to your Dad saying, "Hey, son, we're friends, aren't we?"
On some level, sure, you're friends with your dad. You fish together, you chat about stuff, you may even regularly get together with him at the bar and have a drink or two. But he is still your dad. He's the guy who threatened you when you were a screaming kid in the back seat; he's the guy who took down your pants and roasted your bottom when necessary; he owned the house where you grew up and he's a hell of a lot older than you. You don't just love him, you respect him ... even if he's the kind of dad that doesn't deserve respect. You do anyway, because he's you're fucking dad.
Nothing is ever going to change that.
Now, the DM you happen to be playing with is not your dad, he or she hasn't got anything like the kind of influence your father has over you ... but there is a very definite division there. You know the DM knows things that you don't know. You know the DM can screw around with you, mess with the situation, hold a grudge and so on ... and you know that a good game requires a great deal of TRUST between you and the runner of the game. Even when that trust goes bad, it can take time to convince yourself that it has.
The gentle reader isn't an idiot. The reader has lived in the world and knows very well that people can smile right into your face and lie. It's a knowledge we consort with every day, and even as young adults we stop believing what we're told just because someone uses those words. We have been freaking lied to before today. We know of what people are capable.
We judge our success at anything from the dynamic that exists between ourselves and others - and there is a very definite dynamic between player and DM. We know we're not talking to a fellow player; this is the one who runs the game, and we know that when it comes to the game, it is the DM who sets the tone.
We're not dumb. We know on what side our bread is buttered.
If the DM says, "Hey guys, we're all going to make this decision; I'm no more important than you are," we realize that is a bunch of shit. We've grown up on the planet too. We can read the signs on the DM's face. The power for veto is there. We're not fooled. When dad says he wants to be our friend, that doesn't mean he wants to share porn.
No DM is going to run a game where all the players have decided such-and-such is cool, if the DM doesn't think so too. Sure, the DM might agree, but the DM has to agree. We all know it. Saying that's not the way it is, well ... that's some kind of delusion, isn't it?
Yet I've run smack bang into that illusion. Not just in D&D, obviously, but in all sorts of interaction. There's the guy who says, "Sure, I'll play right field," and then you find out at the end of the day that he was pissed he didn't get the chance to pitch. There's the one in the crowd who agrees to see the movie everyone else wants to see, that secretly hates every minute of it. A lot of people go along to get along, then find out that going along really sucks, and after a couple hours lose their shit about it. If you've lived on planet Earth, you've experienced this.
We've watched a DM convince himself that he's going to run a game the players want ... only to find out he really doesn't want that. And a few months into the project, its really beginning to tell on him. He's bored, or he's angry, or both. Oh, sure, he promised to run that game, but now all the actual work has fallen on his shoulders and he is sick to death of that game. Sooner or later its going to occur to him, "Hey, I'm the fucking DM. It's my world, isn't it?"
So when you hear a DM saying, "Yeah, the party and I talked about it and agreed," that is really a lot of shit. What happened is the party read the DM, guessed what the DM wanted, paid lip service to that extent and the DM has somehow managed to delude his or her self into thinking it really was a group decision.
The first time I learned that lip service works was doing door-to-door sales at 17. I have a very low tolerance for lip service myself. I think of it as a lot of bullshit, which is why I don't really trust someone who makes a comment on a blog that amounts to, "good post." But as it turns out, a lot of people actually believe lip service. You can stand in a homeowner's doorway, praise the flower patch in their front yard - which, let's admit, you don't give a shit about - and they'll beam and bask in the praise of a total stranger, which in turn softens them up for buying $500 worth of housepainting. Or more. When I was first instructed to do this, I thought in my head, "Nah, that ain't gonna work. I'm selling shit, aren't I? The guy is going to know I'm saying it to get on his good side, right?
Apparently not. It makes no damn sense to me, but if I say this or I praise that, I can get people to unload a hundred thousand dollars on a car, easy. Blows my mind. (It also makes me feel awful sleezy, so I don't do that kind of work).
"Oh yes, Bob, of course you're just like we are. Of course we won't think of your opinion as having any different weight than our own. Of course we won't interpret anything you dislike with an special import. We promise."
So Bob freaking beams, because they're all just one great jolly family. He runs off to a convention or to the net and says, "Yes, we make decisions together!"
And everyone with a brain - literally, actual grey matter, helping them breathe and digest food - thinks, "Yeah. Right."
It is something akin to your Dad saying, "Hey, son, we're friends, aren't we?"
On some level, sure, you're friends with your dad. You fish together, you chat about stuff, you may even regularly get together with him at the bar and have a drink or two. But he is still your dad. He's the guy who threatened you when you were a screaming kid in the back seat; he's the guy who took down your pants and roasted your bottom when necessary; he owned the house where you grew up and he's a hell of a lot older than you. You don't just love him, you respect him ... even if he's the kind of dad that doesn't deserve respect. You do anyway, because he's you're fucking dad.
Nothing is ever going to change that.
Now, the DM you happen to be playing with is not your dad, he or she hasn't got anything like the kind of influence your father has over you ... but there is a very definite division there. You know the DM knows things that you don't know. You know the DM can screw around with you, mess with the situation, hold a grudge and so on ... and you know that a good game requires a great deal of TRUST between you and the runner of the game. Even when that trust goes bad, it can take time to convince yourself that it has.
The gentle reader isn't an idiot. The reader has lived in the world and knows very well that people can smile right into your face and lie. It's a knowledge we consort with every day, and even as young adults we stop believing what we're told just because someone uses those words. We have been freaking lied to before today. We know of what people are capable.
We judge our success at anything from the dynamic that exists between ourselves and others - and there is a very definite dynamic between player and DM. We know we're not talking to a fellow player; this is the one who runs the game, and we know that when it comes to the game, it is the DM who sets the tone.
We're not dumb. We know on what side our bread is buttered.
If the DM says, "Hey guys, we're all going to make this decision; I'm no more important than you are," we realize that is a bunch of shit. We've grown up on the planet too. We can read the signs on the DM's face. The power for veto is there. We're not fooled. When dad says he wants to be our friend, that doesn't mean he wants to share porn.
No DM is going to run a game where all the players have decided such-and-such is cool, if the DM doesn't think so too. Sure, the DM might agree, but the DM has to agree. We all know it. Saying that's not the way it is, well ... that's some kind of delusion, isn't it?
Yet I've run smack bang into that illusion. Not just in D&D, obviously, but in all sorts of interaction. There's the guy who says, "Sure, I'll play right field," and then you find out at the end of the day that he was pissed he didn't get the chance to pitch. There's the one in the crowd who agrees to see the movie everyone else wants to see, that secretly hates every minute of it. A lot of people go along to get along, then find out that going along really sucks, and after a couple hours lose their shit about it. If you've lived on planet Earth, you've experienced this.
We've watched a DM convince himself that he's going to run a game the players want ... only to find out he really doesn't want that. And a few months into the project, its really beginning to tell on him. He's bored, or he's angry, or both. Oh, sure, he promised to run that game, but now all the actual work has fallen on his shoulders and he is sick to death of that game. Sooner or later its going to occur to him, "Hey, I'm the fucking DM. It's my world, isn't it?"
So when you hear a DM saying, "Yeah, the party and I talked about it and agreed," that is really a lot of shit. What happened is the party read the DM, guessed what the DM wanted, paid lip service to that extent and the DM has somehow managed to delude his or her self into thinking it really was a group decision.
The first time I learned that lip service works was doing door-to-door sales at 17. I have a very low tolerance for lip service myself. I think of it as a lot of bullshit, which is why I don't really trust someone who makes a comment on a blog that amounts to, "good post." But as it turns out, a lot of people actually believe lip service. You can stand in a homeowner's doorway, praise the flower patch in their front yard - which, let's admit, you don't give a shit about - and they'll beam and bask in the praise of a total stranger, which in turn softens them up for buying $500 worth of housepainting. Or more. When I was first instructed to do this, I thought in my head, "Nah, that ain't gonna work. I'm selling shit, aren't I? The guy is going to know I'm saying it to get on his good side, right?
Apparently not. It makes no damn sense to me, but if I say this or I praise that, I can get people to unload a hundred thousand dollars on a car, easy. Blows my mind. (It also makes me feel awful sleezy, so I don't do that kind of work).
"Oh yes, Bob, of course you're just like we are. Of course we won't think of your opinion as having any different weight than our own. Of course we won't interpret anything you dislike with an special import. We promise."
So Bob freaking beams, because they're all just one great jolly family. He runs off to a convention or to the net and says, "Yes, we make decisions together!"
And everyone with a brain - literally, actual grey matter, helping them breathe and digest food - thinks, "Yeah. Right."
Friday, September 6, 2013
Fly on the Wall
DM: The guard denies you passage. The guard does not like you.
Fighter: Did you roll?
DM: What?
Fighter: Did you roll a dice. To see if the guard likes me.
DM: I don't have to. The guard doesn't like anyone.
Fighter: Anyone? The guard doesn't like anyone. The guard doesn't like his mother, his brother ...
DM: None of those people are here right now. The guard doesn't like anyone trying to get past him.
Fighter: And you know that ... how?
DM: I decided it.
Fighter: So basically you decided to screw us.
Mage: Will you just drop it?
Fighter: No, I won't. Okay, we wait for the next guard. How long until the guards change.
DM: It won't do you any good.
Fighter: Why? Does that guard hate everyone too?
DM: Look -
Fighter: That's awful convenient. I think it would be marvelous to have perfect guards that have absolutely no chance of liking anyone they meet. Where can I rent these guards? Is there a storefront?
DM: I'm just saying -
Fighter: The guard hates me and he hasn't even met me yet.
DM: If you don't like the adventure ...
Fighter: The adventure is fine. It's this perfect guard thing.
Thief: What difference does it make?
Fighter: The difference is, we pay this guy ten times his monthly salary, just 30 g.p., and we get to the other side of the wall in the next ten minutes. Otherwise we have climb down into the moat again, find the secret door, wade through fifty yards of muck, fight another giant crocodile, climb up a 70 foot greasy metal ladder, make checks, and come out into the same stupid corridor covered in slime and grease and stinking like a garbage pile. Now I want to know why I have to do all that because this guard 'hates everyone.'
DM: Okay, fine. [rolls] The guard doesn't like you.
Fighter: Oh, now, what is that?
DM: I rolled.
Fighter: You're behind a goddamn screen. How do I know what you rolled?
Mage: I don't care about this. Let's just -
Fighter: I care.
Mage: You're just complaining. What difference does it make?
Thief: The croc was good experience.
Fighter: You really want to fight another croc? Screw that. There's good experience right here. And I'd rather get it not smelling like a gong pit. PLUS ... if we don't smell, we're going to have a LOT less trouble sneaking up on Paulo.
Thief: True.
Fighter: How do I know you're not just rolling a dice to make me shut up?
DM: I rolled a dice. That's it. It's settled. The guard will not take a bribe.
Fighter: It's not settled. You're just unwilling to consider any alternative.
DM: You're not going to tell me how to run my world. It's my world -
Fighter: - And what you say goes. We've heard that before.
DM: Well ... I am the DM.
Fighter: And so what? I'm supposed to just fuck around going through whatever crap you want because you can't be bothered to say there's at least a chance we could bribe the guard?
DM: There was a chance. I rolled a die.
Fighter: That is such bullshit. You never intended to roll a die in the first place. You only threw the die to shut me up.
DM: Look. This is how it goes. I don't care if you like it or not. This is my world, and if you don't like the way my world works, you can get out.
Fighter: So that's it. No negotiation.
DM: Not with this guard, no.
Fighter: Why?
Mage: Can we please stop fucking around and play the game?
Fighter: Shut up. I am playing the game.
Mage: You're bitching about the game.
Fighter: I'm trying to keep from being fucked over by the DM because he likes it when we do things his way. He's got something waiting in the damn sewer this time, and now that I think of it, I'll bet you all my freaking dice it ain't another crocodile. The only goddamn thing he cares about is getting to throw it at us.
DM: That's not true.
Mage: I just want to play. [to the thief] Are you with me?
Thief: Yeah, sure. I don't care.
Fighter: For the love of ... I want to play too. I just want to stop feeling like the only two options I have is to do what I'm told or to quit playing.
DM: You've got lots of options.
Fighter: Name two.
DM: Well, first of all, you can go down to the moat.
Fighter: That's one.
DM: The second is that you can go talk to the old woman.
Fighter: That's not an option.
DM: Yes it is.
Fighter: No, it's not. You told us we had to talk to the old woman anyway. We have to talk to her after we get the stinking Cup from Paulo. What good does it do to talk to her before we get the Cup?
DM: Well, she knows other things.
Fighter: But we have to talk to her anyway. No matter what happens. Before, after, it makes no difference. We'll still have to get the Cup, and we'll still have to go through the damn moat. It's not an option!
DM: You can do one or the other.
Fighter: We have to do both anyway. Oh my god.
Thief: Let's just get the cup. We can figure out what else we can do after.
Fighter: Jeez.
Mage: Come on.
Fighter: Oh ... fuck. All right. We go down to the fucking moat.
DM: Good. It's dark now, and you can see the shine of oil slicked on the surface of the moat, gleaming in dim rainbow colors ...
Fighter: Did you roll?
DM: What?
Fighter: Did you roll a dice. To see if the guard likes me.
DM: I don't have to. The guard doesn't like anyone.
Fighter: Anyone? The guard doesn't like anyone. The guard doesn't like his mother, his brother ...
DM: None of those people are here right now. The guard doesn't like anyone trying to get past him.
Fighter: And you know that ... how?
DM: I decided it.
Fighter: So basically you decided to screw us.
Mage: Will you just drop it?
Fighter: No, I won't. Okay, we wait for the next guard. How long until the guards change.
DM: It won't do you any good.
Fighter: Why? Does that guard hate everyone too?
DM: Look -
Fighter: That's awful convenient. I think it would be marvelous to have perfect guards that have absolutely no chance of liking anyone they meet. Where can I rent these guards? Is there a storefront?
DM: I'm just saying -
Fighter: The guard hates me and he hasn't even met me yet.
DM: If you don't like the adventure ...
Fighter: The adventure is fine. It's this perfect guard thing.
Thief: What difference does it make?
Fighter: The difference is, we pay this guy ten times his monthly salary, just 30 g.p., and we get to the other side of the wall in the next ten minutes. Otherwise we have climb down into the moat again, find the secret door, wade through fifty yards of muck, fight another giant crocodile, climb up a 70 foot greasy metal ladder, make checks, and come out into the same stupid corridor covered in slime and grease and stinking like a garbage pile. Now I want to know why I have to do all that because this guard 'hates everyone.'
DM: Okay, fine. [rolls] The guard doesn't like you.
Fighter: Oh, now, what is that?
DM: I rolled.
Fighter: You're behind a goddamn screen. How do I know what you rolled?
Mage: I don't care about this. Let's just -
Fighter: I care.
Mage: You're just complaining. What difference does it make?
Thief: The croc was good experience.
Fighter: You really want to fight another croc? Screw that. There's good experience right here. And I'd rather get it not smelling like a gong pit. PLUS ... if we don't smell, we're going to have a LOT less trouble sneaking up on Paulo.
Thief: True.
Fighter: How do I know you're not just rolling a dice to make me shut up?
DM: I rolled a dice. That's it. It's settled. The guard will not take a bribe.
Fighter: It's not settled. You're just unwilling to consider any alternative.
DM: You're not going to tell me how to run my world. It's my world -
Fighter: - And what you say goes. We've heard that before.
DM: Well ... I am the DM.
Fighter: And so what? I'm supposed to just fuck around going through whatever crap you want because you can't be bothered to say there's at least a chance we could bribe the guard?
DM: There was a chance. I rolled a die.
Fighter: That is such bullshit. You never intended to roll a die in the first place. You only threw the die to shut me up.
DM: Look. This is how it goes. I don't care if you like it or not. This is my world, and if you don't like the way my world works, you can get out.
Fighter: So that's it. No negotiation.
DM: Not with this guard, no.
Fighter: Why?
Mage: Can we please stop fucking around and play the game?
Fighter: Shut up. I am playing the game.
Mage: You're bitching about the game.
Fighter: I'm trying to keep from being fucked over by the DM because he likes it when we do things his way. He's got something waiting in the damn sewer this time, and now that I think of it, I'll bet you all my freaking dice it ain't another crocodile. The only goddamn thing he cares about is getting to throw it at us.
DM: That's not true.
Mage: I just want to play. [to the thief] Are you with me?
Thief: Yeah, sure. I don't care.
Fighter: For the love of ... I want to play too. I just want to stop feeling like the only two options I have is to do what I'm told or to quit playing.
DM: You've got lots of options.
Fighter: Name two.
DM: Well, first of all, you can go down to the moat.
Fighter: That's one.
DM: The second is that you can go talk to the old woman.
Fighter: That's not an option.
DM: Yes it is.
Fighter: No, it's not. You told us we had to talk to the old woman anyway. We have to talk to her after we get the stinking Cup from Paulo. What good does it do to talk to her before we get the Cup?
DM: Well, she knows other things.
Fighter: But we have to talk to her anyway. No matter what happens. Before, after, it makes no difference. We'll still have to get the Cup, and we'll still have to go through the damn moat. It's not an option!
DM: You can do one or the other.
Fighter: We have to do both anyway. Oh my god.
Thief: Let's just get the cup. We can figure out what else we can do after.
Fighter: Jeez.
Mage: Come on.
Fighter: Oh ... fuck. All right. We go down to the fucking moat.
DM: Good. It's dark now, and you can see the shine of oil slicked on the surface of the moat, gleaming in dim rainbow colors ...
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Thieving Abilities - Hear Noise
I'm going to take a crack at hear noise, among the most annoying, least defined and generally crappy game mechanics in AD&D ... and at the same time, absurdly difficult to improve. I've never been able to do so, I don't know of any other mechanic that does more than simply inflate the base problems - first, that the character supposedly fails the roll and can't hear something that ought to be perfectly clear, and second, that what can and cannot be heard is far, far too subjective, and therefore almost wholly dependent upon the grudging or generous DM.
What's needed is a measurement ... and as it happens, in sound there is one.
Having spent some time trying to hammer down the mechanics of decibels, I've put together the following table:
Now, while I think this idea may in fact be easy to use, once one is adjusted, initially it is a bit of a mind fuck ... so take that ol' mind out and give it a good stretch.
The numbers were put together from an online calculator, so I admit that I did not do my own math; this one was a bit beyond me, I'm afraid ... but remember, we're not trying to pass a physics test here, we just want a workable system for D&D. One where we can measure sound, not just point at it.
The feet/yard/miles columns are included so the DM can choose what particular measure is useful given the particular circumstances. The examples of sound for decibels is more or less what you'll find online, though I've worked to remove all modern references, such as rock concerts, jet planes and jackhammers. Those are very common examples you'll find on decibel sites.
How this works is this: the distance indicated is that point where the sound being made has been reduced to barely audible (12 decibels). It's that distance that the sound can just barely be picked up ... because, it must be understood, the amount of sound a thing makes is dependent on how far away you are from that sound. That's obvious ... but where is the mechanic that demonstrates it?
If you half the maximum distance, you increase the level of sound by 6 decibels (not double!). Half that distance again, and that again increases the sound by 6 decibels. This is how the decibel mechanics actually work. A sound that is 6 decibels higher can be heard at twice the distance.
So the hammer on an anvil can be just picked up at 3/10ths of a mile ... but it sounds very minute, like the clear sound of a pin dropped on a floor in an otherwise silent room. At 273 yards, the hammer sounds as loud as the rustling of leaves. At 137 yards, something like the collective sound of a nearby farm. And so on. At nine yards, as loud as a stream, at six feet, as loud as a dinner party.
Sound is such a deceptive thing, however, and the real problem with your perception of a hammer right now is that you tend to think of it as loud as it is when you're standing right next to it, actually using the hammer. It's hard, really, to grasp how loud it sounds, exactly, from nine yards away. Moreover, it is almost impossible for you to get a good grasp on how loud the rural countryside is, or a 'quiet garden.' That's the mind fuck. Every idea you have about the relationship between sound and actual recognized sound-making is purely subjective. You simply have to discard that perception.
I would like a better set of sounds than 'quiet street' and 'noisy street' ... but that's going to take even more research than I've done now, and I'd like to start to get a handle on what kind of sounds I'm looking for. The thing is, most examples that are given bear a certain modernistic similarities - I got better traction by looking up specific things. I'm going to have to spend a bunch of time thinking up a list and then looking up those things and placing them on the decibel scale.
Meanwhile, the system in general should work.
See, figure what the sound level is, then ask yourself as DM, is the party close enough to hear that? Then consider this ... can the thief pick out the sound that's relevant apart from other sounds? Not just that there's voices, but what the voices are actually saying.
That ought to be a gradient as well. However, while I've been piecing out the above, I'm stumped for how to improve the thief's actual ability to decipher the noise. I don't like the idea of a straight percentage roll ... which sucks. Perhaps an ability to nail down sounds that fall into a certain range, and then that range expanding. Between 57 and 62 at 1st level, then between 56 and 63 at second, etc. Note that the range system above allows a very precise measurement of where the sound overlaps that range, and the difference in a few points could make a big difference.
But I'm just spitballin' here at the end. I want to think about it more, try out the base template, and see if I don't get an epiphany.
What's needed is a measurement ... and as it happens, in sound there is one.
Having spent some time trying to hammer down the mechanics of decibels, I've put together the following table:
Now, while I think this idea may in fact be easy to use, once one is adjusted, initially it is a bit of a mind fuck ... so take that ol' mind out and give it a good stretch.
The numbers were put together from an online calculator, so I admit that I did not do my own math; this one was a bit beyond me, I'm afraid ... but remember, we're not trying to pass a physics test here, we just want a workable system for D&D. One where we can measure sound, not just point at it.
The feet/yard/miles columns are included so the DM can choose what particular measure is useful given the particular circumstances. The examples of sound for decibels is more or less what you'll find online, though I've worked to remove all modern references, such as rock concerts, jet planes and jackhammers. Those are very common examples you'll find on decibel sites.
How this works is this: the distance indicated is that point where the sound being made has been reduced to barely audible (12 decibels). It's that distance that the sound can just barely be picked up ... because, it must be understood, the amount of sound a thing makes is dependent on how far away you are from that sound. That's obvious ... but where is the mechanic that demonstrates it?
If you half the maximum distance, you increase the level of sound by 6 decibels (not double!). Half that distance again, and that again increases the sound by 6 decibels. This is how the decibel mechanics actually work. A sound that is 6 decibels higher can be heard at twice the distance.
So the hammer on an anvil can be just picked up at 3/10ths of a mile ... but it sounds very minute, like the clear sound of a pin dropped on a floor in an otherwise silent room. At 273 yards, the hammer sounds as loud as the rustling of leaves. At 137 yards, something like the collective sound of a nearby farm. And so on. At nine yards, as loud as a stream, at six feet, as loud as a dinner party.
Sound is such a deceptive thing, however, and the real problem with your perception of a hammer right now is that you tend to think of it as loud as it is when you're standing right next to it, actually using the hammer. It's hard, really, to grasp how loud it sounds, exactly, from nine yards away. Moreover, it is almost impossible for you to get a good grasp on how loud the rural countryside is, or a 'quiet garden.' That's the mind fuck. Every idea you have about the relationship between sound and actual recognized sound-making is purely subjective. You simply have to discard that perception.
I would like a better set of sounds than 'quiet street' and 'noisy street' ... but that's going to take even more research than I've done now, and I'd like to start to get a handle on what kind of sounds I'm looking for. The thing is, most examples that are given bear a certain modernistic similarities - I got better traction by looking up specific things. I'm going to have to spend a bunch of time thinking up a list and then looking up those things and placing them on the decibel scale.
Meanwhile, the system in general should work.
See, figure what the sound level is, then ask yourself as DM, is the party close enough to hear that? Then consider this ... can the thief pick out the sound that's relevant apart from other sounds? Not just that there's voices, but what the voices are actually saying.
That ought to be a gradient as well. However, while I've been piecing out the above, I'm stumped for how to improve the thief's actual ability to decipher the noise. I don't like the idea of a straight percentage roll ... which sucks. Perhaps an ability to nail down sounds that fall into a certain range, and then that range expanding. Between 57 and 62 at 1st level, then between 56 and 63 at second, etc. Note that the range system above allows a very precise measurement of where the sound overlaps that range, and the difference in a few points could make a big difference.
But I'm just spitballin' here at the end. I want to think about it more, try out the base template, and see if I don't get an epiphany.
Grit
I was wondering about games that go 'stale,' and what to do about them.
Games get frustrating, sometimes. Occasionally it's hard to get an image across, to make it clear where characters physically stand in relationship to one another, particularly if a combat hasn't happened and the distances are too large to justify a battle map. Sometimes a word or two here or there will get someone on the wrong track. It happens. It's no big deal. I fixed a large whiteboard to the wall above where I run, and I have found that terrifically useful for quickly explaining everyone's position in a few dozen seconds (which doesn't work online, unfortunately).
And a game gets difficult. There's too much to manage in too short a time, either with combat, or with herding the party like cats in a given direction; sometimes its just trying to relay information that the party might not have much grounding in. My online party recently woke up a king who has been sleeping since the 8th century, and much of the roleplaying recently has been 1) what the king thinks of this incredibly modern 17th century world, and 2) references the king makes to the world in the 8th century - placenames, regions, countries, people, etc. Making that play well for the party, who looks at one another confused when the king simply can't explain where something is except to repeat names the party has never heard (and which exist now exactly nowhere) has occasionally been challenging.
Stale is something else. It's no longer fresh or much fun; the motivation is gone. The party has been at this thing for months and it's just ... too much.
There are a number of things that contribute to staleness in a campaign. Compelling a party to follow through with a quest until it is done, and giving them no choice about it. A massive battle that just doesn't seem to end. A monumental task that just seems to go on, and on. Anything repetitive.
I recently caught someone making a comment somewhere - it doesn't matter, it's an opinion that is expressed often enough - that he did not feel his characters were anything except convenient constructs, he didn't understand people who thought of them any other way, and didn't run his campaign in any manner that encouraged sentimentality.
I wondered at the time how he got around that pesky human nature thing.
We identify with everything. We view with fictional characters we've seen for less than an hour with sentimentality (its called a 'movie'), causing us to miss them when they die. These are characters over which we have no control. We sentimentalize stuffed animals, cell phones, little objects that fall off things after they've rolled around on the floor of the car for a few months or a year, the shape of a rotting fencepost in the back yard, the curb where we caught the pedal of our bike when we were 9 and had our first real accident, the supermarket that used to be in the next county but is now just a big flat concrete slab with weeds growing through it ... literally everything. These things have life for us. We look at that slab and are affected - and we didn't even shop at that dumb supermarket. It's just that our mother used to shop there to buy some dumb thing, driving an extra hour so you could sit in the car and wait for her. But now that supermarket is gone, and it's sad.
So how can people be so stupid not to think that people would sentimentalize their characters? Characters whom they have directed, designed, rewritten, named and struggled to keep alive ... which required only about a hundred times more effort than that ridiculous cup where you keep your toothbrushes, the same cup you'd scream about if someone spontaneously decided you needed a replacement for.
We get attached to things. Why?
To begin with, we invest in them. That stuffed animal kept you company when you were four and afraid of the dark. That's the cellphone you had when you heard on it that your daughter had been born. That knob that was on the floor of your car, but now for no particular reason you keep in your toolbox, was broken off by the girl you lost your virginity with 18 years ago. The fencepost is a reminder that this is your property, the property that you own, and it has a strange place in your heart because you remember sinking it into its place by yourself. The curb reminds you how much bigger you are now than when you were nine. We were there. We saw those things. And even if they hurt and were a lot of work or they otherwise don't have any purpose now, that doesn't matter. In fact, it matters more because there was a lot of effort and pain involved.
So, stale campaigns. They come in two types. The first is where the DM imposes that unending, grinding dullness. Where the party is just so bloody tired of this miserable purposeless going-through-the-motions nightmare that they eventually reach a point of endurance failure, ending their involvement with that campaign. They're not invested, they're just doing what comes next, and this particular goddamn thing just went on too long. The DM asked too much. Can we please, for the love of dead puppies, end this thing?
And then there is the other kind of 'stale' campaign. Where it isn't stale because someone made a campaign that's a bit dull. This campaign is stale because the party has decided to do a particular thing, and doing that particular thing isn't going to be pleasant, it isn't going to be fun, and its going to take a long, long time.
Have you never done anything like that?
I have written a number of books. I have published one myself, and I am working on others that I've already written, but which are not now good enough to publish, in my opinion.
I freaking hate these books. To put it clearly, if I met these books in a bar, not only would I look at them with a mean look in my eyes, I would grab them, drag them outside, beat the living shit out of them and then drown their motherfucking asses in a pothole full of water mixed with mud and piss.
That doesn't mean I'm going to stop working on them. Because I am. Because that is what it means to work on something you care about. It's hard. It's unpleasant. Getting the thing done sticks in your craw and you can't be happy as long as its not done. When it is done, you're satisfied like nothing else in the world can satisfy you. That sort of task, no one can plan for you. No one can design for you. It's simply not possible.
Look at the features of your life that matter, and ask yourself if there's a pre-fab module or adventure that can duplicate this idea. Ask yourself if a DM ought to view this sort of thing as something that needs to be 'jump started' to make it more exciting and interesting. Because, in reality, it is the staleness that offers the insanely gratifying pay-off that's bound to come later.
I don't think that a DM can make this sort of adventure. I think this is the kind of thing that can only occur organically. And I think it is a FAR, FAR better campaign when this sort of thing does happen, for it produces an investment in character and motivation that is utterly unmatched by anything that a third party can slap together.
Sometimes, people just want to grit their teeth, and the worst thing you can do is bother them. It helps to understand pyschologically when and how this occurs.
Games get frustrating, sometimes. Occasionally it's hard to get an image across, to make it clear where characters physically stand in relationship to one another, particularly if a combat hasn't happened and the distances are too large to justify a battle map. Sometimes a word or two here or there will get someone on the wrong track. It happens. It's no big deal. I fixed a large whiteboard to the wall above where I run, and I have found that terrifically useful for quickly explaining everyone's position in a few dozen seconds (which doesn't work online, unfortunately).
And a game gets difficult. There's too much to manage in too short a time, either with combat, or with herding the party like cats in a given direction; sometimes its just trying to relay information that the party might not have much grounding in. My online party recently woke up a king who has been sleeping since the 8th century, and much of the roleplaying recently has been 1) what the king thinks of this incredibly modern 17th century world, and 2) references the king makes to the world in the 8th century - placenames, regions, countries, people, etc. Making that play well for the party, who looks at one another confused when the king simply can't explain where something is except to repeat names the party has never heard (and which exist now exactly nowhere) has occasionally been challenging.
Stale is something else. It's no longer fresh or much fun; the motivation is gone. The party has been at this thing for months and it's just ... too much.
There are a number of things that contribute to staleness in a campaign. Compelling a party to follow through with a quest until it is done, and giving them no choice about it. A massive battle that just doesn't seem to end. A monumental task that just seems to go on, and on. Anything repetitive.
I recently caught someone making a comment somewhere - it doesn't matter, it's an opinion that is expressed often enough - that he did not feel his characters were anything except convenient constructs, he didn't understand people who thought of them any other way, and didn't run his campaign in any manner that encouraged sentimentality.
I wondered at the time how he got around that pesky human nature thing.
We identify with everything. We view with fictional characters we've seen for less than an hour with sentimentality (its called a 'movie'), causing us to miss them when they die. These are characters over which we have no control. We sentimentalize stuffed animals, cell phones, little objects that fall off things after they've rolled around on the floor of the car for a few months or a year, the shape of a rotting fencepost in the back yard, the curb where we caught the pedal of our bike when we were 9 and had our first real accident, the supermarket that used to be in the next county but is now just a big flat concrete slab with weeds growing through it ... literally everything. These things have life for us. We look at that slab and are affected - and we didn't even shop at that dumb supermarket. It's just that our mother used to shop there to buy some dumb thing, driving an extra hour so you could sit in the car and wait for her. But now that supermarket is gone, and it's sad.
So how can people be so stupid not to think that people would sentimentalize their characters? Characters whom they have directed, designed, rewritten, named and struggled to keep alive ... which required only about a hundred times more effort than that ridiculous cup where you keep your toothbrushes, the same cup you'd scream about if someone spontaneously decided you needed a replacement for.
We get attached to things. Why?
To begin with, we invest in them. That stuffed animal kept you company when you were four and afraid of the dark. That's the cellphone you had when you heard on it that your daughter had been born. That knob that was on the floor of your car, but now for no particular reason you keep in your toolbox, was broken off by the girl you lost your virginity with 18 years ago. The fencepost is a reminder that this is your property, the property that you own, and it has a strange place in your heart because you remember sinking it into its place by yourself. The curb reminds you how much bigger you are now than when you were nine. We were there. We saw those things. And even if they hurt and were a lot of work or they otherwise don't have any purpose now, that doesn't matter. In fact, it matters more because there was a lot of effort and pain involved.
So, stale campaigns. They come in two types. The first is where the DM imposes that unending, grinding dullness. Where the party is just so bloody tired of this miserable purposeless going-through-the-motions nightmare that they eventually reach a point of endurance failure, ending their involvement with that campaign. They're not invested, they're just doing what comes next, and this particular goddamn thing just went on too long. The DM asked too much. Can we please, for the love of dead puppies, end this thing?
And then there is the other kind of 'stale' campaign. Where it isn't stale because someone made a campaign that's a bit dull. This campaign is stale because the party has decided to do a particular thing, and doing that particular thing isn't going to be pleasant, it isn't going to be fun, and its going to take a long, long time.
Have you never done anything like that?
I have written a number of books. I have published one myself, and I am working on others that I've already written, but which are not now good enough to publish, in my opinion.
I freaking hate these books. To put it clearly, if I met these books in a bar, not only would I look at them with a mean look in my eyes, I would grab them, drag them outside, beat the living shit out of them and then drown their motherfucking asses in a pothole full of water mixed with mud and piss.
That doesn't mean I'm going to stop working on them. Because I am. Because that is what it means to work on something you care about. It's hard. It's unpleasant. Getting the thing done sticks in your craw and you can't be happy as long as its not done. When it is done, you're satisfied like nothing else in the world can satisfy you. That sort of task, no one can plan for you. No one can design for you. It's simply not possible.
Look at the features of your life that matter, and ask yourself if there's a pre-fab module or adventure that can duplicate this idea. Ask yourself if a DM ought to view this sort of thing as something that needs to be 'jump started' to make it more exciting and interesting. Because, in reality, it is the staleness that offers the insanely gratifying pay-off that's bound to come later.
I don't think that a DM can make this sort of adventure. I think this is the kind of thing that can only occur organically. And I think it is a FAR, FAR better campaign when this sort of thing does happen, for it produces an investment in character and motivation that is utterly unmatched by anything that a third party can slap together.
Sometimes, people just want to grit their teeth, and the worst thing you can do is bother them. It helps to understand pyschologically when and how this occurs.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
The Straight Dope
JB left a comment on the last post that I'd like to address ... but it is too damn long to post the whole thing here. So I'm going to do a hatchet job on it. I recommend reading the entire comment on the previous post.
"... 'What if I’m the single individual interested in the smuggling operation and the rest of the table is only interested in knocking over dungeons and houses?' What if I’m the lone individual who thinks piracy might be a decent occupation but you’re sitting at a table full of 'Dirk'-types, who only want to plunder the dungeon because it seems like a lot easier target than worrying about getting a ship and crew together and doing the groundwork to figure out shipping lanes and the routes of fat merchant vessels? ... I’m talking about wanting to do 'group adventures' that are completely lost on the group ... it’s no good saying, yeah let’s loot this dungeon for a while to finance our pirate ship because ... they simply want to move onto the next ancient tomb or sunken city.
It’s all well-and-good to say, okay, I’m walking away ... But it’s not every DM you come across who’s created a rich-sand-boxy-environment-world where piracy or smuggling or whatnot[sic] would be a real active possibility. They ... instead say “well, we’ve got this particular adventure planned for the next few sessions and then we’ll look at the pirating possibility.” Except that after This Particular Adventure is exhausted, there’s another ‘particular adventure’ to be played. And another. And another.
We ARE talking Dungeons & Dragons ... why (as a DM) bother creating All the Rest of the World ...? As an intellectual exercise? That’s your bag, perhaps ... I’ve done similar and found it completely wasted on a table full of 'Dirks' ... so then what do I end up doing? Catering to my players.
... I guess what I’m struggling with is A) if I don’t give them what they want ... they’ll stop playing; yet B) if I give them only what they want, the game will get stale ..."
To answer your questions JB,
That's much less than what you said ... but you do tend to waffle, buddy. Still, I think the above gets to the crux of it.
Regarding the first half - how do I play if the world is a railroad, or the other players like it that way, or no one is interested in exploring new story ideas - I haven't played in a solid campaign since, I think, 1985. Why? Largely because of all that you describe. Not because of Dirks so much, though I've met my share of those ... just a general malaise in campaign design. There is a willingness to embrace the most banal of templates - the dungeon, the module, the ruin-near-the-town. Gather in the dungeon, dump off in town; gather in the dungeon, dump off in town. Everybody happy? Good. Gather in the dungeon, dump off in the town. Lather, rinse, repeat.
JB, I don't know what honest advice I can give you. I'd like it if some other sort of world existed ... where I did not happen to be the DM. I encouraged my daughter to run for awhile, but while she has the imagination she hasn't got the time. Like all 24-year-old women, life moves way too fast for game design.
The greatest part of why I run a campaign like I do is because of how pissed off I was trying to run in other people's campaigns. I have NEVER run in a campaign that wasn't built exactly like either the 'BAD' or 'AWFUL' games depicted by Winston Rowntree. Those are the only campaigns I've ever encountered. Conventions, the club at the university, the gamespace at the local RPG shop (the Sentry Box), my friend's campaigns, virtually everything I've seen described online, including all the let's-film-our-session-with-a-really-crappy-camera. It's easy to think that no one, ever, anywhere, runs a campaign where a party can decide to do virtually anything they want and the DM just gets the fuck out of the way.
But you know, having run my world now for 34 years, I have had a lot of people come through with a view to doing something, a particular thing, only to find themselves very disappointed. The phenomenon does not only happen with gaming. I have seen it again and again with respect to the real world.
New employee comes into a company. New employee is excited to work. New employee has a lot of great ideas. New employee has trouble reconciling the fact that those great ideas are of interest to no one. Company has a set agenda. Company has a plan. Company isn't going to change that plan for a noob. New employee gets upset. New employee has trouble adapting to new environment. New employee quits.
I have watched a parade of players start in my campaign with exactly that attitude.
I have started a campaign from scratch four times online. Once in Dachau; once in Fiume; once in Golos; and once in Cuxhaven. Each time I started with a complement of players who together had the opportunity to set an agenda where there was no agenda.
The Fiume campaign started with three players who all decided to play a mage. The fourth character was an assassin. The actual level of interaction was piss-poor. The end result was a group of very disgruntled players, one disgruntled DM, a lot of long term bad feelings and a disastrous campaign that never had any continuity. I leave it up where it can be read as proof to anyone that not everything I run works. Yes, that's right, I have no desire to hide it. There is more to be learned there about how not to play, and why a DM does get autocratic, than there is in the 10,000 word post. To compare it with the present ongoing campaign, a typical post gets between 60 and 100 comments, from people who are questioning and expressing their intent. I was lucky to get 10 comments with the Fiume campaign.
The Golos campaign was short-lived. There were peculiar circumstances involved with it that ended the campaign, but it was struggling because it was quickly reduced to one player.
The Dachau campaign seemed to start well, but there were problems with players who did not seem to understand that a game played on a blog was actually going to require a willingness to write and post. One player lost interest in his character fairly quickly; another stated that he could only post in the evening, and then failed to post most evenings. The remainder limped on a bit, but I think the strangeness of the venue was a challenge. Players did not have a template on how to play in the format. Still, eventually we got some new blood - a cleric, who is still playing in the ongoing campaign - and we ran through an entire adventure that proved to be satisfying for all. Then things soon after went kablooie, and I took a break for awhile.
The Cuxhaven campaign, now in Greece, has been the success. The players had the necessary template. They were chosen for their willingness and ability to write. They jumped straight into it with the understanding that nothing was certain, but that there were things to do. Unfortunately, one disappeared (Silvius), and the other had a change of life (Nine-toes) and adjustments had to be made.
So we brought you on, JB ... but that didn't go so well. Then we brought on a paladin, Melchior, and a mage, Lukas. Melchior didn't seem to understand that I had a complex and precise combat system, despite having posted about it continuously on this blog, and also seemed to have some assumptions about how the strength of residents in the world should be telegraphed to the players. Melchior was replaced with a ranger, who seemed to do well with the party for awhile ... but then he just disappeared. The ranger was replaced with a druid, Maximillian.
Lukas and Maximillian are still with the party, for one particular reason. They went along at the beginning of their experience. They stepped into an ongoing campaign and the rode with it. The opportunity to set the agenda from scratch was past; they had to accept the present agenda, and then, with time, reap the reward of their investment. Like an employee who has to be with the company for a few years before their opinion matters. A player doesn't have to be with a party anywhere near that long - but usually, two or three significant encounters is enough.
But this is my world. This is a world where I'm willing to get the hell out of the player's way. This isn't the typical world of the typical DM, as you yourself point out, JB. There isn't any room in those worlds for the players setting the agenda, because the DM feels that he or she is just as entitled as the players to do so. This is the greatest anathema of the game ... the DM insists that because they have done all the work, and they have all the knowledge, and they are a person too, they have just as much right to set the style of play as any player.
It doesn't matter how much you scream at these people. It doesn't matter how blue in the face you get. This is their stance. You can argue that they're not a player, you can argue that they're the fucking umpire, but they just won't accept that. It's not a glamorous enough role for them. They do the work. They want the right to decide how the work is applied.
If you haven't watched an artist try to explain to a viewer how the art piece SHOULD be viewed, you're only understanding half of what I'm saying.
You can't win with these guys. It's their way or the highway ... and for myself, I've taken the highway for the last 28 years. I don't expect to ever 'play' this game again. That's the long and the short of it.
Now, as to the other half of it. Why create a world if the player's don't appreciate it. Let me see, I want to be sure I get the right line of your comment here: "... why (as a DM) bother creating All the Rest of the World outside the dungeon (or isolated adventure site)? As an intellectual exercise? That’s your bag, perhaps ... I’ve done similar and found it completely wasted ..."
JB ... with all due respect, right there you are full of shit.
Let me make myself clear. I recognize the work you put into your blog. I recognize the effort with the new product. And I respect your character; you and I have gone head to head on a number of occasions and it's never gotten abusively personal. I don't mean this personally. The fact is, you have a great deal to learn, and I have long observed a very strong resistance on your part towards changing your mind - even when you're slapped in the face.
You've done similar?
Really now.
Have you any idea how much respect and value my 'bag' produces for my campaign? Do you recognize how much people have paid me in money for my 'bag'? Or the number of people who have written to say they've applied my 'bag' to their campaigns and gotten terrific and amazing results? This blog is the blog my 'bag' built.
Where the hell is your bag, so similar to mine? Where are the links? Point them out to me. Mind you, I only want to see the links that show a 'similar' level of design and effort.
I think what you mean to say is that you've TRIED to produce something similar, and that it FAILED to get the attention of the people you've DMed. That might be for a number of reasons. It might be that you just didn't impress anyone. It might be that your players are a bunch of louts and morons. I don't know your players. I've certainly had players who tried to play in my world who were louts and morons. I presume, if you've played as long as me, so have you.
So what is the issue here, exactly? That you suffer louts and morons to play? That the louts and morons don't appreciate your efforts? Perhaps you should try NOT playing with louts and morons. Or perhaps you should try producing a 'bag' that draws respect. Either one would seem to me a fairly obvious solution.
Most of what I do on this blog is throw my pearls before swine. There are a great many who scoff at the maps, who scoff at the generators and the design, at the problem solving, at the alternative way of looking at gaming, etcetera etcetera. I don't write for them, however. The fact that there happen to be swine in the room is of no consequence.
All this game design is not an intellectual exercise. The maps and so on are applications. They're the game board. They're the rule book. They make it possible for the players to make up their minds about what they want to do. If you can't see that, if you can't judge my work as anything but a waste of time because it wouldn't work on 'Dirks,' then you have A LOT TO LEARN.
I was going to write something about having principles and standing on principles where it comes to making your world for players to run in it, but I think what you really need to do, JB, is change your mind about something. You're frustrated because your precepts are faulty. You're judging yourself, methinks, too generously. Where it comes to how you will run your world, it is your decision to be used by Dirks. It's your decision to fail with your design. It's your decision to throw your hands in the air and claim there is no point.
But that decision isn't based on any evidence that I can see. It seems derived from some other place.
Your frustration will sort itself out when you realize the thing you're frustrated with is you.
"... 'What if I’m the single individual interested in the smuggling operation and the rest of the table is only interested in knocking over dungeons and houses?' What if I’m the lone individual who thinks piracy might be a decent occupation but you’re sitting at a table full of 'Dirk'-types, who only want to plunder the dungeon because it seems like a lot easier target than worrying about getting a ship and crew together and doing the groundwork to figure out shipping lanes and the routes of fat merchant vessels? ... I’m talking about wanting to do 'group adventures' that are completely lost on the group ... it’s no good saying, yeah let’s loot this dungeon for a while to finance our pirate ship because ... they simply want to move onto the next ancient tomb or sunken city.
It’s all well-and-good to say, okay, I’m walking away ... But it’s not every DM you come across who’s created a rich-sand-boxy-environment-world where piracy or smuggling or whatnot[sic] would be a real active possibility. They ... instead say “well, we’ve got this particular adventure planned for the next few sessions and then we’ll look at the pirating possibility.” Except that after This Particular Adventure is exhausted, there’s another ‘particular adventure’ to be played. And another. And another.
We ARE talking Dungeons & Dragons ... why (as a DM) bother creating All the Rest of the World ...? As an intellectual exercise? That’s your bag, perhaps ... I’ve done similar and found it completely wasted on a table full of 'Dirks' ... so then what do I end up doing? Catering to my players.
... I guess what I’m struggling with is A) if I don’t give them what they want ... they’ll stop playing; yet B) if I give them only what they want, the game will get stale ..."
To answer your questions JB,
That's much less than what you said ... but you do tend to waffle, buddy. Still, I think the above gets to the crux of it.
Regarding the first half - how do I play if the world is a railroad, or the other players like it that way, or no one is interested in exploring new story ideas - I haven't played in a solid campaign since, I think, 1985. Why? Largely because of all that you describe. Not because of Dirks so much, though I've met my share of those ... just a general malaise in campaign design. There is a willingness to embrace the most banal of templates - the dungeon, the module, the ruin-near-the-town. Gather in the dungeon, dump off in town; gather in the dungeon, dump off in town. Everybody happy? Good. Gather in the dungeon, dump off in the town. Lather, rinse, repeat.
JB, I don't know what honest advice I can give you. I'd like it if some other sort of world existed ... where I did not happen to be the DM. I encouraged my daughter to run for awhile, but while she has the imagination she hasn't got the time. Like all 24-year-old women, life moves way too fast for game design.
The greatest part of why I run a campaign like I do is because of how pissed off I was trying to run in other people's campaigns. I have NEVER run in a campaign that wasn't built exactly like either the 'BAD' or 'AWFUL' games depicted by Winston Rowntree. Those are the only campaigns I've ever encountered. Conventions, the club at the university, the gamespace at the local RPG shop (the Sentry Box), my friend's campaigns, virtually everything I've seen described online, including all the let's-film-our-session-with-a-really-crappy-camera. It's easy to think that no one, ever, anywhere, runs a campaign where a party can decide to do virtually anything they want and the DM just gets the fuck out of the way.
But you know, having run my world now for 34 years, I have had a lot of people come through with a view to doing something, a particular thing, only to find themselves very disappointed. The phenomenon does not only happen with gaming. I have seen it again and again with respect to the real world.
New employee comes into a company. New employee is excited to work. New employee has a lot of great ideas. New employee has trouble reconciling the fact that those great ideas are of interest to no one. Company has a set agenda. Company has a plan. Company isn't going to change that plan for a noob. New employee gets upset. New employee has trouble adapting to new environment. New employee quits.
I have watched a parade of players start in my campaign with exactly that attitude.
I have started a campaign from scratch four times online. Once in Dachau; once in Fiume; once in Golos; and once in Cuxhaven. Each time I started with a complement of players who together had the opportunity to set an agenda where there was no agenda.
The Fiume campaign started with three players who all decided to play a mage. The fourth character was an assassin. The actual level of interaction was piss-poor. The end result was a group of very disgruntled players, one disgruntled DM, a lot of long term bad feelings and a disastrous campaign that never had any continuity. I leave it up where it can be read as proof to anyone that not everything I run works. Yes, that's right, I have no desire to hide it. There is more to be learned there about how not to play, and why a DM does get autocratic, than there is in the 10,000 word post. To compare it with the present ongoing campaign, a typical post gets between 60 and 100 comments, from people who are questioning and expressing their intent. I was lucky to get 10 comments with the Fiume campaign.
The Golos campaign was short-lived. There were peculiar circumstances involved with it that ended the campaign, but it was struggling because it was quickly reduced to one player.
The Dachau campaign seemed to start well, but there were problems with players who did not seem to understand that a game played on a blog was actually going to require a willingness to write and post. One player lost interest in his character fairly quickly; another stated that he could only post in the evening, and then failed to post most evenings. The remainder limped on a bit, but I think the strangeness of the venue was a challenge. Players did not have a template on how to play in the format. Still, eventually we got some new blood - a cleric, who is still playing in the ongoing campaign - and we ran through an entire adventure that proved to be satisfying for all. Then things soon after went kablooie, and I took a break for awhile.
The Cuxhaven campaign, now in Greece, has been the success. The players had the necessary template. They were chosen for their willingness and ability to write. They jumped straight into it with the understanding that nothing was certain, but that there were things to do. Unfortunately, one disappeared (Silvius), and the other had a change of life (Nine-toes) and adjustments had to be made.
So we brought you on, JB ... but that didn't go so well. Then we brought on a paladin, Melchior, and a mage, Lukas. Melchior didn't seem to understand that I had a complex and precise combat system, despite having posted about it continuously on this blog, and also seemed to have some assumptions about how the strength of residents in the world should be telegraphed to the players. Melchior was replaced with a ranger, who seemed to do well with the party for awhile ... but then he just disappeared. The ranger was replaced with a druid, Maximillian.
Lukas and Maximillian are still with the party, for one particular reason. They went along at the beginning of their experience. They stepped into an ongoing campaign and the rode with it. The opportunity to set the agenda from scratch was past; they had to accept the present agenda, and then, with time, reap the reward of their investment. Like an employee who has to be with the company for a few years before their opinion matters. A player doesn't have to be with a party anywhere near that long - but usually, two or three significant encounters is enough.
But this is my world. This is a world where I'm willing to get the hell out of the player's way. This isn't the typical world of the typical DM, as you yourself point out, JB. There isn't any room in those worlds for the players setting the agenda, because the DM feels that he or she is just as entitled as the players to do so. This is the greatest anathema of the game ... the DM insists that because they have done all the work, and they have all the knowledge, and they are a person too, they have just as much right to set the style of play as any player.
It doesn't matter how much you scream at these people. It doesn't matter how blue in the face you get. This is their stance. You can argue that they're not a player, you can argue that they're the fucking umpire, but they just won't accept that. It's not a glamorous enough role for them. They do the work. They want the right to decide how the work is applied.
If you haven't watched an artist try to explain to a viewer how the art piece SHOULD be viewed, you're only understanding half of what I'm saying.
You can't win with these guys. It's their way or the highway ... and for myself, I've taken the highway for the last 28 years. I don't expect to ever 'play' this game again. That's the long and the short of it.
Now, as to the other half of it. Why create a world if the player's don't appreciate it. Let me see, I want to be sure I get the right line of your comment here: "... why (as a DM) bother creating All the Rest of the World outside the dungeon (or isolated adventure site)? As an intellectual exercise? That’s your bag, perhaps ... I’ve done similar and found it completely wasted ..."
JB ... with all due respect, right there you are full of shit.
Let me make myself clear. I recognize the work you put into your blog. I recognize the effort with the new product. And I respect your character; you and I have gone head to head on a number of occasions and it's never gotten abusively personal. I don't mean this personally. The fact is, you have a great deal to learn, and I have long observed a very strong resistance on your part towards changing your mind - even when you're slapped in the face.
You've done similar?
Really now.
Have you any idea how much respect and value my 'bag' produces for my campaign? Do you recognize how much people have paid me in money for my 'bag'? Or the number of people who have written to say they've applied my 'bag' to their campaigns and gotten terrific and amazing results? This blog is the blog my 'bag' built.
Where the hell is your bag, so similar to mine? Where are the links? Point them out to me. Mind you, I only want to see the links that show a 'similar' level of design and effort.
I think what you mean to say is that you've TRIED to produce something similar, and that it FAILED to get the attention of the people you've DMed. That might be for a number of reasons. It might be that you just didn't impress anyone. It might be that your players are a bunch of louts and morons. I don't know your players. I've certainly had players who tried to play in my world who were louts and morons. I presume, if you've played as long as me, so have you.
So what is the issue here, exactly? That you suffer louts and morons to play? That the louts and morons don't appreciate your efforts? Perhaps you should try NOT playing with louts and morons. Or perhaps you should try producing a 'bag' that draws respect. Either one would seem to me a fairly obvious solution.
Most of what I do on this blog is throw my pearls before swine. There are a great many who scoff at the maps, who scoff at the generators and the design, at the problem solving, at the alternative way of looking at gaming, etcetera etcetera. I don't write for them, however. The fact that there happen to be swine in the room is of no consequence.
All this game design is not an intellectual exercise. The maps and so on are applications. They're the game board. They're the rule book. They make it possible for the players to make up their minds about what they want to do. If you can't see that, if you can't judge my work as anything but a waste of time because it wouldn't work on 'Dirks,' then you have A LOT TO LEARN.
I was going to write something about having principles and standing on principles where it comes to making your world for players to run in it, but I think what you really need to do, JB, is change your mind about something. You're frustrated because your precepts are faulty. You're judging yourself, methinks, too generously. Where it comes to how you will run your world, it is your decision to be used by Dirks. It's your decision to fail with your design. It's your decision to throw your hands in the air and claim there is no point.
But that decision isn't based on any evidence that I can see. It seems derived from some other place.
Your frustration will sort itself out when you realize the thing you're frustrated with is you.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Irresistably
Sometimes I think English is the villain. I don't have any talent for other languages, but it seemed that Latin was clearer when I was - temporarily - familiar with it.
"Passion is a term applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm or desire for something. The term is also often applied to a lively or eager interest or admiration for a proposal, cause or activity or love - to a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or compelling emotion, a positive affinity or love towards a subject. It is particularly used in the context of romance or sexual desire, though it generally implies a deeper or more encompassing emotion than that implied by the term lust."
Note that the term 'compelling' is used twice in the above. If I can be forgiven, I'd like to define that, also:
Compel: to drive or urge forcefully or irrestibly; to cause to do or occur by overwhelming pressure.
I like that word 'irresistibly.' In the latter definition, it is certain to be the word that is most ignored where others consider passion, particularly when discussing the need to denounce or otherwise restrain passion. I'm going to forego defining the word 'irresistible.' I'm going to presume the reader can understand it as clearly as they understand the word 'understand.' I'll see where that gets me.
Because passion is something a person feels compelled by ... and because that compulsion is irresistible, it is actually pretty stupid to tell someone to restrain their passion. To do so is, in fact, to deny that they have passion, or to misunderstand just how intensely a passionate person feels about a particular thing. In the larger sense, it is to deny that any other individual's emotion is a driving force at all. It is to say, obtusely, that while "I" have passions that drive me, I expect all other persons to curb their passions simply because I don't share them ... and to do so smartly.
And, naturally, it is the habit of people to deride others for having passions. "It would be better for me, obviously, if all of you were merely straw figures, capable of performing the tasks that keep civilization running but, in general, obedient and consciously respectful of my personal will."
In such a world, some will say that D&D should be banned. Some will say that some forms of D&D should be banned. Some will say that D&D is fine, but only if it is played in a particular fashion. And some will impose rules about what the players are allowed to be passionate about, and will couch those rules in the decision of the majority, believing that passion can of course be restrained by a general agreement among all the players, IF they decide.
Naturally, it never works. People cannot "play nice" where it comes to something that matters to them. If it matters, they will not restrain themselves. They do not desire to restrain themselves; if they are browbeaten or threatened or frightened into doing so, the result will be resentment, maliciousness and a host of neurotic behaviors. They will crop up in your campaign and they will destroy your campaign.
There is a rather ridiculous notion that humans are really simple creatures that can be bullied into a particular behavior ... and once bullied, that's the end of it. We have a remarkable capacity to overlook another person's ability to look us in the eye and lie about their willingness to agree. "I have stated this as DM, and since I am the DM all my players recognize that the matter is closed, and we can move on."
This is a delusion.
But it is a widespread delusion. That particular sentiment, about a DM having the final word, is propagandized in almost lock-step fashion, despite that number of campaigns that collapse under the weight of all the 'final words' of a particular DM and all the matters that were 'closed.' Every one of us has had that experience of leaving a night's running and, now that we're not in the DM's presence, reiterating our opinion of that closed matter. "I can't fucking believe he said that ... I can't believe he thinks so ... Oh, he's so fucking sure of himself ... I don't think I'm coming back next week" ... and so on.
A DM does not keep players with inflexibility. Nor does a DM keep players by denying passion. A DM keeps players by rolling with the passion, by enabling it ... and by getting the hell out of passion's way. Because passion is gonna roll. If not in your campaign, then somewhere else, or in something other than D&D. If people don't get what they want because you're Mr. or Mrs. Banality, they'll find it somewhere else.
Of course, there are a host of DMs who will argue at this point, "But I make final decisions in my campaign and I've been playing with the same people for ten years."
This is intended to be proof of something. My gut tells me that it's a campaign I'd never want to play in. I am quite a passionate person. I have a number of rather violent passions which I find quite irresistible. The need to play in a fashion that doesn't bore me, for instance. The need to be unrestricted in my character's choices, or behavior. The need to examine all the elements of life and action, not just those approved by the Kindergarten Committee. The need to write these things out. The need sometimes to abuse others for being terribly thick-headed (I don't care actually that they don't have my passions, but I am quite put out when they try to invoke policies of restraint).
So when I imagine myself at a table with a bunch of people who have decided, say, that none of us are going to be pirates - because, you know, piracy is wrong - I find myself ... put out.
It isn't that I have a passionate desire to be a pirate. If I did, I doubt I would be blogging at the moment. Or, perhaps, I'd be blogging from my ship off the coast of Somalia, describing in glorious detail the manner in which the German businessman and his fat squalling wife were hacked mercilessly to death by my proud crew of vicious Somali buddies. THAT would be an interesting blog, I should think ... though probably a short-lived one.
No, it's more to the point that if matters tilted in a particular way in a campaign, and if there was every indication that NOW would be a good time to plunder this ship and kill all its crew - except, of course, for the German merchant and his fat squalling wife, who no doubt could be ransomed (it's the 15th century, after all ... you don't kill rich people six hundred years ago), then I would be quite put out by the DM suddenly saying, "Oh, no, sorry, you can't do that. We don't pirate in this campaign."
At which point, taken unawares to discover that I'm surrounded by a bunch of complete morons, I would probably exclaim, "What? Why?"
"We've agreed," would say the DM, then going on to explain how they had agreed.
Whereupon, I would look around at the other assured faces at the table, who were nodding their heads in support of their DM, having clearly drunk the same kool-aid.
Some people will find themselves in this situation saying, "Oh, well, okay." They've looked around at the other faces, they've judged the resolve of those faces and they recognize there's going to be no negotiation with that resolve. They will then measure their desire to be a pirate in that moment against their need to continue playing D&D at that time, and most often decide they'd rather play D&D with restrictions, than not play D&D at all.
It would be better for me, I suppose, if I could look at the world that way. Unfortunately, the first thing that occurs to me in that situation is that my liberty is being flagrantly curtailed. I want a better explanation than, "we agreed." There's something about that rebuttal that smacks of "Because." My mind immediately jumps to all the times in my life where this particular rebuttal was employed ... and it always seems to have been employed because others didn't actually have a good reason.
So right there we're off to bad start. I've just been told the reason is there is no reason except that it's what others want.
That puts me in this place where I'm forced to balance my wants against someone else's wants with the understanding that my wants are either secondary in their concern, or otherwise immaterial. Now, see, that really pisses me off. I'm willing to be equal and all, but this dismissal shit really gets under my skin. Nor do I really care how many people are dismissing me. In fact, if everyone at the table is prepared to veto my liberty, that only increases the discontent I feel. My ire is inversely proportional to the number of people dismissing my liberty.
And that is where the trouble starts.
I am, unfortunately, not afraid of a lot of people. I recognize that for most, where there is more than one person involved, the tendency is to push down that feeling of being dismissed because it's a bit frightening to face up to a crowd. I don't feel that way. I always presume that a significant number of the crowd feels exactly as I do ... only they haven't said so out loud because they think they're alone. I'm going to demonstrate, loudly, that they are not alone. I have generally found this an extremely positive tactic. I most often find allies who are willing to speak up once they recognize another person feels as they do.
Not always. No, I am sometimes alone. But that doesn't bother me. My liberty is being dismissed. Right is right.
NOW ... a lot of people reading this are going to miss entirely the following paragraph. They're going to comment, if at all, having never seen what I'm about to say.
IF someone in the party says, "Let's not pirate the ship because I don't think we can get away with it," then I'm more than prepared to back off and do something else. If someone says, "We've heard that they're hunting pirates in this area, and that they're setting decoys to catch pirates," then I'm definitely going to say let's not do it then. I am VERY ready to consider a reply that has in it an actual reason not to take an action. I'm being told by the other players something else: piracy isn't necessarily off the menu, just not right now. I am so in with that.
It's that whole 'because' thing. That's what pisses me off.
I would imagine that someone is going to bring up my policy against player-vs-player. That's been out there for some time, though you'd have to have read this blog regularly, because it hasn't come up for awhile. The thing is, I don't have a 'policy' against it. If players want to go head-to-head ... seriously head-to-head ... I won't stop them. Not my place. I will step up and call it idiocy. I will make an argument about how there's so much more to a campaign than duking it out. I may toss a person from the campaign if they feel compelled to do nothing else. It's boring. But in campaign, I won't actually stop them. I count on the party to do that, with swords and stuff.
It's one of the reasons I insist that everyone starts in a campaign at 1st level. It means that the noob, if he or she wants to live, has to ingratiate themselves a bit with the rest of the party. If they act all boorish and stuff, start swinging a weapon around and so on, they're generally a lower level, with less stuff, than those who are already here. And if they do reach a level where they might threaten a long standing party member, usually by then they've worked together for so long no one would ever think of it.
I wouldn't try to change a campaign that told me I couldn't be a pirate. I'd get up and leave. I wouldn't force a player who wanted to kill other players to stay in my campaign and play nice. I'd just boot them. People shouldn't have to play with people who don't share the same passions. I understand that.
But IF I'm invited to your campaign, I don't want a bunch of restrictions imposed on me when I walk in. Certainly not a bunch of moral restrictions, where no other LIVING person in the campaign is restrained in their ability to play their character (like PvP restraints). No invisible walls, please. I presume if you've invited me, you want ME to play. Not some sanitized version of ME that you think you can bear. I don't come in an expurgated version. I'm all me, all the time. People who invite me better realize that.
I realize that about others. I don't ask them to conform. I ask them to listen, I ask them to be engaged, I ask them to be clear about what they're doing and to be informed about the rules. But I don't ask them to be a different person. If they want to get 'icky' in their description of removing the bowels of an orc and spelling out strange words on the ground with the intestines, well ... I presume they've got some reason for doing it.
Doesn't bother me.
APPENDIX:
The gentle reader can find things I've written about PvP both here and here. Make up your own mind whether or not I've contradicted myself, or if this is just a very nuanced thing that depends upon the exact circumstances involved.
"Passion is a term applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm or desire for something. The term is also often applied to a lively or eager interest or admiration for a proposal, cause or activity or love - to a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or compelling emotion, a positive affinity or love towards a subject. It is particularly used in the context of romance or sexual desire, though it generally implies a deeper or more encompassing emotion than that implied by the term lust."
Note that the term 'compelling' is used twice in the above. If I can be forgiven, I'd like to define that, also:
Compel: to drive or urge forcefully or irrestibly; to cause to do or occur by overwhelming pressure.
I like that word 'irresistibly.' In the latter definition, it is certain to be the word that is most ignored where others consider passion, particularly when discussing the need to denounce or otherwise restrain passion. I'm going to forego defining the word 'irresistible.' I'm going to presume the reader can understand it as clearly as they understand the word 'understand.' I'll see where that gets me.
Because passion is something a person feels compelled by ... and because that compulsion is irresistible, it is actually pretty stupid to tell someone to restrain their passion. To do so is, in fact, to deny that they have passion, or to misunderstand just how intensely a passionate person feels about a particular thing. In the larger sense, it is to deny that any other individual's emotion is a driving force at all. It is to say, obtusely, that while "I" have passions that drive me, I expect all other persons to curb their passions simply because I don't share them ... and to do so smartly.
And, naturally, it is the habit of people to deride others for having passions. "It would be better for me, obviously, if all of you were merely straw figures, capable of performing the tasks that keep civilization running but, in general, obedient and consciously respectful of my personal will."
In such a world, some will say that D&D should be banned. Some will say that some forms of D&D should be banned. Some will say that D&D is fine, but only if it is played in a particular fashion. And some will impose rules about what the players are allowed to be passionate about, and will couch those rules in the decision of the majority, believing that passion can of course be restrained by a general agreement among all the players, IF they decide.
Naturally, it never works. People cannot "play nice" where it comes to something that matters to them. If it matters, they will not restrain themselves. They do not desire to restrain themselves; if they are browbeaten or threatened or frightened into doing so, the result will be resentment, maliciousness and a host of neurotic behaviors. They will crop up in your campaign and they will destroy your campaign.
There is a rather ridiculous notion that humans are really simple creatures that can be bullied into a particular behavior ... and once bullied, that's the end of it. We have a remarkable capacity to overlook another person's ability to look us in the eye and lie about their willingness to agree. "I have stated this as DM, and since I am the DM all my players recognize that the matter is closed, and we can move on."
This is a delusion.
But it is a widespread delusion. That particular sentiment, about a DM having the final word, is propagandized in almost lock-step fashion, despite that number of campaigns that collapse under the weight of all the 'final words' of a particular DM and all the matters that were 'closed.' Every one of us has had that experience of leaving a night's running and, now that we're not in the DM's presence, reiterating our opinion of that closed matter. "I can't fucking believe he said that ... I can't believe he thinks so ... Oh, he's so fucking sure of himself ... I don't think I'm coming back next week" ... and so on.
A DM does not keep players with inflexibility. Nor does a DM keep players by denying passion. A DM keeps players by rolling with the passion, by enabling it ... and by getting the hell out of passion's way. Because passion is gonna roll. If not in your campaign, then somewhere else, or in something other than D&D. If people don't get what they want because you're Mr. or Mrs. Banality, they'll find it somewhere else.
Of course, there are a host of DMs who will argue at this point, "But I make final decisions in my campaign and I've been playing with the same people for ten years."
This is intended to be proof of something. My gut tells me that it's a campaign I'd never want to play in. I am quite a passionate person. I have a number of rather violent passions which I find quite irresistible. The need to play in a fashion that doesn't bore me, for instance. The need to be unrestricted in my character's choices, or behavior. The need to examine all the elements of life and action, not just those approved by the Kindergarten Committee. The need to write these things out. The need sometimes to abuse others for being terribly thick-headed (I don't care actually that they don't have my passions, but I am quite put out when they try to invoke policies of restraint).
So when I imagine myself at a table with a bunch of people who have decided, say, that none of us are going to be pirates - because, you know, piracy is wrong - I find myself ... put out.
It isn't that I have a passionate desire to be a pirate. If I did, I doubt I would be blogging at the moment. Or, perhaps, I'd be blogging from my ship off the coast of Somalia, describing in glorious detail the manner in which the German businessman and his fat squalling wife were hacked mercilessly to death by my proud crew of vicious Somali buddies. THAT would be an interesting blog, I should think ... though probably a short-lived one.
No, it's more to the point that if matters tilted in a particular way in a campaign, and if there was every indication that NOW would be a good time to plunder this ship and kill all its crew - except, of course, for the German merchant and his fat squalling wife, who no doubt could be ransomed (it's the 15th century, after all ... you don't kill rich people six hundred years ago), then I would be quite put out by the DM suddenly saying, "Oh, no, sorry, you can't do that. We don't pirate in this campaign."
At which point, taken unawares to discover that I'm surrounded by a bunch of complete morons, I would probably exclaim, "What? Why?"
"We've agreed," would say the DM, then going on to explain how they had agreed.
Whereupon, I would look around at the other assured faces at the table, who were nodding their heads in support of their DM, having clearly drunk the same kool-aid.
Some people will find themselves in this situation saying, "Oh, well, okay." They've looked around at the other faces, they've judged the resolve of those faces and they recognize there's going to be no negotiation with that resolve. They will then measure their desire to be a pirate in that moment against their need to continue playing D&D at that time, and most often decide they'd rather play D&D with restrictions, than not play D&D at all.
It would be better for me, I suppose, if I could look at the world that way. Unfortunately, the first thing that occurs to me in that situation is that my liberty is being flagrantly curtailed. I want a better explanation than, "we agreed." There's something about that rebuttal that smacks of "Because." My mind immediately jumps to all the times in my life where this particular rebuttal was employed ... and it always seems to have been employed because others didn't actually have a good reason.
So right there we're off to bad start. I've just been told the reason is there is no reason except that it's what others want.
That puts me in this place where I'm forced to balance my wants against someone else's wants with the understanding that my wants are either secondary in their concern, or otherwise immaterial. Now, see, that really pisses me off. I'm willing to be equal and all, but this dismissal shit really gets under my skin. Nor do I really care how many people are dismissing me. In fact, if everyone at the table is prepared to veto my liberty, that only increases the discontent I feel. My ire is inversely proportional to the number of people dismissing my liberty.
And that is where the trouble starts.
I am, unfortunately, not afraid of a lot of people. I recognize that for most, where there is more than one person involved, the tendency is to push down that feeling of being dismissed because it's a bit frightening to face up to a crowd. I don't feel that way. I always presume that a significant number of the crowd feels exactly as I do ... only they haven't said so out loud because they think they're alone. I'm going to demonstrate, loudly, that they are not alone. I have generally found this an extremely positive tactic. I most often find allies who are willing to speak up once they recognize another person feels as they do.
Not always. No, I am sometimes alone. But that doesn't bother me. My liberty is being dismissed. Right is right.
NOW ... a lot of people reading this are going to miss entirely the following paragraph. They're going to comment, if at all, having never seen what I'm about to say.
IF someone in the party says, "Let's not pirate the ship because I don't think we can get away with it," then I'm more than prepared to back off and do something else. If someone says, "We've heard that they're hunting pirates in this area, and that they're setting decoys to catch pirates," then I'm definitely going to say let's not do it then. I am VERY ready to consider a reply that has in it an actual reason not to take an action. I'm being told by the other players something else: piracy isn't necessarily off the menu, just not right now. I am so in with that.
It's that whole 'because' thing. That's what pisses me off.
I would imagine that someone is going to bring up my policy against player-vs-player. That's been out there for some time, though you'd have to have read this blog regularly, because it hasn't come up for awhile. The thing is, I don't have a 'policy' against it. If players want to go head-to-head ... seriously head-to-head ... I won't stop them. Not my place. I will step up and call it idiocy. I will make an argument about how there's so much more to a campaign than duking it out. I may toss a person from the campaign if they feel compelled to do nothing else. It's boring. But in campaign, I won't actually stop them. I count on the party to do that, with swords and stuff.
It's one of the reasons I insist that everyone starts in a campaign at 1st level. It means that the noob, if he or she wants to live, has to ingratiate themselves a bit with the rest of the party. If they act all boorish and stuff, start swinging a weapon around and so on, they're generally a lower level, with less stuff, than those who are already here. And if they do reach a level where they might threaten a long standing party member, usually by then they've worked together for so long no one would ever think of it.
I wouldn't try to change a campaign that told me I couldn't be a pirate. I'd get up and leave. I wouldn't force a player who wanted to kill other players to stay in my campaign and play nice. I'd just boot them. People shouldn't have to play with people who don't share the same passions. I understand that.
But IF I'm invited to your campaign, I don't want a bunch of restrictions imposed on me when I walk in. Certainly not a bunch of moral restrictions, where no other LIVING person in the campaign is restrained in their ability to play their character (like PvP restraints). No invisible walls, please. I presume if you've invited me, you want ME to play. Not some sanitized version of ME that you think you can bear. I don't come in an expurgated version. I'm all me, all the time. People who invite me better realize that.
I realize that about others. I don't ask them to conform. I ask them to listen, I ask them to be engaged, I ask them to be clear about what they're doing and to be informed about the rules. But I don't ask them to be a different person. If they want to get 'icky' in their description of removing the bowels of an orc and spelling out strange words on the ground with the intestines, well ... I presume they've got some reason for doing it.
Doesn't bother me.
APPENDIX:
The gentle reader can find things I've written about PvP both here and here. Make up your own mind whether or not I've contradicted myself, or if this is just a very nuanced thing that depends upon the exact circumstances involved.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
4th Level Illusion - Dispel Emotion
Some readers may know that I've been re-writing Illusionist spells, both to improve the general list (which is shit in the books) and to deviate the illusionist's power more profoundly away from those things that make a mage dangerous. This has involved some serious rewriting of spells, sometimes simply throwing out the spell entirely and replacing it with something else.
I'm curious about this rewrite that I've produced for the 4th level Emotion spell, which is a case of getting rid of and replacing. I'm looking specifically for some angle I haven't considered:
Dispel Emotion
Range: self. Duration: 3 rounds +1 round per level. Area of Effect: 60’ radius. Casting Time: 2 rounds. Saving Throw: none.
Stifles aggressive or passionate emotions of all creatures within the area of effect, including the caster, so as to produce a sudden and profound disinterest in matters such as combat, fury, sexual passion or the like, for the duration of the spell.
Creatures affected will suddenly find themselves behaving quite passively, not only towards their own kind, but in fact towards any other also affected by the spell. All will be open to the sharing of ideas or negotiation, and will for the most part remain in place, moving no more than 10’ a round, and only then in order to bring themselves to a more comfortable distance for communication.
Note that the caster’s party and allies will likewise be affected by the spell, just as any other creature. The caster, however, while unable to take part in any aggressive action, or urge others towards aggressive action, will not be compelled to communicate but may move freely to a better advantage point—provided he or she does not do so at a speed greater than 3 hexes per round. Any faster speed will have the effect of breaking the spell for those nearby—see below.
The caster may also enable others to move freely, so long as he is able to touch them. To touch another individual—and thus give them the power to move freely also—the caster must enter their hex. Thus, the caster can ‘free’ up to three creatures per round of movement.
However, once an aggressively behaving creature (shouting, attacking, etc.) has either moved within 1 hex of an affected creature, or has at a distance physically interacted with a creature (throwing an object, striking with a missile, affecting with another spell), the affected creature will be freed of the spell.
Others, however, will continue to behave as before. Thus, the pattern of breaking the spell will typically be a wave that sweeps from the outside inwards, until either the spell duration is past or all persons have been broken free of the spell.
Note that rapid movement by the caster, or any the caster has ‘freed,’ will be treated as aggressive movement, so those adjacent to a freed person’s entire path of movement will be disenchanted by the disturbance in the spell’s dweomer.
I'm curious about this rewrite that I've produced for the 4th level Emotion spell, which is a case of getting rid of and replacing. I'm looking specifically for some angle I haven't considered:
Dispel Emotion
Range: self. Duration: 3 rounds +1 round per level. Area of Effect: 60’ radius. Casting Time: 2 rounds. Saving Throw: none.
Stifles aggressive or passionate emotions of all creatures within the area of effect, including the caster, so as to produce a sudden and profound disinterest in matters such as combat, fury, sexual passion or the like, for the duration of the spell.
Creatures affected will suddenly find themselves behaving quite passively, not only towards their own kind, but in fact towards any other also affected by the spell. All will be open to the sharing of ideas or negotiation, and will for the most part remain in place, moving no more than 10’ a round, and only then in order to bring themselves to a more comfortable distance for communication.
Note that the caster’s party and allies will likewise be affected by the spell, just as any other creature. The caster, however, while unable to take part in any aggressive action, or urge others towards aggressive action, will not be compelled to communicate but may move freely to a better advantage point—provided he or she does not do so at a speed greater than 3 hexes per round. Any faster speed will have the effect of breaking the spell for those nearby—see below.
The caster may also enable others to move freely, so long as he is able to touch them. To touch another individual—and thus give them the power to move freely also—the caster must enter their hex. Thus, the caster can ‘free’ up to three creatures per round of movement.
However, once an aggressively behaving creature (shouting, attacking, etc.) has either moved within 1 hex of an affected creature, or has at a distance physically interacted with a creature (throwing an object, striking with a missile, affecting with another spell), the affected creature will be freed of the spell.
Others, however, will continue to behave as before. Thus, the pattern of breaking the spell will typically be a wave that sweeps from the outside inwards, until either the spell duration is past or all persons have been broken free of the spell.
Note that rapid movement by the caster, or any the caster has ‘freed,’ will be treated as aggressive movement, so those adjacent to a freed person’s entire path of movement will be disenchanted by the disturbance in the spell’s dweomer.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Enthused & Deluded
This page is, to me, one of the most interesting on all of Wikipedia.
At first glance, it seems to explain EVERYTHING about the internet. Better than that, it provides the best ready and most convenient answer, ever, to anything that you, the gentle reader, don't personally want to believe, or that you might not ever want to admit.
All it requires is to dispense with certainty that you could never be someone suffering from it.
True manifestation of the deviation, in fact, is very rare ... and can be controlled by the possessor most often with simple therapy, increasing one's sense of self-conception. Nevertheless, for many, the immediate belief is almost certain to be that everyone, at least on the internet, is clearly suffering from the condition.
As I said, this is as convenient as it gets.
Of course, I myself am by no means immune.
So let's say, for the sake of argument, that I have completely succumbed. This would seem to be the best possible outlook. We'll just agree that I am truly 'out there.' The mechanism is befuddled. The harbour lights are off and the ship is sailing full on for the shore. Let's just look at things from that perspective.
I recently wrote on this thread,
"Whatever your world is. I am more clever than you. I am smarter than you. I am more imaginative than you. And most of all, I am more invested in what happens to me than you are. No matter how clever you think you are, no matter how smart, no matter how imaginative, your world is never going to be as interesting to me as making up my own game INSIDE YOUR WORLD will be."
Let's talk about that from my perspective, which is, after all, the only perspective I have.
Let us suppose that I am sitting in a coffee shop with a view of the street on a sunny day. As I am looking outside, a large flat bed truck pulls up with a small, funky looking vehicle parked on top that says, "Offroad Emergency Rescue." A team of men come out and start unpacking the vehicle, while another group of people start setting up a table with the intention of 'spreading the word' about this nifty new technology.
Do I get up and look at it? Am I interested? Certainly, some people are interested, but then, they don't know everything about the world like I do. They're stopping and asking questions and getting a little tour inside the truck and it all seems very interesting ... but I'm just sitting here drinking my coffee.
Am I denying myself some really interesting tidbit of knowledge? Perhaps someday I'd like to write a story that takes place in the outback, and it might be useful to have a look at this thing. On the other hand, if I was writing such a story, I could just as easily call up the company, perhaps arrange a personal tour at my convenience, along with far less time constraint and less competition for the presenter's attention.
Yes, in fact, there's no reason for me not to stand up and get another cup of coffee.
The point I'm making is that, so far as I am concerned, whatever the particular event that happens to be going on around me, I will make up my own mind as to whether I care. Recently, Calgary experienced some flooding. Part of downtown was submerged, considerable parts of the city were evacuated, and as it happens I was downtown in my office, going to work like usual, because in my addled state I had long since stopped listening to the radio because I had found everyone on it so annoying. That is, it was so obvious the news was selling me on what they believed, they had stopped actually informing me.
So I was not informed when I went to work that particular Friday. And because the bus delivered me into downtown just as it always does, I had no reason to believe there was a reason to be informed, until I actually found myself walking around empty streets, where it proved impossible to get my morning coffee.
By sheerest chance I ran into someone I knew just before entering my office and learned what was happening. We were all of four blocks from the edge of the flood just then. And with all the concern of someone who has no concern at all, I went into my office, took the elevator up, emailed the people I work with in far flung cities and snagged my work computer from its nest.
Re-emerging onto the street, it very quickly became evident I wasn't going to get a cab. Sometime between getting off the bus and deciding I should go home, the hotels had begun to empty, and cabs were now unavailable. I was not particularly worried. I did not see any reason to hurry. Nor did I see any particular reason to walk the necessary four blocks to see the City Hall under water. I thought about it. But I've seen tons of footage of floods on line, and I didn't think that any actual sight of a lot of water around the foundation of a building was going to radically alter my perception of what that looked like. I have, after all, seen a building partly emerged in water before.
Now, the gentle reader must understand that I have lived here almost all my life. And I am very geographically and geologically minded, so I have a very good idea of where the rivers are in Calgary, where their flow rates are fastest, where the carry weight of said rivers is going to make a mess of the city and so on. I've walked every inch of shore and I've always been interested in such matters. My own mapmaking on line is a manifestation of something that has fascinated me since literally infancy.
So, when I planned to simply walk out of downtown, there was no need to rush. While admittedly downtown appears flat to many people, it really isn't. I simply kept to the highest ground and made good time. I did not listen to the radio or the news. Why would I?
If buildings were going to start falling downtown due to soft ground, I'd have ample warning. Or I wouldn't need warning, since I'd be under the first one that fell. The radio wasn't going to change that.
So here we have an example of an actual crisis, a real world event, something that shattered the city for weeks afterwards and continues to have reprecussions - which I did look into once I got home and comfortable in my ridge situated home, 400 feet above the river valley - and yet I wasn't bothered enough to walk a few blocks and SEE.
If some fellow is running a world, therefore, it's going to be very difficult for them if they take the perpective that they're going to create "presentations" that are remotely interesting to me. Back in university, I had a professor who used to answer every question I asked with a book I should read. At this point in my life, I find myself doing to others what he did to me. Read this. Read that. Educate yourself. The fellow who is going to entertain me has one hell of a tough row to hoe. He's going to have to be as educated as I am, at least; in fact, he better be better educated than me. He has to be as steeped in the habits of human psychology, as morally deficient, as unpredictable and so on, as I am ... or he is going to BORE the ever-living snot right out of me.
He is almost certain to pick and play on things that are interesting for HIM. Which is nice for him. Only thing is, I'm not interested in the shit he's interest in. I am virtually never interested in the things that interest other people. Other people seem to be willing to swallow the most profound crap imaginable and get knotted up about it. (As an aside, does anyone want to talk about how the spelling in the letter is almost flawless, or how the format of the letter is structured like a high school english essay? For anyone who has read the sort of abusive letters this one proports to be - i.e., the sort a newspaper receives - is it really possible that the press has bought into this, or is it just that advertising sales were guaranteed to jump?)
Part of the reason I don't play in other people's worlds is because I'm not interested in other people's idea of a 'good adventure.' I'd like to investigate my idea of a good adventure. The same way I investigate my idea of a good Saturday afternoon. Or the way I decide what I'm going to do when I go out for the evening. Things that I don't have to explain to God or Mammon (well, Mammon has a lot more to do with it than God, but I'm making good money these days).
Why shouldn't it be that if I am a player in a persons world, that I can decide what *I* would like to do there? Why can't we as a party decide? There are roads. Why can't we pick which one to walk down, and why shouldn't we expect a certain 'hands off' idealism on the part of the world's creator? The so-called creator of this world seems to have it down pretty well. He doesn't give a shit what we do AT ALL. Quite a lot of DMs could learn from that.
But then, I know, there are just so many people sitting in that coffee shop thinking, I'm bored ... I wish something would happen. I wish someone would just give me something to do. Sigh. It sure is boring.
But, you know, I'm all screwed up in the head. That may be one of the reasons I think I'm so damn smart. Maybe I'm really not. Perhaps I'm very deluded about that. Perhaps I'm really no smarter than you, gentle reader, and that saying I am is just proof of my delusion.
Sure enough, that's reasonable. Can you tell me, though ... why is it I'm not bored right now?
At first glance, it seems to explain EVERYTHING about the internet. Better than that, it provides the best ready and most convenient answer, ever, to anything that you, the gentle reader, don't personally want to believe, or that you might not ever want to admit.
All it requires is to dispense with certainty that you could never be someone suffering from it.
True manifestation of the deviation, in fact, is very rare ... and can be controlled by the possessor most often with simple therapy, increasing one's sense of self-conception. Nevertheless, for many, the immediate belief is almost certain to be that everyone, at least on the internet, is clearly suffering from the condition.
As I said, this is as convenient as it gets.
Of course, I myself am by no means immune.
So let's say, for the sake of argument, that I have completely succumbed. This would seem to be the best possible outlook. We'll just agree that I am truly 'out there.' The mechanism is befuddled. The harbour lights are off and the ship is sailing full on for the shore. Let's just look at things from that perspective.
I recently wrote on this thread,
"Whatever your world is. I am more clever than you. I am smarter than you. I am more imaginative than you. And most of all, I am more invested in what happens to me than you are. No matter how clever you think you are, no matter how smart, no matter how imaginative, your world is never going to be as interesting to me as making up my own game INSIDE YOUR WORLD will be."
Let's talk about that from my perspective, which is, after all, the only perspective I have.
Let us suppose that I am sitting in a coffee shop with a view of the street on a sunny day. As I am looking outside, a large flat bed truck pulls up with a small, funky looking vehicle parked on top that says, "Offroad Emergency Rescue." A team of men come out and start unpacking the vehicle, while another group of people start setting up a table with the intention of 'spreading the word' about this nifty new technology.
Do I get up and look at it? Am I interested? Certainly, some people are interested, but then, they don't know everything about the world like I do. They're stopping and asking questions and getting a little tour inside the truck and it all seems very interesting ... but I'm just sitting here drinking my coffee.
Am I denying myself some really interesting tidbit of knowledge? Perhaps someday I'd like to write a story that takes place in the outback, and it might be useful to have a look at this thing. On the other hand, if I was writing such a story, I could just as easily call up the company, perhaps arrange a personal tour at my convenience, along with far less time constraint and less competition for the presenter's attention.
Yes, in fact, there's no reason for me not to stand up and get another cup of coffee.
The point I'm making is that, so far as I am concerned, whatever the particular event that happens to be going on around me, I will make up my own mind as to whether I care. Recently, Calgary experienced some flooding. Part of downtown was submerged, considerable parts of the city were evacuated, and as it happens I was downtown in my office, going to work like usual, because in my addled state I had long since stopped listening to the radio because I had found everyone on it so annoying. That is, it was so obvious the news was selling me on what they believed, they had stopped actually informing me.
So I was not informed when I went to work that particular Friday. And because the bus delivered me into downtown just as it always does, I had no reason to believe there was a reason to be informed, until I actually found myself walking around empty streets, where it proved impossible to get my morning coffee.
By sheerest chance I ran into someone I knew just before entering my office and learned what was happening. We were all of four blocks from the edge of the flood just then. And with all the concern of someone who has no concern at all, I went into my office, took the elevator up, emailed the people I work with in far flung cities and snagged my work computer from its nest.
Re-emerging onto the street, it very quickly became evident I wasn't going to get a cab. Sometime between getting off the bus and deciding I should go home, the hotels had begun to empty, and cabs were now unavailable. I was not particularly worried. I did not see any reason to hurry. Nor did I see any particular reason to walk the necessary four blocks to see the City Hall under water. I thought about it. But I've seen tons of footage of floods on line, and I didn't think that any actual sight of a lot of water around the foundation of a building was going to radically alter my perception of what that looked like. I have, after all, seen a building partly emerged in water before.
Now, the gentle reader must understand that I have lived here almost all my life. And I am very geographically and geologically minded, so I have a very good idea of where the rivers are in Calgary, where their flow rates are fastest, where the carry weight of said rivers is going to make a mess of the city and so on. I've walked every inch of shore and I've always been interested in such matters. My own mapmaking on line is a manifestation of something that has fascinated me since literally infancy.
So, when I planned to simply walk out of downtown, there was no need to rush. While admittedly downtown appears flat to many people, it really isn't. I simply kept to the highest ground and made good time. I did not listen to the radio or the news. Why would I?
If buildings were going to start falling downtown due to soft ground, I'd have ample warning. Or I wouldn't need warning, since I'd be under the first one that fell. The radio wasn't going to change that.
So here we have an example of an actual crisis, a real world event, something that shattered the city for weeks afterwards and continues to have reprecussions - which I did look into once I got home and comfortable in my ridge situated home, 400 feet above the river valley - and yet I wasn't bothered enough to walk a few blocks and SEE.
If some fellow is running a world, therefore, it's going to be very difficult for them if they take the perpective that they're going to create "presentations" that are remotely interesting to me. Back in university, I had a professor who used to answer every question I asked with a book I should read. At this point in my life, I find myself doing to others what he did to me. Read this. Read that. Educate yourself. The fellow who is going to entertain me has one hell of a tough row to hoe. He's going to have to be as educated as I am, at least; in fact, he better be better educated than me. He has to be as steeped in the habits of human psychology, as morally deficient, as unpredictable and so on, as I am ... or he is going to BORE the ever-living snot right out of me.
He is almost certain to pick and play on things that are interesting for HIM. Which is nice for him. Only thing is, I'm not interested in the shit he's interest in. I am virtually never interested in the things that interest other people. Other people seem to be willing to swallow the most profound crap imaginable and get knotted up about it. (As an aside, does anyone want to talk about how the spelling in the letter is almost flawless, or how the format of the letter is structured like a high school english essay? For anyone who has read the sort of abusive letters this one proports to be - i.e., the sort a newspaper receives - is it really possible that the press has bought into this, or is it just that advertising sales were guaranteed to jump?)
Part of the reason I don't play in other people's worlds is because I'm not interested in other people's idea of a 'good adventure.' I'd like to investigate my idea of a good adventure. The same way I investigate my idea of a good Saturday afternoon. Or the way I decide what I'm going to do when I go out for the evening. Things that I don't have to explain to God or Mammon (well, Mammon has a lot more to do with it than God, but I'm making good money these days).
Why shouldn't it be that if I am a player in a persons world, that I can decide what *I* would like to do there? Why can't we as a party decide? There are roads. Why can't we pick which one to walk down, and why shouldn't we expect a certain 'hands off' idealism on the part of the world's creator? The so-called creator of this world seems to have it down pretty well. He doesn't give a shit what we do AT ALL. Quite a lot of DMs could learn from that.
But then, I know, there are just so many people sitting in that coffee shop thinking, I'm bored ... I wish something would happen. I wish someone would just give me something to do. Sigh. It sure is boring.
But, you know, I'm all screwed up in the head. That may be one of the reasons I think I'm so damn smart. Maybe I'm really not. Perhaps I'm very deluded about that. Perhaps I'm really no smarter than you, gentle reader, and that saying I am is just proof of my delusion.
Sure enough, that's reasonable. Can you tell me, though ... why is it I'm not bored right now?
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Parenting, Not Autocracy
There was another question on yesterday's link that I'd like to address:
"How do you handle PCs who want to split up, perhaps act in manners that act against the interests of other PCs? Because when I ran a similar style, this was the biggest hurdle I ran into and it turned me off to the style personally."
Ever since writing the Opening Module post, I've been bumping up against this one. I've been trying to distill a meaningful answer that would be helpful to everyone who finds themselves in this position, something where I DON'T call adult people at a table who can't agree a bunch of squabbling children.
I try to picture myself a such a table. These two people on the right of me want to stay in port, buy a shop and start running underground weapons to rebel pirates who are plundering shipping on the sea. The two people on my right think that's a terrible idea, they would rather march into the wilderness, find a dungeon and start plundering its rooms. Finally, the two people in the middle are only interested in individual adventures; this one wants to case a house and rob it, alone, keeping everything that's found for himself; and that one wants to spend the whole night gambling, and wants me to play the croupier at the table so she can do that.
And since we're answering the question posed by Fochizzy on the link, let's assume that all six are adamant in what they want to do.
Now, I am also to assume that this is because of a sandbox 'style' of play - so presumably, if I toss in a wizard lord, smack the party around and impose a quest to kill the Great Slog of Punkettsville, this solves the problem.
This solves the problem?
Really, I want to understand. Everyone is acting in a basically selfish, inflexible manner, and the solution to this situation is for the DM to step in and behave in a completely AUTOCRATIC manner. This gets the campaign 'back on track' and therefore is a MUCH better way of running a game.
I see. Can I just ask ... how certain are we that the individual members of the party are that reluctant to work together? Are we certain that the DM isn't just a prick?
Well, some other people in the last couple of months have said or written that when they tried to just back out and let the party go at it, nothing happened all night long. Nothing. Now, I don't have any more information than that in these cases. It's necessary to fill in the gaps. There's no transcript, no blow by blow, no specific reference to what she said or he said or why specifically neither party desired to resolve the disagreement and get on with the game. I only know they weren't able to.
What would I do?
Well, probably I'd begin by troubleshooting plan A: the town smuggling operation. More to the point, I'd try to shoot it down. "You don't have any contacts, you don't have enough money, you haven't thought it through, how are you going to start it ..." That sort of thing. I'd start with the smuggling operation because it's the most complicated. It is the one that requires the greatest amount of thought. That also means it's the one that requires the greatest amount of resolve, so it's likely the first plan that's going to crash and burn in its early stages. It will probably crash and burn as soon as I start poking holes in the plan - legitimate holes the players haven't thought through.
It's the same thing you do when you start a business. First you think about everything you want to do. Then you think about everything you'll need. THEN, if you're smart, you'll think about everything that can go wrong, or more to the point, WILL go wrong. Then you go to someone else who has been there, who is also in business, and you get them to point out everything that will go wrong. If you find yourself saying, "Yes, but I've already thought of that, so it won't ..." then you might just as well quit now. What you need to say is, "Okay, okay, and when that happens, what do I do?"
By and large the ambitious players haven't really thought it through ... and unless they're committed, they'll start to have second thoughts by the time the conversation is rolled out and discussed, whereupon they'll lose heart and opt for the dungeon option.
However, if they don't lose heart, if they really have a plan, then usually what happens is that they have a role for everyone at the table ... and they'll start selling the table on those roles. They won't say, "Come help so my smuggling operation will work." They'll say, "Look, I'll need someone who can get the weapons; and where's the best place for cheap, available weapons? The dungeon up the hill. So help me get my end started, and then we'll go get the weapons ..." And soon enough at least four people in the party are on the same course.
The people who want to go to the dungeon just want direct, easy to understand experience. In the short run, they don't care where they get it. Of course, if they're just bloody minded about going to the dungeon, and they're not interested in being sold ... then I'll go to work on them.
First of all, I want to know what they want out of D&D. Experience? Combat? Anything else? "Seriously, you just want to come in and fight and get experience, and everything else sounds boring. Oh, you are serious. And anything else that happens - I see, it's just bullshit until the next combat. Good. I understand."
Here is where I get into some personal trouble with this subject. This is where I run out of useful things to offer the gentle reader, as a DM. I can't see myself gaming at a table with a person like this. I recognize there are people like this. I've met, oh, hundreds of them. Grinders.
As a player, I always found a way to point them at something I didn't like, or something that was an obstacle in the way of something that I wanted, so that we could operate together. I would meet people like this and I would deliberately use them, and I don't mean character to character, I mean person to person. It's the way a boss uses an employee that isn't that bright, keeping them motivated to get the floor mopped or the light fixtures changed, while carefully sidestepping anything about wages or promotion. "Yes, Dirk is a good worker, I just push him off in a direction and he does it. No, I really don't give a shit about him. I think I could replace him by the end of the week." It's okay. Dirk likes to kill things. And if I make sure that Dirk has something to kill before the night is over, Dirk is happy. I'd rather not have to service Dirk in this manner, but if that's what I have to do to achieve MY goals, then ...
Most players, however, don't have that killer instinct. They're not ready to lie, cheat, manipulate or whatever the person at the table who is nominally their friend. So it falls to the DM. And because the dungeon adventure is a lot easier than the smuggling adventure for the really 'focused' members of the party to grasp, the DM steps in and says, "Dungeon tonight." And the smarter more clever people sigh and give in and make the best of the dungeon adventure that they can. The Grinder, on the other hand, will not do this with the smuggling adventure. The Grinder will bitch and moan and roll their eyes and sulk because there was no experience tonight, no matter what was achieved.
Now, about the other two. The Gambler and the Thief. I am sorry to say this, but I think both are about as loathsome a people as it's possible to meet playing this game. The thief, at least, might do something that is interesting to someone. First time in a game, it's vaguely exciting to be a spectator watching a thief slip into a house, nearly get caught, successfully overcoming a dog and getting away clean with the jewels. That at least is a narrative. It's a completely selfish, cliched narrative, and the thief never really gets away with more than would be his or her normal share in a straight up encounter that involved everyone (there isn't time, the treasure is too difficult to carry or there isn't enough of it that can be grabbed before the room is full of angry residents) ... but it's a narrative.
The Gambler is far, far worse. They seem to have forgotten what they're doing in a D&D game. They'd rather play craps ... or whatever side game has emerged. They'd rather be in Vegas, but somehow they've wandered into your campaign and you've been caught unaware by someone whose either easily amused or has some sort of gambling problem. They're utterly oblivious to everyone but themselves. And when you say enough, they get upset or exhibit frustration, then pout for the rest of the night. Every time they come back into town, they ask if the gambling venue is open, and soon enough you'll find yourself saying, "No, angry townspeople burned it to the ground."
I hate these people. I hate having them at my table. At the moment, with all three of my campaigns being well-established and the participants motivated towards DOING something that they've decided on their own, it is invariably the newest person in any given campaign that creates a problem like any of the above. They come into a game with their own, personal agenda, or their own, personal bias, and they completely ignore that D&D is a game played by a lot of people, not just one person. They soon find themselves banging against the wall produced by the consensus-driven people who are already there, and either they bend or they quit.
On this blog I talk a lot about the player agenda. That agenda is, however, unfortunate for some, dependent upon the majority being serviced. This is no different from any other group activity. Sports, community service, political activism, the workspace, a holiday get-together ... it is all the same. The person with the biggest PROBLEM is the person who thinks the entire event needs to redirect itself towards their personal needs.
I don't mean, they enter into the activity with an eye to making sure every one's active and doing what they want and that the thing happens. There are those people too. Facilitators. Like me and Dirk. Dirk's happy, he's killing things; I'm happy, I'm cornering the weapons market. We both get what we want. If people want to play baseball, someone gets the diamond, someone brings the bat and ball, people make sure than Cynthia, who is just shit at catching, still gets a turn in right field, where she can occasionally drop a ball but not as often as she would in left field - and everyone makes sure to cheer Cynthia hard when she tries.
No, I'm talking about the asshole who has to PITCH, because he deigned to show up. Who has never been to one of these things before, but is ready to criticize everyone. And who wants to change rule A and rule B because they don't suit him.
Often, it's not that blatant. Instead of bossiness, there's a distinct sluggishness or apathy; the player mopes and sulks; they answer questions as though answering questions is the most boring thing in the world. They only get excited when everything comes around their way.
Trot 18 random strangers onto a baseball diamond and tell them to play, and 18 people can organize themselves pretty quickly. They'll use any of the standard ways for splitting themselves up into two teams that were invented for them in elementary school, they'll debate for a bit about what position to play, or what batting order to be in, but you can pretty much expect that they'll be playing baseball inside half-an-hour.
But put 4 strangers at a D&D table and tell them to do what they want, and they'll calcify in a couple of minutes on four different strategies. That's why Fochizzy says that he doesn't play that way any more. He autocratically decides. Otherwise, nobody plays.
I think that's wrong. I think it's a rational solution if the goal is to put up a barn or to get a film made. One autocratic individual can motivate a crew without any trouble.
I think, however, that the REAL solution is to have the party come around night after night, forcing them to face the same question, until one of two things happens.
1) They recognize that no one is going to hold their hand, and that if they want to play D&D they're going to have to sort themselves out like grown-ups.
2) After the second or third night of this, only one or two people show up. The most serious players. With less people muddying the water, they'll get started. And then, when one of the others find you're still playing D&D, and show up to find the other two are already moving in a set direction, that third person will fall in line.
The party will have ultimately decided. And you'll have a sandbox game. One where you'll NEVER have to boss the party again. But it is like giving birth. Sometimes the campaign dies, comes out still born. Sometimes you get a squalling, screaming infant. But as the infant grows, it begins to create it's own way in the world.
As a DM, you cease to be an autocrat, and slip comfortably into the role of proud parent. Giving advice, making suggestions, offering ideas ... but never, ever ruling your way or the highway.
Still, there are a lot of parents who try to parent that way. There are a lot of old age homes full of lonely parents.
"How do you handle PCs who want to split up, perhaps act in manners that act against the interests of other PCs? Because when I ran a similar style, this was the biggest hurdle I ran into and it turned me off to the style personally."
Ever since writing the Opening Module post, I've been bumping up against this one. I've been trying to distill a meaningful answer that would be helpful to everyone who finds themselves in this position, something where I DON'T call adult people at a table who can't agree a bunch of squabbling children.
I try to picture myself a such a table. These two people on the right of me want to stay in port, buy a shop and start running underground weapons to rebel pirates who are plundering shipping on the sea. The two people on my right think that's a terrible idea, they would rather march into the wilderness, find a dungeon and start plundering its rooms. Finally, the two people in the middle are only interested in individual adventures; this one wants to case a house and rob it, alone, keeping everything that's found for himself; and that one wants to spend the whole night gambling, and wants me to play the croupier at the table so she can do that.
And since we're answering the question posed by Fochizzy on the link, let's assume that all six are adamant in what they want to do.
Now, I am also to assume that this is because of a sandbox 'style' of play - so presumably, if I toss in a wizard lord, smack the party around and impose a quest to kill the Great Slog of Punkettsville, this solves the problem.
This solves the problem?
Really, I want to understand. Everyone is acting in a basically selfish, inflexible manner, and the solution to this situation is for the DM to step in and behave in a completely AUTOCRATIC manner. This gets the campaign 'back on track' and therefore is a MUCH better way of running a game.
I see. Can I just ask ... how certain are we that the individual members of the party are that reluctant to work together? Are we certain that the DM isn't just a prick?
Well, some other people in the last couple of months have said or written that when they tried to just back out and let the party go at it, nothing happened all night long. Nothing. Now, I don't have any more information than that in these cases. It's necessary to fill in the gaps. There's no transcript, no blow by blow, no specific reference to what she said or he said or why specifically neither party desired to resolve the disagreement and get on with the game. I only know they weren't able to.
What would I do?
Well, probably I'd begin by troubleshooting plan A: the town smuggling operation. More to the point, I'd try to shoot it down. "You don't have any contacts, you don't have enough money, you haven't thought it through, how are you going to start it ..." That sort of thing. I'd start with the smuggling operation because it's the most complicated. It is the one that requires the greatest amount of thought. That also means it's the one that requires the greatest amount of resolve, so it's likely the first plan that's going to crash and burn in its early stages. It will probably crash and burn as soon as I start poking holes in the plan - legitimate holes the players haven't thought through.
It's the same thing you do when you start a business. First you think about everything you want to do. Then you think about everything you'll need. THEN, if you're smart, you'll think about everything that can go wrong, or more to the point, WILL go wrong. Then you go to someone else who has been there, who is also in business, and you get them to point out everything that will go wrong. If you find yourself saying, "Yes, but I've already thought of that, so it won't ..." then you might just as well quit now. What you need to say is, "Okay, okay, and when that happens, what do I do?"
By and large the ambitious players haven't really thought it through ... and unless they're committed, they'll start to have second thoughts by the time the conversation is rolled out and discussed, whereupon they'll lose heart and opt for the dungeon option.
However, if they don't lose heart, if they really have a plan, then usually what happens is that they have a role for everyone at the table ... and they'll start selling the table on those roles. They won't say, "Come help so my smuggling operation will work." They'll say, "Look, I'll need someone who can get the weapons; and where's the best place for cheap, available weapons? The dungeon up the hill. So help me get my end started, and then we'll go get the weapons ..." And soon enough at least four people in the party are on the same course.
The people who want to go to the dungeon just want direct, easy to understand experience. In the short run, they don't care where they get it. Of course, if they're just bloody minded about going to the dungeon, and they're not interested in being sold ... then I'll go to work on them.
First of all, I want to know what they want out of D&D. Experience? Combat? Anything else? "Seriously, you just want to come in and fight and get experience, and everything else sounds boring. Oh, you are serious. And anything else that happens - I see, it's just bullshit until the next combat. Good. I understand."
Here is where I get into some personal trouble with this subject. This is where I run out of useful things to offer the gentle reader, as a DM. I can't see myself gaming at a table with a person like this. I recognize there are people like this. I've met, oh, hundreds of them. Grinders.
As a player, I always found a way to point them at something I didn't like, or something that was an obstacle in the way of something that I wanted, so that we could operate together. I would meet people like this and I would deliberately use them, and I don't mean character to character, I mean person to person. It's the way a boss uses an employee that isn't that bright, keeping them motivated to get the floor mopped or the light fixtures changed, while carefully sidestepping anything about wages or promotion. "Yes, Dirk is a good worker, I just push him off in a direction and he does it. No, I really don't give a shit about him. I think I could replace him by the end of the week." It's okay. Dirk likes to kill things. And if I make sure that Dirk has something to kill before the night is over, Dirk is happy. I'd rather not have to service Dirk in this manner, but if that's what I have to do to achieve MY goals, then ...
Most players, however, don't have that killer instinct. They're not ready to lie, cheat, manipulate or whatever the person at the table who is nominally their friend. So it falls to the DM. And because the dungeon adventure is a lot easier than the smuggling adventure for the really 'focused' members of the party to grasp, the DM steps in and says, "Dungeon tonight." And the smarter more clever people sigh and give in and make the best of the dungeon adventure that they can. The Grinder, on the other hand, will not do this with the smuggling adventure. The Grinder will bitch and moan and roll their eyes and sulk because there was no experience tonight, no matter what was achieved.
Now, about the other two. The Gambler and the Thief. I am sorry to say this, but I think both are about as loathsome a people as it's possible to meet playing this game. The thief, at least, might do something that is interesting to someone. First time in a game, it's vaguely exciting to be a spectator watching a thief slip into a house, nearly get caught, successfully overcoming a dog and getting away clean with the jewels. That at least is a narrative. It's a completely selfish, cliched narrative, and the thief never really gets away with more than would be his or her normal share in a straight up encounter that involved everyone (there isn't time, the treasure is too difficult to carry or there isn't enough of it that can be grabbed before the room is full of angry residents) ... but it's a narrative.
The Gambler is far, far worse. They seem to have forgotten what they're doing in a D&D game. They'd rather play craps ... or whatever side game has emerged. They'd rather be in Vegas, but somehow they've wandered into your campaign and you've been caught unaware by someone whose either easily amused or has some sort of gambling problem. They're utterly oblivious to everyone but themselves. And when you say enough, they get upset or exhibit frustration, then pout for the rest of the night. Every time they come back into town, they ask if the gambling venue is open, and soon enough you'll find yourself saying, "No, angry townspeople burned it to the ground."
I hate these people. I hate having them at my table. At the moment, with all three of my campaigns being well-established and the participants motivated towards DOING something that they've decided on their own, it is invariably the newest person in any given campaign that creates a problem like any of the above. They come into a game with their own, personal agenda, or their own, personal bias, and they completely ignore that D&D is a game played by a lot of people, not just one person. They soon find themselves banging against the wall produced by the consensus-driven people who are already there, and either they bend or they quit.
On this blog I talk a lot about the player agenda. That agenda is, however, unfortunate for some, dependent upon the majority being serviced. This is no different from any other group activity. Sports, community service, political activism, the workspace, a holiday get-together ... it is all the same. The person with the biggest PROBLEM is the person who thinks the entire event needs to redirect itself towards their personal needs.
I don't mean, they enter into the activity with an eye to making sure every one's active and doing what they want and that the thing happens. There are those people too. Facilitators. Like me and Dirk. Dirk's happy, he's killing things; I'm happy, I'm cornering the weapons market. We both get what we want. If people want to play baseball, someone gets the diamond, someone brings the bat and ball, people make sure than Cynthia, who is just shit at catching, still gets a turn in right field, where she can occasionally drop a ball but not as often as she would in left field - and everyone makes sure to cheer Cynthia hard when she tries.
No, I'm talking about the asshole who has to PITCH, because he deigned to show up. Who has never been to one of these things before, but is ready to criticize everyone. And who wants to change rule A and rule B because they don't suit him.
Often, it's not that blatant. Instead of bossiness, there's a distinct sluggishness or apathy; the player mopes and sulks; they answer questions as though answering questions is the most boring thing in the world. They only get excited when everything comes around their way.
Trot 18 random strangers onto a baseball diamond and tell them to play, and 18 people can organize themselves pretty quickly. They'll use any of the standard ways for splitting themselves up into two teams that were invented for them in elementary school, they'll debate for a bit about what position to play, or what batting order to be in, but you can pretty much expect that they'll be playing baseball inside half-an-hour.
But put 4 strangers at a D&D table and tell them to do what they want, and they'll calcify in a couple of minutes on four different strategies. That's why Fochizzy says that he doesn't play that way any more. He autocratically decides. Otherwise, nobody plays.
I think that's wrong. I think it's a rational solution if the goal is to put up a barn or to get a film made. One autocratic individual can motivate a crew without any trouble.
I think, however, that the REAL solution is to have the party come around night after night, forcing them to face the same question, until one of two things happens.
1) They recognize that no one is going to hold their hand, and that if they want to play D&D they're going to have to sort themselves out like grown-ups.
2) After the second or third night of this, only one or two people show up. The most serious players. With less people muddying the water, they'll get started. And then, when one of the others find you're still playing D&D, and show up to find the other two are already moving in a set direction, that third person will fall in line.
The party will have ultimately decided. And you'll have a sandbox game. One where you'll NEVER have to boss the party again. But it is like giving birth. Sometimes the campaign dies, comes out still born. Sometimes you get a squalling, screaming infant. But as the infant grows, it begins to create it's own way in the world.
As a DM, you cease to be an autocrat, and slip comfortably into the role of proud parent. Giving advice, making suggestions, offering ideas ... but never, ever ruling your way or the highway.
Still, there are a lot of parents who try to parent that way. There are a lot of old age homes full of lonely parents.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Wiggly All Over the Place
Watching a conversation at The Wizards Community, a place I had gone only because it was driving traffic towards this site, I came across this question imposed by one Fochizzy:
"I am legitimately curious as to how you create these random maps, monsters, NPCs and tables that you discuss. Do you create them in advance and use what feels appropriate? It sounds like you eschew most preparation, so how do you keep it all together? Because my experience with someone with a similar style to what you espouse is that they were unable to keep everything straight."
The statement was meant, I believe (in context), to be anecdotal evidence of the impossibility of such a venture. In context, there's a sort of "pffft!" sound that one can hear in the background, which I think is evident from the last line of the quote. On the next page of the thread, one can find Yagami answering it (Yagami who occasionally pokes his head up around here, and was responsible for creating the thread linking to content on this blog). I think I can offer a better reply.
The maps, as anyone knows who reads me, are a long term venture that has paid off ... but even at the beginning (around early 2005), when the only map I had was a small reproduction of the province of Voronezh, creating my own map on a computer program, which could be manipulated at will, was well worth the effort. This is where my long-running off-line party started, about 8 years ago now, in a little town on the edge of orc-country in the steppes of Russia, a town called Kolyeno. With the aid of Wikipedia, an encyclopedia, several atlases and my own imagination, I was able to insert the party into a place that had a history, and which was relevant to them at least in terms of being able to comprehend how large a world they were in beyond the simple local hills and grasslands surrounding the valley of the Don River.
Therefore, I keep the maps straight by working off the real world, where all my information is on the net, at my fingertips, and all I need do is conform that information to my perception of what a 17th century world would be like. I even have tables that tell me what moon phase exists in any particular part of the world, at any time, such as Athens in 1651.
The monsters are mostly those in the monster manual. I insert these more or less in places where there are no people. I've been doing this mostly grab-ass for the last 33 years, using my experience to estimate how many and how they're encountered, mostly with the mindset of depicting these monsters as they would live and breathe if there were no persons there to discover them. In other words, I don't have the party come across a chimera because its interesting and exciting to kill a chimera. I presuppose, IF a chimera were in this place and time, WHAT would be the chimera's motivation? What do chimera want? Is it sleepy and perhaps resting after several months of causing destruction? Has it climbed out of a cave and is mostly interested in sunning itself? Is it hungry? Has it little chimera children its raising (well, probably not, because that's not how chimera happen). IF the party stumbles across the chimera, how is that likely to happen. I have to assume the chimera was doing something before the party showed up. It wasn't just waiting there off camera, arguing with its agent on the phone before the call came for it to step out and read its lines. That chimera has an agenda. What is it? What does the chimera want? And how does what the party want conflict with the chimera, or in fact how does it coincide? Must we always assume the party and the chimera are opponents in whatever struggle is taking place?
So I manage these monsters mostly by putting myself in their place. Since I as DM have no agenda, no cattle run or railroad, then the whole matter of the chimera (or any other monster appearing) comes down to, "Has the party moved into an area where something other than vermin is likely to be?" And that thought is followed by a die roll that tells me if there's a monster there. If yes, we can start up a dialogue/battle. If no, I can tell the party they are one day closer to their destination without there being a distraction. One die roll. Everyone's happy either way. Win for the new encounter (and possible experience), or win for the party's plan moving that much closer to fruition.
And if the party is somewhere that only vermin are likely to be (vermin = creatures too dumb to know that they'll be killed if they wander into civilized lands), then the die roll is there for that, too.
NPC's are run pretty much the same way. If the party goes into a particular civilized land/area/city/what have you, I think, who would they likely find there? And what would be their agenda? Sell stuff? Get help? Ask the party to get the hell off their land? Steal from the party? Con the party into believing a lie in order to get their money? There are really thousands, tens of thousands of motivations, and I'm creative.
I don't need an overall grand plan to give an ordinary NPC a motivation that will challenge the party. The guy driving the car on the road ahead of you, who is challenging the living fuck out of you, doesn't need to fit into any grand scheme. He's a problem. NPC's are often problems. They are sometimes solutions. They have information, they have both ordinary and extraordinary little agendas, they're chock full of adventure opportunities.
I don't have to keep track of them because, well, chances are as an adventuring party you'll never see them again. Even if they're someone you see everyday, I don't have to create their stats or most of their wealth because there's no logical reason the party would ever have knowledge of that anyway. I myself only need it if that person is actually going to get into combat; the idea that I'd sketch out an entire NPC sheet for the local grocer who always says hi to the party when they come back to town, whose name is Greg and has a pretty wife, is ridiculous. Why would I do that? Even if the party attacked Greg, in about two seconds I can decide that he probably hasn't got any special stats, and being a grocer he's probably got between one and eight hit points. If he were a guard, he'd have a d8 for mass and a d10 for his level, and maybe (50%, say) either a 16 strength or a 15 constitution. Probably nothing else. That thief that robbed the party is bound to have a good dexterity (roll 5d6 and keep the highest three). It takes no time. And the NPC is probably going to disappear forever soon after, or be dead. Why would I waste time designing them down to how much they weighed or what color their eyes were? The party doesn't care. Why should I?
And if the body is to be rifled, I can just as easily rattle off a dozen things the body is carrying or wearing in the middle of a session as I can write it down ten days earlier in 'preparation.' Preparation there is a waste of time. I can be preparing better things ... like a general treasure & arms table that identifies the value the NPC is carrying fast enough to keep the game going.
Yes, I eschew a great deal of bullshit preparation. Most of this preparation is a sort of self-roleplay thing that people do in order to be part of the game when the game is not going on. But then, I wrote a great long post about that.
Keeping this "all together" is really about going with the flow. Not trying to force the party into a box. That means that a lot of things get left by the wayside, never developed, because the party really wasn't interested in them. And sometimes it means my forgetting the name of that grocer because the party hasn't been back to that town in seventeen months of play. But you know, if I start calling the grocer 'Gary,' no one cares. And if someone says, "I thought his name was Greg," I answer, "Oh, right, Greg. Anyway, Greg says ..." and the game goes on.
There is this rather foolish sense that a DM has to be this flawless individual who can never make a mistake about something they have in their campaign. That's simply not true. The gentle reader will find generally with the party that they're ready to adapt to a lot of things - such as keeping notes themselves if they ever want to find that strange little man outside that town. I don't keep information like that in my head for the party. They remind me. They say, "Hey, did we find that prayer rug the town said they were missing?" And I think, oops, forgot all about that. Out loud, I say, "Nope. No sign of it." Whereupon the party goes, "I wonder where that is."
But you know what? If they NEVER find it, no big deal. Because sometimes things just go missing. Sometimes, the town just has to get along without that prayer rug. Maybe a black pudding ate it. Maybe its in someone's backback right now as they're getting aboard a ship for China. Who the hell knows? What the hell difference does it make? If the party doesn't find that particular bit of treasure, no biggie, there will be other things. I don't have anything in my world hinging on the whereabouts of that thing, so if I've forgotten to toss that thing into the treasure where, seven months ago, I totally meant to, what the hey? The game still manages to go on.
I never tell the party that, of course. I keep it close to the body. I never reveal what happened to stuff that was never found, because in reality, there's just stuff we lose and we never find. There are people we knew really well who might be, well, anywhere. We can't even find them on the Net. Maybe they died before the Net got really popular. Who knows?
Every once in awhile someone in the party might say, "I wonder what ever happened to ..." and I think, hm, maybe I'll have them find that. Or I think, naaaaaah.
Not telling the party things helps a lot in keeping it all 'straight.' Not having a plan helps in that there's no real definite reason to keep things 'straight.' My principal self-rule is that I don't intentionally fuck around behind the party's back changing things. Once I decide that this is that, I make it that. True, I do forget stuff - like that prayer rug. But I never had any specific plans for what that rug was, anyway.
In the main, I'm less concerned about making the world "fun" for the party than I am letting the party make the world "fun" for themselves. I don't worry about if I'm running a world like a computer would run a world. I don't get wrapped up in how much personal glory I'm getting, of if the party properly respects the effort I've made. I want to know for certain that the party is having a good time. That it is worth it for them. That they're engaged.
I'm engaged in making all this background. It amuses me more than enough to have created a big park where other people want to play. I don't feel at the same time that they need to pay lip service to me for having created it.
So there you have it. I keep it together by playing it pretty loose and off the cuff, which works because the world as it stands is pretty loose and pretty much undefined. The less defined it is, the better park the world becomes. I like it that way, my players like it that way.
I think that phrase, "keep everything straight," is telling in itself. Railroads are straight. FIXED design is straight. Inflexible things are straight. I don't make a straight world.
Mine is wiggly all over the place.
"I am legitimately curious as to how you create these random maps, monsters, NPCs and tables that you discuss. Do you create them in advance and use what feels appropriate? It sounds like you eschew most preparation, so how do you keep it all together? Because my experience with someone with a similar style to what you espouse is that they were unable to keep everything straight."
The statement was meant, I believe (in context), to be anecdotal evidence of the impossibility of such a venture. In context, there's a sort of "pffft!" sound that one can hear in the background, which I think is evident from the last line of the quote. On the next page of the thread, one can find Yagami answering it (Yagami who occasionally pokes his head up around here, and was responsible for creating the thread linking to content on this blog). I think I can offer a better reply.
The maps, as anyone knows who reads me, are a long term venture that has paid off ... but even at the beginning (around early 2005), when the only map I had was a small reproduction of the province of Voronezh, creating my own map on a computer program, which could be manipulated at will, was well worth the effort. This is where my long-running off-line party started, about 8 years ago now, in a little town on the edge of orc-country in the steppes of Russia, a town called Kolyeno. With the aid of Wikipedia, an encyclopedia, several atlases and my own imagination, I was able to insert the party into a place that had a history, and which was relevant to them at least in terms of being able to comprehend how large a world they were in beyond the simple local hills and grasslands surrounding the valley of the Don River.
Therefore, I keep the maps straight by working off the real world, where all my information is on the net, at my fingertips, and all I need do is conform that information to my perception of what a 17th century world would be like. I even have tables that tell me what moon phase exists in any particular part of the world, at any time, such as Athens in 1651.
The monsters are mostly those in the monster manual. I insert these more or less in places where there are no people. I've been doing this mostly grab-ass for the last 33 years, using my experience to estimate how many and how they're encountered, mostly with the mindset of depicting these monsters as they would live and breathe if there were no persons there to discover them. In other words, I don't have the party come across a chimera because its interesting and exciting to kill a chimera. I presuppose, IF a chimera were in this place and time, WHAT would be the chimera's motivation? What do chimera want? Is it sleepy and perhaps resting after several months of causing destruction? Has it climbed out of a cave and is mostly interested in sunning itself? Is it hungry? Has it little chimera children its raising (well, probably not, because that's not how chimera happen). IF the party stumbles across the chimera, how is that likely to happen. I have to assume the chimera was doing something before the party showed up. It wasn't just waiting there off camera, arguing with its agent on the phone before the call came for it to step out and read its lines. That chimera has an agenda. What is it? What does the chimera want? And how does what the party want conflict with the chimera, or in fact how does it coincide? Must we always assume the party and the chimera are opponents in whatever struggle is taking place?
So I manage these monsters mostly by putting myself in their place. Since I as DM have no agenda, no cattle run or railroad, then the whole matter of the chimera (or any other monster appearing) comes down to, "Has the party moved into an area where something other than vermin is likely to be?" And that thought is followed by a die roll that tells me if there's a monster there. If yes, we can start up a dialogue/battle. If no, I can tell the party they are one day closer to their destination without there being a distraction. One die roll. Everyone's happy either way. Win for the new encounter (and possible experience), or win for the party's plan moving that much closer to fruition.
And if the party is somewhere that only vermin are likely to be (vermin = creatures too dumb to know that they'll be killed if they wander into civilized lands), then the die roll is there for that, too.
NPC's are run pretty much the same way. If the party goes into a particular civilized land/area/city/what have you, I think, who would they likely find there? And what would be their agenda? Sell stuff? Get help? Ask the party to get the hell off their land? Steal from the party? Con the party into believing a lie in order to get their money? There are really thousands, tens of thousands of motivations, and I'm creative.
I don't need an overall grand plan to give an ordinary NPC a motivation that will challenge the party. The guy driving the car on the road ahead of you, who is challenging the living fuck out of you, doesn't need to fit into any grand scheme. He's a problem. NPC's are often problems. They are sometimes solutions. They have information, they have both ordinary and extraordinary little agendas, they're chock full of adventure opportunities.
I don't have to keep track of them because, well, chances are as an adventuring party you'll never see them again. Even if they're someone you see everyday, I don't have to create their stats or most of their wealth because there's no logical reason the party would ever have knowledge of that anyway. I myself only need it if that person is actually going to get into combat; the idea that I'd sketch out an entire NPC sheet for the local grocer who always says hi to the party when they come back to town, whose name is Greg and has a pretty wife, is ridiculous. Why would I do that? Even if the party attacked Greg, in about two seconds I can decide that he probably hasn't got any special stats, and being a grocer he's probably got between one and eight hit points. If he were a guard, he'd have a d8 for mass and a d10 for his level, and maybe (50%, say) either a 16 strength or a 15 constitution. Probably nothing else. That thief that robbed the party is bound to have a good dexterity (roll 5d6 and keep the highest three). It takes no time. And the NPC is probably going to disappear forever soon after, or be dead. Why would I waste time designing them down to how much they weighed or what color their eyes were? The party doesn't care. Why should I?
And if the body is to be rifled, I can just as easily rattle off a dozen things the body is carrying or wearing in the middle of a session as I can write it down ten days earlier in 'preparation.' Preparation there is a waste of time. I can be preparing better things ... like a general treasure & arms table that identifies the value the NPC is carrying fast enough to keep the game going.
Yes, I eschew a great deal of bullshit preparation. Most of this preparation is a sort of self-roleplay thing that people do in order to be part of the game when the game is not going on. But then, I wrote a great long post about that.
Keeping this "all together" is really about going with the flow. Not trying to force the party into a box. That means that a lot of things get left by the wayside, never developed, because the party really wasn't interested in them. And sometimes it means my forgetting the name of that grocer because the party hasn't been back to that town in seventeen months of play. But you know, if I start calling the grocer 'Gary,' no one cares. And if someone says, "I thought his name was Greg," I answer, "Oh, right, Greg. Anyway, Greg says ..." and the game goes on.
There is this rather foolish sense that a DM has to be this flawless individual who can never make a mistake about something they have in their campaign. That's simply not true. The gentle reader will find generally with the party that they're ready to adapt to a lot of things - such as keeping notes themselves if they ever want to find that strange little man outside that town. I don't keep information like that in my head for the party. They remind me. They say, "Hey, did we find that prayer rug the town said they were missing?" And I think, oops, forgot all about that. Out loud, I say, "Nope. No sign of it." Whereupon the party goes, "I wonder where that is."
But you know what? If they NEVER find it, no big deal. Because sometimes things just go missing. Sometimes, the town just has to get along without that prayer rug. Maybe a black pudding ate it. Maybe its in someone's backback right now as they're getting aboard a ship for China. Who the hell knows? What the hell difference does it make? If the party doesn't find that particular bit of treasure, no biggie, there will be other things. I don't have anything in my world hinging on the whereabouts of that thing, so if I've forgotten to toss that thing into the treasure where, seven months ago, I totally meant to, what the hey? The game still manages to go on.
I never tell the party that, of course. I keep it close to the body. I never reveal what happened to stuff that was never found, because in reality, there's just stuff we lose and we never find. There are people we knew really well who might be, well, anywhere. We can't even find them on the Net. Maybe they died before the Net got really popular. Who knows?
Every once in awhile someone in the party might say, "I wonder what ever happened to ..." and I think, hm, maybe I'll have them find that. Or I think, naaaaaah.
Not telling the party things helps a lot in keeping it all 'straight.' Not having a plan helps in that there's no real definite reason to keep things 'straight.' My principal self-rule is that I don't intentionally fuck around behind the party's back changing things. Once I decide that this is that, I make it that. True, I do forget stuff - like that prayer rug. But I never had any specific plans for what that rug was, anyway.
In the main, I'm less concerned about making the world "fun" for the party than I am letting the party make the world "fun" for themselves. I don't worry about if I'm running a world like a computer would run a world. I don't get wrapped up in how much personal glory I'm getting, of if the party properly respects the effort I've made. I want to know for certain that the party is having a good time. That it is worth it for them. That they're engaged.
I'm engaged in making all this background. It amuses me more than enough to have created a big park where other people want to play. I don't feel at the same time that they need to pay lip service to me for having created it.
So there you have it. I keep it together by playing it pretty loose and off the cuff, which works because the world as it stands is pretty loose and pretty much undefined. The less defined it is, the better park the world becomes. I like it that way, my players like it that way.
I think that phrase, "keep everything straight," is telling in itself. Railroads are straight. FIXED design is straight. Inflexible things are straight. I don't make a straight world.
Mine is wiggly all over the place.
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