On Swearing

Is D&D a children's game?  Should it be?  I ask because I stumbled into a fantasy gaming podcast earlier today that started off with the warning, "We're going to use adult language and talk about adult themes" . . . whereupon the swearing commenced.

To be honest, I remain confused about this culture's habitual attitude towards both the use of swearing and its supposed restraint of it.  I swear regularly on this blog, but I abstain from swearing at all in the books I write.  In real life, I swear all the time - my friends swear all the time and most people I meet in passing swear quite comfortably.  But when I walk into the workplace, again, I don't swear at all.  In fact, I had developed a reputation at my last workplace as "the man who doesn't swear."

That is because I can turn it off and on again like a switch.  I can talk quite comfortably all night, rant, go on the verbal attack and debate, all without a swear word even occurring to me.  Yet when I'm relaxed, not putting on a show, swearing comes without thinking.

I am a child of my age.

As a boy, back in '70-'71, at the tender age of six and seven, I remember that every boy swore.  I don't remember if the girls did - boys and girls kept to themselves when I was growing up, at least until junior high school, when all at once they were everywhere.  I remember quite well that the 12 and 13 year old girls that I went to grade 7 with swore with proficiency.  But hell, we didn't think of ourselves as children by then - Beth, who was part of my grade 8 home room, would walk the stroll on 3rd Avenue at 14 for money.  Every kid who knew her knew that - and we didn't care that much.  Not that we volunteered the information to our parents - knowing it would have driven our parents crazy, something that we understood perfectly.

We learned pretty early as children how to dance around issues we knew all about to convey the idea of innocence for our parents.  I learned not to swear around my mother, pretty much the ONLY place in my universe where I couldn't swear.  By '78 even the teachers had accepted that kids were going to swear - and I had several teachers who would themselves.  Teachers who swore were cool.  Everyone thought so.

Here it is, 37 years later, and there is still this silly notion that kids have to be protected from adult language and adult themes . . . as if this shit isn't everywhere on the internet.  Yes, you must be warned about THIS podcast, because we are not like the millions of podcasts that do not bother to warn you.  Nor are we like the easy and available footage of every horrible event going on everywhere in the world.  Yes, kiddies, we're going to use swear words - words you can't possibly even know.

It isn't for the children, is it?  Really, the warning is for that significant number of people who just can't get over the use of words.  Words convey ideas and there are people who aren't comfortable with the ideas behind fucking, cock-sucking and shit.  It isn't that the words are bad, it's those pesky ideas that we don't want pushed into our faces - things we would rather go through our whole day not thinking about.

Funny, but I never think of actual feces when I use or hear the word 'shit.'  I never think of copulation in relation to the word 'fuck.'  I hear frustration, anger, passion, impatience . . . but these are ideas too, aren't they?  Ideas that also bother people, since emotions akin to anger and impatience are very difficult to handle.  Part of the reason that I don't swear at my job is because I don't want any of my co-workers to know when I'm impassioned or frustrated.  In the workplace, passion makes bored or unhappy listeners deeply self-conscious of their misery.  Frustration, on the other hand, suggests incompetence.  By never appearing passionate or frustrated, I have always portrayed an image of perfect ability and perfect respect for my co-workers.  It's all a sham, but it works.

Some people do get very upset when they hear swear words - and in the workplace, where life is harder, I'm willing to spare them this pain.  Out of the workplace, on the other hand, when I am not building a team between my fellow human and myself, fuck it.  Out of the workplace, tell me not to swear at your peril.  Out of the workplace, your inability to handle swearing makes you weak.  Well, it does in the workplace too, but in the workplace I'm willing to tolerate and give support for your weakness.  In the workplace, you're useful to me.  Out of the workplace, your weakness is just annoying.

Is it fair to call you weak because you find swearing difficult to tolerate?  That's difficult, because at times I'm going to swear no matter how it makes the reader feel and at times I'm going to make allowances.  Circumstances dictate my actions.

Coming back to the subject of D&D and children.  I had just written a section in the upcoming book about the value of plunder and murder in role-playing games . . . an intrinsic part of the game that has been reworked and reinvented with marketing terms in order to make palatable for people who cannot reconcile its existence.  There are other aspects too, like the presence of evil or torture, the use of body parts to make potions for spells, and a whole host of concerns about kill-happy players, lust or greed.  The fantasy game is not always pretty - because life itself is not always pretty, because we don't want to condemn the inclusion of things just because they make some people uncomfortable.

There are many games where aspects of life are banned - just as swearing is banned.  I have no problem with this; if everyone at the table agrees that swearing is off the menu, I can support that.  I could easily play in such campaigns, without anyone knowing my out of game habits.

But will I promote such censorship?  No.  The world is out there and whether or not we try to hide from it in our rooms and at our tables, or keep the kids from finding out something they plainly already know, the big bad world is going to remain just as big and just as bad.  The crime isn't committed in being part of that world, it is committed in being afraid of that world.  Afraid to use the words and admit inwardly the ideas upon which the world is founded.

The fear of feeling uncomfortable contributes to a loss of freedom.  We cannot allow ourselves to be ruled by fear or by discomfort.  No matter how hard, we must steel ourselves and be strong.  We should be gracious to the weak; we should encourage them and gain their trust, and help them be strong.  But we can never allow ourselves to be ruled by the same weakness that rules them.

Remember that no one wants to be weak.  Weakness is a jail.  It is a limitation.  Weak people deserve consideration and support, particularly when we need them to be strong for us.  When we build weakness into a virtue, however, we jail everyone.  That is what censorship and banning practices does.  It declares that the weak can never be strong, so the strong will have to forever bow to the weak.

That way madness lies.

Publish Your Own Book

JB at B/X Blackrazor talked about writing a book on Friday . . . and my heart went right out to him when I read the words, "I don't know how much it would cost to do a print-run down here or what the quality of the product might look like, but I feel almost obligated to try . . ."

This makes me feel like I should explain how you, too, can print books - even if this undermines some of the mystery, and perhaps the magic, of my own books.  I feel, however, that everyone ought to know these things.

You can publish your book for free.  Honest.

This does not mean, however, that you can have someone else do all the work without having to pay for it.  'Free' means that if you're prepared to do the work yourself, you will not pay a single dime to have your book published, enabling you to make a legitimate profit.

I won't hold back.  I'll give it to you straight.  Here is what you need to do:

1) Write a book.  By this, I mean do more than write a series of words from the beginning of the book to the end.  You will need to consider a lot of elements that you've never considered, since when the book is done you won't be able to explain to the reader that elements of chapter three are explained in chapter six, like you do with your friends.  Your book will need to stand up on its own, without anyone around to explain what you meant.

The result will be that people will misunderstand you.  You'll want to do as much rewriting as you can to avoid this.  Assuming you care.

Aside from the problems of publishing, be sure to include things in your book that most books have.  Page numbers.  Chapters.  An introduction.  An index if that's what the book needs.  There are methods for creating these things and lists on line for what you'll need.  Google search "Things a book needs to include" and you'll find a million pages.  If you've never made an index before, look up "How to make a book index."  Use google.  That's why it's there.

2) Find Cover Art.  This is a lot harder than it sounds.  For a book, you will need a picture than you OWN - or at least that you have the rights to use, not just for the book cover but for marketing.  Talk to your friends about the contents of your book and get their advice on what the cover should look like.

If you want art, get out and find an artist.  Ask on your facebook if anyone you know can put you in contact with one.  Meet the artist, discuss what you want, then deliberate on a price.  Be cheap.  Don't let the artist railroad you.  You are not a famous author, you shouldn't be dealing with any artist that will ask for more than $200.  If they ask for that much, they better be good.  Make sure that they ARE good by looking at their portfolio.  If there is ANYTHING about the portfolio that fails to impress you, find another artist.

If you want a photo, try to find a photographer.  Photographers are easier to find than artists, and should charge you less.  If he's a friend, you should be able to get the work for whatever it costs the photographer to actually make the photo.

You have several other options, however. Consider a graphic that is a simple pattern. Consider no graphic at all.  Investigate the whole subject of book-covers.  Teach yourself how to play a bit yourself with shapes or with fonts - but beware of including multiple fonts in anything you make.  Follow the rule, ONE WORK = ONE FONT.

3) Steal from Others.  Copy from other books.  Copy their organization, copy the form of their chapter headings, copy their covers (not exactly, but in principle), write the blurb on the back of your book in the same context or mood, use the same clever devices that you find and do it without hesitation.  Everyone else has.

4) The Free Part.  Now, listen.  These things above that I'm telling you, I learned these things while working for newspapers and magazines.  I learned how to lay out a cover and to create a file that would make a good pdf.  If you are serious about publishing, you will need to learn these things too.  Otherwise, you will be at the mercy of others who will exploit the shit out of you.

I publish my books through Lulu.  Lulu is all about making deals, giving advice, offering you resources and expertise in order to help you publish your book.  All this will cost you much more money than you can afford and more money than your book is ever likely to earn.  Lulu (and other companies) will charge you to edit your stuff, lay out your cover, book templates, how to market your book and so on.  Ignore all this. Seriously, avoid anything that is 'automatic.'  Lulu cannot offer you anything that a student working at your local university newspaper can't also do. If you really need someone to lay out your book or your cover, then find such a student.  They will worship you.  They will also happily show you how it's done.  Because they're young and giving and they still feel people should know things.

If you're patient, you can work your way through Lulu's create a book page.  This one.  If you have a question, DON'T ask Lulu.  Ask google.  Lulu will ask you to go through a sort of gauntlet of pages, each of which will challenge you.  Get through them one at a time, asking google questions about the pages and perhaps getting a friend to help you decipher the language.

If you can get through those six "easy" steps (hah hah ha ha!), it will not cost you any money to publish your book, or even to get an e-book version on Amazon, Nook or iTunes.

Thereafter, every other person in the world can buy your book with paypal or some similar system.  When they buy your book, a percentage of the cost of the book will go to you and a percentage will go to Lulu, Amazon, Nook or iTunes.  This means you will make money without spending any coin on pre-made copies.  You will only make profit.

In effect, the book isn't even made until someone orders it.  Lulu will not mind you not using their systems to publish your book because they will still be making money from you without their having to do any work.  You make money for you and you make money for them.  It is a perfect arrangement.

Now and then they will pester you to buy other things, but that is their business model.  They won't punish you if you say no.

5. For Me, This is All Easy.  And right now, I am unemployed.  So if you really need advice, and you have no one to turn to, and you are willing to make it worth my while, I'll give you a hand.  I'll walk you through the Lulu process if you pay me.  I've been through the steps a lot, so I'm an old hand.

At the very least, perhaps I can give you a boot when you're stuck.  As I remember, the hardest part of the process is readying an ebook for Amazon and their kind; the language is just goofy.  When I get back to doing that again, pretty soon now, I'm going to have to remind myself how I did it last time.

Everything, however, gets easier with practice.  Remember that.  You can learn this stuff and get good at it.  It's only publishing.

Letting Them Talk

Been a tough bunch of days.  There are always issues with every book.

The dragon went as expected - but what, really, could the party do?  They had decided to climb above the treeline, so they were exposed on the mountain side when they destroyed the mist giant.  Destroying the mist giant alerted the dragon, so it was natural that the dragon was going to hit them when they were exposed.  They did their best - they hit it with bows and magic, depleted half the dragon's hit points in three rounds, during which the dragon breathed twice, soaking three party members in acid.  Black dragon breath is notoriously narrow in dimension.

The worst thing - in my world at least - about dragons is not the damage, though that was meaningful: 120 hp total in an AD&D universe, as two players blew save and one made it.  The worst thing is that everything the players are carrying has to save as well - and since dragon breath is magical, that means everything magical has to save as well.

The players lost:  a +2 dagger, +3 vs giant creatures; two +1 rings of protection; one set of gauntlets of dexterity; and a wand of fire with 50 charges.

Ouch.

This post is not meant to be a war-story.  It is about the circumstance.  I predicted - as DM - that the players would fight the dragon, lick their wounds, then decide whether or not to go after it.  They spent an hour deliberating their decision.  For one thing, that much damage, plus whatever players were suffering from the giant, meant deciding how much healing to use.  And how to gear up for the next revolution.  And whether to go right away.  And time spent recovering from loss.

Sometimes it isn't good to rush a party.  They've got to have that time, they've got to consider how much more they can take, and if today is the day.  They've got to be given a chance to argue over details and bemoan loss.  They have to have room to be human.

I don't set an agenda for how much game I'm going to cover in a night.  I think that's a mistake when it's done - unless, of course, the reader is playing a one off adventure that MUST be played because these people will never see each other again.  Personally, I hate one-offs . . . partly for that reason.  I enjoy that the party will get to play their next challenge, because - barring death - I will be here to run it for them.

Occasionally, I'll push the game forward; it doesn't do to languish if nothing is being said and the party is going around in circles.  Gotta pick your moment.  Gotta use your judgement in deciding when the party's banter is 'fruitful.'

Are they making plans?  Good, leave them alone.  Are they dealing with character details, debating positions, clarifying new skills or something they haven't used in a long time?  Yes, fine, let them be, this is effective time spent.  Are they bantering about something they'd like to do after the adventure, something that may not even happen for five or six months of real time?  This is the best time to leave the players alone.  What they tell each other now will help set a tone for long-range play and will help establish continuity in the overall campaign.

But are the players bickering over abilities?  Fucking squash that shit.  DO NOT ALLOW PISSING CONTESTS.  This is going to be hard for many of you, because pissing contests are funny and sometimes it feels like players are just blowing off steam.  What they're really doing, however, is building up a confrontational matrix for later disputes - its the sort of thing that leads to PvP or players arguing over whose magic items made who more powerful in the party.

Those gauntlets of dexterity and the +1 ring of protection had made the paladin's armor class -5.  They had been gained individually three years of gaming apart, and certainly made the paladin nigh-indestructible when facing some creatures.  But now they're gone.  Some players, seeing that, would feel inwardly that the paladin had been reduced back to the level of an ordinary player - but what was heard around the table were apologies and regrets.  That loss HURT.  It doesn't need to be highlighted by someone who once lost a pissing contest with the paladin, whose been carrying a grudge.

Don't let the players crow; don't let them rattle off their statistics, pumping themselves up . . . and they will if you let them:

Why?  Because it's pride, friend.  Self-promotion inevitably leads to a string of other party-destroying actions.  Player too involved with their own prowess . . . well, let's admit that there are some players that can't handle a 19 strength or an 18 charisma.  Some players have principles far too weak for being an 11th level mage.  With players like this, DMs must practice their sarcasm.

Yes, I wouldn't flat out tell a player, "Stop talking about yourself."  But I will make it clear that I am not impressed.  There are probably quite a few DMs who get a kick out of watching players strut around, enjoying the experience (there are a few too many DMs who strut around themselves).  I don't like to see it, myself.  Success isn't never a solo achievement.  Those who think it is, or who indulge it, will see that pride break up a party.

Hm.  I began talking about giving a party space to talk and wound up with shaming players when they annoy me.  Well, I don't really want anyone shamed.  I would rather see a bit of humility, particularly for those moments when some players get away without a point of damage because the dragon breathed on someone else.  Wow, if I ever saw a player take a moment like that to dance on someone's shit - there's gonna be another dragon in the air, let me tell you.

For the players to win together, they've got to lose together.

Oh, yes, they did decide to go after the dragon.

The author, Alexis Smolensk, has been lately operating under stressful conditions and should be considered, at this time, under evaluation for several serious possible disorders.

Dr. E. Gee, Attending Physician 

Mm, Dragons

The party is fighting a dragon tonight.  A black dragon.  Funny how dragon combats remain every bit as remarkable even after decades of play.  I am truly looking forward to it.

The party isn't going to win - that is, barring a very lucky hit.  Oh, no worries, they're not going to lose either.  The party is on the side of a mountain, scrambling up to the dragon's cave, about to be attacked from the air.  This is only the opening act, where the dragon breathes at them on the ground while they respond with missile weapons and spells.  Without luck, the characters don't have enough power to kill a dragon in the air; the dragon, in turn, doesn't have enough power to kill all the characters on the ground, even if it physically engaging them - but the breath weapon might kill a henchman.

I fully expect that once the dragon has breathed twice, it will flee - injured, frightened - back to its lair.  The party will then have to decide - beard the dragon in its den, within the day, when it can only breathe one more time?  Or lick wounds and retreat.  They had just finished fighting a rather large 16 HD mist giant - some of them are hurting.

Well, it is up to them.

Can't wait.

Annoying Thoughts in the Middle of Writing a Book

I am so burned out writing about dungeons.  I'm still trying to get one more essay in on yet one more subject, but I will be very happy when this book is done and I can put dungeons aside.  Reading and reading some more about dungeons these past few months has convinced me that there really isn't that much thought that goes into their creation - you can find the same advice given over and over on hundreds of websites, every one of them written as if it were the very first thing written on the subject.

This has, admittedly, made for a fertile subject, since I am trying hard to look at dungeons every which way.  The opinions included in The Dungeon's Front Door are as original as I can make them - hell, as original as any opinion I have, since I always seem to be on the other side of most things the community agrees upon.  Good for me.

I have the rest of this month to clean the book up and get it ready.  I admit, it's going to be tight.  Even though I'm not working, time gets eaten up by trying to find employment - and with my strange inability to ever focus on just one thing.  It is all I can do not to make maps or get back to the wiki (which I've relaxed these past few weeks), along with writing post after post on this blog.  I could, after all, put the blog down and that would buy me another 30 hours this month, right?

Sigh.  Not going to happen.  I can't stop scratching this itch.

There is something on my mind, something I have to exorcise with the ceremony of writing about it, otherwise I'll begin to obsess over the next few weeks and that's not going to work.  For this I apologize - this post is going to be an awful tease, but just imagine how I feel.

I want to try a game.  It's something that occurred to me about a year ago, which I killed in my head by working on the How to Run book . . . and here it is again, taunting me, telling me, "Come on, do it, it will be fun."  Except that I know in three weeks I'll be all, "Fuu . . . uuck, why did I start this?"

Okay.  A game.  That we're not going to play.  At least, not this month.  Everything that follows are thoughts that have recurred in my head repeatedly since Monday.

To begin.  I make three dungeons, each of which are accessible from three doors named Heart, Pit and Pendulum - red, grey and black in color.  The dungeons follow three themes, but mostly they're simple in form and fairly equal in threat or challenge.

Everyone is invited to play.  I set up a post that describes the opening room - you see three doors in front of you, already named and colored, and you - the reader of this blog - are invited to commit to one of the doors.

There are rules, obviously.  First, with respect to entering/registering:

• You begin by picking a character from four pre-made characters that I would put on the post - a cleric, fighter, mage and thief, spells and abilities chosen by me.
• You would send me an email confirming your character class and your online nick.
• To commit to a given door, you must write a comment that capitalizes the verb that indicates your action:  i.e., "I ENTER the Pendulum door."  Until this is capitalized, you are considered to have taken no action.
• You must write the comment committing to a door (and later, to an action), within 3 days of the post being published (time and date of the deadline would be included in the post).

Once those are done, you're part of the contest.  Yes, if I did this I would make it a contest, with two free books being given to the winners.  Why "two"?  Well, there is the rub.

See, once you go through the initial door (with everyone else who would also go through that door), your success depends upon other people.  If you commit to an action - and you are the ONLY person in the group who commits to that action - you LOSE.  If the remaining people in your party all want to go in the left door, and you stubbornly insist on the right door by yourself, ding ding ding, you're dead.  The prize, then, would go to the last two people standing.

Yes, if you were the only person that initially chose, say, the Pendulum door to enter, then that would mean you died right from the start.

To keep this contest from running forever, it means the dungeons would have to be a bit deadly.  Moreover, each dungeon would have to have a measurable equivalent with every other dungeon, in order to ensure that if every party died at approximately the same distance in, some resurrection would be in order.

I haven't quite worked out how combat would happen, but this is how I'm thinking:

• There would be no limit on the number of clerics, thieves, etc., that could be chosen.  Suppose there were 35 people who all decided to go through the Pit door - it would be acceptable if there were 7 clerics, 19 fighters, 4 mages and 5 thieves.
• Regardless of the actual number of players participating as a specific class, there would only be four 'avatar' members of the party - provided each avatar was being played by somebody.
• Combat numbers against the party would be gauged for four characters - thus the party would encounter, for example, 6 orcs, even though there were 35 people involved.  The actual combat, as played out, would be 4 characters vs. 6 enemies.
• Everybody would be given the opportunity to give their actions in sets of four rounds, then those four rounds would be played.

Suppose that you were the cleric.  You've just entered a room with six orcs.  You would write your orders, "R1: I cast protection from evil; R2: I attack; R3: I attack: R4: I run away" - or whatever sequence works for you.

Then I 'interpret' the battle as a series of multiple permutations to see who lives and who dies.  I roll all the dice; I record the effects against different players individually, then tally the totals.  When I do damage to the cleric, the damage is rolled separately for every player of that cleric . . . I see this as completely insane, and yet somehow I feel confident I could pull it off.

A bit weird, though.

At each step along the dungeon, I would make multiple options - to enable people to break off into smaller groups if they wished.  Some of these options would be dangerous - do you go through the door or try a leap over the pit?  Some of these options would have traps that might kill off excess players.  Bad luck.  I think sincerely that the dungeon would need to be made ahead of time, not as we went, with a witness to assure its authenticity.  But who could we trust?

The point being that you'd want to ask around a bit before committing to an action by writing your choice in capitals.  "You see two doors; the left door has the handle on the left side, the right door has a handle on the right side.  Both handles are made of brass, but one is capped with the figure of a skull and the other is capped with the figure of an eagle.  Which do you pick?"

You might not want to rush in and write, "I ENTER the left door" before asking in the comments section if there's anyone who would go with you.

There, I feel better.  I'm sure there would need to be more rules.  Sorry I'm not running this.  I'm actually writing a book.

Point Reached, 7:03 p.m., Feb 4, 2015

Took staggeringly longer than some people to get here, nearly seven years . . . but here I am, nevertheless.

Cargo Cults

"In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas - he's the controller - and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land."

- from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman

I want to talk a moment about Ron Edwards' non-nonsensical GNS theory.  I don't intend to talk about the theory itself - that would be a waste of time.  Rather, I'd like to express how you, the reader, can identify it as junk.  In a larger sense, to explain how junk theory can be recognized almost immediately.

We have all been in forums where GNS theory was discussed.  What was the overriding result?  None at all.  It is great flame war fodder, for every element of the theory creates at least two sides who have differing interpretations of the theory, who must both rely upon argument, anecdotal evidence and metaphor in order to explain their positions.  Because it is a 'theory,' it lacks practical analysis or established facts to back up its premise - and because fundamental to the theory is the introduction of semantic terms to describe 'ideas' rather than facts, it becomes very easy to graft one's own personal experience upon the ideology being presented.

To support this evaluation, I must rely upon Slavoj Zizek's principal theme in The Pervert's Guide to Ideology - this being that the more empty of substance the depiction of an idea offers, the easier it becomes to substitute one's on personal bias into the ready-made symbols the artwork provides.  Here is a piece of the film, where Zizek discusses Jaws, Triumph of the Will and the frame into which we insert our ideology.

In making GNS theory so deeply unclear, Ron Edwards was able to provide a crutch to tens of thousands of comments based on muddy thinking, fundamentally based upon what we wanted to believe about RPGs personally.  By providing a set of words without precise definition, Edwards empowered us to create our own definitions.  The result was dissension, bickering, debate without resolution and - ultimately, these many years later - a complete lack of development upon the initial theory.

It is this last that is the telling point.  Like the Cargo Cult, no airplanes have landed.  Edwards' own re-interpretation of his own work as 'The Big Model' failed to offer any new insight on the original premise.  He did not produce new thinking or facts to support his theory, or indeed offer any indication at all that he was searching to develop the original premise.  All he really did was add a few graphics and rewrite the theory into similar and yet less clear precepts.

This is a sign of junk thinking.  It does not provide development.  Being in possession of the theory does not, in turn, promote further investigation, as there is nothing to investigate.  Asking individuals what sort of game they run fails to produce any meaningful result.  As no reconciliation can be made between participants based on the theory, it remains nothing but an hypothesis.  "If we build a space that looks like an airport, planes will land and give us things."

We can recognize this in other examples of junk thinking.  Astrology, for instance, although very old, offers no improvement in its ability to predict by means of further research and development.  Religion must depend upon adherence to faith and tradition because any addition must be viewed as heresy - while heresy, in turn, only turns out to be more junk theory.  I can live my life upon the principles of religion, but I can't expand those principles except in my personal approach to faith.  That personal approach doesn't help YOU in your approach.  At best, you can be induced to follow the same traditions . . . but you won't follow them in the same way I do, because you are you.

This is why in tackling the subject, How to Run: An Advanced Guide to Managing Role-playing Games, I did NOT simply argue my own ideas.  I set out to research principles of legitimacy, pattern-recognition, presentation, human reaction to stimuli, FBS design, situational awareness and many more subjects, then I put the source material for those subjects in my bibliography.  So that the reader can check me by digging into the source material and discovering insights that I failed to recognize or that I did not have space to include.

Because opinion is shit.  It means nothing.  Dressing it up with neat words and clever idiograms looks very scientific and compelling, but in reality it what junk thinking does to side-step real thinking.

Don't be deluded by it.

One Predicament, with Specifications, Acted upon

Because the subject arises again and again, I feel the hardest thing to coordinate in the game is how the adventure unfolds.

Look at the different ways we have chosen to handle it.  We try to fix every event, not merely what is in each room or behind each door, but pre-determining how the monsters or the devices within will react once triggered.  Alternately, we try to fabricate a story that will establish an arc of purpose, allowing some latitude in player behaviour but ultimately intended to propel the party from event to event.  This failing, we offer the players agency - but in removing our own direction, the players find themselves without a direction of their own, so the campaign withers and dies.

The trick is ultimately to hybridize all these approaches into one:

1. There are events, but if at all possible we struggle to increase the profligacy, the free rein of these events.
2. There is a 'story,' but we struggle to ensure that is it a story that has been created through events, without predetermination.
3. We give the players agency, but we aid their struggle through creating events and story.

I'm operating under an epiphany here, inspired by a comment I've just received, so I want to go very slowly.  Let's handle them one at a time.

We should think of these events as predicaments rather than blueprints.  We take a simple circumstance, such as a party moving along an empty road in the mountains.  We introduce the predicament - the party finds a sphinx, cut to pieces, stabbed by a giant-sized spear that remains in the sphinx's body.  The sphinx is near death, unconscious, itself immense in size and terrifying to the party.  All the better if the party is not high enough level to take on a sphinx.

Okay, remove the backstory for a moment.  Empathically place yourself in the predicament; presume there will never be an explanation for this.  Eliminate from yourself a prediction of the party's response.  Establish in your mind that no matter what the party does, it will be the right thing.  Because there is no story, because the life or the death of the sphinx serves no specific purpose for the character's experience, whatever the characters do changes nothing about the DM's world.

The is the foundation of the predicament.  It is a difficult situation, perhaps unpleasantly difficult.  The lack of information perplexes.  The beast itself, whatever has nearly killed the beast, the size of the spear, the presence of the sphinx in the open, helpless, where it can be found, all these things scream danger to the party.  It is so weird, so strange, it defies immediate explanation.  Anything that is so clearly not understood produces a wide range of emotion.

There is no need for an adventure here.  There is no guarantee the party will ever receive an explanation.  IF they want an explanation, they will have to risk exposing themselves.  That is the beauty of the predicament.  There is no knowledge without investment.

Being the DM, it is up to you to conceive of predicaments such as the one I've described.  Literature and film are full of them.  Steal if you must.  But first, you will have to strip away everything else about the story or the character in order to understand the fundamental nature of the predicament.  The plans for the destruction of the empire are missing.  We may never find them.  Nazis have knowledge about the whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant.  No plan of action exists.  A magic ring is in your possession.  We have no idea what it is or what it does.  We're on our own.

Let's look at the next piece.  Think of the story as a set of specifications.  Wash out all the motivations, all the narrative, all the right, wrong, intention, meaning and interpretation for the explanation of the sphinx's appearance on the road and concentrate ONLY upon its actually being there.  What series of events in the past brought its body to this place, at this time, in this condition?  Eliminate the motive; what this creature thought or what were the thoughts of the other creatures involved is a matter of total immateriality.  Right now, in this moment, all that is wanted is a series of plausible instances that produced the scene as the party discovers it.

This chain of events we keep to ourselves - until the party takes steps to deconstruct the specifications.  We must understand this chain of events a perfectly as possible - so that as we relate clues about the scene, the party will perceive continuity in our description.  Any specification that is related inaccurately or in conflict with some other specification will ring bells, immediately.  So whenever possible, keep your specifications simple.

As time passes, as the party investigates, as more predicaments arise in relation to the party's actions, more of the story will come to light and the party will have the opportunity to reconcile what they've seen in the past with the campaign in the party's present.

None of this requires a predetermined future!  The circumstances that nearly killed the sphinx will suggest actions for all those associated with the event that can occur simultaneously with the party's choice of action.  If the party chooses not to investigate or involve themselves in the predicament, the specifications behind the predicament may well never come to light.  Alternately, the party may encounter another, connected predicament, another mile down the road.  As DMs, we are free to create these predicaments as we see fit - but as mysteries, and ultimately as mysteries for which no future is absolutely established.  The past, yes, this we know.  The present, yes, we can produce a present for other beings as the party's present progresses.  But the future - ah, this we should simply ignore, letting things play out as they will, should the party decide to be involved.

If the party refuses, well, we can simply toss the whole matter aside, as all we have actually created to this point is the predicament, yes?  As DMs, we've made no long term plans.  As DMs, we've made no investments.  We are here to wait for the players to invest.  We don't until they do.

WHICH MEANS, create the predicament alone.  Rely upon yourself to create the specifications for the predicament when and if the party invests; until that time, don't bother!  Save your creative juices for the next predicament.  Cross the bridge of creating a specification when you need one.

I regularly create predicaments without specifications.  Now and then, I do find myself painted into a corner - but in such cases, the answer is really very simple.  If it is impossible to create a set of specifications for a given predicament (and this happens very, very rarely, as I have a fertile and quick imagination), then there is NO explanation.  Too bad.  The world is very strange sometimes.  Not every mystery has an answer.

Let us look at agency then.  Agency is the player's choice to pursue the predicament.  That is all.

We therefore do not wait for the players to 'invent' an adventure.  They find themselves on one once they've chosen to pursue a given predicament.  The specifications they discover produce a happenstance where they encounter others, learn things, discover motives (which we can delicately add when the party begins to inquire into the reasons behind what they've seen) and then see how it all plays out according to what the players do, how well they succeed, who they choose to speak to, etcetera, etcetera.  As they dig deeper, I create more things for them to find, from session to session adding to the backstory that has occurred in order to give them things to discover in the future about what is happening.  When I wrote that I had revealed things to the party recently, this is what I was describing - specifications that remained unknown to the party for seven years.

I play the deep, long game.

My players pick up on hints, make wrong guesses, go storming off . . . then I create a predicament that pulls them back in, drawing them into further investigations and revelations.  That is how my campaign unfolds - one predicament after another.

I Am Not Cool

Is my world 'cool'?

I wouldn't know.  Doug used the word in relation to the post I wrote after my session, early Sunday morning.  I've been mulling over that ever since.

People have said that I am too much a simulationist; they have intimated that my world can't possibly be 'fun' given how much work that I do.  At least one blogger has 'quit' because of something he read here (since March, 2013, no posts), describing it as crap that I've wasted my life for.

Perhaps that is because I am just so darn cool.

Cool is a word that will go straight to your head.  I've gotten a lot of praise here, in various forms, all of which has made me grateful - but I am a child of the 70s, I hit puberty in a time when nostalgia for leather jackets hit its peak, when it became possible to buy porn under the counter at a bookstore (even when we were 13), when crashing cars and dancing ruled.  Cool was defined by strange things in those days.

There's no way in hell it applied to me.  I was a nerd of the first order, back when nerds were not defined by how much fan-boy shit they collected, but by their clumsiness, their social failings, their interest in 'crap' like space, robotics and electronics . . . and in how they could not get girls.  I fit helplessly into that category.  Oh, so helplessly.

But those things rule now, don't they; and it turns out that girls like socially awkward boys.  Seems the real problem was all those toxic masculine idiots pushing the girls around and telling them what to like.  Feminism is a great thing for young nerds who don't want to fight, drink or compensate for their flatulent manhood.  Turns out, where it comes to having to deal with abusive men, women and nerds are on the same team.

Obviously, that is totally not cool.

I know that I'm going strange places where Doug never intended me to go when making the point about the adventure I'm running.  Sometimes, my brain just finds its own way.

JB made a comment on the same post, about playing AD&D like in the old days.  To be honest, I am not sure what that means.  This is how I've always played it; contriving ideas to enable the players to get what they want.  In this case, they want the character back; they are deeply curious about the items and would like to know what they're about or where they go; and people are always interested in travelling about my world, to see how I'll run different places.  All they need is an excuse.

How do other people play the game?  I confess to being baffled.  The party Saturday goes down on Wednesdays to play in a WOTC-sponsored campaign, where they fill out forms explaining what they did on a given running (which they hate), to play what they've described to me as a badly designed module.  See, apparently, the people at WOTC who invented the rules were not the same people who spent their time designing the campaign, and at certain points, well, the campaign has to be stupidly adapted so that the characters are strong enough at certain points don't die.  Like, as it was described to me, everyone magically jumping from 5th to 7th level.

I guess.  The people who play Olie and Demifee in my world must be getting something, though they come every other week to play, bitching about the WOTC.  And we know how I hate that sort of thing.

Yes, I'm baffled.  Because I thought everyone was playing modules.  Aren't modules all about sending people on quests?  That's all I've done with this latest adventure.  It's a simple quest.  Return the items.  Don't die.  Do it within a year.  Everything else is interesting window dressing.

They'll make their way to each location, getting convenient information that tells them where the next place is.  I've decided I'm not going to contrive a villain to block them, but I've already got a parallel narrative that's going to follow them along, tying them up in various ways, both wasting their time and rewarding them enough to make it too tempting to ignore.

(just an aside; the link I just gave starts with me liking Anne Hathaway and thus enduring Batman for her; and I just did that again, with Interstellar; I am going to have to start hating Anne Hathaway if she won't stop working with Christopher Nolan.  That is not cool).

Isn't this the way everyone plays?  Move, fight, plunder, town, exposition, move, explore, fight, exposition, plunder, town, repeat.

No?

What the hell sort of game are you people playing?

Maybe I am cool.

Nah.  That's ridiculous.  Just look at me.

Breaking Death

One in the morning and I've just finished my session.

I've broken a rule about my world I've never broken before.  But that's what rules are for.

Back in October, I killed the party's mage, Demifee.  And then I wrote a post about how important it was to be able to kill characters, how the chance of death had to be real, how hard it was for the player to handle the death and so on.

I need to make clear that what happened with the last session (which I will quickly recount) and tonight had absolutely nothing to do with the player requesting anything for their dead character.  I simply realized an adventure hook that could work and would build up a good sequence of events.

I had mentioned in the link above that the party was retrieving five idols.  Those idols were in the shape of religious symbols - a cross, a David's star, the symbol of the Tao, an ankh and a Zoroastrian medallion.  Without waxing on about it, the mage's death occurred in the midst of retrieving these items, making their restoration (to wherever they belonged) possible.  The party knew about the cross.  It was the cross they had gone to get.  They did not know about the other idols until they got there.

Now they have four idols and they don't know where they go (or didn't).  They spoke to a priest and the priest suggested speaking to the dead Demifee, with the chance that perhaps some information was given to her upon her death, regarding why she died and what she died for.  The party made arrangements to do this and had to wait 29 days before a cleric with the spell would cast it for them.

They spoke to Demifee in the last running.  She explained that, in the afterlife, she had been settled on the banks of the river Acheron.  There she was waiting with many others who had died in a circumstance of uncertain balance.  These were people who had died performing a great service for the gods but whom did not believe in those gods.  As such, I described an unwillingness on the part of the gods to condemn these people, but it was equally impossible to save and elevate them.  So there they would wait, without judgement, for eternity.  Unless persons on Earth 'changed the balance' of the scales.

In other words, return the idols, finish the job that Demifee had taken a part in starting, changing her fate.  She gave them a name, Hyklion, and a place, Amisos.  Thus they set out.  Amisos was not too distant, so tonight they reached it.

Hyklion turned out to be a group of telepathic somewhat supernatural monks, who were waiting for the party when they arrived.  And here is where I broke all the rules.

They agreed to return Demifee, the mage, to the semblance of life; she would not truly BE alive, but she would act and seem alive for all intents and purposes - for one year.  If, by that time, the party was able to return the four idols, the monks believed her life would be restored.  If she and the party failed, she would return to death and be condemned.  The party agreed to this quest, the monks communed with the powers of the universe and when the sun set, it was done.

So the mage is back with the party.

Cheating?  Absolutely.  The feeling of the players?  Overjoyed.  Not only the mage, but ALL the players.  Is the quest a railroad?  The party argued vigorously with me that it is not.  They argued that any time you want something, you have to take certain actions to make that thing happen.  These actions were acceptable.  They did not feel bound by the situation.

And what of allowing the return of a character that had failed resurrection?  I discussed that too, emphasizing that I did not wish for people to view this as a gateway to getting back any character that died.  This party has had characters die already; it does happen.  They were quite willing to accept that death in the future was expected to be final, that this was an intriguing one-off.

So, there we are.  Cheating for the sake of running an adventure that goes right off the usual fare.  I'm sorry I can't tell you details about the four idols or where they go - the party reads this blog.  The party did learn that "Jethro's Star," the Jewish symbol, belonged in Edessa.  For the moment, that is where they are bound.

People Listen

They say that it's impossible to change minds.  No, it just requires commitment.

Again, thank you JB.

Ring & Run

So, here I am, done with my job.  Meaning that I can - sort of - talk about it.  There are things that I can't say - disclosure agreements and all that, so the actual entity I worked for has to remain obscure - but I can talk about the industry, which is fun.

These past five years I've been managing a database and working as a liaison between film companies and pay-per-view.  This means that I've previewed, for free, hundreds upon hundreds of movies, including a helluva lot of porn, since this also gets sold to clients.  I've written about a million synopses, talked to studios, talked to the encoding houses that make it harder to rip the movies from DVDs or - in our case - from our system.  I've had access to some swag from film companies (the posters are junk, all of them, film companies don't part with the good stuff), which has enabled me to expand my library somewhat.  I've marketed and manipulated and run a lot of sales numbers and watched the whole distribution process - the same one a lot of you see from looking at the storefront - from the beginning to the end.

Whew.  Am I sick of it.

I love movies.  Not just recent movies, but all movies, right back into the silent era.  I really hate it when a twenty-something's "all time" list extends back to when they were 14, with a few movies they remember their big brother or sister liking.  To me, the IMDb list of the top 250 is total shit, based on a voting public that learned to punch a keyboard last decade.  Of course there are films like Inception and Interstellar.  And of course virtually every old movie on the list is replete with male toxic wannabeism.  Because that is what most movies since the early 70s came to be about, once the Hays Code was - correctly - burned down.

Not that a lot of people rating movies have any idea what the Hays Code was.

However, I digress.

I wanted to explain about the industry I'm leaving.  From the outside, it looks very lucrative.  People have been talking about the 'changes' brought on by the explosion of streaming video, how it is revivified the industry and people's interest in movies.  Daily we're hearing exciting news like Amazon hiring Woody Allen to write a television series and Sony or Lion's Gate talking about getting into the movie streaming business themselves.  But let me reassure you - it is all public relations.  In reality, the movie studios are running scared.  In reality, the business itself has a very, very narrow profit margin.

Not because the public doesn't want to see movies.  Not because the movies are bad.  But because the industry is bankrupting themselves making it hard for you to steal the movies for free.  A strategy they are failing at 100%.

Before a movie can be put on a streaming system for you to buy, that movie has to be encoded with what's called macrovision, sometime called DRM.  This is a 'vertical blanking signal' or a 'colorstripe' that must be incorporated into the video so that someone who does not know what they're doing cannot simply copy the video.  (Someone who does know what they're doing can bypass this easily).  This is a process that has to be applied to every asset in the system.  It is a very expensive process.

For an HD video - and mostly anything is HD nowadays - it is upwards of $15 or more per minute of film.  This is money that must be spent ahead of time, before the film has an opportunity to make money . . . so the reader can guess that if the film doesn't make more than a certain amount, the company loses money.  Does the studio cover that cost?  No.  They don't pay for the encoding at all.  That's the responsibility of the streamer.

That's why, if you've wondered, you don't see hundreds or thousands of old movies on your preferred streaming system - there aren't enough people who will pay to see the film to make it worthwhile encoding.  Particularly when you consider that everything has to be re-encoded every two or three years because the previous encoding has been hacked.

It's fine for a huge film like Frozen - but Frozen has to pay for every other film in the system, including a lot of films that never pay for themselves.  And believe me, for every film that does really well like Frozen, there are three or four hundred films that utterly tank.

Why is it this way?  Because the studios insist upon it.  They would rather see their own product rot in a warehouse than risk letting it emerge without being coded.

Which brings us to the practical joke in all this.  Being an encoding house - that is, being the company that adds the macrovision - sucks.  It sucks hard.  A lot of the time the re-coding just doesn't work.  It results in stuttering, strange sounds, blocking, pixellation, reduction of sound, weird disruptions in synchronization, etcetera, etcetera.  The list is a long one and all of it has to be compensated for.  Sometimes the master received from the studio is old or poor in quality, or simply the wrong specifications for the encoding company (which is usually limited in what they can handle) - and there are problems that arise from low budget independent films that are 'special.'  This means that occasionally the work has to be done over and over, all within a certain time frame as the studio has conniption fits if the video doesn't stream public on a specific day.  Yes, the studios all get their cut from everything that shows - which undermines the profit margin still further.

How much help can you expect from the studios when these problems arrive?  Oh, pretty much zip.  Studio distribution must be a nightmare all its own, because people don't last in it more than a few years.  Nothing ever happens fast; phone calls are not returned; 'corrected' masters turn out to be the same master that produced the original issue, contacts get petulant, contacts disappear for weeks at a time . . . let me assure the reader, it is all a lot of fun.

Should I be telling you this?  Oh, probably not.  There's a chance that someone might find this, but I doubt it.  I don't think anyone at work knows how to use a search engine.

How do I know this?  Well, it has a lot to do with piracy.

See, piracy does not exist.  Well, okay, it exists, but it has nothing to do with us.  Well, maybe it has something to do with us, but most people would rather pay for things.  Well, maybe not most people, but a lot of people.  At any rate, there's nothing we can do about it, so it's best not to acknowledge that it is exists.  That is why it doesn't.

I have one story that I will tell.  Could get me into trouble, but hey, life is a risk.

We received a copy of Gravity from the encoding house and the various testers and techies noticed there was something terribly, terribly wrong with the sound at the beginning of the movie.  Now, if you actually know the film, you know that the sound at the beginning is purposefully raised from silence to comfort level very slowly.  Naturally, by a large number of people who themselves watch perhaps one movie a week - and never in the theatre, as these are business people who work 14-16 hours a day - the sound at the beginning was presumed to be a GLITCH.

For three days, rather smugly I must admit, I watched a wave of emails crashing on the shore between the studio, the encoding house and the streaming company about what could be done and where a copy could be obtained that wasn't already doctored in order to decide what the dialogue at the beginning should sound like.  Time was getting short as the film had to premiere on the system in a matter of days.  Yet no one could remember from having watched the film.  Except, apparently, me.

Eventually, I took it upon myself to solve the problem.  I found the url where you could see Gravity, for free, without needing to download it or add any special program to your computer.  I used Google to find the url.  Took me about 90 seconds.  Then I sent the url in a reply all email.

I'm quite sure no one looked at it.  Because piracy does not exist.

Anyway, looking to get out of television and into another industry.  Perhaps there is some way I could make it as a writer.