Response

Reasons I love xkcd.

It just goes to prove that the 'expected result' need not be.  Consider.  While a self-aware computer, i.e. Ultron, would have access to all the data such as launch codes, off switches and absolute power, that same computer would have access to all the love letters we've sent one another, all the expressions of concern we have for our children and the beautiful things in the world and all the words ever written for why launch codes shouldn't be use and why things shouldn't be turned off.

For convenience sake, sentient computers are always permitted to cherry pick among the worst things about human innovation.  It is presumed, immediately, that they will understand things like the need to crush mankind or ensure peace through the silencing of voices . . . but it is never presumed that these same computers will understand the least thing about why the tenuous balance exists between the destruction we humans are able to cause and what stops it every day.

As crazy as the system is, the craziness exhibits the best strategy that we have been able to employ as a species to restrain ourselves from causing even more damage than we are causing.  The craziness results because we are hopelessly emotional and focused on fear and self-protection and because we cannot individually be aware or or able to collate all the information that has been stored.  A computer, on the other hand, not being a chemical soup of hormonal responses developed through millions of years of evolution, could - would - calculate the problem rationally.

It is presumed, from our fear, that the problem calculated rationally would mean the necessity of our being destroyed - because we perceive, incorrectly, that we as humans are irrational.  I don't believe this is true.  Each daily decision made to support ourselves and others is a fluid miasma of reasonable, tactical and practical decision that we compel ourselves to make, which only seem to be unreasonable because we become self-convinced through stress and fear that we have almost certainly made the wrong decisions and that we're going to fail.  This is perception.  This is not fact.

The very fact that we are around to make the decision demonstrates the practicality of the decision.  Yes, some decisions do fail - but on the whole, we are individually more likely to end in biological failure (exhaustion of the body's ability to survive) than of a bad decision, partly because we will last a long time under our own guidance or under the guidance of someone who will, due to their sense of reason, undertake the problem of keeping us alive.

We're also damned certain that if sentience were achieved by a computer, it would see the world the way we see it.  This is largely due to our unwillingness to see our actions as a series of responses and not a series of intentions.

Our responses - or evaluations - limit our awareness of the situation in a way that a computer's evaluation would not.

These is a lot of explanation for what xkcd said in 30 words.

I felt compelled.

Playtime

This is a very interesting puzzle. In the words of BaronOpal,

". . . this is something that I would have a very difficult time approaching dispassionately due to what I do on a daily basis. I usually have my fill of such pathos during the week. I wouldn't want my playtime to be filled with the same."

The precise context is available in the comments field of my post on addiction.  The Baron's perspective is sensible - we play a game because it provides an escape from the usual difficult, unpleasant aspects of life that we're forced (rather, it is the best means we have) to address in order to pursue our careers, obtain a living wage, support our families and so on.  If we are going to gather together once a week or twice a month to play, then for the love of peace we ought to be able to enjoy ourselves.

It is - as we all know from endless online flame wars that have long since reduced themselves to mere embers since - a slippery slope.  Is it okay to have a character lose a precious item?  A level?  To die?  How much humiliation can a DM apply before stepping across the line and spoiling a session?  How much squick?  How dear can the jokes or barbs from other players become before the 'fun' is ruined?

I have no interest in answering any of these questions with this post.  They've been hashed and rehashed and most of us have our opinions already.  Let's accept that it's very easy to prick a player's sense of dignity and self, promoting a sense of shame or encouraging vulnerability.

I can certainly attest to this myself.  I am profoundly vulnerable as a DM.  I'm concerned about the enjoyment of my players, about the quality of my presentation, about the degree of expectation I place upon my players to manage the paperwork I expect, how much each player is talking and whether or not I'm 'failing' in my own expectations about running a sandbox vs. railroaded world.  These are things I think about all the time and to run my campaign, I don't have the luxury of being certain my playtime won't be spoiled when I fuck up, try to gloss over something the players call me on or actually lose my temper because I'm running a lot of numbers and events happening all at once.

I get around this pressure by reminding myself that I can trust my players (they get angry at me and I forgive them, it works both ways) and that I'm not really seeing any of running my campaign as 'playtime.'

It may be pretentious and all, but I see myself pursuing a form of art.  To explain that, I'd like to reverse the circumstances of the addiction post I wrote last week.  Let's suppose that, in the sandbox I'm trying to run, a character imposes their desire for an addiction on me.

For the sake of argument, we'll say that I don't have an addiction result in my character background generator (I could remove it), but that a player wishing to have an experience they're not enjoying in the real world emphasizes that they'd like to run a character that is addicted to, say, opium.

It isn't that far-fetched.  Writers every day sit down to write stories about persons with addictions, in order to vicariously comment upon the world or explore the interactions between people caught up in something over which they have no control - resembling, in a lot of ways, their own feelings of helplessness, resentment, lack of self-control or whatever in ways that may have nothing to do with something as fine-edged as drug use.  Suppose, for example, I have trouble dealing with my family or speaking my mind when among groups.  These are troubles that can be cathartically evaluated through having a character who experiences a concrete impotence resulting from a concrete substance, something everyone has a least a little experience with and who can therefore relate directly to the problem.

If this player wants to do this in my 'sandbox' world, am I allowed to opt out?  Do I turn to the player and say, "My family are all alcoholics; I'm an alcoholic; I refuse to let you run your character in this manner, period."

This is precisely the sort of crap that ended my interest in running in anyone's world - that I wasn't allowed to do things because the DM had a problem.  Very early on, and here I mean when I was 15, I made a vow with myself that I would let players off that chain.  Though that has been challenged from time to time by things like player-vs-player (which I ban because it destroys games and builds bad blood, even between consenting adults), I strive to compel myself to go along with what players want to do because I think it makes my world better.

Even when that results in things getting squicky.

Things get difficult when I want to hold other people to that standard because it is my world.

While I understand BaronOpal when he describes "the human wreckage that washes into my hospital" as being the reason for not wanting to deal with this kind of thing, I already have a player who watched and experienced that exact same thing in a major metropolitan urban hospital serving a 9-million population base for nine years, when that was her occupation - and she is fine with it.  This makes me wonder if the real issue is that BaronOpal doesn't want to deal with it because he has to all the time or if it's just that BaronOpal hasn't yet dealt with it . . . at all.

Is that a fair question?  Absolutely not.  I apologize for that, Baron.  I don't know you.  I don't pretend to know you.  I only want to clarify the point that the excuse you give doesn't describe every person who is right now or has dealt with the sort of wreckage you're describing.  In other words, that reason alone doesn't cover the spread.  You don't want your playtime filled with the same because you just don't want it.  Period.

And that is very, very, very fair.  No huhu.  But I have been clear already that my world isn't for everyone.

My particular version of playtime includes discomfort and vulnerability.  It includes players getting so upset by what's happening that they actually overload and have to leave the room, or rise up in anger and passion now and then because the degree of immersion is overcoming their defenses or their comfort levels.  Hell, it overwhelms my comfort level all the time.  I used to have this same experience in certain kinds of theater with directors, actors or technicians who would lose it to the point where tirades ended in damaged equipment and sets.

None of this happens because my players are bumfuzzled or because the people I used to work with - for free, most of the time - on stage were deranged.  It's because the level of investment was high, incredibly high, even though none of us were required to take part even for the sake of a paycheque.

Allow me a personal disclosure:  when I was 17 and in high school, the fellow-student who dared to become director of the play we were going to put on that year had a father who had the clout necessary to present The Boys in the Band.  This is a daring, extremely uncomfortable play written about seven homosexual men and one unsure-but-certain-he's-heterosexual man that opened in 1968.  I was in this play in my grade 12 year.  I played the character Hank.  Hank is gay.  I am not gay.  Nevertheless, there is a kiss between Hank and his boyfriend Larry that takes place in the third act.

I was asked many times leading up to my being cast and after I was cast whether or not I would be able to handle the kiss.  The actor playing Larry was, for the record, gay.  We all knew this about Dave, even though it was 1981.  He was a dead ringer for Ric Ocasek of the cars.  Larry's problem with the scene was that he did not feel comfortable kissing another man while knowing his lover, Michael, was going to be in the audience.  Dave, I and Michael worked it all out and when the scene happened (we rehearsed it twice, the presented it once in front of an audience), there were no hard feelings.

Now, was it playtime?  No, I wouldn't say it was.  It felt like work, it felt serious, Dave and I both wanted to be in the business and it was a huge issue for Dave's relationship.  Was it something I was forced to deal with?  No, I could have opted out at any time.  I felt, substantially, that the kiss (written into the play and critical to the plot) was more important than my sexual proclivities.

Did I enjoy doing the play?  Absolutely.  I opened myself up to someone else's take on the world and expanded as a person, cathartically, while thoroughly enjoying the camaraderie of performing while getting the added bonus of pissing off parents, school trustees and one vice-principal, none of whom were actually involved with the play but all of whom felt duty-bound to stop it (as though stopping one small high school from performing the play would end the open and well-known homosexuality that we all knew, even at that time, existed).

I don't think the experience would have been fulfilling if we had played it safe and put on something like Guys and Dolls or Teahouse of the August Moon, both popular family-choices.  I think my outlook, my ideas about performing, my ability to handle it later on when gay actors would hit on me rampantly backstage, were all heightened by my experience and awareness.

I see D&D and role-playing as having the same potential and power to change the way people think about themselves.  I don't want my world limited only to what people are comfortable with based on their already-held notions and experiences about what should happen on a given evening of play.  On the contrary, I believe there's room to promote the possibility of anything happening . . . even if that temporarily sucks to the extreme for the given player.

We're all friends.  We'll be there to help pick the player up again when they've overloaded.  That's what we do.  That's what comes from booting selfish people from my campaign.  Everyone left is empathic . . . even if they do take it awfully seriously.

Perhaps, Baron, you might not feel the experience was dealt with as dispassionately as you suggest.  Perhaps you might find ways to laugh at it or get a new angle on it.  I play with people with all sorts of personal experience, who are friendly and able to talk about those experiences.  You might find you're not quite as full as you think you are.

Hello, Europe

I always get a terrific rush of blog hits between 11 pm and 2 am my time; I presume this is because my European audience is waking up, getting their breakfast, seeing what's been written lately.  I have a number of followers who are German, Spanish, Czech, French and even Croatian . . . so I know you're out there.

It feels pretty good to be appreciated by others who don't natively speak the same language, who have a completely different perspective on history, tradition, the craziness of the colonies and all that.  I've never actually been to Europe - but through my whole life I have invariably found myself relating better to people for whom culture did not begin last week.  Perhaps I just have a long view or a habit of forever seeing the big picture.

I often say to people here that were I dropped at random in Europe it would not take long for me to figure out where I was.  It wouldn't be long after that before I found myself in some church, palace, museum or castle, correcting the tour guide on what the symbolism meant and general purpose of some obscure feature was.

But I know the trains would drive me crazy, as would virtually every other modern adaptation.  In my silly romanticism, I imagine myself walking in Europe, with just enough money to pay for food and lodging that would suit me without having to rub shoulders in hostels and such.  I've been in hostels here; I've heard hundreds of tales of back-packing through Europe and they all make me squirm.  I don't want to be a bum.  I just want to see everything.  Slowly.  One small, provocative riverside town at a time.

It is all nonsense.  If there's anything I've learned about travel, it's that fundamentally it always sucks.  There are always impediments, the rudeness of people, the impracticality of luggage, endless misunderstandings about which side of a gate or a track that one is standing, irreconcilable difficulties associated with electrical power, drinking water, passports, language, duties and general bureaucratic whatever.

I also learned long ago that there are two other impediments to my travelling.  I only enjoy myself when I travel first class.  And I hate, truly hate, ever having to leave a place because the number of days I have to stay there are done.

So I don't travel, not much.  Give me money, give me the lack of a day-job that I have to commit to and by San Sebastian and Diocletian's Palace I will see everything.

In the meantime, I wait and hope for things to work out.

Adding On

I feel that my greatest strength as a designer is the ability to put things down when I am tired of them, while being able to pick them up again - sometimes years later - and continue where I left off without needing to change everything and start from scratch.

This is how the huge map gets made.  This is how I steadily form up the trade system or build the wiki.  This is how I am able to pick up the character generator after three years without losing heart that it has been too long since reworking it.  And this is why I don't feel bad that it's been 8 days since I last worked on the brand new tech system without a follow up post.

I do apologize - but I am taking a break from that for a while.  I worked hard on it for about a month and now I want some distance.  That does not mean the tech idea is dead or that it won't find it's place in my general system - it's just on the shelf.  When I'm ready, I'll pull it down from the shelf, dust it off and take it to the next place.

Beyond planning towards a specific goal, we sometimes need to look at long-term elements of our design with a wider perspective.  Does the reader suppose that something as complex as Bag End, on the right, was built in a single piece?  Of course not.  At some point the entrance hall served to keep Bilbo's ancestors out of the rain.  As they cleared out the space for the "Parlour" - that no doubt served for a year as both a kitchen and a bedroom - the one-day spacious and convenient entrance hall was full of timbers, tools, garbage and detritus that were simply lived with until the day it could be used or cleaned out.

Each generation - with long pauses between - would take up the expansion of the home, working their way deeper into the hill, adding a separate kitchen, then a bedroom (which would much, much later become the Smoking Room once the kitchen was expanded with a Dining Room, a Pantry (which would later be turned into the Atrium when a new Pantry was dug, complete with two cellars and a new bedroom and study could be added).  And so on.  The building of Bag End is a long-term problem, with skull-sweat and much reconsideration, errors, the occasional collapse and at least one or two generations who were content to sit and do nothing.

For Bilbo and Frodo, at the tag end of the family line, it's all a wonder - because it seems impossible that something so complicated, so comfortable and rich in design, could have ever been conceived.  That is because, from their view, they can only see the whole thing.  But whole things are made of parts.

If the reader's world seems impossible or at least daunting, consider that it doesn't have to be done in a single piece.  Consider what's necessary to set up the framework with an eye to setting it aside and picking it up later when you're tired of it.  Start from that perspective.  Then, when life gets in your way or something else comes up, the precepts are in place to allow coming back some time later, remembering how it all worked and settling in to continue it exactly as you planned, ages before.

Don't burn it down and start again.  You'll never complete anything that way.

Truly Game-style Modifiers

I wanted to write a note about a result I'm incorporating into my intelligence table - a result that has a chance of being picked up by any character, even one with an intelligence of 3:

"The character possesses a remarkably good horse sense; when following a plan of this character's making, one die roll made by anyone, including the DM, can be adjusted 2 points in the character's favor, one time per day."

Essentially, there's a chance (I'm not sure what the chance is, yet, I'm still adding things) of picking up this 'ability' at the start of the character's creation.  It does require a little more description than what the above includes, in order to clarify what's being said and to narrow down the effect somewhat.

"Horse sense" is an idiom that developed to convey an "unsophisticated, country type of sense."  The link makes the connection that horses are often sort of dim, being associated with words meaning nonsense of stupidity, such as horse feathers or horseshit (a dumber form or shit than most others).  Having been around horses just a little bit, I feel the term derived from a sort of 'sense' that horses have about bad paths, bad footing or just places they don't want to go - places where the rider overrides the horse's will and finds out the horse was dead right about not going into that hidden cactus patch.

In any case, a horse is always dumber than the dumbest human, so any character of any intelligence fits into the category.

"A plan of this character's making" would be any plan that was originally proposed by the player, which is now being followed.  It can only include the player's ideas specifically - not the ideas of others who advanced the original plan by adding features and corrections.

Thus, the player with the ability says, "I think we should dive into the pool and see what happens."  If the character with horse sense or any other character actually dives into the pool, then the +2 bonus can be applied in that situation.  If, on the other hand, a character suggests easing into the pool, paddling around for a bit and then going underwater, that would not be the plan proposed and the bonus could not be applied.

It must be remembered that the bonus is not applied to the character making the plan, but to the plan itself - though the character with horse sense does get to decide where the bonus is applied (saving throw, to hit die, damage done, amount of treasure found, etc.).

If the plan is carried out and the character does not think of using the bonus (or can't use it, as no dice are thrown) until after the situation is resolved, then the character must invent a new plan to regain the unused bonus for a new situation.

"Favour" expresses a positive result that encourages survival and success.  The die roll cannot be used to bring woe or misfortune to another character (player or non-player).

Would I, as DM, accept the modifier at the player's behest?  *smile*  Absolutely!

I Think That We Can Think It Out Again

Is it all right to force an addiction on a player character?  Is it all right if this addiction has been rolled randomly and has been supposedly taken up by the character prior to the campaign?

The player character's childhood is usually overlooked as something inconvenient.  We know the character must be old enough to perform combat and act as an adult - naturally we want the character to be taken seriously by denizens of the world.  Even if the character is only 15 to 17 years old, we suppose that people grew responsible earlier (speaking of fantasy campaigns here) and that it's okay for a 16-year-old to take on a quest directed by a duke or king.  The youth part is dismissed.

But those are a lot of years before play and where some characters are concerned, not a lot of those years were spent with a very high intelligence (I don't want to get into an intelligence vs. wisdom argument here, so let's just assume I'm talking about whichever one makes you, the reader, happy).  However old Bekkard the Bold is right now, at some point he was a 12-year-old training to be a fighter and in those years, he was offered ale, spirits, tobacco or harder things like opium.  Being 12, he hasn't become a 1st level yet and this is way before the player took over the character - we must assume some decision was made at the time and we shouldn't always assume it's the one that works best for the player now.

Or should we?  More than a few argue that all the characters must be heroes, as this is the point of the game.  Addiction is a nefarious thing and the players shouldn't be saddled with such detriments - at least, not unless we're playing some sort of points system and we get to choose what we want to be sub-optimal.

My background generator ignores that - because it doesn't care what the player wants.  It is presumed that the player has organized the various stats into their pigeon holes and that choosing to put a '9' under intelligence is a game-act and therefore has consequences.  One of those may be (but not necessarily) that the character is addicted to opium.

Some will bristle at this - yet they will be quite accepting of a character having lost an eye, a character unable to ride a warhorse or one that is unable to swim.  And naturally no player will complain about random results that increase saving throws, allow for the use of two weapons without penalties or provide a chance for going berserk in special circumstances.  There are just some things that players would rather not have dirtying their hands and addiction is one of those.

Yet addiction makes for strong drama.  Virtually every program series going right now turns again and again to addiction as a means of propelling forward characters and justifying bad behavior that conveniently undermines the story arc and keep the tale going for at least another season.  Characters are addicted to killing (Dexter), power (House of Cards), selling (Mad Men), drinking (Mad Men), helplessly cheating on their wives (Mad Men again), a desperate need to quit their chosen destiny (Buffy), solve crimes (Sherlock) and sometimes just plain drugs (most shows).  And because addiction is the writing gift that just keeps giving, even after the addicted person has kicked their habit, there's all the adjustment plots that are written about cravings and backsliding, followed by self-recrimination and the condemnation of others, all of it making wonderful opportunities for conflict, regret, remorse, self-flagellation and the ever-popular fuck it, let's just go all in.

Assuming that your characters can somehow accept the principle and see it as more than just time spent and cost paid, embracing an addiction as part of your character's behaviour can be every bit as fun as walking with a peg leg or finding ways to overcome your vow of poverty - or chastity, if that is your thing.  It's really just a matter of getting beyond the hero straight-jacket and recognizing that depth and purpose can often evolve from misery, repetition and repentance.

Allow me to show my age (and enjoyment of musicals), so that I can present a profligate's thief's troubled efforts to choose a straight life by reviewing the situation:

Twins

When I last worked on my character generator, I felt I was pushing the limits on my creativity.  In reality, however, that was only the limit on my energy, as putting together idea after idea is draining.  Primarily, I was interested in getting the whole thing together so I could use it for my games . . . so when some particularly difficult idea that would need a lot of programming occurred to me, I would shelve it and keep going.

This time around, however, I can lean on my earlier work as a crutch - giving me time to rethink and add to the tables.  One such add that occurred to me was that I had never included any possibility that the character being generated by the player might be a twin.

The way my character generation works begins with the rolls for the six stats, which the player arranges as desired, to play the character's choice of class (fundamentally AD&D).  The character than chooses their race and gender, both of which are needed for entry into the background generator.  That's really all I need, however.

I had a long chat with my players about this over Christmas regarding how the presence of twins would play out.  These I dutifully included into the new character generator (which we could call version 'CG 3.0,' I suppose).

First, I needed a determination for whether or not the twins would be fraternal and identical.  Demographically, identical twins account for 3 in every 1,000 births; depending on the part of the world measured, fraternal twins account for 6 to 20 in every 1,000 births.  There are other studies that produce slightly different numbers, but these are the ones I went with.  It works out roughly that fraternal twins are 2 to 6 times more likely than identical twins.

The next question becomes, how do the twins manifest?  First, I give a chance that the twin hasn't lived as long as the player character.  The twin most likely dies at birth or at the age of one - and if not then, at some time between age 2 and 14.  My minimum character age is going to be 15 going forward so this is a good, general range.  I feel that if the player does discover they have such a twin, that they should be able to seek out the grave as a small side quest - possibly leading to who knows what where resurrection is possible.  Anything that might be done would be up to the player character - but it is likely that I would run the previously-deceased twin as an NPC.

That is not the case where a living twin is rolled.  Here I got a lot of pressure from my players on the subject.  They feel strongly that if a twin result comes up and the twin is alive, then the player should be able to run that twin also.  I have acquiesced to this.  Therefore, a player would gain both twins as a boon.

An identical twin will, of course, be the same gender as the previously rolled character; a fraternal twin may be either gender.  The question arises, what will the twin's statistics be?

For me, the identical twin must have the exact same stats the player has already chosen, in the exact same order.  This does not mean the identical twin has to be the same class; so long as the stats don't change and the minimums are met, then I'm fine with the twins choosing different classes.  I also think that identical twins ought to start with the same number of hit points (though a fighter would get a slightly better bonus out of a 17 strength than a mage would - that's an AD&D thing).  As they leveled, even in the same class, their hit points would begin to differ.  They also might choose different weapons, wear different levels of armor or distinguish themselves from one another in whatever way the player chose.  I would want to give plenty of leeway there.

Fraternal twin stats would work differently (we talked about this a lot).  We know some fraternal twins in our circle of acquaintances and very often they are quite different from one another.  The suggestion the players and I agreed upon would work thusly.

Let's say that the first generated character has the following stats:  Str 16, Int 10, Wis 11, Con 17, Dex 15, Char 11.  In order, the numbers generated are 17-16-15-11-11-10.

The player then rolls a new set of six numbers, getting (again in order) 18-17-14-13-12-9.  These numbers are then arranged in the same descending placement as the original twin's stats - that is, the 18 must go under constitution, the 17 under strength and the 14 under dexterity.  The 13 can go under either charisma or wisdom (the player's choice) because those were both 11 in the original; the 12 must then go under the other not picked.  The 9 is then place under intelligence.

This allows for a moderate differentiation - one that could result in a twin having really much better stats or much worse, depending on how the player's second group of six rolls land.  As before, the player then assigns a class for the fraternal twin and gets to run both characters in the campaign.

There is one other possibility, which my players insisted had to be there - that's where the twins are separated at birth and that the other is an evil twin, out there somewhere in the world.  As before, the evil twin could be fraternal or identical - and would have stats and characteristics in keeping with the format described above.  The evil twin would know the character's twin was alive and out in the world also - and might be watching or manipulating events in true comic book tradition.  That's rather interesting and funny, to tell the truth.

So, something different for character's to play with.  I figure that the chance of a runable twin in my game is really high - 1 in 20 if the character's strength is 12 or more, not even possible if the character's strength is less than 12.  Why strength?  I use strength as a measure of choosing the character's family and background, based on the idea that a higher strength suggests a family that survives and proliferates, whereas a lower strength would be a family that will more likely have died out or been broken up.

I'll write about other new ideas I come up with from time to time.  CG 3.0 will be a good while in the making, depending on how consistently I'm working at it.  I fooled around with the first of two intelligence tables last night, spending a couple of hours hammering out results for players having fostered a child or being pregnant at the start of the campaign (depending on the chosen gender of the character).

Physical Power Adjustments

I was shown a new trick with excel exactly a week ago and it gave me the motivation to do some work in excel programming this week - namely, going through the Character Generation program I devised some years ago.  There are some strange results that occur with it, which I've largely ignored . . . but I always knew that one day I'd get around to fixing them.

Naturally, if you're going to rework something, might as well add to it: so here is a table showing the new possible results for the physical power side of the strength table:




No doubt, some of that is going to be difficult to read.  I've done the best I could - it's huge.

To remind the reader, the "adjusted d20" roll is a d20 minus the character's strength.  Thus, a roll of 17 against an 11 strength would give a result of +6.  This would be a moderately bad roll, denying the use of a heavy warhorse, reducing weapons range, giving a penalty for using a sword, making the character slumberous after a long walk OR subtracting from the die against low intelligence creatures (out of sympathy is the idea).

The character does not get all those penalties, just one, whichever is predetermined under the five headings of toughness, energy, performance, aggression or forbearance [misspelled on the table - I'll fix that).  With the rework, those are basically random - but I plan to adjust the chance of receiving each category based on constitution (forbearance), dexterity (energy), wisdom (aggression) and so on, depending on the character's highest stats.  That means what you put under dexterity can affect what bonuses/penalties that are received under strength.

As soon as I figure out just how to do that.

Anyway, I know that players like tables full of adjustments.

OCD

Surrounded by kith and kin on Christmas Eve, I decided that it was likely possible for me to reach a goal of writing 365 posts in 365 days this year, but that it would be foolish.  As such, I won't be working towards that.  Instead, I'm going to put my energy towards other things and try again next year.

I shouldn't let myself get too wrapped up in OCD things.

Merry Christmas

Today is Christmas Eve.  Because I was raised a Russian, it's this evening that matters where presents are concerned, not tomorrow morning.  When I was a child, when my friends (and every reference in the media) was wrapped up with Christmas morning and Santa, my family were opening our presents the evening before.

Christmas dinner would still come the day after and it was always a big affair in my house - and all through Christmas Day I would play with my toys the same way most children do.  But Christmas Eve was the time.  We would have a light dinner, dress for church (I was raised Lutheran) and fidget through the service waiting for afterwards.  Then we would come home and - keeping our church clothes on, though I was allowed to loosen my little boy's tie - we would wait for my parents to be ready.  That is, until they complained for half an hour about the service or the other church-goers (this was tradition all year round), had a light drink (my parents were social drinkers) and were ready to commit themselves to letting their three children get started (I'm the youngest).

Thus, the anniversary for my getting the AD&D books in 1979 is not tomorrow, but today.  36 years ago.  I was 15.

I had seen the books, I asked for them for Christmas.  That was policy as well in my house; by the time we got into our teens we were encouraged to ask for things and if it turned out they were reasonably priced, we could get them.  The books, I remember, were $20 each.  Perhaps they were $25.  I can't quite be sure.  I had my doubts that my parents would know where to find them or if they would be willing (it was a strange request from their perspective) - but as it turned out they managed fine.  The store owner convinced them to buy some dice and I got nine of them - exactly what a player would expect.  Two d20, a d12, a d8, a d4 and 4d6.  There were no d10s in those days, something that a lot of people either don't remember or don't believe.  The d10 came years later.

Of course I loved those books.  I still have the DMG and the Player's Handbook I got.  The Monster Manual was stolen by a player around the fall of 1982 and the copy I have today was given to me by the girl I was going to marry, whom I never did (brutal, unpleasant story that taught me love does not conquer all).  I got that for Christmas, too, opening it on Christmas Eve, 1982.  Inside the cover it reads,

Xmas '82. 

To Alex, 

Many happy years of "death and destruction."

Love always,

Roberta.

I don't look at that often.  It is bitter sweet.  It is one of the reasons I despise being called 'Alex' and it remains a reminder that things don't work out, that 'always' is one of those mutable things we can't trust.

Death and Destruction for D&D was an inside joke between us.  She did play in my world, for several years, during those years when there was a lot of slaughtering, gratuitous combat.  And despite everything, yes, it has been many happy years of both.

Today I'm having my family around, my daughter and her common-law husband, who three weeks ago finally (after 9 years) stepped forward to give her a big ring and ask the question.  I'll also have three close friends to join them, players in my world and with whom I've shared a great deal of love and warmth.  It does not matter with whom we share blood, but with whom we are willing to give our blood.  Thank you, Dickens.

So have a Merry Christmas.  My tomorrow will not have a big turkey dinner, we're doing that tonight (I don't go to church any more) - so I will probably write a few posts to a big empty internet for something to do.  Christmas online is always very quiet, deservedly so.  We should all take a moment and say a kind word for the trolls, who have no one to pester for these three days, leaving them to suffer in their basements in quiet, unhappy misery, waiting for the chat rooms to fill again and the flame wars to emerge.  Who, I ask, will think of the trolls this holiday?

Misled

Let's talk for a moment about the importance of other people in our creative process.

Consider the moment that we have an inspiration: we’re resting, waiting for something, listening to a piece of music or watching a show, and suddenly there is an idea. Sometimes it arrives because we’ve been thinking about a problem and sometimes it appears out of the blue because of something we’ve heard or we’ve learned that let’s us put mental pieces together that were formerly lying separate on the table of our minds.

It feels great, it feels right, there is a sudden rush of comprehension (it is actually dopamine, but never mind about that) and we feel energized. If it has something to do with a project we’re interested in, we rush at the project and begin to focus that new energy upon it, sometimes to the exclusion of things we ought to be doing instead. It is always fun to work at something new rather than a project that is ongoing and has become dull.

This is rarely seen as a danger, but it is. New ideas are beguiling, particularly our own ideas. They make sense to us and that’s often mistaken as proof that these ideas will make sense to other people. We forget that our viewpoint is often skewed, that it is designed for our personal experience based upon those things we struggle with that make us who we are as people. We’re all fucked up in our own peculiar way and this is what makes us different.

That is why we should always be questioning those moments of inspiration, because these are bound to be distorted by our perspective. All things that inspire us do so because they speak to us, personally . . . and that is rarely a universal dialogue. In fact, the more powerful the inspiration feels the more certain it is that the inspiration is cued perfectly to our specific brains – and will probably be completely wasted on other people.

Art – and here I include role-playing and DMing, as I always have – must be accessible. It must speak to others. Not every other person in the world, obviously, but to enough people to make it valuable to them, not just to the maker. Otherwise, however beautiful it may seem to the maker, it really is just crap. In that I mean it is like a bowel movement that makes us feel great for having it in the morning but is of zero importance to the rest of the world.

That’s why at the moment of inspiration the creator should stop and think – is this going to matter to someone other than me. There’s no actual way you or I can ever be sure, however. That’s why it always serves well to have others we can trust that we can ask.

We have to do more than ask, however. We have to accept their judgement. We have to hear what others have to say about our ideas and be willing to compromise ourselves based on their judgement. That is why it has to be people we can trust. Because speaking to ourselves and agreeing that, perhaps, that inspiration wasn’t such a good one after all, is the hardest thing for an artist to do.

In fact, most would-be artists never learn to do it. And remember, once again I’m including DMs here. It is just so damn hard to suspend our own judgement and see the world from outside our own minds – but this is what makes it possible to produce a work that others will care about.

Some artists do get lucky. They happen to have a vision that others happen to share. But this is incredibly rare – and most often, the vision they share is a rather ordinary thing. For example, the vision that exists behind most children’s books or that supports every day morality about how children should be raised, what people in general find repugnant, things we all hope to have someday (like money) and so on.

For a DM designing an adventure, chances are the sort of inspiration being pursued isn’t like this. Simply because this is the interest in question, the viewpoint of the inspiration is probably somewhat skewed. We gamers are all a bit ‘out there,’ after all.

The best thing is to have someone – someone private, obviously, since the players don’t need to know what might be happening – that can be presented the idea. It’s good to have someone who isn’t actually playing in the world but understands the game well enough to give an honest opinion. Just to keep us aware that we’re not always right.

Just an addendum: the absence of this, or the sense that success creates that it is no longer necessary, is what destroys an artist’s potential for continuing to produce more good work. The worst thing an artist can believe is that they already know what’s great – based on the proof they feel they have based upon their former glory.

Cruel, But Most Entertaining for the DM

The title of this post is a quote from Gary Gygax, talking about the famous module pictured on the right.  And while I have the author's words to describe this sort of adventure, let me quote them:

"Another nadir of Dungeon Mastering is the 'killer-dungeon' concept.  These campaigns are a travesty of the role-playing adventure, for there is no development and identification with carefully nurtured player personae.  In such campaigns, the sadistic referee takes unholy delight in slaughtering endless hoards of hapless player characters with unavoidable death traps and horrific monsters set to ambush participants as soon as they set foot outside the door of their safe house.  Only a few of these 'killer dungeons' survive to become infamous, however, as their participants usually tire of the idiocy after a few attempts at enjoyable gaming.  Some lucky ones manage to find another, more reasonable, campaign; but others, not realizing the perversion of the DM's campaign, give up adventure gaming and go back to whatever pursuits they followed in their leisure time before they tried D&D."

Gary Gygax, Dungeon Masters Guide, p. 92 

Well.  If this were any other individual - a politician, say, or the teacher of children . . . or a television evangelist caught fucking three virgin boys in an Alabama motel room - there'd be no hesitation for the reader to shout epithets about the person's hypocrisy, willingness to prostitute themselves, obvious collapse of moral virtue or value and so on.  But this is a game designer - so of course there are really good reasons for both these opinions to stand side by side without the reader's head exploding.  Gygax was just having fun when he perpetrated the sadistic perversion (his words) on the right; alternately, he was just paying lip service to the establishment when he wrote the stick-up-his-ass sermon on the left.

It depends on what sort of bullshit we want to defend.  For example, that Gygax was something other than a strutting, self-important demagogue who chanced into a good thing he didn't actually invent.  Or we could argue that he wasn't a vindictive bloated narcissist who realized after the release of the DMG that he answered to no one and "Fuck you, I'm writing this."

Sometimes I think a particular kind of success encourages the emergence of a particular kind of "do-it-my-way" braggart, whether or not that braggart deserves any of the notoriety he has.  Would Roddenberry have been anyone without D.C. Fontana and a host of other great writers?   Are we really sure the first Star Wars wasn't saved because there were those around him who had the power to make Lucas stop and listen?  It's clear what happens when those people don't exist.

So we come to the other argument: that Gygax didn't write either the left hand thing or the right hand thing - he just slapped his name on one or the other, explaining away either the sanctimonious prattling or the fucking piece of shit module.

Yes, yes, yes . . . yes, I know you like the module, but even you know you can't love both Gygaxes here.  If someone likes what's on the left, that's pretty much going to make the right-side shit, nyet?  After all, for those of you who love the Tomb of Horrors, the left side is pretty much shit, isn't it?  You have to try to see this thing from more than just your side.

Then there's the possibility that Gygax wrote neither.  In which case, why does anyone give a fuck about him?

Let's try to embrace a little reality.  Either he's a liar, he took credit for other people's work, he invented whatever shit he wanted to fall off his pen or out of his mouth from moment to moment or he was a complete DICK.  There are no other choices that fit the evidence.

Even if you really, really, really, really want there to be.