A Search

This is a story about memory, and how we are utterly failed by it.

A week ago, I took a trip with friends from Calgary into British Columbia.  We travelled through Banff, Radium Hot Springs, Wasa, Cranbrook, Yakh and Creston.  From there, we took a minor road north to Crawford Bay, then on a ferry to Balfour and Nelson.  From there we went north to New Denver, Nakusp and Galena Bay, where we caught another ferry to Shelter Bay.  We drove north to Revelstoke, then back to Calgary through Golden.  Distance numbers on the map are in red, indicating kilometers.

The country is beautiful; we drove through and visited five national parks, six provincial parks and some of the most magnificent and remarkable mountains in the world.  But the reason for this strange circular journey was not only to look at mountains.  I was also looking for my grandfather.

I have spoken about my grandfather on the blog before.  Born in 1886, emigrated to Canada at 18, a Canadian veteran of both World Wars, a writer, a painter, an ornithologist and towards the end of his life, a mountain man who squatted on land he did not own, in the very country I visited last weekend.  Only thing is, I didn't know where.

My grandfather was 51 when my father was born; my grandfather was 85 in 1971, when he had a stroke and was brought by my father to Foothills Hospital in Calgary.  There he remained as a convalescent until his death in 1976.  My parents are both gone now, so all I have left of him are my memories when I was only five or six.

I remember visiting him in British Columbia, perhaps two or three times before his stroke.  I had a memory of what Cranbrook and Creston looked like ... but I hadn't been there since before 1971.  Yet I remembered the highway; I remembered there was a big house with glass windows on the right hand side, and that there was a huge lake on that side.  On the other side, the mountainside came down to the highway.  I remembered that we always drove south to reach my grandfather.  But of course, there are hundreds of places in B.C. that look exactly like this.  My only thought was to get some sense of where his house might have been.

I was certain the place had to be somewhere between Cranbrook and Creston.  It might be somewhere before Cranbrook.  But as we came down highway 93, it was obvious from the great flat valley that my grandfather couldn't have lived around Cranbrook.  And as we followed highway 3 to Cranbrook, nothing looked at all familiar.  There were no large lakes, and the mountains were all wrong.

I'd told my fellow travellers about my search on the first day, so they were on the lookout as well for clues and possibilities.  I must point out that we couldn't be on the wrong highway; every valley in this country has exactly one paved route.  That night in Creston, I must admit feeling downhearted.  There were no highways further south; Creston is only a few miles north of Idaho, and we certainly never crossed the border.

So, last Sunday, a week ago, we started north on highway 3A.  Kootenay lake loomed beautifully on the left hand side, the wrong side by my memory, while we enjoyed the journey.  Then my friend Jan called out that we were passing a "Glass House" on the left-hand side; it was also the wrong side by my memory, but he stopped the car and we veered back.

As I got out of the car, looking at the house, it looked completely wrong.  I saw large panes of glass in my mind, a tall angular roof.  Here's what we saw:

I couldn't know it, but The Glass House is a famous B.C. tourist site; but I don't have any memory in 1970 of it being anything special.  I said out loud to my friends that it definitely wasn't the right place.

Nevertheless, for the sake of stretching our legs and maybe finding a nice piece of B.C. jade, we parked the car and walked to the shop.  We were greeted by a friendly woman in her 60s.  And on some ludicrous whim, I asked her if she'd ever heard of a man by my grandfather's name.  She said she didn't, but she called her husband, asking if he might have.  Her husband's name was Eldon and he had lived there since he was a boy, back into the 1960s.

He remembered my grandfather perfectly.  For an hour, I listened as he told story after story, funny ones and serious ones; things my grandfather had taught him; jokes my grandfather had made.  It was clear that Eldon was as stunned and pleased to find the grandson of this man in his company, as I was to hear stories from someone other than my parents.  My grandfather was a recluse; not a part of the larger family, divorced from his wife and her people, out of choice.  The serendipity of the moment was ... astonishing.  I'm still confounded.  The chances of my choosing to take the journey; to have any expectations at all of finding even a scrap of evidence; the chances of this man Eldon still living in this place where he was a boy, and still remembering an old man, a man 70 years his senior, so well that he could talk and talk and talk about him.  The chances of our meeting.  It's stupefying.

My friends listened just as I did; no one felt any need to rush away.  For the next two days, we found ourselves wondering at it, as though we'd just witnessed a great historical event.

Now I'm staring at my coffee and not writing, so I must be out of things to say.

Did You ... ?

 

The Menu's Logo

We have art.

The expectation is that the artwork will be embossed on the front cover of the menu, in silver.  We're having this done by the company when the time comes; I'll be pricing it tomorrow.  As such, the artwork cannot be overly complex.  For something like this, simple is best.

I'll be interested to hear from those who like the picture.  I have no interest in hearing from those who don't.  First rule of the internet: there will always be haters.  Always.  Such comments and opinions are, therefore, useless to a creator.  It's only important to count the number of likes.

Those who cannot like something might as well say nothing at all.

Anything that Isn't "Easy" is Impossible

I wonder if Apple or Samsung regularly receive letters and missives from readers saying, "Hey, I really like your phone and I'd like to make one of my own.  Can you help me do that?"

When I began designing a trade system for my game world, I had one fundamental goal: that it would define different prices for different goods and services based on the origin of those things.  I had no sense of there being a "right" way to do this.  I began by accumulating a list of manufactures and resources according to their origin.  Using the real world as a model, this soon became a prodigious list, with hundreds of unique references and thousands of sources.  For a time, I was confounded on how to turn this list into a format that would produce prices, then adjust those prices according to how far said goods were shipped.  To make it work, I had to adjust my thinking process again and again; I had to throw out preconceptions for the sake of practicality.

Those preconceptions included "supply & demand," the basing of value upon labour, or upon produced food and determining a flat-rate cost of transportation for things being shipped.  I had to accept that any system I created had to function "illogically," because all the details and particulars were never going to be accounted for.  We can't account for them today, with millions of economists, strategists and other experts working on them today.  I'm just one person.  I have limitations.  Therefore, realistically, the trade system would have to be unrealistic.  And because of that, it would end up as counter-intuitive.

This evaluation and eventual manifestation took 16 years.  During that time I tried everything.   I rebuilt the system fifty different ways.  Try to imagine what it was like to organize all the data, make lists, make calculations and then run tests with the players, with pencil and paper, only to find that it produces absurd, aberrant numbers ... and then to face up to the players disparaging your system and expressing things that make you feel humiliated.  Then, doing it all again.  Fifty times.

Long before I had dedicated readers, I had dedicated players.  They tolerated this procedure for literally years, gamely giving each system a try, recognizing the value of the idea if not the idea's success.  Those players never saw a successful version.  That first gaming period of my life ended in 1997 and it took another seven years before I finally sorted out the system.

I write this to explain that whatever prejudices I had about how a working trade system would function were steadily eroded away by failure after failure.  In the end, the final result was the one that worked, not the one I wanted or the one that best reflected the real world's economic trade system (which, it must be noted, is organic and in some degree misunderstood by everyone).  My trade system, however, does do what it was meant to do: it provides different prices for different goods and services based on the origin of those things.

I've been approached by others who claimed to have a "better" system than mine ... and yet I have never seen any of these systems laid out as plainly and directly as I have on multiple blog posts; and upon further investigation, they all admit that no, they don't do what mine does, specifically what mine was designed to do: provide different prices, et al.  Meaning that they're not a trade system at all.  They're a glorified pricing system for one game world location.

I've also been approached with the general message, "Hey, I really like your trade system and I'd like to make one of my own.  Can you use your time to help me do that?"

Recently, I've been giving the answer, "No."  I've come to that because in the past, when I've tried to help, my advice is never taken.  It is assumed that while it's nice that I made the decisions I made, the new maker wants to make their own decisions.  They think the trade system they want should function differently.  It should be based somehow on supply & demand, or labour, or a gold standard, or any one of a hundred economic principles that have been thoroughly debunked in the real world for a century now.  If you want to be laughed out of a room by a group of economists, mention supply & demand.

Additionally, every once in awhile I see someone has discovered the pdf for "Grain Into Gold."  These people are always excited, because at last they've found the economic Mecca they've been searching for all these years!  This "simple and sane supplement" is an exercise in pulling economic numbers out of your ass.  I've never seen anyone write, "I've done it!  I built a trade system based on Grain Into Gold."  Because it doesn't work.  It's hot garbage.  Yet it feeds the standard belief system for most people who want to build anything for their campaign world.

It promises that this is going to be easy.

This is why people come to me and ask if I'll help them build their trade system, their way.  Because having me do it is easier than doing it themselves.  After all, I've proved I can do it.  I have the evidence.  Anyone can read it.  And in fact, anyone can copy and implement it exactly as I've done it ... only they don't.  Because it is too much work.  It isn't easy.  Which begs the mantra that titles this post.

My trade system wasn't easy.  Took 16 years to invent it.  Took another 10 to get it into a truly serviceable order.  Expanding it has been an effort I've undertaken for almost a year now, one that I'm wallowing through, because the project is immense.  Making any change is an enormous headache, because the system functions like a delicate machine.  It is adjustment-unfriendly.  Yet every instance I use it in a game, every time I need to sort out some detailed element of the game's money or economy, I am enormously grateful for the time I've taken.  No matter how awful it was to make the bloody thing, the bloody thing is bloody marvelous.  It is both unequalled and unadaptable ... and is therefore intimidating as hell for any other user, particularly those who won't break their body and mental prejudices to accept the thing as it is, and to do the necessary work to make it function in their world.

I've decided I no longer care.  I haven't any respect for those who won't work.  Nor do I have any interest in using my time to hand-hold someone who has the benefit of my work but feels that isn't enough.  And I say this while trying to raise money for a completely different project ... which I know perfectly well can't be reinvented by someone else without my help, because it required an expertise in history, culinary art, dungeon mastering and creativity to manage.

Therefore, as long as I don't explain how I did it, I hold an intellectual patent that no government can issue.  So, when I said yesterday I would offer "proof," that certainly did not include providing more examples of the product.  From my point of view, that would be enormously stupid.

Work is not just tiring.  It produces results.  Results carry knowledge in the process and knowledge is power.   Power brings independence and opportunities.

When the reader resists or refuses to work on their game world, there are no results.  Without working to make something result, knowledge isn't gained; and without knowledge, there is impotency.  Impotence offers only dependency and subjugation to others.

"Easy" has a cost.  It is time, and life, and self-respect, wasted.

It's Alive!

The kickstarter is indeed live.  It seems to have started just after midnight last night, my time.  As of writing this, I had 8 backers pledging $639.  I'm overwhelmed by the considerable generosity shown by such a small number of people.

Necessity requires that I ask my readers to please go to the sign, watch the video if you have not and then contribute what you can.

If you feel you cannot for some reason, please tell me what thing I could say that would convince you.  Explain the post I could write or the subject I could address.  Define the proof you need that would allow me to demonstrate my commitment and passion for this project.  Help me to help you understand how important this is.

One thing is true: the plans I have hinge on the menu doing well.  I think it will do well.  I've had the opportunity to show it to complete strangers now, and the result is everything I'd hoped it would be.  The immediate impression is startling; one might say electric.  One fellow exclaimed quite loudly, in a public place, that not only was the menu unexpected, but that "It's like nothing I've ever heard of before!  I've never even imagined that something like this could exist!"  High praise.

Therefore, please contribute.  Contribute and I will do my part.

Journey's End

Back from my trip and naturally, I'm tired from the trip.  But ... while the trip was very good, with lots of great food and strangers, plus beautiful scenery, just now I'm too tired to appreciate it.  The sheer exhaustion of twelve hours in a car yesterday, as we took a circuitous route to get back from our wandering (to see more things), casts a pall over the memories that it will take another sleep to get over.  Good to be back in my own bed, sitting at my desk, my fave coffee cup in hand, drinking my own good-tasting coffee.  Travel coffee always sucks.  Always.

I don't know why the kickstarter hasn't launched yet.  I set the date up for last week, and it is clearly public; I received an email last Wednesday that it was confirmed from the company.  Without a direction to go, I'm just waiting.  Originally, the site said 8 business days to launch; I set it up for 8 business days, but maybe they mean AFTER the date I set.  Don't know.  This is my first time.

I received two complaints that the menu shouldn't be listed under "game hardware" because this usually means electronic and obviously the menu isn't electronic.  Well, too fucking bad.  The menus are "hard", they're "ware" and they're for "games."  There were no choices for "fictional game menu" in the list, it isn't an actual food product, and if anyone gives me money thinking it's an electronic gadget, because they didn't read the DESCRIPTION, then caveat emptor.  Yes, that's right, I'm saying this is a super-clever grift to steal money from enormously stupid people who don't read about the electronic products they want to pump money into.  It only proves how frickin' smart I am.

Much of the last four days was spoiled by a consistent theme: Things We're Not Allowed to Do because at some point in the past, stupid people acted stupidly and died.  Going onto the Ferry's top deck to see 360 degrees?  Nope, it's closed, people have fallen off and drowned despite the railing.  Crossing the bridge over the canyon, that's been there since the 1950s and I've crossed twenty times in the past?  Nope, can't do it now; stupid people have purposefully jumped to their death.  We saw one sign in Nelson B.C. that warned us that if we wanted to walk over the rocks to reach the lake, we should be careful to "wear proper shoes."  Careful, the Hot Springs are hot.  Warning, this scree is slippery.  Careful, this mountain lake is deep.  I wanted desperately to find a "cliff" sign literally at the edge of a cliff; unfortunately, all the cliff signs could only be found at the bottom of trails leading up mountain sides.  Didn't really make that good a picture.

In effect, the world is being held hostage by what the stupidest person coming to this place might do at any given moment.  The most obvious example is covid and masking.  Travelling while masking ranges from a mild inconvenience, where one merely needs to remember a mask when meeting people, to a entrenched headache when randomly subjected to a stranger's paranoia or arrogant rudeness.  We did meet the occasional right wing sort that refused to mask; we did find one stranger in the village of Radium who was screaming about how masks are stupid and no one needs them.  But far, far worse than such idiots were the occasional left wing obsessives posting fake "out of order" signs on public toilets or imposing excessive demands for social distancing.  I am a strong believer in taking steps for public health and I steadfastly support mask wearing, social distancing and getting vaccinated.  But I am definitely opposed to self-appointed screaming fanatics without education, credentials or sense shouting their dictates at strangers like WWII block wardens.  Maybe someone should issue these people white hardhats so we can identify them and cross the street.

But ... yes, had a very good time.  Spectacular mountains, deep azure blue or emerald green lakes, water in some places so crystal clear as to be invisible, lots of friendly shopkeepers, one moment of staggering serendipity (I'll write about that on another post) and very good company for four days made a marvelous winding, adventurous time. I hope to do something like it again next year, in a different part of B.C. — and in parts of Alberta I've never seen as well.

I've had some thoughts and I feel restored somewhat creatively.  This is always a good feeling.  As soon as my body catches up, I know I'm going to have a great month.

... And

 

4 Days

Not sure of how the kickstarter actually works, or when it actually starts at this point.  I set it for today, but I see from the website that it "might" take a while longer.  Ah, patience.

For the long weekend, I've arranged a 4-day road trip with friends, starting tomorrow, to small resort towns in southeast British Columbia ... my first overnight stay since 2017, when I last did a game con in Edmonton.  Plans are to see the hot springs at Radium, some of the Purcell Wilderness, the forest where my grandfather lived off the grid as a squatter (hunter, farmer & ornithologist) near Cranbrook, the Kootenay valley and Nelson (though I think I'm too old for serious bouldering) and a good part of the Columbia River valley.  Mountains, rocks and trees, and water ... a true Canadian landscape.

Always good to get back to the basics.

I'm being held to a commitment not to access my email or blog during the trip, so I'll be doing so only surreptiously when I can slip away from witnesses ... because obviously such commitments are silly and of no importance.  Nonetheless, my marriage is important so I'll be sly about it.  No one needs to know (unless she reads this blog, whereupon she'll assume I'm kidding).

I plan to have fun.

I'll be gone on the 6th of September, so I won't be observing my 42 anniversary of playing D&D on Monday (unless I want to do so late at night, which I won't, because I'll be beat).  I don't have anything special to say about it anyway, except that 42 is a very, very long time.  This is 8 more years than Gygax played the game and 7 more than David Arneson.  I think those numbers are relevant.

Please support the kickstarter.  Be well all.

Jousting Piglet Kickstarter Launched

I've been approved and the Kickstarter for the Jousting Piglet menu starts tomorrow, Sep. 2.  Here is the site's url:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/authenticdnd/the-jousting-piglet-menu

Please support me if you can.  Go to the link and sign up to be notified upon launch.

I don't know what more can be said that hasn't already been said, except that you're all wonderful.

Stock Characters

This is a western from 1957. Some readers will recognize which. I'll give a hint: it's the opening scene. The main character is dead center, moving from left to right.  He's the good guy.  The others are background characters ... they're here because it matters that this not be an empty saloon; the plot requires lots of witnesses.  These characters have no lines, however, because the story is told through visuals — meaning these other unimportant people are extras.

The good guy is the player character.

This is a bad guy.  He's not "the" bad guy, he's "the" bad guy's brother ... but he's here to commit a murder that sets up the film's plot.  In film parlance, he's a stereotypical fictional person of a specific type, age, social class and motivation.  He's a stock character.

In D&D parlance, he's a plot hook.  He's there to taunt the party and get them inextricably invested in the adventure, which must be resolved before the party's safe.  Note the mocking gaze, the mottled leather vest, the low gun-belt, the flashy wide-brimmed hat, the choice to buy a full bottle of liquor.  These are the tell-tale cliches that rush to the front of a DM's imagination — every time.  But we can talk about visuals another day.

The stock character is a problem.  Savvy players recognize him immediately: because typically he's the only NPC that notices or addresses the player characters.  Or, to be more accurate, he's the only character the DM describes in the room at length.  "There's a room full of people; one of them is wearing a big brimmed hat.  He's standing at the bar, watching you as you enter; his lips curl in a smile."  The message is obvious: the DM wants you to address this guy.  I can do this set up all day long and every time the players will dutifully do their part.  It's like a monkey hitting a lever to get grapes.

But turn on the DM and say, "Describe any other person in the room," and almost certainly the DM will launch into a general description of everyone, and not the one person asked for.  "Uh, they're cowboys, having drinks, wearing basic cowboy clothing and, uh, there are a few women at the table with them."  This is because the DM doesn't want us to talk to these other people; they're not relevant to the DM's story and therefore of no use to the adventure, except as set dressing.  Quite quickly we'll be back with the man and his black hat, conscientiously moving the adventure, um, "forward."

This happens without anyone's noticing it.  We're forcefully brainwashed from a young age to recognize how these people appear on film as opposed to those people.  There's a deep, intensive science involved in grabbing our focus and directing it, one that we're unconscious of.  Look again at the first picture.

To get a good, clean screenshot, I waited until the character, moving through the crowd, pauses; as he does, he turns his face away from the camera.  His waist is framed neatly between the girl and the two cowboys at the bottom, with the vertical candle pointing upwards to force your eye to look up.  His head is likewise framed between the lantern and the vertical seam in the wall ... while the adobe brick is horizontal.  There's a lone cowboy on the right, who's looking up at the character, turning your eye away from the darkness on the right (which will be used to frame the actor again later on in the shot), while the one fellow who's standing is gently leaning towards the shot's centre.  None of which, I promise, you'll notice when you watch the film; the moment is less than one second long, probably about 21 frames, and your thoughts are full of the lead actor (whom you'd have recognized in 1957, like recognizing Brad Pitt in a film now).  Some readers who don't know the film have figured out who he is by now, and are looking him up in IMDb to figure out which movie it is.

While you don't consciously recognize all this, the cinematographer is paid serious money to set this up; hours and hours are spent on this framing; good actors learn to hit their marks perfectly so the work isn't wasted (one reason why a seemingly popular actor stops finding work, while some other tiresome actor gets three movies a year).   You don't see it but your brain does.  A scene like this and you instantly, habitually ignore everyone; you know none of these people will matter, so you don't look at them (unless, of course, you're a youtube doof with hundreds of hours to pick over films frame by frame looking for someone's wristwatch).

So when the DM tells you to look at the character at the bar with words alone, your brain filters the scene through a hundred thousand film hours, scrubs out the extras and spotlights the relevant NPC.  The bar might as well be empty.

This is generally fine for most worlds ... but the system breaks when it meets with a sandbox.  The difference between the film above and you actually walking into a random western 1875 American saloon (recognizing it wouldn't look like this saloon, which I covered yesterday) is that there are no extras or stock characters.  The saloon is full of people, actual beings who haven't read a script, aren't told where to stand, don't dress like stock characters and have reasons for being there that have nothing to do with you or a film audience.  They'll respond to you exactly as any group responds to you in the real world right now ... and without the cues you need to tell which of them are of such-and-such a social standing, an experience level or of a particular motivation.  The good guys and the bad guys look alike.  And none of them care a whit about you.

They're not necessarily there to advance a story line or a plot.  Oh, yes, of course I can have one of them be a plot hook if I want, I've written about that before.  But it's important to understand I don't have to.  AND it's important to understand that every person in the room has a story; every person is potentially a plot hook; every person might be be beneficial, or malevolent, towards the party.  A roomful of people are like 40 dungeon doors waiting to be opened ... with any number of them leading to nowhere except a home and kids.  But you don't know; and I'm not going to definitely tell you.

Therefore, if someone starts a conversation with the party in my game, that might be a plot hook.  It also might be a local being friendly, with no agenda whatsoever.  If a local trips over the player's chair, that could be totally innocent.  People in saloons trip over chairs all the time.

But a genre savvy player that's been weened on everyone-that-talks-is-a-stock-character, this gets a bit ludicrous in short order.  Every NPC who offers to help the party is a suspicious, dangerous character; every comment is an invitation to a saloon fight; every glance is loaded with intrigue and overthinking; no one is taken at their word; this is obviously a set-up for a dangerous fight that's definitely waiting outside the front door.  And as the players drift conclusively into rank paranoia, I'm forced to adopt William Goldman's strategy in the Princess Bride: "She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time."

"I give you my word," I explain, "that when this guard says he intends to help you, everything your character knows having lived 25 years in my world, and the nature of guards, and the expression you see on the guard's face, that the guard is being genuine and is not a random plant in the employ of the bad guys at this time.  You can trust him.  As a DM, I'm not going to fuck you on this."

It has to be made extremely plain, you understand.  Otherwise, it still won't be believed.

My face-to-face campaigns were easily purged of this illness, perhaps because of my body language and because my family and friends know my character and recognize I get zero pleasure from "gotcha D&D."  It just isn't my game.  I enjoy offering odd, ordinary, loyal, dutiful or lackidaisical characters as potential resources for the players to use ... not as false fronts hiding mastermind criminals.  What I said about my game being "political" is relevant here.

Greater success in my game, above that of surviving and advancing the character's ability, lies in reconciling oneself with the natural and cultivated elements of the game world, such that the faithful are rallied together as allies against the unseen, as-yet-unmet holders of power, who jealously hate to lose any of that power to newcomers.  To survive a dangerous world, the players will need to bring some of it under their control, to ensure a safe refuge against the outside; this will be seen as a challenge to others who also hold spaces of their own.   These will see the players as a threat; and they will use their minions to test the players, and if possible, eradicate the players.  The players alone, being relatively few in number, cannot rely on themselves alone.  They will need friends; they will need support networks and goodwill.  They will need to play a long game to obtain these things.  They will need to trust NPCs.

This requires seeing every NPC as a potentially rich, motivated character ... which I can make of them, step-by-step, as the players deliberately seek to know them better.  Faithful NPCs can be retained; questionable NPCs can be reconsidered or ejected.  But none of them are necessarily as simple and bald-faced as a stock character made for a two hour film.  A D&D setting sustains itself for hundreds and hundreds of hours; there's time to let the actors be people.

The End of Wholesomeness

I don't subscribe to the boy's version of D&D ... the notion that "We're on an adventure!" and that it's full of "fantastical and heroic" things.  I don't find D&D to be either mysterious or arcane.  The word "magic" is not magical for me.  I have never, ever, thought of D&D as a "game of the imagination" — though I know others think of it that way and occasionally I've been willing to pander.  I don't ascribe the word "imagination" to it, because in essence all things are of the imagination, including paying my bills, expecting the local safeway to carry enough Oikos yogurt in the form I like this week and the existence of Bulgaria — which so far I've been forced to accept on the word of other people.  Since I think constantly — a habit which others do not seem to acquire — I use my imagination constantly, applied to every part of my creative and interpretive existence.  I don't see exactly why I should think D&D is special in some way.  I use the same brain for it that I use for everything else.

The colloquial meaning of "magical," distinct from its application to witchcraft and spellcasting, is to see things as "beautiful or delightful in such a was as to seem removed from everyday life."  I suppose I would see actual magic and spells as that, but that's not how I see the long lists of written spells, items and abilities in D&D.  I see these things as cold, hard, functional metrics.  They work in a specific, practical manner relating to the rules of the game.  I get no fuzzy feeling in my gut, no lightheaded giddiness in my goiter when these things get used.  This is not to say the spells are lackluster or boring, but to explain that I think of them with the same interested presumption as an immunologist has talking of viruses infecting liver cells in such and such a manner.  Completely fascinating; zero sense of the supernatural.  It all seems very day to day for me.

There's nothing "arcane" in a game system that's been in existence just forty years.  There's nothing mysterious when everything is written out, explained and prescribed.  I may concoct a series of events that will enact the literary structure of a "mystery" for the players — but surely they know I have all the answers and that the thing itself is hardly mysterious in the sense of whatever happened to Amelia Earhart.  The game is as enigmatic as a magic trick; it's not a real mystery anymore than it's real magic.

Likewise, there's nothing "heroic" about sitting around a table and pretending to sacrifice a player character that doesn't exist; or in pretending to save a pretend princess.  These pretentious claims to having achieved something of great excellence and merit seems very silly and adolescent to me; of course, once I too indulged in such notions, but I'm no longer 15 and I see no reason to wax jejune about something that's long gone.

As such, I just don't relate to D&D on these notions ... the very notions that are hammered daily on blogs and press releases with relentless banality, often using the same phrases so often as to become saws and old chestnuts.  I hear someone cry excitedly, "On to adventure!" and think either that they're clinging desperately to their youthful innocence or that they're desperate for attention.  Whichever it is, I can't help rolling my eyes.

I'm experienced.  Best to think of me as the grizzled sarjeant doing his seventh tour of Vietnam, whose well past posturing.  I don't give a fuck about all that.  "This is a war, soldiers; get yourselves together, get on the bounce, quit griping and mind that you live 'til the end of day.  I don't wanna see no heroes, I want you head outta your asses and none of you do something stupid.  Let's get on with it."

Naturally, this doesn't fly well with a lot of players.  They want warm and fuzzy.  They worship a string of fantasy writers who churn fantasy content on a grade 6 to 12 level and that's just fine.  They don't want to be soldiers.  They don't want to play in a world where politics, nature, cruelty and indifference are vastly more powerful than magic — because, in my world, magic is a tool, not a force.  No matter what you have, no matter what you can do ... there are always others who can do exactly as much or more.  And if they're organized and you're not ... well, you can kiss ass or kiss dirt.  That's up to you.

I think the most interesting thing about D&D is the game world.  A thing that's staggeringly complex, huge, momentarily intimate, funny, absurd, unexpected and outlandishly dangerous ... everything that exists in the real world, in fact.  To be clear, what I like about D&D is that it happens in the real world, between me and my friends — and that this dynamic allows me to create all the happenstances of the world and watch the players fight, survive, fail or succeed according to their wherewithal, intuition and pluck.  Those things are real ... and infinitely more exciting and challenging than silly knights and princesses.

Let me put it another way.  A long time ago, Hollywood used to make westerns where everyone wore a clean shirt, where all the men were clean-shaven and the women were honourable.  These westerns surrounded simple story lines where a stalwart, decent sheriff protected a town with decent townfolk, or a group of heroes rode into a town to rescue it from a group of bad guys.  The line between "good" and "bad" was just as sharp as a D&D alignment chart ... and I'll grant, some of these movies are quite good; I can give you a list, if you like.  But they were all ruled over by something called the Hays' Code ... a set of moral principles that have been dead and gone from film for nigh 50 years now.

But those same moral principles are upheld and STANDARD among D&D producers and players, because it's perceived that children are playing this game ... and we mustn't invent anything that might bother the children.

In the late 60s, starting with Spanish, Italian and other European directors, who didn't give a shit about the Hays' Code, westerns started getting made where the "good" guys and the "bad" guys became harder and harder to tell apart.  Everyone had beards, most of them didn't wash, the women grew to be as vicious and vindictive as the men.  The protagonists in many of these films were brutal, cold-hearted murderers ... and the films became less and less about defeating the bad guys, and more about what it meant to be alive during the period.  The characters climbed down off their pedestals and became human.  And while many, many people hated these movies, and what it did to an iconic American fable, the truth is these movies were better.  They weren't fantasy.  They were real.  Watching them, we got the sense of what it was really like to carry a gun, and be shot, or hanged, or live in those difficult, brutal times.

That change didn't just reveal itself in the western, either.  It appeared in cop films as well; and in movies about relationships and lovers.  The change had happened a decade earlier in books, investing high-quality literary works with pulp fiction themes, enabling us to investigate ideas like abortion, racism, rape, institutional slavery, crime, genocide ... all subjects that were banned in my parent's time and had to fight for their right to be found on bookshelves.

This is where I want to be.  I'm not interested in running Gunsmoke and Bonanza.  My characters do not adhere to the boundaries of 1950s film noir.  I am not running the Children's Hour.  I'm running an adult game, for adults.  With adult themes and adult situations.  My game world is not imaginary, it's industrial.  It's not heroic, it's hubristic.  It's full of people who want to give aid and build support, organizing together for protection and mutual support; because the world is not just dangerous for the players, it's dangerous for everyone.

The people of my game world are the hardest puzzle for old-school Hays' Code players to interpret ... because, like a 1950s western, they think everyone who isn't a bad guy or a good guy is a stock character.

And they are so, so wrong about that. 

Ere the Kickstarter

It's been two months since I teased the menu.  Sigh.  Sorry about that.  What with one thing or another, hesitancy being a part of it, getting ducks in a row has been trying.  In any case, the kickstarter has been filed and is awaiting review.  I'm told I'll get a response by Thursday Sep 2, and they'll let me know the official start date at that time.  Perhaps it will be this week; I don't know, I haven't done one of these before.

I'm awaiting art for the menu, still, and investigating with the printers/cover manufacturers on the cost of embossing that art into the cover, which would be extra rich and cool.  All things going well, we might be able to begin sales before the kickstarter is completed, as I have banked monies waiting to move ahead on that.  The kickstarter would make me feel more positive about not going broke on a boondoggle ... which I still do not think this is, as it feels so damn fine when I hold it.  I've made arrangements to send a copy to JB of Blackrazor to review it, but that hesitancy again is keeping me from letting go of the only copy I have.  So things are happening, even if it appears weeks are going by without word.

As far as purchasing the menus go, I haven't many options.  Using Amazon costs $29.99 per month, +8-15% per product sold, so not very desirable since we'd like to keep our profit margins as thin as possible.  There are online products that would let me process credit cards, but I'm not familiar with their set-up at this time, Stripe for instance; but I know from watching others not to invest in something like that until actual sales are coming in.  Lots of people think starting a business means setting up to look like a full-fledged 20-year-old company from the starting gate ... and end up spending a bunch of money on products they don't need, sometimes bankrupting themselves.  Trust me, I'm thinking about it.

Paypal is simple and practical, though I know some people don't like paypal.  I've set up a bank account that people can e-transfer into, if they prefer.  People can pre-buy if they want to, but I don't know why the hell you would; supply isn't limited and you might as well keep your money until I actually have the product, sometime in mid-to-late September.  The price is going to be dear; the item is a work of art, not some slack piece of trash, in a faux-leather folder that will maintain it's attractiveness for a decade.  I'm asking $45 + $20 shipping ... that last should surprise no one, for as I said, it weighs more than half a kg (1.3 lbs.).

Kickstarter did not provide a space for describing "stretch goals," as in what happens if I raise more than the $3,000 I'm asking for.  I don't think that's going to happen, but then the hew and cry of angered internet villagers with pitchfork railing against creators daring to take in more than they ask for weighs upon me.  As such, I've decided that if the numbers climb, I'll be ready to create additional meaningful content to reflect that, in the spirit of this project:

* $6,000.  I'll create a second menu with specifically D&D themes, such as monster haunches, sweetmeats, creatures that are served alive, enchantment effects that aren't just magic items for purchase, things that humans can't eat and yet can be eaten by specifically elves, dwarves, etc.; as well, logically, items that will affect different races in different ways.  This won't be an easy project but it will be easier than the next one.

*$12,000.  I'll create a third menu based mostly upon pre-Columbian foodstuffs, such as sassafras and sarsparilla, maize, peppers, okra, cacao, potato and various beans, derived from Incan, Central American and Native America sources, as best as I possibly can ... and to fill out the menu I'll mix that with authentic Creole and a 17th century Carolingian cultural menu, favoured by pirates at the time as a general theme.  This is going to take considerable research, more than what I can accomplish on the internet; and I can see from some investigation already that the origin of many items is a cherished dispute by many between whether it comes from America or Africa, or even Asia.  The best I could promise is that it will definitely not be European.

*$24,000.  A truly impossible number, but if that happens then I'll take the menu for the Jousting Piglet and create a functional, fully illustrated and kitchen-proven cookbook for (almost) every item in that menu.  I have no doubts of my being able to make any of the foods there; they're all real, from legitimate sources, and about half I've cooked before.  The beverages, however, are going to be a real challenge.  Obviously, I think we can forgo recipes for Absinthe and Grand Chartreuse, among two or three others, but with a budget I'll locate someone who can teach me to make mead or spirits.  I live in a city with multiple distillers of both beer and spirits so this isn't out of the question.  I've worked in hotels and restaurants for a total of 15 years, some with a 5-star rating, so I'm confident I can cook anything, and even make a dozen attempts at something to make sure that when the recipe is attempted by someone else, it will taste good.  I'll get a competent photographer to film it and the final book will be elegant and gorgeous.

Very well, that should do for now.  I'll keep the reader posted on the kickstarter's status.  I should get around to publishing something more intrinsically about D&D soon.  After all, I don't want to spend all my time selling, like other bloggers have gone.