Dungeons & Kobolds

Adults and Kids (and Boys and Girls)

2010-03-30T02:27:00.000-07:00

Have I already mentioned how disappointed I am at the OSR? I could deal with the holier-than-thou mentality, the tough guy posturing, the chest-thumping, the self-deception ("look, we're not nostalgic at all! really!") and even the fear and loathing towards non-D&D RPG's, but the extreme narrow-mindedness towards editions, aesthetics and playing styles that to me are clearly inside the niche that OSR is supposed to cover is a bit too much for me.

We have fans of OD&D, AD&D and Basic; we have fans of Trampier, Otus and Elmore; we have people who are into dungeon-hacking, people who are into role-playing and people who are into creative problem solving; we have pulp fantasy fans, Tolkien fans and probably Dragonlance and Drizzt fans; we have vocal sandbox fans but I'm sure we have a lot of storyline fans as well; we have fans of strangeness and sci-fi and fans of "vanilla fantasy", we have people who are into dark, edgy and adult themes and people who are into more light-hearted and kid-friendly stuff.

And all these people hate each other with a passion, proclaiming that THEIR preferences are the only right ones. Yes, sometimes you'll come across someone who is more tolerant of say, different editions, but then chances are he's a playing style fascist. Or the other way around.

It's especially hard to me, because I'm a little bit into everything. And the things that I'm not into, I try to learn to understand and finally get into. My understanding is that if I don't understand something, it is my fault, and I must work towards correcting that fault. The only thing that I'm not going to bother trying to understand is narrow-mindedness. And by that I don't mean that WoW players or, say, rugby players are part of the OSR as well. It's pretty clear to me what the Old School Renaissance means: you play some old version of D&D. With whatever playing style or choice of aesthetics. And by Gary, you aren't required to be averse to 3E or 4E, or Wizards of the Coast, or White Wolf, or MMORPGs, or commercial RPG's in general, or those indie RPG's for that matter. It's not a movement. It means you play old versions of D&D, even if it's only your fourth favourite game or something.

But that was just an introduction to today's sermon (and a tiny psychological nerd rage steam-vent, I'll give you that). Let us talk about the target audience of D&D, and the fact whether D&D is really meant for adults... or children. And again, we'll have to start with going back a long way in time... all the way back to 1974.

D&D evolved from miniature war games - games clearly played by adults, grown-up men who were into history and tactics. And that was the whole audience in the beginning. Enthusiastic, although most probably extremely nerdy and bearded guys, sharing an obscure hobby, totally unknown by the rest of the world. With the appearance of D&D, it is probable that the most hard-core historical gamers never joined the bandwagon (or tried it once and didn't like it), while gamers more into Tolkien, fantasy and sci-fi were more likely to jump in. And that was how gaming gained its unholy matrimony with literature.

With the editions released in the 70's, this matrimony persisted. The game's roots lie in wargaming, but literature was what drew people to D&D, I suppose. When reading the original AD&D manuals, Gygax not only gives his Appendix N (whose place in the history of D&D I understand, even if I'll rather be eaten alive by Giant Shrews than take pulp fantasy influences to my personal D&D campaign), but he pulls references to Howard, Leiber and Tolkien all over the place. It seems that fantasy fans had overrun historical wargamers in the demography of players. Moreover, I keep hearing that in the days of AD&D (that is, late 70's), most players were actually colledge students. That was a completely new demographic as well, and most likely a bit younger crowd than the original wargamers, too, I suppose. AD&D had stepped out of the circles of the original hobbyists, and even though every sub-urban kid wasn't playing yet, the word spread like wildfire through colleges. Led Zeppelin was playing, weed was smoken and cheap beer was imbibed while the heavily-moustachied heroes descended into tombs of horrors. Perhaps somebody had an artistic or hippie girlfriend as well, who joined the game, and so, suddenly the demography included women as well.

Still, most people playing at this point were adults (the likes of Gary's kids and the Old Geezer notwithstanding). How "adult" were the themes in their games? I'm sure the Howard and Lovecraft (or history!) fans put out a fair share of violence and sex... but what of the Tolkien fans, hippies and new agers? The Lord of the Rings has darkness and even some brutality, but no sexuality at all, and the brutality involved is somehow... mythological, not in-your-face. Gollum bites Frodo's finger off like Fenris bites Tyr's hand off - it feels like a myth, not a gory scene happening right before your eyes. And The Hobbit is of course very much a children's book, a tale of light-hearted exploration. The mythological black-and-white morality of Tolkien resonates on a different level than the drab grayness or outright blackness of the pulps. I'm willing to bet that some of the players in the late 70's had much less darkness, horror and evil in their games than some people would like to believe. I'm thinking of the Tolkien fans, hippies, new agers... and the girlfriends. It is often said that men are into achievements while women are into relationships. I somehow feel that it was the female players who started befriending NPC's adminst all the dragon-slaying and loot-stealing (and mechanistic/logical problem-solving). To that, I owe them the greatest of thanks. To me, D&D is greatest when the "yang" elements (fight, loot, solve, advance, adventure) are tempered by the "yin" elements (talk, feel, act, immerse, understand), both coming harmoniously together, neither one overshadowing the other. And all-guy games, quite frankly, often bore me.

So, while some menstruating monsters had infiltrated the phallic purity of the early demographic, and although I suspect that several of the games that took place would have been quite kid-friendly in themes and style, (A)D&D was still played mainly by (and written to) adults. That changed in the 80's, with D&D becoming a fad and spreading to the suburbs.

The Moldvay Basic D&D set, and it's successor, the Mentzer Basic D&D set, and the new prints of AD&D with renewed covers, were clearly marketed to an ever younger audience. I have never read Moldvay, but I think that it still had some of the "adult" flavor left, perhaps with a synthesis resembling a "family game", one that adults and children can play together? An interesting point is the cover text, that supposedly said something like "to adults 12 and up", while the Mentzer Basic set had dropped the "adults" word. I've read some people lamenting the loss of that word, and to me, that is just hysterically funny. How's that for nostalgy? Nothing wrong with it, though. It's time we old scoolers learn that it's perfectly OK to feel nostalgic about the games we played as kids, while at the same time acknowledging the objective and worthy virtues of these games. These things do not cancel each other out!

The look and feel of the games changed, that much is very true. Mentzer Basic reads NOTHING like AD&D, even if the rules themselves are fairly similar. The tone of the writing (and the artwork) is completely different. I started with Mentzer at the age of twelve, and that defined role-playing games forever for me. His teacher-like, fatherly voice guiding the clueless reader forward, explaining everything very carefully, even multiple times. His easy-going nature shone through the text, suggesting a balance between justice and mercy, always reminding that the point of the game is to have fun. When he referred to or recommended books, it was never fantasy or sci-fi, but always history and mythology. Although there were great dangers in this fantasy world, there was no great evil, no Lucifer in the bottom of Dante's Hell. There was Law and Chaos, no Good or Evil. The most evil thing around was Entropy, and even that wasn't so evil. This created a setting that always felt like ancient Greek or Rome to me. While my young self yearned to have more demons and other great evils in the game, I also remember respecting the sorta-philosophical, not-oppressive-but-exciting world very much. In fact, it seemed "adult-like" to me. While I wanted to fight completely evil demons and undead, I identified this desire as being simplistic and "child-like". We were to begin as some kind of medieval Famous Five from the farm, finally ending up as Perseus, Odysseus or Achilles, challenging the dangerous but not simplisticly evil gods.

While Gygax's AD&D is something completely different. He's not the jovial pedagogue like Mentzer - he's the mad scientist ranting and raving. He uses strange words that are sometimes beautiful, sometimes awkward; he gets sidetracked; he gets angry and emotional; he gets offensive and he gets defensive; he mocks and laughs at the reader; but often, his voice gets intimate, and he confesses something of great importance. You feel like you're talking to this crazy person, but who is on equal footing to you, not treating you like a kid. And that is very exciting. Especially the Dungeon Master's Guide is a delightful read: in the end, Gygax is finally on the same side as you, and he's preparing you to a wonderful journey like a harsh, private Kung Fu master - unlike Mentzer, who comes across as an Athenan philosophy teacher, talking to a whole classroom of young students. Only Mark Rein-Hagen's 2nd edition Vampire: the Masquerade has ever achieved such unobstructed vistas into the mind of the creator of the game, with such a feeling of intimacy and trust.

I haven't read all editions of D&D, but even if we compare these two, the feeling is quite different. I love them both and value them highly, despite their differences. But Mentzer is always going to be the first thing for me, the thing that got it all started. And I suppose it's like this for a lot of people. At a young age, we stumbled across a book with a dragon or a warrior on the cover, whether it was written by Gygax, Holmes, Moldvay, Mentzer, Cook or someone else. And that book changed the way we spend our free time forever. It is easy to take that book as the "one true way" of playing, because of our emotional attachment to it. But if we are to create a community of old-school players in the internet, we need to tamper that emotion with reason, objectivity and empathy toward others.

After the D&D fad in the 80's, the main target demographic changed again. Fewer new players joined the club, and 2nd edition AD&D seemed like catering to the people who were already there. With 3rd edition, they targeted the people who had dropped the game in the 90's, now having jobs and families. And with 4E... I don't know who they're targeting, really, probably everyone, including the Basic D&D fans who were dissatisfied when the line was cut off in the early 90's. But the bottom line is that different editions have had different target audiences. Some have targeted adults, some children. Some editions have arguably been "less commercial" than others. But all of these editions have meant a lot to people, and all of them have transformed some kid's world completely. I understand that Mentzer Basic is pretty commercial, and it is written for kids (even if Mentzer's calm prose comes across as much more "mature" than Gygax's wild ramblings). That's where I'm coming from, and that's why, whenever I play D&D, deep down I feel that I'm playing a kids' game. I don't pretend to be a kid, but at it's heart, D&D is a kids' game to me. That's why a film like The Goonies inspires me to write D&D adventures, much more than any Conan story, or anything with excessive sadistic brutality and moral blackness.

However, I do understand that people who lost their virginity to different editions (or Gary forbid, different games!!111) may feel differently. Or, maybe they started out with one edition but gravitated towards another. It's all good.

In a perfect world, we would have a worldwide community of D&D players, playing all the editions from OD&D to whatever's the newest edition at the moment, communicating in harmony and understanding. In practice, the gap between old and new D&D is quite large, with some bad blood on both sides, and no one can deny that the approaches that the old and new editions utilize are quite different. While I certainly gravitate more towards the old stuff, I'm trying to learn the new as well. Not everybody feels like this, though, and there's nothing wrong with it. But despite their differences in attitude, writing style, and target audience, old editions are so similar to each other that it shouldn't be too hard to form some kind of a tree house club around them, with adults and kids, boys and girls playing these games in various styles and flavors.

Or do we need tree house club at all? I don't know. But - I've said this before, and I'll keep repeating it to the end of time - we sure don't need the narrow-minded blockheads yelling that the mechanics/art/attitude/aesthetics/thematics/playing style of THEIR preferred campaign is the only right one.

Identity vs. Versatility

2010-03-26T03:30:00.000-07:00

One of the major themes in the history and development of Dungeons and Dragons is the dynamic between character identity and versatility. This can be seen as a spectrum, with a clearly defined but calcified character in one end, and a poorly defined but versatile character in the other end. One could perhaps say, with not too much exaggeration, that most of the differences between the editions can be reduced to the position that the edition takes on this spectrum. Another interesting fact is that there seems to be a trend to increase versatility, until it reaches a breaking point of some sorts, and then there is a point of discontinuation, and we come back to to the clearly defined character. Let's take a look at the editions and their positions.

The oldest editions clearly had a well defined character with poor versatility. Many proponents of these editions argue that there was substantial versaility instead, due to the overwhelming use of DM fiat and imagination. Sure, your OD&D Fighting-Man might have disabled traps all over the place with some player cleverness, even learned spells perhaps, if you as a player could fast-talk your DM, but that's not the point. The point is that while you might have played this way, it was not supported by the rules themselves. At this point, the classes and races were extremely well defined, and allowed little diversity. The Elf, I hear, could choose to play an adventure "as a Fighting-Man", or "as a Magic-User", however the player chose - and the choice could be renewed each adventure. And the Magic-Users differed from each other by having different spells: one could have Charm Person, the other Sleep. So there was some versatility around even then, but I guess that during these times, most versatility came from playing the characters in different ways. Due to the acceptance of DM fiat and fast-talk, you could get away with crazy and interesting stuff if you had the ability to imagine it and the persuasive power to convince your DM. But the sort of versatility that is dictated by the rules didn't really exist.

Please notice two things: first, that a lot of this is based on hearsay and the Internet, as I'm mostly knowledgeable about AD&D and Mentzer; and second, that I'm making no value judgments of any kind, this is purely descriptive.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons hit the scene in -77, and it was really the gates of versatility blasting themselves open wide. Actually it didn't much improve the basic mechanics of the game: although there were additions like round segements, weapon speed factors and the weapon vs. armor table, it seems that while some people utilized those, many more didn't, preferring the simple rules of OD&D and Holmes Basic instead. What we got, then, was a variety of choices. There was multiclassing, even two different kinds of; and most importantly, race/class combinations. No longer were dwarves and halflings limited to being fighters, and your elves and half-elves had crazy options like magic-user/thief and fighter/cleric. Your human fighter types could be rangers or paladins instead, your clerics druids, your magic-users illusionists, and your thieves assassins. There were limitations, certainly, many of them quite infamously arbitrary, but the fact was that the roads of possibilty had opened.

But, even if these AD&D dwarves had only four classes (cleric, fighter, thief, assassin) to choose from, they had lost some of their dwarven identity along the way. Before, if you saw a dwarven adventurer, you would know what they are capable of. They were stout fighters with a smattering of dwarven special abilities, like good saving throws and the ability to find moving dungeon structures. With AD&D, some of that identity was lost. And that is the crux of the issue: whenever you add versatility, you lose some identity and vice versa. Sure, AD&D dwarves had racial ability modifiers to give them some identity, but how often do you glare over your co-player's character sheet, anyway? Also, with random ability rolling, the modifiers were lost in the sea of static noise. The pleasure in having a strong class or racial identity comes from your co-players having some expectations, and you fulfilling them - whereas the pleasure in having a versatile character comes from being different from every other member of your race or class. A lot of identity was left, though. Identity needs something strong and definitive, as well as exclusive, to back it up. One example could be the elvish ability to find secret doors better than other characters - a very useful ability, and limited to elves (and half-elves - already some exclusivity lost there). Unlike infravision that was possessed by most of the demi-human races, and thus, while being a useful ability, doing little to establish racial identity, the ability to find secret doors actually made the rest of the players think: "Hey - that guy is an elf!" And that's all that identity is about. In role-playing games we imagine together. We want to see what's going on with our mind's eye. But we also want to share those visions with the other players. And that is where the rules can help or hinder. With OD&D and its race-as-class paradigm, your identity is strong - as an elf, you fight, you cast spells, you find secret doors and see in the dark. When you do these things, no one will for a second forget that you're playing an elf. But if there's two elves in the group, they are going to get mixed. Sure, you can emphasize personality, different playing styles and all that, but in the end, the rules for those two elves are similar. And thus, your co-players are going to remember that you are an elf, but not that you are Laralindaloirenthaladas Dewdropmagicmistsilvermoon. This is where the versatility of AD&D comes to help, creating several different elves for you to choose from. Fighter, magic-user, thief, assassin, or almost any double or triple combination thereof. With that system, everyone will instantly recognize that Laralindaloirenthaladas casts spells, and Fingolfinlegolasmarilyn opens locks and backstabs. But are they going to remember that they are both elves?

I can put it no simpler than this: it's a trade-off. It's a very old trade-off, in fact; as human beings, we have always sought both to belong, to have shelter; and to be different, to be free. To me it seems no wonder that this dilemma occupies such a central place in role-playing games as well. RPG's are wish fulfillment and a projection of our desires, anyway.

After AD&D hitting the stage, TSR decided to continue the legacy of the original game with the Moldvay Basic set. More business-savvy heads can probably tell you better, dear reader, why this came to pass, but I cannot help but wonder whether a small drop of desire to have a game around with a stronger sense of class and race identity was present, even subconsciously. This was followed with Frank Mentzer's Red Box, still famous and well-known in Europe, and a best-seller. With the AD&D line continuing with Dave Cook's 2nd edition, the dichotomy was set in stone. A Basic edition and an Advanced edition, this choice of words conjuring images of simple (gamist?) rules versus complicated (simulationist?) ones, but this was indeed not the case. It was mostly a case of the number of choices to make for your character, a case of class/race identity versus versatility. During their respective adventures, the Basic and Advanced D&D heroes utilized pretty similar systems. Frank Mentzer's warnings in the Basic Set of the rocket science in AD&D are a source of unending amusement but also slight bitterness to me; because of them, I never tried AD&D at a young age.

There was a dichotomy indeed, but versatility had not yet reached its high point. That would come to be with 3rd edition (A)D&D, now owned by Wizards of the Coast. AD&D, with all its arbitrary and annoying class limitations, still retained a moderate sense of racial and especially class identity - although I suspect that with all the supplements released in mid- to late 90's, diversity must have increased and identity waned. But third edition wanted to be the ultimate in versatility, a kind of final point in the process started by 1st edition AD&D. Books filled with races and classes and all manner of supplementary rules stormed the shelves of gaming shops. Multi-classing was made extremely easy; what you couldn't do you could buy with a mechanic called "feat"; it seems like they really wanted us to play unique snowflakes. The adventures of Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas, instead of Human, Dwarf and Elf, or Ranger, Fighter and, well, another Ranger. Again I must warn that my knowledge of 3rd edition is extremely limited. But all that I've heard and seen leads me to believe that they succeeded. 3rd edition has still a lot of fans around, and why shouldn't it? After all, it seems to dwell in a place of high versatility, unoccupied by any other edition of D&D. But if you are into niches and strong race/class identity... it seems that you'll have to look elsewhere.

It all comes down to what you want from your D&D. Any point in the spectrum of identity vs. versatility is valid; all that you should do, in my opinion, is to make a conscious choice, not only concerning what you're gaining, but also concerning what you're losing. Moldvay Basic? Powerful archetypes, but prepare to look alike to all other fighters and make it up by roleplaying personality and tactics. Third edition? Prepare to swim in the sea of choices, getting to play exactly the combination that you want, but say goodbye to strong niches and archetypes. To me, 1st edition AD&D is quite the "sweet spot" between the polar extremes. But let me go briefly over two more games still.

Castles and Crusades, first of the so-called retro-clones, marries 1st edition AD&D with some modern inventions like unified system mechanic and overall cutting down of sub-systems. It offers the classic AD&D races and classes, but with completely unlimited race/class combinations, offering enormous versatility. However, multi-classing, while done in practice, is not supported by the core rulebooks (at least my versions). This is a great choice in my opinion, as it protects the class niches wonderfully, achieving a harmonious mid-point between identity and versatility that really strikes a nerve with me. Also, the lack of 3rd ed.-style feats serves to protect both the cause of overall simplicity, and class identity. I cannot help but to love this game dearly, it's only deficit being the somewhat vague racial identities. But the game that has even solved that riddle to me is...

...4th edition D&D. While being a very drastic change, and losing a lot of the "Gygaxo-Arnesonian heritage", which is lamentable, the newest version of everyone's favourite occultistic recreationary practice seems to have achieved the impossible, side-stepping the trade-off almost entirely and offering a supersized portion of both identity and versatility on a silver platter. Multi-classing is practically non-existent: if you try hard, you can dabble in another class a tiny bit, but everyone is going to see you as a member of your main class. Thus, class niches are sternly protected. Race/class combinations are all legal, which is wonderful and creates a lot of diversity. Feats also remain, creating even more diversity. But most ingeniously, on top of the ability modifiers and small things like low-light visions, each race gives you an exclusive ability that totally blueprints you as a member of that race. Every elf gets to reroll a missed attack roll once in an encounter. Every dwarf is immune to forced movement. Every halfling gets to force the enemy to reroll a successful attack once per encounter. Every dragonborn can use dragon breath. And so on. While the elven, dwarven and halfling abilities are subtle in the gaming world, they are NOT subtle at the gaming table. And identities are all about the gaming table, your playmates noticing what and who you're playing - sharing the vision of your character that you have yourself. In this case, your friends are going to notice something which is quite subtle and intimate in the gaming world: your elf's accuracy, your dwarf's stalwartness or your halfling's dexterity and luck. While I cannot defend 4E's wholescale abandonment of many classic D&D tropes, I cannot deny that it has created the most wonderful balance between identity and versatility that I've ever seen in D&D or its clones. But whether you want a balance at all, preferring either end of the spectrum instead, is indeed up to you.

A World of Lacunae (and Scaffolding)

2010-03-21T00:38:00.000-07:00

Allright, allright, I'm stealing this word from you, Mr. Grand Master of Flowers. Lacunae is the plural form of lacuna, which means an empty space between things that are not... empty spaces. It could mean an area that is undescribed or non-existent, but still somehow given rough location by its borders. Role-playing games are full of lacunae of all kinds. If an RPG system represents an imaginary world, any description of that world included in an RPG book must be an incomplete scetch. Just look at real scientific libraries: we try hard to describe our own world, an even a library full of books is incomplete. How full of lacunae must then a description of an imaginary world be, usually compressed to a chapter or two in an RPG book, or in the case of the most detailed worlds, a meter or so worth of supplements in your bookshelf? No matter how hard the authors try, they cannot outrun the emptiness of the lacunae, and now I'm starting to sound like a Lovecraft impersonator. But the truth is that an imaginary world without empty spaces would have no need of player characters. There must be some room left for creativity in the game itself, room for the heroics of the PC's, or else the world does not function as an RPG world anymore. So, we've established that any RPG world must have lacunae, not only for page-count reasons but also to leave room for the actual gaming experience that happens at your kitchen table.

Dungeons and Dragons, in its various and glorious incarnations, has always had an extremely scetchy description of its gaming world, its lacunae giving relentless vertigo to Dungeon Masters not prepared to the arduous task of giving birth to a living, breathing milieu. Oh, and now I'm impersonating Gygax, it seems. But bear with me, dear reader; I hope I have some points to make adminst all the lacunae. Whether delibrate or due to circumstances, the world of D&D has always been almost non-existent. I suppose the oldest editions had nothing, I know AD&D didn't have anything (except the structure of the cosmos, and I'll come back to that!), and while Frank Mentzer's Basic D&D had this "Known World/Mystara" setting, it was presented in a way that it seemed... very non-intrusive. It was clear that the world was not the cause, the primus motor of the rules: the classes, races, monsters and rules existed because they came from the primal pool of D&D itself. The world was presented as an afterthought of sorts. "Look, here's a map you can use", said Mr. Mentzer, "here are the PC's, there's kobolds, there's elves, here's the castle of an evil baron that you can use as the main villain, here's the capital city, and yeah, there are some other countries in the world as well". It all was very... exemplary, in the sense that it seemed like an example. It was a world made for D&D, not the other way around. You could use it, or make one yourself and lose nothing in the process. This was so very D&D, an approach that made it differ from games like Runequest, MERP, Stormbringer and countless others.

I know that Mystara got expanded by supplement books, but here in Finland, while they had firmly established the Finnish D&D line and put out several supplements (like Rahasia, Castle Caldwell, even Palace of the Silver Princess and so on), the Gazetteers were never translated, so the Mystara world remained full of lacunae to many Finnish gamers. Many people stuck to it, myself included, which is funny in hindsight, because pretty much all we had was this admittedly beautiful map, full of nonsensical countries that we had no information of, except their names that were often so telling that little extra information was necessary. It wasn't much of a challenge to figure out that the "Jarls of Soderfjord", living by the northern seas, were Vikings, or that the "Emirate of Ylaruam", all desert with the exception of one city, was inhabited by Arabs. Known world/Mystara has been the butt of many a joke ever since, and rightfully so - its virtues, however, are not nearly so often noticed. It was immediate like a lightning bolt, it utilized widely known stereotypes, and it DID have a wonderful map full of cool hexes. Like anyone with half a brain knows, stereotypes and archetypes are first and foremost tools that one can use. The quality of the result depends on the skill of the worker, and one can not blame a tool for that. And Mystara - without the Gazetteers - was first and foremost a toolbox. It was much more than say, AD&D had, but it was still so full of lacunae that it should have fallen apart, were it not to the strong scaffolding made of familiar archetypes that kept it together.

What's extra funny is that I hear that in later supplements, Mystara was revealed to be a "hollow" world, like an orange with just the peel and no pulp, and reverse gravity inside, I suppose. Lacunae indeed!

After Mentzer Basic, we had second edition AD&D, and it is the edition most famous of its detailed, intricate worlds. I never played this edition, but many people I know fell in love with it indeed because of the attention given to the worlds. Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Ravenloft... these are the things that some people seemed to love. While there's nothing wrong with that, to me that seems somehow backwards and lightly perverse, if you will. There is no mistaking D&D to Runequest or Empire of the Petal Throne: they have worlds first, while D&D has the system and approach first. So, to love (A)D&D because of some gaming world seems to me like declaring one's love for Indian cuisine because you love naan bread. Still, all these worlds remained optional, and the system itself was presented without a world, in the ancient tradition.

I have very little experience with editions 3 and 3.5, but all my feeble knowledge leads me to believe that the worldless tradition stood strong during these years. Order of the Stick, surely (at least in my prejudiced mind) the best thing that this edition gave us, has its own world and makes few references to any other. All this leads me to believe that the lacunae in the D&D world survived these years, even if things like strong class archetypes didn't. And 4th edition, of which I'm fast becoming a fan, presents an interesting skeleton of a world: a bit of history here and there, giving the various races some history, and an optional small-scale setting reminiscent of the Duchy of Karameikos from Mentzer Basic. I'm sure we're going to have world-freaks again in this age of D&D just like we had during the 2nd ed. AD&D years, but to my joy, the presentation of this "Points-of-Light-land", or "PoLand", to use hip internet slang, has been deliberately scetchy and... not vague, because vague it is not; but full of creative lacunae. To make creative lacunae, a strong skeleton or scaffolding is needed: one need not be vague. The scaffolding can be firm: the spaces in between need not be described at all! Mentzer said something like this: "Here's the map and wandering monster tables, make up the rest like the history of the world yourself!", while 4E is saying "Here are the major guidelines in history that tie these PC races together, make up the map yourself!". Both are firm in their scaffolding, while giving us complete freedom to pain the lacunae in colours that we prefer.

What have we gathered thus far? D&D has never given us a detailed, intricate world that would be inexorably tied to the system. Optional worlds have been presented, as well as scaffoldings and lacunae (I'm going for an internet record here... how many times the word "lacuna" can be typed in a blog entry? Lacuna lacuna lacuna! Allright, let's continue.).

What, then, makes a "detailed RPG world" anyway? How do we define it? Some editions have given us geographical data, some historical data... and actually most editions have given us quite detailed cosmological data, in the form of a universe far more structured than the material world itself. If you have any simulationist blood at all, you must agree that the rules themselves model the physical laws of the world - at least to some degree, perhaps hand in hand with the demands of narrativism, the needs of the story. The classes give us some sociological data of the world - at least of the population of adventurers. And especially the monsters give us a lot of knowledge. If, as a DM, you stick to the monsters in the manuals, as I do, don't think for a minute that your campaign world is a piece of pure originality, created ex nihilo. There's a relationship between monsters and the world, and it goes both ways. If you want to use the various slimes, oozes, puddings and jellies at all, for example, you will probably have to use dungeons. These monsters make much more sense in a moist, sunless and smooth dungeon than outdoors. And if they live in a dungeon, how could the dungeon be inhabited? It couldn't, as the slimes would make any meaningful humanoid inhabitation impossible. Then, who could co-exist with the slimes? Flying creatures like giant bats, or small creatures that can escape them, like giant rats. Or incorporeal creatures like wraiths. So, how did we end up with this uninhabited dungeon, filled with slimes, bats, rats and incorporeal undead? Just with the desire to present a monster (in this case, a slime) to the players in a believable context. The environment deviously created itself.

THAT is one of the secrets of D&D. It seems not to present a world at all, and indeed nominally it does not; it offers the sccaffolding for your imagination, and when you try to fill the lacunae, certain similarities to other campaigns, to other people's D&D experiences, emerge. But like in nature, these are not truly "emergent" properties, but projections of underlying realities and laws. The structure of the game creates them. Granted, each DM's campaign world is different both in matter and spirit, but these "certain similarities" are awfully persistent. Let us take a look at one of the mandatory tropes, the Tavern.

Nowhere in D&D does it say that the adventurers frequent taverns, or that they would originally gather the team from tavern regulars and patrons. This trope does not even exist in fantasy literature, at least to my knowledge. But the structure of D&D tends to create taverns. Let's review the facts: A) Adventurers exist. B) Monsters exist. C) Monsters guide treasure. D) Adventurers need treasure to level up. In other words: the society of this world does not force a certain role or profession to everyone - you CAN be an adventurer. Monsters are dangerous, and if they inhabit any physical places, much of the world must be unexplored by man. Monsters have gotten the treasure from somewhere, so previous civilizations must have existed. They most probably live in ruins of previous civilizations. If you can be an adventurer, this society cannot be totally totalitarian - supported by the fact that human civilization has not achieved total hegemony. So, like in our western civilization, the place where you're most likely meet a stranger is a place where they serve alcohol - the Tavern. Work would not do, as adventuring is the work of the PC's. School would not do, unless all the PC's share a similar class (and that goes against all the most ancient and sacred traditions of both D&D and fantasy literature). So the Tavern it is. Of course, a DM can fight against these tropes. He can subert them, avert them or try to turn them upside down, and that is his Gary-given right. But that does not mean that these hidden and almost subliminal tropes do not exist.

The fact that most editions have clearly-defined stucture of the cosmos and the afterlife is very interesting as well. Most adventures are going to be Earth-based; let's face it, how many of us have ever had a planar adventure? Not many. But how many of us have had our adventures affected by the planes? I bet, most of us. Demon cults and schemes of the Devils are AD&D staples. In absence of those, Basic D&D often utilized Djinn, Efreets and Elementals as messengers from the beyond. The cosmos serves as a backdrop, another scaffold; the fact that is quite well defined does not take any lacunae away from our adventures due to the fact that it is quite rarely entered itself. But the defined cosmos in the backgound is another one of those devious underlying realities that shapes our D&D experiences towards similar results.

I'm not saying that all D&D experiences are fundamentally similar. The freedom that all editions of D&D give to the Dungeon Master still remains extraordinary. But what I'm saying is that despite all that diversity, there is an underlying current of similarity. Different editions of D&D do this in different ways: personally I might be most fond the strange approach of 1st edition AD&D, as it didn't give anything of the world itself, but gave the planes and even individual monsters, like Orcus and Tiamat, who existed and ruled on their respective and well-defined thrones on all of these myriad campaign worlds made by AD&D DM's. So, you could talk to a fellow AD&D player, and your experience of the world would be completely different, but you could still say something like "My paladin went to Hell and was killed by Tiamat!" and be completely understood. Likewise, a Basic D&D player could say "I acually dethroned Baron von Hendricks!", and perhaps a 4E player could say "I resurrected the final emperor of Bael Turath!". But paladins could be all-female, von Hendricks could actually be a legitimate ruler of Karameikos, and Bael Turath could be an island kingdom or an underground one. This fascinating combination of generality and specificity is, to my mind, unique to and quintessentially D&D. The game is always presented as a toolbox with infinite diversity, but the underlying currents subtly guide that diversity towards common ends. That simultaneously pleases our desire to be different and unique, and to belong and have something in common with others.

Pulp Fantasy, Schmulp Fantasy

2009-11-30T13:21:00.000-08:00

My least favourite part of any book that has the label "Dungeons & Dragons" on the cover (excluding the entry of the thoul monster in Mentzer Basic), must be the fabled "Appendix N", on page 224 of the original Dungeon Master's Guide of AD&D. This is the part where Gary Gygax, the author of that legendary and excellent volume, lists his favourite fantasy and sci-fi books.

Now this is starting to sound awfully negative, and I'd very much like to concentrate on positive things in this blog, but I'll give this one a go, because I think this one needs addressing - or at least I need to get this out of my system.

From a more positive angle, I could say that there's actually not much wrong with the Appendix N itself. The book itself, the Dungeon Master's Guide, is written using a very intimate, personal style, where the original Dungeon Master, Gary Gygax, talks directly to the aspiring DM, the reader of the book. It is very much in the spirit of the book to have this kind of list in the end. Gygax talks about his personal preferences and his own Greyhawk campaign the whole time; it is only fitting that he lists his favourite book in an appendix at the end, moreso because, to quote Gygax, "all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game". So, the reader might get some insight about (A)D&D itself by delving into those books. But, the primary reason of the existence of this list seems to be that Gygax just wants to share his preferences. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Moreover, I actually like pulp fantasy, the genre where most of the entries in "Appendix N" can be grouped. I actually like several of the authors that Gygax mentions. Or at least, I used to like. I don't read much of that stuff these days, but I remember spending countless hours enjoying books by R.E.Howard, H.P.Lovecraft, Moorcock and Tolkien. Anyway, I certainly don't hold the fact that I haven't read those books for a while against them, or against Gygax recommending them to the readers. So, I don't want to speak ill about pulp fantasy; it is a fine genre and I heartily recommend it to anyone and everyone.

What is my beef, then? If I think that the appendix fits neatly in the book, and that the books it recommends are good and worthwhile... what am I complaining about? See, I'm complaining about the disproportionate significance that the list seems to have taken these days, and the supposed relationship between pulp fantasy and D&D.

The Dungeon Master's Guide has 240 pages. I think that by reading any of the other 239, you would get a better understanding of what (A)D&D is all about. Appendix N is just Gygax kindly telling us his own preferences. Nothing more, nothing less. While I cannot deny that those books certainly helped AD&D take shape, or that Gygax was very much influenced by them, I contest the point of view that they should be studied by later generations, "to better understand D&D".

I've read my fair share of books in the Appendix N, and they haven't made me understand D&D better. Actually, I think that if I tried to understand D&D in the context of those books, I would just get confused. To me, Howard is as anti-D&D as anyone can get. With the exception of Lovecraft, perhaps. Also, emulating the adventures of Elric of the Fellowship of the Ring with D&D rules seems to me a task doomed to fail. With a right mixture of Howard and Tolkien, we might get closer... but still no cigar. Whatever portions D&D might have taken from the stories mentioned in Appendix N, they have been ground, smashed and pulped to a synthesis where the original ingredients are not seen... or at least, don't make sense taken out of the context of the new synthesis, that is D&D. Trolls might have been taken from Poul Anderson's books, but in D&D, they only make sense in a context of a world that also has Hobbits, Ents, Vorpal Blades and XP that comes from aquiring riches.

That is my central idea in this: D&D is its own world. Yes, it has its roots, but so have all things. If you always search for the roots in everything, you'll always end up in the Big Bang. That is a job for a scholar... but are we, D&D players, all to be scholars? Even if our preferred editions are those of times gone by? And even with all the research of the past, D&D indeed remains a synthesis that takes bits and pieces of the past and mutates them to something new and different altogether. I'll say it again: researching Poul Anderson, you might understand where trolls come from, but you'll get no understanding about what is their place in D&D.

Now me, I like researching and digging for the roots. It's fun, and it indeed grants us new understanding. But sometimes, something takes place that is not best understood by looking at where it came from, but my looking at it right in the face. I think D&D is one of those things. It took a myriad of things not only from pulp literature, but also from medieval Europe and the mythologies of the Ancient world, and presented them in a form so strong, so bold and so distinctive, that the ingredients were forever altered. To me, the best tool for understanding that world is taking it, as it is.

Not to talk about stifling creativity! All sources and common sense make plain that D&D is a tool for the imagination. Everyone agrees on this. If we are to forever look at D&D from the angle of pulp fantasy and appendix N, to me that seems that we shackle our imaginations. It is not relevant what Gygax would have thought about this - he was the founder of the game but not a "sacred prophet" of any kind - but I think he would have agreed with me, for what it's worth. Nothing should shackle your creativity in D&D, not even clinging to the roots where the game came from. To me, that seems a great folly.

Again, of course, there is no folly in basing your D&D campaign or character in pulp fantasy. That is actually a very old-school and cool thing to do; although I cannot for the life of me see the "spirit of D&D" in pulp fantasy, I know that Gygax did, and if you do, more power to you. But if you try to claim that it's impossible to understand (old-school) D&D outside the context of pulp fantasy... that statement I'm never going to accept. AD&D and the Dungeon Master's Guide (and the Appendix N!) are not the end-all be-all sources of D&D; already, something like the Mentzer Basic red box has about zero traces of anything pulp-related.

D&D was never an attempt to replicate or emulate any kind of literature. Looked from that point of view, I can see nothing but an enormous failure. D&D is a role-playing game about exploration, adventure, heroism, combat, monsters, treasure, plots, in-character discussions, party dynamics, and whatever you dare to imagine. It grew out of strategic war games and remains, after all these years, a game - a game of imagination. Any and all literary influences - pulp fantasy, Tolkien, later Dragonlance - have always been superficial. You can play with them, sure, but D&D is larger than that.

To end this, I present my own "Appendix N" - books that have inspired and continue to inspire me as a D&D player and DM:

*Gygax, E. Gary: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide, even with THAT one page.
*Mentzer, Frank: Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, Expert Set, Companion Set and Master Set.

And that's about it. No novel or book has inspired me to make and play D&D adventures more than those.

Top 10 lists part 2: magic items in D&D

2009-11-19T02:56:00.000-08:00

Magic items are of course a major ingredient of any D&D-experience. I give them by the book, rolling from the treasure tables, only re-rolling if the item in question happens to be too powerful - the sucky ones I never re-roll. That is because I prefer a low to mid-risk, low-reward style of play, but I can write more of that later. When the characters are on levels 1 to 3, I use the magic item list in the Mentzer Basic Set, updating to the Expert Set list when they reach level 4. At level 9, I again switch to the list in the Companion Set. This way, certain items see more light of day than others. This is a list of classic magic items that appeal to me for some reason or another.

1. A sub-optimal weapon +1.

Give me a short sword +1, a spear +1, a hand axe +1 or a battle axe +1. On their own, without magic, these weapons are so bad that no one should ever use them. That's a shame, because they are cool. D&D usually forces PC's into the same mould: plate mails, shields, normal swords, bows. Mechanically, these items are so good that nothing will compete. That's why I love a sub-optimal weapon with a magic +1 modifier. A short sword +1, hand axe +1 or a spear +1 make the same average damage as the ubiquitous normal sword, but they hit better. That makes them much better choices for a fighter than a normal sword, even though the maximum damage of a normal sword is one point higher. And of course, they can hit magical and incorporeal creatures. I don't count the mace +1 and warhammer +1 as sub-optimal weapons because they are optimal for the cleric, and there's usually clerics aplenty - mechanically, the cleric has always been the best class, in my opinion. The battle axe +1 might just be the coolest weapon in existence; I'm just hoping to roll up one some day. Because of the low hit point totals of the PC's in D&D, using two-handed weapons instead of the extra protection granted by a shield is usually a very, very bad idea. Again, that's too bad, because the image of a character using a two-handed weapon is just awesome. The two-handed sword is somewhat usable, but the battle axe is just mechanically so incredibly sub-optimal that you'll never see a PC with one. With a +1 variant, that just might happen. Heck, I don't think I'd reroll a +2 variant; it might still get its wielder killed some day because he didn't use a shield.

2. Shield +1.

Now this one's a keeper. It's not that rare at all, and it's usable by - count 'em - FIVE classes (the fighter, the elf, the dwarf, the halfling and the cleric). So, usually there's several PC's in the party who'll be wanting to grab this one. As anyone who has even a slight interest in game mechanics can tell you, armor class is the most important stat in Basic D&D, and a shield +1 makes your AC one point better. What does that mean? Let me tell you, a LOT. Let's just look at one example. Your average fighter is going to have an AC of 2. To hit him in melee, a goblin needs to roll a 17 with a d20. That means, he's hitting you 20% of the time, or every fifth round on average. If the same fighter is using a shield +1, his AC will be 1, and the goblin is going to need to roll an 18 to hit. That means, he's hitting you 15% of the time, or LESS THAN EVERY SIXTH ROUND on average. In effect, you've lessened the goblin's chance to hit by a QUARTER. If you've got a character with dexterity bonuses, the effect of the shield will be even more drastic. An advice to beginners: if there's a shield +1 in the loot bag, GRAB IT.

3. Potion of gaseous form.

When we were kids, we used to laugh at this goofy item. We really thought it was really bad. That's silly. First of all, there's no spell that mimics this potion. Most potions have spells that mimic them, making those potions not very unique at mid-levels. This one doesn't. What it does, then: it saves your character's backside from certain death. There aren't many kinds of death threats that can override the mighty gaseous form. It can save you from the claws of monsters, falling damage, poison, drowning, suffocation, acid baths, squeezing to death by a descending ceiling, you name it. You'll just have to use it in time, and that's indeed a basic virtue in D&D: threat assessment and retreat if the threat happens to be too much. In addition to being a life-saver, there's a million other things that you can do with this potion. Go through cracks and inside chests; really, pretty much any inhospitable or inaccessible place becomes your playing ground when you take the gaseous form. So, in addition of being useful, this item encourages player creativity.

4. Crystal ball.

First of all, it's the fluff. It's a crystal ball. A classic item of the occult recognized by everybody. Second, it's the unlimited usage. An item like a wand is extremely evocative as well, but they just don't feel the same - because of the limited charges. They feel like rifles with a limited number of shots. You don't respect them, they're just tools to get the job done. Actually, I'd much prefer wands that had unlimited charges, but could only be used once a day or something to that effect. But the crystal ball, with its unlimited usage, feels extremely magical. It feels like you're holding a mysterious, powerful entity - indeed something like a palantír. A third point is that permanent magic items usable by magic-users are just rare. Most of the useful rings will probably be rightfully grabbed by the front row guys, because they'll just need them more. But a crystal ball is the magic-user's birthright, and I think that there should be more of them around. In addition to all that, a crystal ball is again one of those items that encourage player creativity. I've seen some outrageous crystal ball-based tactics work in the favor of the PC's. Sometimes I feel that every magic-user should be given one of these freely at 1st level.

5. Ring of protection +1.

It is painfully obvious that I cannot finish this list without mentioning this, THE magic ring. All things considered, it's pretty much the best magic item in D&D. Of course, a ring of protection +2 is even better, but honestly, raise your hand if you've ever even HEARD of anyone possessing that. It's just not going to happen. The +1 variant, on the other hand, while rare, is not impossible to get. A permanent item, usable by ANYONE, having no charges, that gives you a +1 bonus in BOTH armor class AND all saving throws?!? And you can even wear two of these babies simultaneously, if you happen to be that lucky. It's also a DM's favourite power item, because it is still very "balanced" - for all its power, it doesn't break a game down. The wearer is still very much vulnerable to both monsters and traps. But it's the ultimate "feelgood" item. The player who has it becomes very happy, and the DM can also be happy because he's made the player happy, while all of the coming combats and challenges still remain challenging.

6. Gauntlets of Ogre Power.

This would be another challenger for the "best item in D&D"-title. Zap, your strength is now 18+3? Awesome and unique, given that there are no other ways of raising ANY of your attributes in Basic D&D. And the mighty Gauntlets don't give a measly +1 or +2... zap, straight to 18. There's something deeply satisfying and magical in that simple approach. Now, if the Gauntlets would boost your dexterity or constitution, I'd say that they would be even better than the ring of protection, but now, I think that the ring beats the Gauntlets by a thin margain. You see, while the ring is useful to anyone, the Gauntlets are not that useful to a magic-user. Bah, I don't want to sound so negative, the Gauntlets are really the cream of the crop. Somewhat useful even to a magic-user, I can easily imagine PC's killing each other over this fabulous item.

7. Ring of fire resistance.

Rings are pretty much the best class of magic items; usable by anyone and having no charges. It's just too bad that what the rings actually do isn't always that great. The protection ring is of course the best, and while the ring of invisibility is extremely useful, I somehow prefer this ring to it. This one is useful, might save your life and... you can forget about it. It stays in your finger, protects you, and you don't have to worry about it. While the on/off balette happening with the ring of invisibility might be creative and fun, there's just something deeply satisfying about a magic ring that you just keep in your finger, and it protects you. Fire hazards are not rare at all in D&D; just imagine your character walking through a burning tavern or a puddle of flaming oil, unscathed. If any enemies saw that, I'd give them a morale check!

8. Magic Scroll with one spell.

In my games, magic-users and clerics have very few spells to choose from. That is why a scroll with a spell on it is always a highly valuable treasure. It is actually more like a permanent item that enhances your character abilities for good. In my D&D campaign, I've seen PC's casting spells from scrolls only once: that was when one PC had died and another had raise dead on a scroll. I actually like it when PC's have a large variety of spells to choose from: it is awesome. But I don't want to give it as a free lunch. One scroll with one spell in each adventure, and I would be happy as a DM. But alas, I seem to roll them quite rarely. Short swords +1 and potions of clairvoyance, that's what my dice have liked for years.

9. Wand of detect magic.

With all the problems that wands have, there's place for them in the game, too. Perhaps it's just the amount of charges (the Basic Set instructs to roll 1d10 for the charges! Just guess how often I've rolled one!). Anyway, this one's my favourite. At low levels, the PC's can't afford to cast many detection spells (if they even have them in the first place). They'll have to go for the big guns like magic missile, protection from evil and cure light wounds. This is when a wand of detect magic comes in handy. The detection of magic is extremely useful in dungeoneering; it is the thing you should do when you encounter anything that looks ominous or demonic, and with a positive result, you should BACK OFF. Also, if the DM indulges in the old trick of hiding a magic item in a pile of similar-looking, mundane items, detect magic is the only way to get the goods. In my games, the kind folks of the magic-users' guild cast this for 100 gold pieces, but of course there's no way you can carry all those 50 swords to them, in the hopes that one of them would be magical. Moreover, this kind of wand gives low-level magic-users more stuff to do besides being dagger/oil throwers.

10. Chain mail +2.

Ah, the chain mail. D&D evolved from a game called "Chainmail"; why, then, did they make the chain mail the most useless item ever? The only time a PC would use a chain mail would be if he's just starting adventuring, and didn't roll enough gold pieces to buy a plate mail. Yes, it's an ideal piece of equipment to give to common NPC soldiers for simulationistic reasons: landowners can afford that (at least to the officers of their troops), but they cannot afford plate mail. But for PC's, there's no use at all for the item. Now, then: let's consider a magical variant, a chain mail +1. It weighs less, makes your AC better, might survive an attack by the rust monster, and is a permanent magic item. But it's still completely useless, because it's still worse than the plate mail. Now just guess how many times I've rolled a chain mail +1 for my players? I can tell you, it's been many times. It's like chomping on an apple, and realizing there's a huge maggot inside. Disgusting, and spoils the joy that you thought you were going to have. I think that even something like a cursed sword -1 is better than a chain mail +1, because if nothing else, it advances the story and might make interesting contributions to party dynamics. But the chain mail is just useless and foul. Now, finally, let's think of the chain mail +2. It is equivalent to a plate mail. So, nothing better than what your usual 1st level Veteran/Rintamamies is having anyway. But it's much lighter: 500 vs. 150 coins, that's quite a difference. And it can resist rust monster attacks... for about two seconds. But ("and zis iz a big butt!!" -Monty Python), it is CHAIN MAIL. And nobody's ever using chain mail. Thus, it gives your character a huge advantage in coolness and uniqueness. And the image of chain mail is indeed cool: being not as stiff and bulky as plate mail, I can imagine a PC doing some agile moves while wearing chain mail. Similar to sub-optimal magical weapons I talked about in the beginning, a sub-optimal magical armor has all the same benefits. The fun thing is, it has to be +2 before you can even consider using it. I remember from my childhood the character of one of my brothers, an elf, wearing a chain mail +3. Damn, that guy was cool.

I've been workin' on the rail-road

2009-11-14T06:21:00.000-08:00

"Railroading" is a commonly used term in role-playing games, referring to an almost universally frowned-upon practice where the Dungeon Master limits the choices of the players and their characters, forcing them to follow the plot that he's planned beforehand.

Let us today discuss the term and its meanings. What is it in its core? Is it indeed as detrimental to RPG's as commonly seen? Can we learn anything of value from this technique? Can it be used to our enjoyment?

First, the short answer: "I feel that railroading is most of all a tool that can be used heavily, in moderation, a little or not at all, and all these approaches can be used in skilled hands to make our games more fun." Then, let's elaborate a bit.

I've DM'ed and played in games that have had extensive and brutal railroading, and in games that do not railroad at all, and everything in between. I've enjoyed all these games. This has reinforced my belief that RPG's are an extremely varied hobby, indeed limited only by our imagination. There are numerous ways to play these games, and enjoyment comes in many forms. Most likely we haven't even yet discovered all the possible ways to play these games, and I would really like to discover numerous of these new ways myself. I fancy myself a fairly non-prejudiced person when it comes to my tastes in RPG's; I always like to try something new. I do have my prejudices, but they are more related to asthetic matters than gaming styles: for example, I don't know if I would ever like to try a game of Exalted, an all-technomage campaign of Mage: the Ascension, or any game of Cthulhu mythos not set in the 1920's. So, while having my reservations, I'm quite an omnivore; however, and I would like to stress this, there is no inherent virtue in this approach. If your tastes, dear reader, go along the lines of "Tom Moldvay edition of Basic D&D with sandbox approach and NOTHING else", there is nothing wrong with that! To each his own, and while it is good to be open-minded, it is also good to know yourself and the things that bring you joy. It's just that to me, many different approaches to RPG's bring that joy.

What is railroading, then? A DM limiting the options of the players and their characters. First, we have to realize, that some of that is happening all the time in all RPG's. With unlimited options, each of them completely as valid as the other, there would not actually be any interaction between the players and the DM. Anything the DM would say would be irrelevant. On the other hand, in the reversed situation, anything the players say would be irrelevant! So, we have a spectrum, with the DM talking to himself in the other end, and the players talking to themselves in the other. RPG's are games about the interaction of the players with the DM (and between themselves, too, of course), and with 0% railroading, as with 100% railroading, that exchange of information does not take place.

Now, someone might say, that for example a completely sandbox-style (sandbox-style meaning a player-driven campaign, where the DM takes a much more reactive role, for those uninitiated; an opposite of railroading, someone might say), old-school campaign in, say, OD&D, would be a RPG without railroading at all. I do not agree. If the DM has drawn a world map, it is railroading; limiting the choices of the players. If the DM has made a dungeon adventure, he railroads as well. Always by presenting choices, he is engaging in limiting the choices of the players. Unless... the choices are not meaningful. Say, a three-way intersection, where all the passages lead to a room with five orcs. If the DM so much as colors the doors different, the choices of the players are then affected by their associations with those colors. A red door might give associations about a violent place behind the door; a golden-colored one might hint of a treasure (or, more likely, a trap trying to lure the PC's in with its false promise of riches). From coloring the dungeon doors differently, there's a short distance to giving the players an uneven choice in larger matters, for example a choice between a seemingly low-risk, high-profit quest, and a high-risk, low-profit one. Granted, the PC's just might choose the unlikely one: and even, if a DM lets that happen, he is indeed engaging in moderate railroading. Also, let's not forget, that he gave only two choices to begin with. And even if the players choose the strangest option - not choosing either quest, but establishing a flower shop in their home town and starting carreers as horticulturists and business owners, or something to that effect - raliroading took place. It's just that the players got sidetracked. And just because the DM lets them be sidetracked, that does not mean that he's not railroading, at least a bit.

Now I know that some of this might sound strange to some of you, mainly because railroading has gotten such a bad name over the years, and because often when the subject comes up, what is really meant is something that I'd call total or 100% railroading, a style where players have absolutely no possibility of affecting the outcome of things. You can see this disastrous style used, for example, on many of the pages of the great webcomic DM of the Rings, where even some of the discussions of characters are scripted beforehand. (Although the DM of the comic does not do that all the time... remember Legolas shooting Gollum dead in the river after Lothlorien! Now that was an instance where, I think, some more railroading could have been used, perhaps in the form of distance penalties, penalties due to mist and the movement of waves... and if the DM had written Gollum as a major NPC, he should have given him a couple more hit dice so that he couldn't be killed just like that!)

Of course it all then comes down to semantics. But semantics are sometimes important, and in this case, I think that if we define the word "railroading" to only refer to the practice of "total railroading", it becomes a confusing and not very useful term. You see, most of what we call "railroading" in actual RPG's is certaily not "total railroading". I'll give one more example.

The DM knows the PC's, their histories and motivations. He knows the players of those PC's, their playing styles and personalities. Thus, he can arrange events so that the most likely outcome is the one that he's planned. Say, we have a group of thoul-hunters, who'd do anything and everything for the opportunity to hunt down some of those nasty, nonsensical and anti-simulationist thoul monsters. The players of those thoul-hunters love dungeon adventures, being the heroes and interacting with NPC's. So, the DM makes an adventure where evil thouls have taken over a castle, and they hold the castle inhabitants, including a beautiful princess, as ransom. The PC's have then an opportunity to kill thouls, go down in a dungeon, be the heroes, and interact with NPC's. Of course they could choose not to go, and spend the gaming night in the town instead. But, given the situation, that is extremely unlikely. The DM has really done everything in his power to get the PC's where he wants them.

Now THIS is the form of railroading most seen in games. This DM, not indulging in "total railroading", would be amazed, befuddled and maybe even angry, if the PC's for some reason chose to stay in town - but he would let them do it. Perhaps he would ask them questions like "Why would you do it? Your characters are thoul-hunters, this is like a dream come true to them!". The players would respond, perhaps with faulty logic, perhaps with something resembling reason. But the DM would let them do it. Was he railroading? Yes, he was. Because the players acting like that was something like a 1 in a 1000 occurence. 999 times out of a thousand, the DM would have got the PC's right where he wanted them. There was a player choice involved... but it was not much of a choice at all. This seems "railroading" to me - railroading used skillfully and productively, and for the enjoyment of all participants. I think that the highest art of railroading is when the DM presents the PC's a choice, for the purposes of the story, all the while knowing how they're going to respond - and the players don't notice being manipulated, thinking that they chose out of free will. Of course, there's nothing wrong in giving real choices as well! Giving real choices is, after all, one of the most basic and important parts of role-playing games. But some skillful railroading, whether a minor or major part of the campaign, depending on the style, can do wonders in spicing things up.

For most part, railroading is a tool of the narrativist DM. It is not the only tool in his disposal, but it's the oldest and most traditional of them. Quite rarely does a system or a campaign totally distance itself from any narrativism; usually, at least a pinch is present. Because railroading is "opaque" (the opposite of "transparent", meaning that the PC's have no other way than gut instinct to tell whether something is happening due to 1) DM's choice, 2) their own choices or 3) the random effects of the dice), it melds smoothly in a game that has also simulationist and gamist elements. The players might guess that it's happening... but they cannot be certain; even if they are, they won't mind, if the engine driver is skillful. That's an advantage that traditional methods have over some of the newer, very "transparent", indie-gaming style mechanics, like "deus ex machina points".

Summa summarum: what can be a disaster in inexperienced hands can do wonders when wielded by a DM who knows what he's doing. The lesson of today: play, play, and play some more. It's only going to get better, never worse. Your characters are not the only ones getting experience points.

Top 10 lists part 1: D&D monsters

2009-11-05T10:01:00.000-08:00

Apologia:

I'd like to now indulge in a bit in egocentrism (although ANY blog-writing is a bit egocentrist, isn't it?) and present you a couple of "top 10 lists" regarding my personal tastes in RPG's and related stuff. It's a bit pointless, but it might make a nice "breather" inbetween all the heavy analysis (both for the writer and the reader). Also, a small window to my personal preferences might shed some light on my other opinions as well. At least, dear reader, you can compare my lists to ones you would make and see if there's any overlap. If there is, that is awesome: we share something that we appreciate in the world of RPG's. If there isn't, then it just illustrates the great brevity, diversity and scope of RPG's; that too is a fine, fine thing.

The entries are in no particular order. This, the first one, is about D&D monsters.

MY TOP 10 MONSTERS IN D&D

1. Rust monster.

I'll just have to mention the ol' armadillo first. It's bizarre, it's iconic, it's the players' nightmare. And it's kinda cute as well. I've been fascinated by the rust monster since I encountered it in the solo adventure in the Player's Handbook of Mentzer's Basic Set. Despite its weirdness, it somehow feels completely natural to me. It's an animal. A bizarre animal, of course, but an animal nonetheless. There are pretty strange animals on our Earth as well, if you look close enough. It's a niche animal, a specialist. So, I feel that it's simulationistic enough for me to like it. Gamism-wise, it's challenge par excellence. A monster that has to be fought in a completely different manner compared to other monsters. Players have to keep cool and not panic; otherwise they might lose a lot of their gear, and that just spells DOOM. A plate mail and a shield worn and wielded by a guy in the front row is the backbone of any D&D-party; while one of the coolest things in D&D is that there's more than one way you can build a functional party, it just doesn't work if there's no one with a plate and a shield. And a rust monster takes that crucial defense away. It rightfully terrifies players. And that brings us to the narrativistic goodness of this monster: not only does it provoke strong emotional reactions in the players and their characters, but if it indeed is able to disintegrate some of the items of the party, the whole story changes. What might have been a mission of exploration or assassination now turns into a story about survival and escape. And personally, best of all is the fact that while this monster is a formidable threat to characters of any level, it is not a fatal threat. It might cause a death, surely, but inderectly - in the case that the players are stupid enough to continue the task that they were doing without their metal equipment. So in that case, it becomes a test of player skill. And, well, although I fancy myself in many ways a tough, uncompromising DM, I'm a big softie as well. I might make the PC's lives a miserable hell, but I just don't like to kill them if I can avoid it. And this monster gives me a chance to be mean, without taking their lives. I'll also have to mention that the tough armor class of the rust monster is very meaningful, as it prolongs the battle, granting the rustie more chances to destroy the party's equipment.

2. Carrion crawler.

Some of the same reasons apply to my fondness of the tentacled abomination as to my liking of the rust monster. Although fantastic, it somehow feels natural. Like the rust monster, the carrion crawler inhabits old, abandoned places, making it an ideal monster in my preferred low-level adventures - abandoned houses. Also, like the rust monster, it's always a moment of terror when this creature appears. It becomes the sole focus of the scene, such is its deadliness. For unlike the rustie, the carrion crawler is a killing machine. I realize its potential for killing people, and thus I use this monster carefully. I don't usually let them wander around or surprise the party. They dwell in dark, dismal holes and usually only come out when a brave PC willfully chooses to enter their lair. While potentially lethal, a carrion crawler only kills people if it succeeds in paralyzing the whole party (or if the remaining members of the party abandon their paralyzed comrades!). Thus: wise players only encounter the crawler on their own terms, and when they're good and ready. The crawler usually is able to paralyze at least a couple of adventurers, before it is put to death. The lousy armor class of the beast suits it also well: its attacks are so mighty that the PC's have much reason not to fight it at all, but the bad AC makes the fight more lucrative. Even the magic-user can hit it with his daggers; also, because the crawler's attacks don't do damage, the magic-user has a reason to enter melee. Fights with carrion crawlers are adrenaline-packed, memorable group efforts where everyone can participate... and if the adventurers manage to win, they have lost nothing.

3. Yellow mold.

Yellow mold is mean, yellow mold is nasty. It kills people, has no treasure and gives practically no XP. This monster must be the favorite of sadistic and evil DM's everywhere. I have absolutely no intention to be a sadistic or evil DM, but I try to be... challenging. And sometimes it takes a bit of yellow mold to be challenging. I think of yellow mold as some kind of an IQ test. It does not move, it does not do anything except kill you if you touch it. And an adventurer really should not touch things like that. I mean, it's yellow. And it's mold. That's enough reasons not to touch it. I also like the mold's biological nature; I am a biologist and I love plants and fungi. What's extra nasty about the mold is that the radius of the spore cloud is 10 feet, exactly the length of the famous pole used by adventurers; so unless you specified that you're holding your pole at the very end, you'll be breathing spores when you do the tapping. It's actually a good reminder that ten-foot-poling, although a very good and necessary tactic, is not foolproof. In my descriptions, I emphasize the very bright, almost unnatural colour of the mold, and I try to make it seem creepy. That should be enough reasons for the PC's to first cast a stone (or a flask of burning oil!) to the mold. Player skill being tested again, and with a monster that seems completely naturalistic, fitting effortlessly in dungeon environments.

4. Giant rat.

A superb naturalistic monster. A big rat, and not even that big at that. They could almost exist in our own world! A natural dweller in abandoned places. The added risk of disease from a bite is a bit nasty, but it's not something that the PC's shouldn't expect. This is a staple monster in my dungeons, whether low or high level: the rat is a survivor and lives everywhere. It really scratches my simulationist itch and makes any dungeon seem more real. Also, for low-level PC's, a melee victory over a horde of giant rats is not unthinkable. Feelings of glory and victory are very important, they motivate the players to press on and keep playing. A group of giant rats is an easy way to grant low-level PC's a moment of glory by steel.

5. Giant beetles.

Ah, the giant beetles. I've grouped them here; from the ones presented in Mentzer's Basic Set (Fire Beetle, Oil Beetle, Tiger Beetle), the oil beetle is my favourite, but I love them all. Again, they feel natural. Only the tiger beetles attack on sight, but with the others, I make reaction rolls. That's what I always do with animals and animal-like, neutral monsters: my vision is that monsters like that do not always attack. That kind of behavior, I think, makes them seem more real. If they always attacked, they might feel more like gamistic obstacles that I've placed to challenge my players. They are partly that, of course, but more than anything I want them to feel like something that could really exist in the context of a fantasy world. The oil beetle is my special favourite because of its oil spray attack: if the attack hits, the PC develops icky boils and suffers -2 in to hit rolls for some time. Again, a threat that is considerable, but not lethal by itself. I love those. And it gives me a chance to indulge in some gross descriptions about how the boils look like and feel like!

6. Giant Centipede.

I bet that by now you're starting to tap into my tastes. The lowly giant centipede is a naturalistic vermin that does not kill anybody. Its poison makes you unable to do physical exercise for 24 hours: what a wonderful ability! It's something to be feared, but by itself, it doesn't kill anybody. Man, was I shocked when I read that in AD&D, giant centipede poison is actually lethal. That's not my giant centipede, that's something else.

7. Insect swarm.

What's even better than giant insects? Well, normal-sized insects, of course! They feel even more real, more believable. They're even more icky, and give me the chance to describe how they feel when they crawl on a character's skin, biting and stinging. Also, since they always hit, they are a nuisance even to high-level characters, but because the damage they make is very low, I can assign these monsters even against very low-level PC's.

8. Shrieker.

First: a mushroom monster. Second: pseudo-believable, with sound ecology, and a dungeon dweller. Third: an indirect threat. All my favourite traits again! The shrieker mushroom is a useless threat just on its own, but coupled with the other dungeon dwellers, it can be lethal. The PC's better not underestimate the mighty shrieker! When the shrieker shrieks, I sometimes just roll on my table of wandering monsters made for that particular adventure, but what I like much more, is looking at the topography of the dungeon map, and deducing which monsters might hear the shriek. But what I like most of all is planning the symbiotic relationship between the shrieker and some dungeon predator (usually a carrion crawler) beforehand. The shrieker is one of the ultimate "dungeon ecology"-monsters, and plausible dungeon ecology is one of THE reasons I love D&D.

Let's face it, I could write every giant insect and fungal monster here, but I like some other kinds of monsters, too. Let's try to break the "mold", haa haa.

9. Gargoyle.

As a young DM, I was endlessly frustrated by the fact that there were no demons of demon-like monsters in D&D. I wanted really bad guys, monsters from Hell! So, I had to make do with the undead and the few demonic monsters that I could find. I also made monsters on my own (something that I don't do these days), and boy, were those things a demonic lot. The gargoyle was the most demonic monster in the manuals, though. Well, there was the beholder, that I felt was extremely demonic, but I figured that one was too tough even for my brothers' characters, who were very high level. But the gargoyle I used a lot. It's certainly evil... but mostly in appearance. If the group has magical weapons, a gargoyle is not that hard to overcome. What I like about the gargoyle these days: again, the evil appearance, and the fact that it is a nice and interesting threat to a group that has only one, or perhaps two magic weapons. For a group with no magic weapons, it's just a DM's way of saying "no". For a group with magic weapons aplenty, it's just a fairly easy monster. With my DM'ing style, I do give out magic weapons, but very stingily, so that the phase when the group has only one or two of those remains quite long. And for that period gargoyle is a nice monster, because it forces the group to change tactics. One more thing I like about the gargoyle is its aura of mystery. Is it a construct? A living creature? Or a demon? Whatever it is, I use fantastic monsters like this sparingly, only on fitting occasions, like abandoned temples.

10. Shadow.

Most of the same reasons apply as to the gargoyle, but a shadow is even more mysterious. The best thing about it to me is that it's not an undead. I know that it's undead in AD&D and some other editions of D&D, but in Mentzer, it is not. That makes it a very unique, very mysterious creature. In fact, I like it more than the gargoyle. This is a creature that always leaves my players guessing, and always terrifies them with the strength drain, as they always suppose that it's permanent. When the strength comes back, their faces just glow with happiness. If I want an inhumane, "evil spirit" type of creature, one that can just barely reach the material world, there's no better choice than the shadow. This monster just drips occultism and dread all over the place. To make them even more mysterious, I usually restrict their movement to only some areas, and they never, ever enter sunlight.

BONUS MONSTERS:

My favourite benevolent monster: Dryad.

Benevolent monsters are a big part of D&D; no matter what edition, all the monster books are full of them, and they're meant to be used. Monsters are not just challenges, they are creatures that one meets when exploring, and exploration is indeed a major part of the game (this is actually one of the very few things that I agree with the Grand Master of Flowers). And the dryad is my favourite benevolent monster. I love trees, I love hippie girls, ergo, I love dryads. Yep, I am a tree-hugging hippie and proud of it. Also, the dryads have an in-built source of drama in the fact that they die if they get separated from their tree: that's a powerful storytelling tool. I see dryads as very inhuman (but benevolent) ceratures, something between a human, a spirit and a plant. This makes roleplaying a dryad a challenging but very rewarding experience.

My favourite undead monster: Wight.

As a young DM, when I couldn't find demons to satisty my fascination with evil monsters, I had to make do with the undead. And back then, the undead were indeed my favourite monsters, especially the intelligent, more powerful ones. Thematically, I loved them, and I still do: but when I filled my dungeons with the undead all those years ago, I noticed there was a problem with their game mechanics; namely, energy drain. Especially, double energy drain. Everyone who's had their character energy drained knows how supremely evil and annoying it is. It is a tool to make players drop the hobby altogether, a weapon of supreme evil. Now I know that many old-school people think that the ability is all right, and it's the PC's responsibility to avoid the battle with energy-draining undead altogether: they think, that if the group faces a wight, wraith, spectre or a vampire in melee, they've already lost; they should have averted the monster. There is some harsh old-school sense in that statement, but it also means, that if the PC's play their cards right, we're never going to see a cool scene where the group takes on a powerful undead creature. And as for me, I want to see that scene! I've made some effort to correct the problem. First, I don't fill my dungeons with masses of powerful undead like I used to. They are rare and scary. The double-draining ones, the spectre and the vampire, are even more rare. Skeletons and zombies are of course all right, and the ghoul remains a scary and challenging opponent, and also a favourite of mine. The mummy is OK, too, but it is a big brawler, more than capable of killing lots of PC's with hit point damage alone. The spectre and the vampire are almost not usable, unless there's a cleric in the group. The wight and the wraith remain extremely scary, but not completely unfair. Of those, I slightly prefer the wight because of its material nature. It is like a little brother of the lich, a suitable boss monster for low level groups. It's clearly not a spirit but an undead creature. I envision it as not rotting and moist, but dried and parched, filled with malevolent intelligence and the dread touch of the grave. My second solution to the problem is nerfing the energy drain. I felt that a saving throw would be quite un-D&D-like, making possible battles with multiple hits from an energy-draining monster, to no actual effect. That felt quite lame to me. So, I made a system where energy drain functions otherwise by-the-book, but the XP stolen goes to this pool, called your "safe XP". Then, when you gain XP in adventuring, you get one XP from the "safe XP" pool per one normal XP earned, until your pool is emptied. That way, you get a big penalty for getting hit with an energy drain, but if you keep adventuring and surviving, eventually all your lost XP will come back. I'm quite satisfied with the results; wights are still scary, but not so unfair that I can actually use them and have the PC's battle them. Oh, and they still kill people, just ask a certain first-level bard.

Old School: Form or Content?

2009-11-03T02:02:00.000-08:00

Which one is more meaningful for a role-playing campaign that identifies itself as "Old School": using the old systems (or their modern derivatives) or playing in a style associated with the old times, no matter what the system?

To give a specific example: which one is more "Old School", an adventure focusing on the social problems of truck drivers of the 1960's, using OD&D as the system, or delving into the dungeons of Castle Greyhawk, the original notes stolen from Gary's black suitcase, using a modern, indie system that, say, lets any player be the DM whenever they feel like it?

Most importantly: does any of this even matter at all?

Let's try to begin sorting out this mess. So, there seems to exist a problem in the OSR. Always when we invent a new label, someone wants to understand the exact definition of it, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that usually labels get invented before they get defined; then, people come up with their own definitions, and after that, it's hard to come up with a common denominator. Just ask any beer geek about the meaning of the phrases "craft beer" or "extreme beer". All this leads to the fact that when people try to come up with exact definitions after the cat's already out of the bag, those definitions have to be the simplest and broadest possible, to have any meaning. And there's nothing wrong with that, I think. This just seems to be how things go.

I'm not out here to define the term "Old School Role-Playing"; for goodness' sake, I don't even have the street cred for that. Someone like the Grand Master of Flowers can do that; I'm just here to share some of my thoughts about the borders of the term. I'm not even sure whether we indeed need any definition for the term at all.

First: who defines the "true" nature of a role-playing game, the author of the game, or the community of (the first) players? Or, which one is more important? If Gary Gygax wanted AD&D to be a toolkit, a collection of rules from which you could pick your favourites, he certainly didn't make this intent clear in his presentation. Rather, his tone suggests more of an "all-or-nothing" approach: Gary's way or the highway. Whichever the case, it seems that the community of players who adopted AD&D took the toolkit approach. Very few people (except modern revivalists) seem to have played AD&D "by the book"; they took bits and pieces that they liked and amputated the rest. Let's take another, more recent example: Mark Rein-Hagen and his (first edition) Vampire: the Masquerade. Rein-Hagen strongly suggests that the game's focus should revolve around the characters' morality, indeed, their very "Humanity", which is actually represented as a game trait. Again, the reality of the game seemed to be different. V:tM seems to be suited for the morality plays envisioned by the author... if there's only one player. With a larger group, it becomes hard to keep the focus there, and the game tends to shift more towards traditional RPG's. And this is how the community played it. While all groups did not go for the full-on (and later maligned) style of "D&D with fangs, trenchcoats and katanas", very few were able to maintain the supposed focus as envisioned by the author.

So, we had these two games; both some of the most successful RPG's of all time, games that have a strong identity and immediately provoke a reaction when you mention them to any role-player. And in retrospect it seems that neither of them was played by the way suggested by the books themselves. Would anyone have the nerve to say that the early community of either was "not getting it" or "playing it wrong"? That only a careful reading of the books, decades later, with modern understanding, would grant us access to "true AD&D" or "true V:tM"? I guess one could say that.. if one was of a hagiographist bent and indeed had the nerve to ignore the reality of the situation; the very community of players and the understanding of the game that they established.

Of course, neither of those communities had much in the way of uniformity. RPG communities form as more or less isolated pockets, each having the rulebooks from a common source, but otherwise not interacting with each other. This was especially the case before the Internet, but I guess it still is more or less like that. In biology, we have a phenomenon that slightly resembles that; it's called "adaptive radiation". In adaptive radiation, we have a common source of organisms; a place where the species in question exists in a more or less uniform state. From there, the species starts migrating to many other places, it sort of "radiates" around. Small groups of the organism thus reach diverse places, more or less losing contact with each other. Then they start adapting to the environmental and biological conditions of those places. Natural selection leads to evolution, and we end up with several new species or subspecies, who might not resemble each other very much, but they all share a common ancestor... who they all resemble, at least a bit. I think it makes up a nice analogy. Before, I said that the AD&D and V:tM communities developed some sort of a common understanding of those games... but when we look closer, we can see that the "common understanding" only consists of a shared habit of ignoring parts of the rulebook. Some bits were more likely to be ignored (natural selection at work!), like psionics and weapon speed factors in AD&D or the wackiest suggestions at ego-tripping in Vampire, some stood the test of time better, like the interesting and imaginative creatures in the AD&D Monster Manual or the simultaneously simple and complex dice pool system of V:tM. But the bottom line remains: the games were sliced and diced by the community, to the point that while they had some resemblance to the original game (as presented in the books), they might not had much resemblance with each other.

Thus: while I think that we have absolutely no ground to say that the early (or current!) RPG communities were (or are) playing their games wrong, we cannot find any kernel of wisdom about the true identity of a game in the community-generated styles themselves... other than that modifying RPG's to one's tastes (and the demands of the actual gaming experience) seems almost a defining feature, something without which these games might not even be able to exist.

It now seems that while we must stick to the form of RPG's to find a definition for them (as the content seems too diverse and mutable to ever give us any), we cannot take that form seriously, so to speak. We cannot see the form as something that's set in stone. If we want a definition, it's in the form, but if we see parts of the form ignored, or foreign parts implemented in a particular game, we cannot say that it diverts from the definition. Otherwise we would have a defined a game so narrowly that no actual gaming group would qualify as its players.

Now we can go back to the original question: is the "Old School" in the system or in the style? It seems to me now that it is more in the system and less in the style. Styles are difficult to pin down, they are elusive; they are mutable; they evolve over time; and the styles written in the RPG books can have next to no resemblance with styles found in actual gaming. So, to pinpoint "Old School" gaming, you first have to pinpoint "Old School" systems. That's easy, because everyone has a different opinion on that anyway. For example, we might have someone to whom "Old School" systems consist of OD&D, AD&D, Holmes, Moldvay, Mentzer, AD&D 2nd edition, and their respective retro-clones. Then, all this person has to do, is to identify games or campaigns that use those systems, or parts of them --- and voilá, those are "Old School". All that one has to keep in mind, of course, is that labels like this are not binary, on/off things. They are a spectrum with different shades of gray. And on that spectrum, it seems to me that a game using something like OD&D as a system is "more Old School" than a game that tries to go for a style that it percieves as "Old School", but with a different system. This, however, does not make it better, more "true" (whatever that means) or even more interesting. All I'm saying is that if matters like this matter to you, there's no greater Holy Grail than the old books themselves, but even with them, "What did Gary mean?" has no more relevence as a question than "How did the players understand this?" or "Was this bit used at all?". But the question that digs deepest into the black heart of "Old School", to me, seems to be "How could I use this and this bit to have an enjoyable gaming experience next weekend?".

Motivational support

2009-10-22T03:35:00.000-07:00

Like I wrote in the last entry, my campaign world stays constant, it's laws not accommodating to the wishes of the players or their characters. But it's a huge place that has several things going on at once, and also a place that you can observe from many vantage points, so to speak (like any world, imaginary or real). Thus, while my world stays constant and true, I do have many tools with which to tinker wildly different adventures to my players. What kinds of adventures do I make? Ones that are constant with the realities of the world, ones that challenge players and their characters, ones that I find interesting... but also, ones that I think would motivate the characters and players in question to undertake and enjoy them.

This last point is quite important for me. It could be said that I sometimes tailor adventures for both my players and their characters. What do I mean with this?

First, I do believe that it's an unwritten rule (that should be adhered to) that the players should in most cases go to the adventure that the DM has prepared for them. Yes, I do believe in immersion and doing "what your character would do", but this one's my nod to... shall we say, reality. In addition to taking place in an "imagination-space", an RPG session also takes place at the kitchen table, and if there's no adventure... well, then there's no adventure. Of course the PC's could then just chat with each other, visit NPC's and do some familiarizing with the setting, update their gear, groom their horses, visit their mother's house for once and the like. I am not averse to things like these happening in an RPG, but my vision of Dungeons & Dragons is a little bit different. D&D should be action-oriented, stuff should happen, new adventures should arise all the time. So, while there's certainly some room for idle in-character chit-chat in my D&D (in fact, I love it), a session without any adventuring or travelling at all should be quite rare.

This also means that the Dungeon Master has a certain responsibility towards the players. If their characters are going to go to the adventure that the DM has prepared no matter what, even if doing so violates their characters' personalities... then I think the DM had better minimize those violations as much as he's able. While I don't think my current D&D campaign is the game to have 10-page PC backstories in (you certainly COULD play D&D that way; see earlier entries in this blog), I do require some information about the characters; something about their personality, something about their history, something about their aspirations. I familiarize myself with the characters... to get some tools.

And I use those tools for making adventures for them.

I want the characters to feel motivated. This is a branch of simulationism again, I think: some kind of "psychological simulationism", I'd say. The players could certainly play their characters on their quests without any in-character motivation: they could be "motivated" by the players themselves, the players' interest in the adventure, their need to see what's going to happen to these poor (and poorly motivated) souls. Sure, one could play that way, and it might even be interesting. But again, I want to immerse the players in my world. If I boast so much about the supposedly infallible reasons and consequences in my world, wouldn't it be silly if the PC's acted all weirdly and unreasonably in this place, going to strange quests "just because"? Sure, it would, and much of the immersion that I've tried to build would be lost. So: I make adventures that I think that the PC's in question would undertake. Nothing harder than that. Actually, it's pretty easy. But being easy does not make it not important. It becomes a little harder if the group consists of PC's who have wildly differing interests... but even then, with a little bit of work, it's not that hard. In games where the PC's do have those 10-page backstories it becomes really challenging (if also rewarding). But in D&D, where most characters are simply motivated by the need of wealth, or fame, or glory, or the desire to do good... it's not a problem.

However, it's not only about the aspirations of the characters; like I said, also their personalities and histories (and abilities!) are to be accounted. Someone likes animals a lot? Maybe local animals are being threatened. Someone can speak the Tuulikansa language? Let them find a treasure map written in that language. Someone's working class family was wronged by the nobility in the past? Even if the player has not explicitly stated that the desire to exact a little bit of vengeance to the noble class is a major part in that character's personality, he should be at least a little bit intrigued if you present an opportunity to steal something valuable from the local posh prince, thus embarassing him.

In other words: the patterns of the DM's world present tools to the players, and the patterns of the player's character present tools to the DM.

So, I tend to make adventures that motivate the characters and "press their buttons". But that's not all: I do the same thing regarding their players.

I see the "job" of the DM to be primarily that of an entertainer. Maybe I see it that way because I'm so strict about the actual rules and I allow no exceptions. That makes me much less of a "referee" (because there is really no dispute to be a referee in) and more of an entertainer. In any case, that's the side of DM'ing that interests me the most. Again, and as always, all this concerns just my personal style: your DM'ing may vary, and I pass no judgement. What this means is that I try to entertain my players. That requires that I know them as people. What are their interests? What do they enjoy most in a role-playing game? What "presses their buttons"? I'd like to think of myself as someone who understands people pretty well (and quickly). This, I think, enables me to make adventures that people find interesting. Granted, sometimes I make mistakes, but usually only regarding people that I don't know well at all. If I know a person a little bit more than superficially, I can usually tell what kinds of things that person would like to happen in a role-playing game.

And yes, what makes this a bit more tricky is that I usually never ask these things directly. I just listen to people talk, and observe them. And I do think that this method works! It's not that hard, really. Someone likes character interaction, someone likes to play the "devil's advocate", someone likes to be the leader, someone likes combat, someone likes to optimize a character, someone likes to solve puzzles, someone likes storylines, someone likes comedy... All these diverse interests could be categorized to perhaps three general classes. First, many people just like to play a certain kind of character, with no regards of the adventure that's taking place around them. These people are very easy to please, you'll just have to let them do their thing, and they'll like any adventure you present. Secondly, some people like to DO a certain thing with their character, whether it's roleplaying, powerplaying, solving problems, or doing combat. You'll just have to present those opportunities. And third, some people are not that much into their character at all, they are more into the adventure. They like certain elements in the adventure, whether it's combat, intrigue, tragedy, comedy, or romance. And guess what, you'll just have to include some of those elements in the adventure, and - wham!- you'll have a happy player.

Of course, there might be arise a conflict between the realities of the campaign world (or just your gaming style) and the preferences of the players. In those cases, I rule in favor of the campaign world and my style. Let's say, for example, that a player likes playing middle-aged people. It's not going to happen in my D&D, because one of the cornerstones of my campaign is that PC's start at the ages between 14 and 16 (I might talk about the reasons to this later). Or, someone likes taking part in world-spanning quests: that might happen, but first you'll have to reach, say, level 8, doing sporadic treasure hunts and smaller quests. Or, god forbid, someone likes to play a thoul-hunter of all things: sadly, there's no thouls in my world.

So, I am an unashamed entertainer, tailoring adventures for the (percieved) tastes of my players and their characters. I am unwilling, however, to sacrifice the integrity of my campaign world and gaming style in doing so. Also, these are in no way all the things that I keep in mind when making adventures. Making adventures is a matter of balancing your creativity on a narrow ledge, with several elements pulling you in different directions. What I call "Motivational support" is one of those elements for me, and a strong one at that, but still, one of many.

The joys of predictability

2009-10-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

I’d like to write a bit about the DM’ing style I use in D&D. I’ve used that style since 2000, when I revamped my D&D campaign, making a new world and style. I run several other games besides D&D, and with them I often utilize completely different styles. Versatility as a DM/GM is something that I strive for. I don’t think that my D&D style is the perfect, end-all-be-all way to do D&D; sometimes I fantasize about DM’ing another D&D-like campaign using a completely different style (perhaps with another system as well, such as AD&D or Castles & Crusades, to further emphasize the difference). But I really like what I’ve been doing, which is something I could call a “predictable” style of DM’ing.

There’s a lot of talk about randomness, weirdness and whimsy in the Old School Renaissance. And then there’s the talk about challenging your players by surprising them and always giving them something new, taking them out of their comfort zone. I don’t believe that these are bad concepts, quite the contrary, but I do things a little differently.

My campaign world is… predictable. The opposite of random and weird. In other words, it’s quite simulationist, in the sense that things happen for a reason. I might go so far as to say that pretty much everything that’s going on in there has a reason behind it. Most of these reasons are not outright evident, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.

Many of the adventures that I do are connected to the history of my campaign world. I reveal tiny bits and pieces, and let the players do the puzzle, if they’re interested. Many more are connected to the biogeography and ecology of the world. Again, puzzle pieces are to be found. Some are connected to the cultures and customs of the people (and monsters) living there. Ditto, puzzle pieces again. But very rarely do I make an adventure “just because”. I might come up with a good idea about an adventure, a room or a monster, but most of these never see daylight, because they would have to fit my campaign world. And if they don’t, I don’t use them. This is also why I have such hard time using modules. I do use them from time to time (and I do like using them), but I’ll have to modify them heavily to fit my campaign world. I’m very careful about the smallest details and I strive for consistency (or, again, predictability).

To make my world even more predictable, I use very few monster types. I know their distribution patterns in my world map and I’m very careful about their ecology. Often, the distribution patterns of today are the result of history. Sometimes, it’s more about biology. But the reasons are there. I’ve got my own wandering monster tables, and I really don’t want Mr. Mentzer telling me that the players are now confronting goblins while travelling on the big plains – sorry, not going to happen. They never migrated to the plains due to orc and human resistance and they prefer the northern woods anyway. You’ll never meet a goblin on the plains of my world unless there’s a specific, plot-related circumstance, of course. Similar laws govern every creature out there.

Then there’s dungeon ecology. Man, I love dungeon ecology. Frank Mentzer loves too; one of the best advices in his Basic Set was that DM’s should think what happens in the dungeon if it’s left as is for a week. I ask this question all the time when I’m making a dungeon adventure… and more: why are these creatures here? What do they eat, where do they sleep, where have they come from? There might be predation going on, or war, or a symbiosis. Also, I ask questions about the architecture of the place. Who made it? Why was it built this way? Would another way of building it have been better? Would a trap here still be intact? Would it have disturbed the daily life of this place if I place a trap here? What were the aesthetic preferences and financial resources of the builder? What was going on in the history of my campaign world when this place was built?

In other words: while I do think about things like “what would be fun?” and “how could I challenge my players and their characters?”, the question “is this realistic in the reality of my campaign world?” kind of overrides them. Call it Gygaxian naturalism, hardcore simulationism, what you will… that’s what I do.

However, I do want to emphasize that this desire to simulate a fictional reality only goes so far. This is still D&D, a game and a pastime. It would be great to write a book about the symbolic meanings of fabric colours in some fictional culture in this world, but it would not support the actual gaming experience very much. Also, and I shouldn’t even mention this, but a lot of physical realism is thrown out of the window because of the combat system (and other systems) of D&D, and that’s just how I like it. All this talk of “realism” only means that my campaign world obeys the laws of a fantastic reality… to an extent, and on some aspects of life. Tapeworms do exist in this world, but the PC’s are not going to get one. A 10^th level fighter will not go down from a single sword hit, no matter how hard you hit. Infections exist, but the wounds of the PC’s will not get infected. And sometimes, when plot-critical stuff happens, the PC’s just “happen to be there”. You know, it’s D&D, not a reality simulation. Some RPG’s strive to be “reality simulations” and there’s certainly nothing wrong about that… but (my and usually anyone’s) D&D is something else.

Nevertheless, my approach is extremely naturalistic to a degree, and this is one of the reasons why I do it: it gives my players tools, and using these tools they can utilize and improve their player skill.

Heck, I don’t even let my players take a peek at the Basic Set Player’s Handbook. Clerics get one measly spell at 2^nd level (one recently got resist cold… yeah, that’s his one and only spell). I think in terms of “character knowledge” and I categorically refuse any player attempts to use their real-life knowledge (or “D&D knowledge” learned in another campaign or with another character) to solve a situation. I thus take many tools away from my players. But I give them loads more in the form of the predictable world. They’ll just have to learn how to use those tools. And rest assured, a predictable world automatically means that there’s dozens of tools at the players’ disposal. If you pay attention to monster strength, behaviour, habitat and ecology, you’ll get tools for fighting (or avoiding) them later. If you pay attention to the original purpose and usage of the dungeon of the week, you’ll get tools for surviving that dungeon. If you pay attention to the clues about campaign history, you’ll get tools for impressing NPC’s and understanding the big picture and the metaplot.

Anything that has a pattern can be used as a tool.

And sometimes, just sometimes… I can be mean and break the pattern that I’ve cherished. I almost never do that, but I reserve the right to do it, just as an exception that proves the rule. And if there’s no pattern, there’s no joy or surprise in breaking it, is there? It rarely gets completely weird, zany or… fantastic in my D&D, but if and when it does, I want it to mean something. And you can bet that there’ll be a reason for the anomaly!

And finally, perhaps the most important reason for all these patterns: immersion in character. While I do acknowledge that there are several means with which character immersion can be achieved, the simulationist route is definitely one of them. When you (the player) realize that the world works, and with that I mean it works predictably, it feels more real; thus, your character and his/her interaction with that world feels more real as well. Certainly, this is not an “old school” virtue, but to me it is a very important one.

Thus, I do feel that “predictable naturalism” is as viable a method of Dungeon Mastering “old-school” D&D as randomness, surrealism, and thinking in terms of challenges. It does present challenges, but the challenges arise from, and are defined by the reality, rather than other way around. Although it limits the use of player skill, it rewards it as well. It supports the “zero to hero” principle of D&D by giving knowledge that accumulates, thus making experienced characters not only more powerful, but more knowledgeable as well. It supports unorthodox solutions to problems due to the existence of a reality that’s in many (but not all) cases above the game rules in hierarchy.

Yeah, I love my predictability and naturalism. But if I had more time, I’d make another, parallel D&D campaign, in the spirit of Tolkien, Dragonlance, Star Wars, Hollywood and adventure path railroads, with the narrative as omnipotent king! There’s so much in Dungeons and Dragons to be explored… and only 24 hours in a day.

How should we play D&D?

2009-10-06T07:18:00.000-07:00

I could just type "any freakin' way we like" and that would be the end of it. However, let's try to make it more interesting and be a little more long-winded about it.

This is a huge subject and it's almost impossible to even decide where to begin. Let's begin by looking at the brevity and scope of the game. There's the choice of the system. D&D has many versions around, and those versions do have their differences. When we utter the phrase "D&D", I think that most of us immediately get an association that's an amalgam of all of those editions (or at least some of them). I've played mainly Mentzer Basic and almost nothing else, and I still get that kind of an association. It is a dream of many people to put together all (or some) of those editions, extracting the golden bits from them and removing the dirt. To put it another way, those that are aware of the many incarnations of D&D tend to borrow at least a bit from other editions, even if they play just one. Even if they don't, few have the nerve to say that anything outside their edition of choice is "not D&D". Even the Grand Master of Flowers, in his OD&D campaign that searches for the hidden truths and origins of our dear hobby, has allowed the newcomer Thief class and many other innovations.

After the choice of the system, even if one does not house-rule it at all, there's the choice of which parts to use. This decision usually falls to the Dungeon Master. Even if he decides to play the game "by-the-book", allowing all classes, weapons, monsters, treasures, magic items, and special rules... all of these things do not come into play every session. What comes into play is decided by him, and to a lesser extent, the players. The DM chooses which monsters to face. He chooses the layout of the dungeons. He chooses the quantity and quality of the traps. These all are decisions. A decision to use a certain monster is also a decision not to use another one. I know that Gygax made some statistics about how many of the rooms should contain treasure, monsters, traps, or be empty, but even if the DM follows this guideline to the letter, he does in fact decide everything else. Even if he follows Mentzer's advice to put mainly one-hit dice monsters to the first dungeon level, two-hit dice monsters to the second dungeon level etc, he chooses which monsters to use and how many of them to put in a room. Even if the DM randomly generates a dungeon, randomly puts stuff to it, randomizes which monsters to use and rolls treasure at random... he still has to come up with a in-game reason for the existence of the dungeon.

Let's assume that we have a really stubborn DM who desperately wants to play D&D "the way it should be played" and completely by the book. He makes a dungeon like I described before and begins the session by saying: "You are in front of a dungeon. The corridor is 10x10 feet and continues ahead beyond the length of the torchlight. What do you do?" If the players ask anything about why they are there or what is this dungeon, he just repeats the above phrase. He does this for the sake of authenticity, to eliminate anything that make the game diverge from its origins.

Of course the game was never ran that way; a human element was always involved. But our little luddite of a DM might think that only a game ran by Gygax or Arneson would be "real D&D", and in his search for the dark heart of the game, the core of it's existence, he would remove his own fingerprints from the game, to make it, if not the real thing, at least a good replica.

But of course, this is all doomed to fail. Even the best battle plan does not survive the reality of the battle. When the session starts, it's all out of control. Do the players imitate perfectly the strategies AND aesthetics of 1974? How do they communicate? How much out of character-communication should be allowed? How many Monty Python jokes? What would Gary do?

Even if the DM leaves the horrible chaos called the 'players' out of it, he should soon realize that this is really an equation with mountains of variables. Even if he is really a grognard who was there when it all started and played with Gary, and thus has first-hand knowledge of the "true soul" of D&D (unlike most of us), it should dawn to him at some point that it's impossible to recreate that reality.

And hey, let's give this imaginary guy some credit where it's due. He understood, that to create a D&D experience that was completely as intended, completely by-the-book... the first step would have to be removing the human element. The human element makes choices; choices create diversions. Diversions destroy any hope of purity of gameplay. And that was only a first step, half-taken, from a long journey that was never even possible in the first place. We didn't even discuss misunderstanding author intent (possible even for someone who gamed with Gary) or the myriad choices of gaming styles. The former I've already talked about; let's talk a little bit about the latter.

System does matter, sure, sure. But does it always create all the content, all the feeling of the game, all the playing style? No; and I've come up with what I think is a nice analogue of it. It's the same relationship as with human biology and human culture. Biology is the gaming system, culture is the playing style. Does biology create culture? Yes and no. We are ultimately limited by our biology, indeed. We are only as smart as a human being can get. We cannot fly like the birds, and we certainly cannot make sugars out of carbon dioxide and water in our cells, like plants do. These are ultimate limits; we might stretch them with evolution, but that takes a long, long time. For now, we're stuck with what we have. So we cannot make a culture that centers around flying around with our arms, or lying in the sun for photosynthesis, or being as smart as Tiamat or Bahamut. But all the other possible cultures... all the possible cultures that do not contradict with what we are, and what we are capable of doing, are indeed possible. We can make a custom of walking with our hands. We can make a religion that centers around wearing pink clothing. We can make a political party that advocates the practice of whispering. We can make as good science as our brains are capable of, but not better.

So, for example, in Mentzer Basic D&D, we cannot make a playing style that centers around spellcasters using both arcane and clerical spells. We cannot make a playing style that centers around going in the dungeon and bringing back more than 400 coins in a single backpack. We cannot make a playing style with fighters casting fireballs. The system explicitly denies all those, so unless you houserule, these are impossible.

But you can make a style that centers around horse-riding, befriending orcs, using laser pistols, facing elder horrors, finding a husband or a wife, losing your humanity, going along pre-written, railroaded adventure paths, finding artifacts in every room of the dungeon, or dying more than in Paranoia. Granted, these might not all fit in with your sensibilities of what D&D is or what it isn't. But none of these are explicitly denied by the system. The system might not help you much if you want to play D&D with the theme of losing your humanity; the system of Vampire might be better for that. But there's nothing stopping you from playing around with themes like these, still with the system of D&D, by-the-book. It might not be optimal... but it's possible. It diverges from the implied 'core' of D&D('s), but so does anything and everything else you do with it.

I'm not an enemy of the system. I think the system can help a great deal in establishing a playing style. I'm not an enemy of implied styles, either. My D&D adventures tend to be fairly conservative, naturalistic (even pedantic) attempts at making up a somewhat predictable alternate reality for my players to immerse themselves in. I have a certain style and I usually stick to it. But I do realize that I wouldn't have to, if I wanted something else. You can fool around with the system, even without "breaking the rules". Heck, that's what good ol' Jim Raggi does. The first adventure I had with his group was quite eye-opening. It was a suspenseful affair of sneaking in steam-filled caverns without much dangers to speak of, just suspense and a feeling of danger, even if there was not much to back it up. We had one single fight, and the rest of it we just wandered around and collected valuables. I liked it very much, the atmosphere was immense. But I was confused. Why was he running an adventure like this... with D&D? It was a pure Call of Cthulhu adventure to me. If this was his preferred style, why was he not running CoC to us? But then I came up with an answer. D&D didn't prevent him from this.

Indeed, Basic D&D seems to be a good system for multiple playing styles, due to its lightness. It doesn't carry much dead weight with it. Focused systems like Call of Cthulhu are great... but if they were used for a completely different style, there would be much dead weight with the system, so to say. With something as light as old D&D, there isn't.

So, the rules of D&D allow multiple playing styles, even if you don't break the rules at all. People have most likely used and abused these different playing styles from day one. It is a nice academical exercise to try to search for the 'true D&D', and there's nothing wrong with it; heck, I do that from time to time myself. So I have absolutely nothing against those guys; keep digging to the past, I say! But one should realize the impossibility of the quest, and approach it with the fatalistic attitude of a doomed, Wagnerian hero. D&D is like life; it's diverse. You can research cellular biology to your heart's content; but even if you understand everything about the cell and it's mechanisms, don't think that you understand all there is to life. If you want to understand life, it just might be better to acknowledge it's chaotic diversity and just simply open your heart to it.

How to play chess wrong

2009-10-05T00:51:00.000-07:00

Continuing on the previous themes, let's take a look at chess. It is a game and a language. How should it be played? I know the rules but I'm not what you would call a chess player, i.e. I quite rarely engage in a game, so please forgive me if I make any wrong assumptions about the game in this entry. I don't think chessboards and pieces come with a manual; at least they didn't when I was young. There is a general understanding of chess in the player community; people know how the game is played. There indeed seems to exist something that we could call a "one true way" of playing chess. Granted, there are many playing styles and strategies but they all use the same premise and the same set of rules. I will indeed relate all this to role-playing games later on, but at this point let's just say that there's nothing wrong with chess having a one true way of playing, quite the opposite.

How come we have this game that is played worldwide, yet with this striking uniformity? I think there are a couple of reasons. First, chess has a long history. It's had orders of magnitude more years than for example D&D to establish itself. Secondly, it's a simple game, at least when compared to something like role-playing games. This is not to belittle chess, think of it as comparing chemistry to biology: in biology, our view of reality is "zoomed out" from chemistry, and thus we observe more groups and entities (that all include the "zoomed in" reality of chemistry). So, an "ideal" biologist (who certainly does not exist) should understand all of chemistry, and his own discipline on top of it. In this instance, what I mean with "simpler" is "having less moving parts". It has nothing to do with which game or discipline is more challenging (unless you're trying to be an "ideal" biologist or D&D-player, understanding everything in more "zoomed in" realities than the one of your choosing... but that would be really counter-productive). And finally, third, chess players seem to agree on the rules. They all not only play the same way; more than that, they think that that is desirable, the way that things should be.

Let's compare, then, the gaming culture of chess to that of RPG's. The way I understand it, chess players don't just meet their old buddies every Sunday to engage in a game. I would think that what they would enjoy more is meeting new players and having a game or two with them. They can do that without the need to discuss the rules (or house rules!) and have a discussion about strategy and tactics instead. The rules of chess seem to be perfectly suited for one way of playing. The system matters; form creates content. Would anyone even want to play chess differently? Let's have an exercise in imagination:

Due to its history, chess terms tend to be more than mathematical operators. They are called knights and queens, not just "A's" and "B's". You win the game by capturing the King, not the "prime piece". Your King escapes to the tower (the rook). Your pawn is "promoted". There's a strong feeling that a piece is "killed", not just removed from table, when you capture it.

Why all this evocative drama? If chess is just an exercise in mathematics, a content created by the rules, why not have more neutral, logical terms instead? Of course the terms come from history, but I think there's more to it than that. If chess players were such cold, calculating evil geniuses that us non-chess players sometimes see them as, they would certainly have changed the terms. Rather, I do believe that the aesthetics of the terms appeal to them.

And aesthetics is the gateway to imagination.

Because of the terms used, the rules of chess are not simply mathematics. They imply that the abstract board really is just a representation of another reality, where armies of peasants clash while the nobility and the clergy are scheming brutal plots of conquest. The weird movement of the knight represents the agility of his horse. The straight-up movement of the rook, his power. The diagonal ways of the bishop, his otherworldliness. The two-square first move of a pawn, the battlefield charge.

Thus, someone might ask: where is the real battle taking place? Where is the real game taking place? Is it here on the board, that seems to be just a representation? Or is it in the airy nothingness of imagination, a midsummer-night's dreamworld that we can only access through the help of this magical focus, the chessboard, that in this way of thinking, now seems to be more like an ouija board?

I think I'm not stretching too much if I say that most chess players, even fleetingly, give some thoughts to that Platonic otherworld. I know I do. Whenever I play chess, I always think of the battle that's taking place. Granted, I do have an overactive imagination, but I strongly suspect I'm not alone.

Is it "wrong", then, to think of this world? Chess terms seem to suggest that it is not, even though it's not said out loud. And from there, it's a small step of going from "how could I win this game?" to "what would I do if I was this piece?". Just because of the terms (and, the outlook of the pieces, we cannot forget that!), it seems that the proud firstborn of Gamism does in fact have an ugly twin sister called Simulationism... and Narrativism too, in fact. Gamism might pretend that his sisters are not there, but they are. If the pieces represent something (making them a simulation), then, what the pieces do makes up a story of some sort (a narrative).

And if we can imagine a person playing chess motivated by the simulation ("what would my piece do?"), thus engaging in simulationism, we can also imagine another one, motivated by the narrative ("what would make a "cool" game? what if I lured my opponent to attack with this clever plot, then I would suddenly make a chessmate with my pawn, now promoted to queen?"), thus engaging in narrativism. Whenever a player thinks of a "cool", dramatic plot that might give him a flashy victory, and forsakes a better but "boring", straight-ahead strategy because of it, he's forsaken the basic premise of the game - gamism, play to win - and engages in narrativism.

Are these people playing chess wrong? Given the universal and uniform understanding of chess, I believe we have evidence to say yes, they are. But are they bad people because of it? I don't think they are, unless they ruin someone else's game because of it. It's a matter of language and communication, again. If your opponent is expecting a straight-up, play-to-win match, and you refuse to sacrifice your bishop, even though it would be beneficial, because you think your queen needs some spiritual advice - then you might ruin his gaming experience. But if you just play with your old buddies every Sunday and they know of your simulation and/or narrative-motivated ways, and are O.K. with it, even though they might be of a more gamist bent themselves ---

then it's certainly not wrong (in an ethical sense), and to me it sounds like an extremely fun way to spend an afternoon.

Form and Content in RPG's, part 3: Of Systems and Matters

2009-10-02T07:28:00.001-07:00

Mr. Ron Edwards, the famous indie RPG guru, laid down some heavy text when he wrote his famous article, "System Does Matter". It's some time since I read it so I'm speaking from memory. System does matter, huh? Somehow, that's self-evident. We have rules in role-playing games, and they are there for a reason, right? The rules are an answer to a question: what is this game? What do we want to do with this game? But that famous piece of text really put us against the wall. We had assumed that the rules of each game were intrinsically "perfect", and automatically guided us towards a playing style that the game designers had had in mind in the first place. Suddenly, we had formalism: the game WAS the rules. The content WAS written in the form. What Mr. Edwards was saying, I think, was that the game - everything about it: the basic premise, the mood, the goals, everything in the playing experience - was born from the rules, the game system. What he was saying was that we should be more aware of the type of game, the type of experience that we are trying to invoke; and that we should have a set of rules to support that type of experience.

And frankly, it was about time someone said that out loud.

We've had game systems and we've had playing experiences. But had they connected? Here was a guy who was saying that they should connect. I do agree... but yet, in the last entry I was yelling about how it's so difficult to grasp the intentions of the writer. And in the entry before I said that we all create our own meanings - "contents" - when we experience a body of writing. How does all this come together?

Let's look at something that I think is revealing in this matter: the second edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I never played the game but I've read the books, and of people's experiences with it. Here it seems that we had a system that was more (brutally) simulationist than anything - simulationist according to the vision of Gary Gygax, that is, no matter that the books were no longer authored by him - and that was clearly aiming for another type of playing experience. It was aiming for a heroic, epic narrative, and yet had no system to support it.

And guess what?

Although the system certainly didn't do much help, may people indeed played those epic Tolkien-rip-offs (or Weiss/Hickman-rip-offs) with 2nd ed. AD&D. And they had fun. Many people probably played that way even back with 1st edition. So they came up with their own content, with no support of the form. Were they stupid or misguided? I think not.

All they needed was that form didn't come in the way of the content they had chosen or percieved.

If role-playing games were just games - simple, gamist games - then the system would indeed be king, and nothing else would matter. But it so happens, that they are much more. In the terms coined by Mr. Edwards himself, they have two more axises: simulationism and narrativism. Simulationism creates a make-believe reality and immerses you in it. Narrativism makes a story for the participants to enjoy. And as long as these elements are present in the game, players can concentrate on them more than in the system itself. They can percieve these parts as more important than the system itself.

If we accept that people read RPG's differently, we can indeed see the value of a neutral, simple system: a system that does not try to dictate the way people play, but the opposite - a system that does not get in the way that people play. This kind of system might be bland and uninspiring, but it could be played in several different ways... like the various iterations of D&D have been played over the years. GURPS is neutral like this, but not simple; no matter the setting, it forces the heavy system down the throat of the players. So in a way, it's not that neutral after all. So, am I advocating a neutral and universal system? No, I'm not; I'm just pointing out its pros and cons. Do I think that system does matter? Yes and no, the same answer.

You see, I'm the kind of slippery weasel who much prefers analyzing and dissecting opinions to actually subscribing to one.

I do think that the rules and the system are your friends. It's much more easy to work with them than despite of them. Creator intent is part of what the rules are, and I do think that it's kind of laudable, if futile, to search for it in role-playing games. But these are not the only ways to play these games. It's been said before, but it bears repeating: if you're having fun, you're playing it right. I'm not one to pick sides, but if pressed at gunpoint, I'd rather side with the crazy people who use RPG books for darts boards than those who only see a one true way.

Form and Content in RPG's; the problem of language

2009-10-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

Every one of us who's ever played an RPG has certainly pondered about their form and content from time to time. The form of a role-playing game must certainly be the very books in which the system is presented. Beginning in the physical shape and the aesthetics of the book and layout, the form really comes alive with the text itself. The fluff and crunch alike, as written, every sentence, are part of the form. The author of the game might have some idea about which parts of the text are more important than others, and he might openly state those thoughts in the text itself.

However...

these thoughts might not come through to the reader. I'm not defending stupid readers, or saying that people who read RPG books are stupid and cannot grasp the author's intentions. What I'm saying is that any time we communicate - using language or any system of communication - the message gets muddled. Unless you can do telepathy, you'd better come to terms with the fact that any kind of communication is imperfect. If you are good in using language, if you strive for clarity and logic - then your message might be more easily understandable than if you're not that adept with language or if you choose an obscure or indirect style of communication. But in any case, the message, the intention - it gets muddled, and there's nothing you can do about it.

So when we come to the "content", the "meaning" of a role-playing game; that is, how a game is used, how it "should" be used, how it works, what does it do, we can percieve a problem. It's certainly not a problem of just role-playing games; it's a problem of language. If we are using simple language about matters that have little room for interpretation, like the language of mathematics or physics, this problem can be practically non-existent. When we move to a more complicated systems (meaning, things that can have more interpretations) like protein structure or those instructions of putting together IKEA furniture, the problem becomes bigger. And when we deal with really complicated things like movies or role-playing games, the problem just explodes in magnitude.

So: can we understand a role-playing game? Can we percieve the original intentions behind it? Can we play it the "right way"? Should we even try? Or does it not matter, should we just use those RPG books as coffee pot stands or darts boards because we're all right in our special way anyway and communication is impossible? I'll talk about that in the next and final part of this series...

Form & Content (Introduction)

2009-10-02T04:32:00.000-07:00

The relationship of form and content is nothing less than absolutely fascinating, to me. Of course, there is no general and absolute "form" and "content"; there are particular forms and contents, and their relationships are things that really interest me. What I mean with "form" is, well, a thing's physical shape. What it looks like. What it's structure is. What it is, from a material point of view. And "content": that means... what's "inside". What's the "meaning" of something. What's the "message" it tries to bring across. Or, more physically: what a thing does. What it's good for. What it's used for. How we understand it, from our human point of view.

Being and Doing, Syntax and Semantics... that's what I'm talking about. I'm certainly no philosopher, just a bearded unemployed guy with too much free time on my hands... but that will not stop me from trying to be all smart and deep! I mean, what were the Greek philosophers if not bearded, unemployed guys with too much free time? And what does this all have to do with role-playing games? Bear with me, dear reader; I'll come to that soon enough.

In protein biochemistry, the relationship of form and content is clear for all to see. There can be no question that in this case, the relationship is really intense. Form is content. What a certain protein does, can be completely explained by looking at it's structure. Granted, science does not understand this connection yet completely fully and absolutely... we still cannot predict all a protein does by looking at it's 3D-structure (heck, we cannot even predict the 3D-structure even if we know the amino acid sequence), but the relationship can be seen, and it's strong. Proteins can be thought of as tiny machines made out of simple, jointed blocks (the amino acids). They do numerous things in living cells, being absolutely vital for life, and the things that they do are quite mechanical and simple. They have evolved to do certain tasks, and while they are not perfect machines (no living thing is), one can see that there's a clear connection between their structure and their function. If they want to grab a glucose molecule by the neck, you can bet that there's just a gap shaped like that (and having the right electromagnetical environment) in their "skin". If they want to be in the cell membrane, you can be sure that their outer layers are nonpolar, just like the insides of a cell membrane (otherwise they could never get in or stay there). Form is content and there's nothing anyone's interpretation can do about it.

But when we go to more complex systems, we tend to percieve less of this connection between form and content. Let's look at cinema. Some casual moviegoers tend to find the "meaning" or the "core" of a film in its plot or dialogue. Some think it's more subtle and in between the lines - in allegory, for example to recent events or to real people. While there's nothing wrong about any of these views - mind you, we're interpreting art here, there's no "truth" but all opinions - there is a school of thought that thinks differently. It's called "formalism", and it searches for the "core" of the film in the film itself - in the manner it tells us about things, rather than in what it is actually telling about. I find this absolutely fascinating, and I do think that this kind of thinking lets us understand cinema on a whole different level.

But why isn't this simple elegance clear to everyone? Why doesn't everyone think like that - that in cinema, as with biochemistry, form equals content - at least to a large extent? The answer is simple: because there's room for alternative views, unlike in biochemistry. A film is such a big thing that you can see some things in it, while being blind to (or disinterested about) others - and this is as it should be. One can enjoy and understand films on many different levels, and there's no big, bad Dungeon Master's Guide telling you that some of these ways are wrong. Actually, I'm sure that some people are saying exactly that... but I don't buy it. I may be a cinematic formalist to a large extent, but there's no way to prove this interpretation - this way of looking at the source material - superior: just ask people coming from a movie. What was it about? What kind of a film was it? What defined the film? You can bet you'd hear all sorts of differing explanations, all from people who enjoyed the movie. Is not a purpose of a film to provide enjoyment for the audience? No matter how that enjoyment is drawn? I think so. The director, the critic and the movie-goer might all see wildly different things in a film. Who has the right to define the film? Certainly not the director - just look at George Lucas and the continuing fiascos with the re-releases of the original Star Wars trilogy. But neither does the critic or the movie-goer have that right. And in a way, they all have that right... for themselves.

The director knows the original intentions behind a film; the critic might see all kinds of hidden undercurrents in it and can interpret it better than anyone; and the movie-goer relates it all to HIS life and understanding, seeing things that make the film meaningful for him.

I know that some people think that it's the creator's right to define a thing that he did, but I don't buy it. Once it's public, it's out of your hands. And even if they "horribly misinterpret" it all, all the while enjoying the work... who are you to judge them?

In the next post, I'll try to relate all this crap to role-playing games!

Nostalgy

2009-10-02T03:30:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a strange relationship with the old school role-playing community and nostalgy. On the other hand, the old-schoolers praise the innovations, playing styles and systems of old. On the other, they seem to want to avoid being labeled "nostalgy gamers", even going so far as to say that nostalgy has nothing to do with it, and these games deserve praise on purely logical and objective grounds. I can't and won't speak for anyone else but myself, but I'm big on nostalgy. BIG. On all levels of life. For me, this is one of the grandest emotions one can experience, and I consciously crave it. But am I a nostalgy gamer?

First, I'll remind you all one more time that I never quit playing Mentzer Basic D&D. It's getting rather tiresome, isn't it? But it's also a case evidence against me being a nostalgy gamer. Granted, the people I played it with changed, and I changed the campaign world from the Known World/Mystara to a world of my own making, but... I kept DM'ing D&D.

That said, I always feel grand, sweeping nostalgy whenever I play D&D, and I welcome it. I remember the games of my youth. And guess what? Like most people, the games I played as a kid were not always that good. Granted, some were good, even excellent. I did make perhaps a dozen very good adventures, but we played so much, that my creativity was strained. And of course I was still a kid with a kid's imagination; vivid and enthusiastic but of course lacking in depth. But the quality of those adventures is beside the point. We were kids, and childhood is always magical. Always. Playing D&D these days is a trip back to those times... granted, it is also much more. Of course I make different adventures these days, being an adult. But I would be lying if I said that I don't feel nostalgic when I play D&D, or that that nostalgy is not a major appeal to me, because it is.

Then there's another shade of nostalgy, although I'm not sure if I should call it that. A feeling of the past coming alive... even if I was not a part of that past. What am I talking about? A sort of collective nostalgy, or a feeling of history. This feeling raises itself when one plays or thinks about the old-school games, and the environment in which they were played. When I think of history, I try to imagine a certain time, with all its phenomena. I try to imagine the zeitgeist, the big state of affairs. Whether it's a movie from the 1930's or a band from the 1960's or an RPG from the 1970's... when I try to understand these particulars, I try to imagine the general time and milieu (thanks, EGG!). It requires a lot of information, but once I have absorbed all that, I am sometimes successful in imagining a state of how things were. Granted, this might be all wrong; it's just my imagination (even if it is fueled by "facts"), but nonetheless, when this is successful, I get myself a powerful and vivid image of the past. And when I relate it to the present... what I feel is... nostalgy. It might be a false nostalgy based of erroneous premises, and I was never there to begin with, but I don't care.

THIS is the kind of "general and impersonal" nostalgy that one might also get from old games. This is what I feel when I read those first edition AD&D manuals or modules. I never played them, I was never there... but I can get the feeling of what it might have been like.

To get this kind of feeling, one must first understand things. If you don't understand why poison would kill you instantly, or why being a paladin would require 17 charisma, or why you would roll for gaining monthly internal parasites in a game that was clearly about a "heroic quest"... if these things are incomprehensible to you, then you cannot get that "false nostalgy" about that time. Granted, you might disagree. But agreement is no prerequisite for understanding. And understanding (or remembering) really is the prerequisite for feeling... nostalgy.

So, whether it's memories of my own past, or false memories arising because of a too vivid imagination, I not only tend to get ambushed by nostalgy when dealing with old-school games, but I actively search for it. It's not the end-all reason why I play these games, far from it; but I can't deny it's there. There are certainly lots of things to praise in old-school games, even on completely rational and objective grounds; I'll talk about them later. But nostalgy is indeed my friend and among the reasons I play (and am interested in) old editions of D&D. If for you, dear reader, it isn't, I pass no judgment.

My roots in D&D

2009-10-02T02:40:00.000-07:00

The fact that there is something called the "Old School Renaissance" in role-playing games in the Internet warms my heart. An enthusiasm about the games of yore, games that surely deserve much praise and love? Sure, sign me in. I still play Mentzer's D&D (since 1989) and I never stopped playing. So I wouldn't say that it's a "Renaissance" for me. Heck, looking at the year I started playing, I know that there's a lot of guys around that would say that I'm not "Old School" either. The way I hear it, many people think that the Mentzer D&D is not "Old School" at all.

Well, if I'm not "Old School" and if it's not a "Renaissance" for me, I can still write about it, can't I? Because it interests me, and because I self-identify as an "Old School" D&D-player, no matter what you old beards would say.

Actually it only dawned to me quite recently that the version I was playing, and the one that I played as a kid, was nowhere near the oldest version of D&D in existence. I had always assumed that it had been just that. I mean, it was primitive, it was simple, and it was called D&D, while there was something else called "ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS" in print. So it seemed to me that the D&D brand was the old and simple one, while AD&D was the new and improved one.

Here in Finland, we had a (legendary) Finnish translation (by the equally legendary Jari Pauna) of the Mentzer D&D. We had Basic set, the Expert set, the Companion set and the Master set. Only the Immortal set was never translated. I had all of these boxed sets, and that's what we played. I knew that AD&D was around; Mentzer not only mentions it in the Basic set, but there were also advertisements for it in the back pages of those books. However, I never bought or played it. Wanna know why? Well first, it was in English, there was no translation available. I was actually pretty good in English at school, but I had no self-esteem to actually try reading a big book (although in retrospect, I think it would have posed no problem for me and would actually have helped me learn more). But secondly and more importantly, Mr. Frank Mentzer clearly states in the Basic book that the AD&D version is MUCH more complicated and well, ADVANCED. Well, I said "Yes, Sir" and kept playing the Basic version. It seemed to me that the advanced version was for geniuses and adults, and ordinary kids like myself should stick to the Basic version. I thought that AD&D must be based on exact sciences, physics and biology, and it must include thousands of hit descriptions on real anatomical locations with different weapons and accurate results... that's what I thought. Little did I know that it was the same game with hard covers, a couple more classes and free class/race combinations...

This is also why I used to feel bad about AD&D and AD&D players. I thought that it was a pretentious game for pretentious people who wanted to boost their ego by playing an "advanced" game. Man, did I hate the word "advanced" in the name; it immediately suggested that my version was "not advanced", i.e. stupid, and that anyone who played it was stupid as well. At the same time I envied AD&D players and desperately wanted to know more about the game, but my pride was too much: I did not want to join these people who clearly implied that my game of choice was stupid.

What's funny is that with all the Expert, Companion and Master sets, the "Basic" D&D was probably more "advanced" than AD&D... but let's not go there. We would have to define what "advanced" means, and establish some understanding about how complex or complicated a game system really wants to be... and that would take the rest of the day. Nuh, can't do that, I still got a Star Wars adventure to run tonight.

So; I kept playing Basic D&D and had a complex love/hate relationship with AD&D due to my low self-esteem and ignorance of what AD&D really was. There was no internet to mine for information those days! And whether I'm part of the OSR or not, the subject matter interests me and I'll keep writing about it.

Dungeons & Kobolds?

2009-10-02T01:55:00.000-07:00

I mean, what a trite and unimaginative name for a RPG blog. However, there's a story behind it. Hear, o prince: Back in the day, when we were young and the grass was a little greener and the sky was a little bluer, we used to waste our afternoons indoors, playing a wonderful game called DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, made by Frank Mentzer on the heritage of the esteemed gentlemen Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. These names did not mean much to me back then, but they've come to mean more to me recently, when I've delved back into the history of the hobby of role-playing. We played Dungeons & Dragons all the time. I was always the Dungeon Master; I was the one who had the inclination and the imagination for it, and I owned the game. We lived in a small village in Western Finland; in the beginning, I had five players, and by the time I was 18 and moved to Helsinki to study, I think I had DM'ed the game for more than ten people.

My players had great fun being players; however, most of them also wanted to be the DM from time to time. I would not allow them to look at my books other than the Player's Handbook, as that would spoil them the fun. So, what they did, was making their own systems. They took everything they could see (or remember) from the Player's Handbook, and approximated the monster and treasure systems they had encountered in our D&D adventures. What was interesting, was that for a long time, no one wanted to make a different system. They just copied D&D. Granted, they wanted to "improve" it by making the official package of six torches a package of seven torches in their version, or made the infamous ten-foot pole an eleven-foot pole. Sure, we used the metric system and thus had 3-meter poles and 3.5 meter ones as the "improved" version, but as you see, that card in the Munchkin game is clearly based in reality.

And one of my dear friends, Mr. R., called his "present-clone" DUNGEONS & KOBOLDS. I thought it was a terrible name, even back then, and I remember asking him why would he choose such a name for his game. Well, he promptly said, that as it's just the same game, the name is just more representative, more fitting. You would rarely see a dragon in DUNGEONS & DRAGONS; you would much more often fight kobolds, these small and pesky, annoying and weak dog-men. He was right, of course, in a blunt and brutal way, and I knew it. That was the reality of the game, and he taught me that. I still thought that DUNGEONS & DRAGONS was a better name, even though it did not describe the reality of the game as well. It was more grandiose, more dramatic, promising of greater things to come. And boy did their characters ever fight dragons; it just came later. Moreover, as I was the one who recruited other kids to the game, I would never have used the name D&K, as no one unfamiliar to the D&D game would know what a kobold is. Marketing-wise, a dragon in the name was much better.

And that is why I've chosen the terrible name of DUNGEONS & KOBOLDS for my blog; it describes the reality of the D&D game. It's in honor of Mr. R., as he was a great and enthusiastic player (and DM), if quite a bit on the power-playing side. I plan to write about role-playing games in general and old editions of D&D in particular, as well as wax nostalgic about the games we played when I was young. I still play D&D (the same edition; I actually never stopped playing it. Granted, I started playing Call of Cthulhu and Vampire and self-made systems... but I never stopped playing Frank Mentzer's Basic D&D) as well as other RPGs and I might write about them, too.

In Internet forums, I'm known as "Xaltotun"; that was the name of the undead sorceror in Robert E. Howard's Conan novel "Hour of the Dragon". On the other hand, he's just another supervillain for Conan to defeat, but his relationship to the passage of time is something that always struck a nerve with me. The guy comes from the dark past, and he plans to re-awaken it. He's dissatisfied with the present, and plans to wipe it all away with a single spell. No matter how good things have come to me in the present, and no matter how atrocious my past might have been, I will always be bound to bouts of nostalgia like that...