Go Long

Eh. I really don't have time for this. But....

So, I was reading this post by Mr. Maliszewski the other day, as well as its associated links. All things considered it feels a little disjointed which is (perhaps) understandable given his focus at the moment on his current writing project. I can dig that.

Still. It bears a response.

There are RPGs and there are RPGs. And in addition there is Dungeons & Dragons. I think it's important to understand how distinct these things are from each other...and from a fiction franchise like the ones described in James's article. Whether you're talking Star Wars or Game of Thrones or whatever, such things are simply settings designed to TELL STORIES. Specifically, to tell a particular story. 

In the case of Star Wars (for example) we're talking about the "story" of Luke Skywalker, from his humble beginnings to his heroic triumph over the forces of evil. The setting of the Star Wars universe...including both its interplanetary geography, its history/timeline, its imagined "culture," its cast of characters, its pseudo-religions, etc....all exist specifically as BACKDROP for the story being told. They provide a rich and (for many folks) inviting tapestry that intrigues and engages the imagination, but they are only as important as they apply to the story at hand. That there is room enough in the setting to tell other stories (the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker, for example, or the story of parental love and identity found in The Mandalorian series) is evidence of the broad consistency and richness of its fantasy landscape. 

[I'd be tempted to say the same about the various book series set in the Star Wars universe, except that A) I've read almost none of them, and B) what I have read all seems to be filled/fraught with blatant "fanservice," in the same annoying fashion as most of the cinematic installments in the franchise history]

Similar statements could be said of Martin's ASoFaI series except that it is far more limited in scope, being (for the most part) medieval mudcore with extremely limited fantasy elements often subverted (especially in the teleplay) to visual porn (both of violence and sexuality).

[I say that as someone who is a fan of the series and who has found it fascinating in spite of its more prurient elements. In other words, not trying to hate, just calling it like I see it]

Franchises...whether you're talking Lucas and Martin or the ones created by Roddenberry, Herbert, Rowling, Tolkien, Clancy, etc....all have something in common: they have become a means of generating reliable income for their producers (either the creators or those who hold the IP) because of their built-in fan/customer base. Every installment of the franchise...whether it be a book, a movie, a TV show, or some example of lifestyle branding/signaling (t-shirts, merch, etc.)...becomes an investment destined to yield a rich return. When Disney allows some company to create coffee mugs with superheroes branded on it, you can be sure that they are reaping some sort of royalty return, even as they allow the cup company to make money themselves (and continue promoting their franchise). Every franchise is a money-making cash cow designed to milk fan loyalty. Pure and simple. This is what the capital behind the franchise is (excuse the pun) banking on.

But D&D is a game, not a franchise.

At least the D&D I play. Unlike certain RPGs that are based on specific, story-based IP (think: most Chaosium RPGs, many "trad" RPGs of the 90s, etc.) D&D invites players to create THEIR OWN WORLD...their own campaign...in which to play the game. Unless you're going to buy into a specific piece of setting IP (say, DragonLance or Greyhawk or whatever), the game you run is your own...with no story involved.

Which is important! Stories have beginnings and (generally speaking, Mr. Martin) endings as well. As such, they are designed to stop. That corporations (it is always corporations of some sort) decide to turn a story into a money-making franchise does not change this essential fact. Luke Skywalker's story is over, once it's told. So is the story of succession for the Iron Throne (once the matter is decided). It is a LOT harder to find reasons to create adventures in a setting/world for which the major events have already been chronicled. 

Not impossible mind you. Creative minds will find a way.

But not all RPGs are created equally. Dungeons & Dragons doesn't come with a built in setting. Instead, it provides a set of rules for playing a game. Individual Dungeon Masters are the parties responsible for creating their worlds/settings. And with a focus on that (i.e. world creation) why would anyone ever tire of their campaign?

DMs are not storytellers. We are lords of creation. We are gods.

D&D is not played with an end goal in mind. Yes there are "win" (and "loss") conditions built into the system; yes, there are objectives of play. But these are of secondary importance to the experiential nature of play itself. DMs do not create stories; DMs create worlds. And then they run those worlds using the rules of the game.  

Some might say that any confession that an RPG (especially one not tied to a specific setting or fiction franchise) could, eventually, be "played out" shows a distinct lack of creativity. As was pointed out to me the other day, a piano has only 88 keys, and yet people continue to find ways to create new music with those same keys, even after centuries of use. And that's only using two hands! How many more combinations of situations can one create with a Monster Manual and a blank sheet of graph paper? How many more iterations can you have with multiple human players, each bringing their own experiences and personalities to the table?

I am certain there are those who look at the game of AD&D...the game I've yet to tire of after 40-odd years...and say, what a boring game. What a boring premise. Killing monsters and getting gold. How long can that stay exciting? How long till that grows tiresome? I am certain of this because people have said as much to me...more than once.

And yet most of us have had the experience of having to "work for a living." Even those of us blessed with an exciting, fulfilling job/career/vocation have known days that were humdrum and boring, or challenging in non-fun ways...dealing with irate clients and unresponsive vendors and the fluctuation of markets affected by the stupid, stupid actions of an utterly corrupt and incompetent American president. 

Isn't it nice to have an escape to a world where your problems can be solved with a sword or a magic spell? Isn't it fun to have some pulse-pounding, adrenaline surging excitement that doesn't end in real world injury...or even sore muscles? And for the creative individual, isn't it nice to have an ENTIRE UNIVERSE to shape and mold as you please, and to share that universe with our fellow humans, astounding them with pulse-pounding, adrenaline surging experiences?

There is a deeper game beyond the surface play one first discovers as a kid opening a boxed "basic set" of D&D...but one only finds it if they spend the time and effort to grow and develop their game. Just as we, humans, grow and develop ourselves.  We need to stop selling ourselves short.

Go long.

 

Comparing Pulp

This post is probably going to ramble a bit. Sorry. I'm in the middle of guzzling coffee, so hopefully my lucidity will improve. Hopefully.

Good podcasts are hard to find. Okay, that's not exactly accurate. Finding podcasts regarding the exact bit of minutia you want to hear can be hard to find. Which just goes to show how reliant on the internet we've all come to be (well, me at least). I'm trying to find comparison reviews of ancient D&D adventure modules and I get irritated when I can only find one or two...this wasn't even a thing five years ago! Sweet Jesus.

But that's what I've come to these days: those who can't do, teach...or blog. Those who can't blog listen to podcasts on the subjects they want to blog about. The other day I listened to a three hour recording of an on-line group playing Dwellers of the Forbidden City (I was doing housework at the time)...and while there's a lot I could criticize about their game, it doesn't change the fact that I listened to (most of) it! And thank goodness I was able to FIND something...those guys were a GODSEND in my "hour of need."

[it was terrible though...I kept wanting to reach through my headphones and throttle them all. First, spending three hours on a single encounter...in AD&D!...is pretty inexcusable. But mainly it just irked me that the DM wasn't prepared to run the encounter. Yes, yellow musk creepers are outside the norm of your usual goblin infestation, but then you should have spent some time figuring out (beforehand) how the creature and its various abilities are supposed to work. The dragging out of the encounter was a direct result of the lack of prep]

I'm inclined to blame Delta for this, by the way...Dan's new video channel (with fellow Wandering DM Paul) have become "must-listen" material for me when I'm doing dishes late at night, or running around doing errands. Both of these guys are long-time, experienced DMs, who aren't afraid to step outside their comfort zones and try new things...or adapt new methods...when it comes to their gaming. For the most part, I don't find them trying to "teach" folks how to run games, but are instead talking about things that worked and didn't work at the table...which is really what I'm looking for. Most of the podcast stuff (and here I'm including videos and "vlogs," too, as I only listen to it, I don't watch the screens) about gaming, especially the "teaching" stuff, is pretty damn lame. Dan and Paul gave me hope that there was better stuff out there. That's why I blame them.

So what I've mostly been searching for is stuff about older adventure modules because (as I wrote yesterday) there are packaged modules that I like that I would like to incorporate into a campaign setting. 

Dwellers of the Forbidden City is one. The Isle of Dread is another. Despite the inclusion of bugbears in both (still need to write my "bugbear hate" post), both of these adventures have a lot of elements that I love. Really, they're both decent settings for long-term (multi-adventure) play...what the kids playing 5E these days term "campaign play." Both are large sites, both have multiple access points, both provide multiple "starter ideas" for possible reasons for exploration/adventure, both have numerous potential factions for players to encounter and ally with (or piss off), and of course both have a ton of treasure to be plundered.

The treasure count for both modules are pretty similar, despite one adventure being written for AD&D and the other for B/X. X1: The Isle of Dread has a total "loot count" of 123,010 g.p. divided as follows:

Main Island encounters: 89,810 g.p.

Central Plateau: 15,000 g.p.

Taboo Island (the target objective): 18,200 g.p.

Okay, this IS a beautiful map.

A lot of this requires additional work, ingenuity, and outright feats of engineering to pull the treasure out: gold to be mined, trade routes to be established, etc. As a large island, there are plenty of opportunities to establish additional lairs (and loot) for various monsters on the wandering encounter tables...including a red dragon, black dragon, centaur clan, dryad grove, and cyclops...all of whom have no way to get off the island (it's too far to fly to the mainland) and all of whom probably have some place their bedding down at night. The average treasure yield for those five creature types is 128,500 g.p. (more than the total treasure in listed encounters!) and even scaling down for smaller tribes and younger worms, you could probably still expect to increase the total value of X1 adventuring by 50% or so. That's probably enough to earn adventurers another level...or close to it, anyway.

I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City has (as listed) a larger haul of treasure: 136,323 g.p. value, but almost all of it is straightforward looting and cash grabs. There isn't a lot of heavy lifting necessary (as in X1) nor a number of cursed treasure items (B2) nor even pricy antiquities requiring specialized buyers (Return to B2 has a lot of these). What it does have is a sprawling ancient metropolis with hostile factions/tribes that will try to bushwhack small parties of treasure-laden adventurers and an adventuring site secluded far from any "civilized" area (i.e. places where wealth can be spent or pawned). Yes, the Isle of Dread is 800-900 miles off the coast of the mainland but (despite historical inaccuracy) once treasure is loaded aboard one's ship the return voyage is relatively safe and easy compared to overland travel through miles of (presumably) hostile jungle. 

[running out of food and water at sea just doesn't have the same sting when players have access to high level cleric spells]

Just like X1, Dwellers has plenty of room for expanding the scope (and treasure) of the adventure. While the yuan-ti are reputed to be the "main bad guys" of the city, no detailed lairs or strongholds of the creatures are presented in the adventure. While they may be more independent than the clannish mongrelmen and tasloi, there're definite hints of organization and cooperation among the demon-men, and no reason not have pockets of wealth scattered all about the city (where are they putting all those trade goods stolen from jungle caravans?). Most of the adventure ideas presented at the end of the module require DMs to create additional lairs within the (rather ample) city confines...and lairs mean treasure. There's no reason the Forbidden City couldn't be expanded to accommodate higher level play by increasing both the opposition present AND the wealth available for plunder.

Now, I realize that more than one DM blogger out there has run these two adventures in conjunction (setting the Forbidden City on the Isle of Dread...usually in place of Taboo Island). Heck, James Maliszewski even had a Forbidden Isle project in the works at one point, though I don't think it was ever realized. For me, while I'd like the presence of both pulp adventure sites in my campaign setting, I don't believe they work well together. You can tell me I lack imagination, but I just don't want my Lost World dinosaurs mixing with demon-bred snake-men; to me, that's much more distasteful than mixing fantasy and science fiction (something I kind of love that a lot of people hate). "Reptillian" ain't a unifying theme, and throwing yuan-ti on the backs of velociraptors (or whatever) is just too gonzo ridiculous for my taste. 

Still, I like the idea of having both adventure sites in the same world, and I'm not sure how exactly to do that. And, no, I'm not into the "demi-plane" idea. 

Anyhoo, got to go. More thoughts on this later (perhaps). Or I might talk about swords instead.

Kids and their Mashed Potatoes

So I was checking out this post over at The Mule Abides this morning, and it really caused a bit of a stir in my sleep-addled brain. To paraphrase, the author was writing about how his 12 year old plays D&D using a conglomeration of books from various editions, ranging from 3.5 to 4E eerily paralleling the days when us Groggy-types used to mish-mash B/X and AD&D and OD&D and Dragon mags, etc.

Okay, first a point of clarification: I’m a purist. Pretty much always have been.

As a kid, I integrated AD&D books into my B/X game only because I didn't know any better. And I can very vividly recall being frustrated by the results. I knew something was “wrong with the picture,” but couldn’t figure out what it was…until I got my first Players Handbook.

Once I had the PHB, then the Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manuals (with their psionics and magic resistance and “druid attack matrices” and nine-fold alignment path) all FINALLY made sense. And my friends and I absolutely dropped EVERYTHING B/X in favor of the Advanced system. Nothing was ‘ported over to our AD&D campaign, with the exception of two surviving player characters (Bladehawk the fighter and Sneakshadow the thief). And much as I wanted to use the Moldvay encumbrance rule “all miscellaneous equipment weighs a flat 80 coins,” in those years 1984-1987 we tallied up every last scroll case and tinder box to figure our movement rates (even though we didn’t use miniatures or battle maps!).

It was only those first couple years (1982-83) that we did a hodge-podge of rules, and speaking for myself, it was pretty damn irritating. Especially when a visiting player brought his hammer of thunderbolts or blade barrier spell and I (as the DM) was left scratching my head saying, “huh?”

These days of course…well, I’m still a purist. I play B/X D&D instead of AD&D or D20, but I play it straight for the most part. All these “shields will be splintered” or “bind wounds” type house rules that are designed to increase PC survivability? Don’t want ‘em, don’t need ‘em, don’t use ‘em. Personally, I feel the game is survivable enough. Plenty of hirelings (i.e. “cannon fodder” or “meat shields”) to help at the low levels and if your character fails an unlucky save versus poison or petrification early in her career, well…character creation is a piece of cake.

And yes I post all sorts of goodies to my blog like “variable damage by class” or new magic items and character classes; but for the most part I don’t use these. Oh, I’m sure I would incorporate some of ‘em if I was running a long term campaign, but since all the games I’ve run in the last year have been “one off” types, I’ve left the house rules at home (except when a different DM includes ‘em, of course).

And as much as anything, playing with one set of rules cuts out most disagreement and allows the DM to run the game as a true ref (making rulings when something’s NOT covered by the rules).

So yeah, I’m a stickler. And often, I’m a gamist/competitor (and knowing a single set of rules allows me to take best advantage of ‘em). And it bugs me to no end when people don’t know what the fuck they are doing with regard to “rules as written.”

FOR EXAMPLE: One of my last D20 “games” wasn’t even an adventure but an on-line arena face-off between my character and another dude. He was actually involved in a game with my buddy, who was trying to get me into their on-line game. I had a 7th level character from a different D20 campaign that I was hoping to bring and this guy was like “your character sucks, I can whip him with my 4th level character.” So we had it out in this arena and then I found that this guy was sporting at least one or two pieces of Epic level magic gear. After barely managing to beat his character I was like “well that’s hardly fair, your character possessing a couple million gold worth of gear.” And he was like “hey, man, I found this stuff in the game.” And I was like “well, your DM doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing then.” And the guy was like “you’re an asshole.”

And he was probably right…I AM an asshole about certain things…or a purist, I guess. If I know up front we’re playing by a different set of rules, than I can make a choice of whether I want to play like that or not. Otherwise, I make the assumption that the rules are as written and I tend to be a stickler.

So now onto the original post from The Mule Abides (yes, I realize I appear to have wandered far afield of the topic):

Here’s how I look at RPGs in general: they provide a structure of rules to play out fantasy lives in an imaginary setting. We can imagine we are cowboys withOUT the structure of rules, but when it comes to a shoot-out to see who’s got the steadiest hand and faster reflexes, we need some set of rules to make that determination. Now the rules can be as “rules light” as CONSENSUS (“we agree that whoever says ‘bang’ first is quicker and the other guy is toast”) or can be as specific/crunchy as Boot Hill. But without rules you’re just daydreaming, not playing…or not playing anything more than “dress-up” (and even that might have rules to it).

OD&D provided a loose structure to explore a fantasy, ancient/medieval world. AD&D and B/X tightened up these rules to varying degrees, and subsequent editions (BECMI, D20, 4th Edition) added MORE rules. Without the D&D rules, we could STILL have a game of dungeon exploration (DM: You see a troll. Player: I fight it! DM: Roll 1D6; on a 5 or 6 you kill it, on a 1 or 2 it wounds you, maybe mortally.). The rules facilitate play in a certain way.

These days, I like my rules on the lighter side (one of the reasons I prefer B/X play) because I believe it provides more leeway for imagination. The more rules you pile onto a game, the more constrictive that imaginary space becomes. Huge tomes of rules, additional supplements/splatbooks full of new classes/spells/equipment…this is more work than I personally want to do. I understand game companies need to make money (don’t we all!), but I ENJOY using my own imagination, creating my own new stuff (as needed, if needed)…it’s kind of like exercise for the brain.

So THAT being said, and leaving aside the whole question of how a person combines 2nd edition and 3.5 and 4th edition (if there was any justification for “mish-mashing B/X and AD&D” back in the day, the systems were INCREDIBLY similar, unlike recent editions that bear little mechanical resemblance to each other)…leaving aside the weirdness, what does that say that kids are mish-mashing editions with happy abandon and having a great old time?

Well, it suggests a couple-three different things that blow holes in MY previous assumptions.

- Maybe kids are a LOT more open-minded about these things than cranky geezers like myself. After all, irritating as it was I WAS still mish-mashing editions at the age of 9 and 10 myself and the irritation wasn’t enough to make me stop playing…indeed it drove me to play more, looking for a way to rectify the discrepancies.

- Maybe kids have a LOT more imagination than adults (duh!) and NEED more rules than adults (double duh!). Kids thrive on discipline and routine; they’re still “learning the ropes” of society. Having MORE rules, not less, may help to keep conflict down (“I shot you!” “No, I shot you first!”) at a time when they are still working out issues of social contract and how to interact politely with each other.

- Maybe kids have LESS experience with fantastic, imaginary worlds than those of us that have been around for 30-40 years, and they need MORE inspiration to “jump start” their imagination. Personally, I can draw from decades of television, stage, film, comics, novels, history, and even the local news (not to mention past gaming experiences!) for the needs of my games…whether that’s character creation (as a player) or world creation (as a DM). Kids, especially younger kids, need a larger diet of inspiration and WotC editions, for all their other failings, have plenty of bold, beautiful, glossy illustrations to fire kids up…not to mention wonderful spells and magic items and monsters that are probably pretty new to ‘em.


Anyway it’s interesting to think about. I know that I’ve mentioned here (more than once) that I have an interest in “growing the hobby” but in the end, my stuff tends to be written for adults, not children. And while I don’t think a thousand page, three-volume rule set is appropriate for a kid (or anyone!) to learn a new game, I may have been underestimating the appetite for rules that kids have, as well as the adaptability of their young minds.

: )

Skills Suck

Shoot…I really thought I’d already written this essay somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. Perhaps I started it and it was toooo loooong. Strong possibility.

I’ll cut to the chase: I hate skills in RPGs. I mean is, in most games these days they annoy me so much that it makes me not want to play games. The more elaborate the skill system, the higher the search and handling time, the LESS I am interested.

I was going to write about the evolution of my disgust for skills, which has waxed and waned until the last couple years when it’s been pretty much all “wax on” disgust-wise. But why bother? Or maybe, I’ll save it for another “origins” post when I talk about the move from AD&D secondary skills, to non-weapon proficiencies, to Star Frontiers, to yadda-yadda-yadda…

However, I do want to say for the record how much I dislike skills:

A lot.
While I can talk about my historical journey through RPG skills (in another post), I think it’s more interesting to write WHY I dislike them. After all, every non-indie industry RPG designer feels the need to include some form of skill system in their rules. What bugs ME so much?

Well many things, actually, but I’ll break it down into just a few categories (not necessarily in order of importance):

#1 Over-complex character generation. This is perhaps my biggest pet peeve in game design. Aside from overly complex combat systems, nothing else slows down play more. Trying to introduce a new player to role-playing? You have to go through hours of skill lists (and explanations of skills and explanations of rule systems) just to design a character. A knowledgeable person, with his own rule book, and a strong idea of what kind of character he wants, can create a PC in…well, probably under an hour but pretty close to an hour mark depending on other options present in the chargen process. For non-gamers, this process (which generally takes them longer) is INCREDIBLY BORING. Woe unto the GM whose RPG then sucks…this does not grow an RPG industry.

#2 Over-complex character generation. Did I not mention this already? Perhaps I did. When chargen takes a long-ass time to create a character, character death becomes an especially awful punishment in play…one that tends to get avoided at all costs by a GM (to keep his players happy and his game going). When character death gets removed from the table, so does much of the drama of action/combat (you know…the life or death part?). For premise-focused games, that’s often fine. For competitive gamist-type games (like D&D) that sucks.

#3 Attempting to model “real life.” Most skill systems use some kind of universal mechanic…that is, all skill use works the same regardless of skill. One problem with this it’s kind of impossible to be all encompassing of “real life.” Another is that real life works differently in different situations. A design problem is that the same game currency (generally ‘points’ which are assigned to various skills) applies to all skills regardless of disparate application…say Bureaucracy versus Firearms; depending on the type of game being run, one of these skills is going to prove much more useful than the other.

#4 Conceit and hypocrisy. Even though many skill systems profess to use universal systems, often the “combat rules” are its own modified system. Shooting and stabbing are “skills” (albeit, not ones used in polite society), so why have things like, oh say “Base Attack Bonus?” What if I don’t want to ‘train up’ my attacking skill? Many, many games use different rules and sub-system for combat then from “normal” skill use. Since skill systems are often fairly complicated (simple, resisted, un-resisted, competitive, use over time, resisted use over time, etc.) the end result is more rules to digest and integrate to play. See point #1 above.

#5 Unnecessary rules. Good game design should only incorporate rules integral to game play. Call that JB’s Axiom #1. It needs its own post.

#6 Player limitation. Ugh…this needs its own post, too.

Now, just because I don’t like skills doesn’t mean I refuse to play games with skills, and the presence of skill systems does not create an immediate abhorrence for a game. Half the RPGs on my Top Ten list include skill systems of the type I’m describing…however, these games have other ‘redeeming qualities:’

• Traveller’s skills are assigned randomly without a player needing to put points on a skill list…plus character generation itself is a fun mini-game.
• Mutant City’s skills are all of equal value in the way they are used to facilitate the game; they actually act as a control of a player’s “spotlight time,” rather than a measure of in-game effectiveness.
• VTM and HEX both have settings that make their games kick-ass…enough that I’m willing to overlook the skill systems. Plus, both have systems that include simplification techniques (VTM by cutting out anything other than simple successes, HEX with its D2 approach and Ubiquity Dice).
• Ars Magica has multiple complex disparate systems including skills, combat, magic, and research. The game is for mature (i.e. experienced) gamers that want to run long sagas…it is NOT for one-off games or combat-quick groups. It requires the systems to help adjudicate (and turn game-like!) what otherwise might be a “group storytelling exercise” about Mythic Europe. Plus magi are badass. Oh…and grogs. I’d play it just for the grogs.

: )