My Daughter's Screen

My daughter is a luddite.  She keeps her footprint on the internet to a bare minimum, has no facebook account, barely tolerates email.  She doesn't even want me to say her name online because she'd rather not be found.

But once in awhile she gets an urge to share.  So here is a post written by her, expressing a recent experience she had.

"I would like to scream and rant about all the obvious reasons not to use a DM's screen: the expected elitist perspective of the upper hand that most DM's seek to provide themselves, by providing yet another layer of control to compensate for more BS railroad storytelling ... but let's put that down.

"For the first time in about eight years I unexpectedly found myself playing with a screen.  Currently my party is facing a giant owl and after some debate on how I wanted the "arena" to feel, I decided I would build a three-dimensional landscape. This would allow the owl to move up and down the 3-D plane. 

"Normally, I play very traditionally; hex grid vinyl mat, miniatures, no fog of war.

"Not wanting to put my players where they wouldn't be able to see, I decided I would be the one blocked by the solid side of the cube.  Suddenly, I was in my own isolated world.  Not only was I playing towards them with my arms reaching like a puppeteer, but I was losing their attention in pulling my gaze away, as I ducked behind the screen.

"I remember the days of a screen ... I do.  Hiding behind that orange wall with tables staring me in the face, papers and notes everywhere.  I don't look back on that memory with a fond gloss; I'd rather look back on it like one of many things I did early in the game ("Remember the days I needed a screen?  Haha ... ya, well, I was still learning).

"I pose this to you: how honest are you really?  Both to your players and yourself: have you ever fibbed a roll?  I would be lying if I said I hadn't.  Sometimes you just don't want to kill someone.  You roll the die and pick it up again, pretending you didn't see it.

"That's what a screen is to me.  I separate myself from the player, I see myself as a greater entity rather than a conduit for the game.  I know this is a point of debate, but regardless of how you see yourself, you owe it to your players to be there with them.

"The truth is you are selling them your world and no one would buy from someone who kept saying, after every question,"One second, while I look behind this screen."

So What If They Win?

There was a disconnect with a comment about the subject of “good players” that I ought to address. When yesterday I said that a player ought to be able to take opportunities when they came, I was not actually making a qualification about good vs. bad players. I was saying a world ought to give opportunities…and if those opportunities exist, players take them. Not just the good players. All the players.

If I have a player who sees the world in terms of taverns and pick pocketing and quests, I recognize at once that it is learned behavior. It’s not the player’s fault for being bad at the game…the player’s experience has taught them to believe this is how the game should be played.

All of my present participants were like that; it took time, but they have all slowly developed into self-propelling beings, working jointly towards their own goals. It took a fair bit of coddling; I actually had one player leave my world because he felt I was coddling too much (occasionally warning them so they wouldn’t kill themselves). I wanted the game to be fun for my players—why wouldn’t it take a little time for them to see how?

So no, I’m not saying be a better player (and let’s put that subject on the shelf). I’m saying, be a better DM and let the players be better players.

To do that, a DM has got to let go of their world. They can’t love it TOO much…or else that love is going to get in the way.

For example: Arkayn, Abner and Aggro stumble across a group of three hill giants and about two dozen gnolls who are serving as underlings. Fortunately, our trio are seventh level; unfortunately, they’ve just had a bad run in with the nearby river rapids and they’ve just emerged wet, shivering and a little worse for wear from some of the rocks they bounced against. So, the DM thinks, this ought to be a combat to really challenge them. Possibly, one of the three might die.

What’s more, the DM has planned this as the last obstacle to keep them from finding Princess Heliose and successfully marrying into the Duke’s family (the Princess is in love with Abner—go figure).

In desperation, Arkayn whips out a wand. A wand that he was given 18 months ago, actual time. That he earned, I might add…its just he’s never used it and he hasn’t a clue what it does. In fact, the DM has no clue either; he wrote a note about it in his diary files and now he has to actually go look that up when Arkayn gives the wand a try.

And what do you know, it’s a wand of paralyzation. With 26 charges.

Well, the hill giants blow their saving throws and it takes no time at all to mop up the gnolls; altogether, the party suffers something like 30 hp damage total. It’s a cake walk.

At this point, MOST of the DMs I’ve known will cry foul: Arkayn doesn’t know the wand’s special secret word (oh please); the wand was wet and doesn’t work properly; there’s a chance that the wand will accidentally paralyze Arkayn; and so on. Anything, in fact, except the recognition that the player reserved that wand until the time came for it to save their ass.

I’ve never been a special word/invoke magic item type of DM. I found long ago it added nothing to the game except for a bit of glee on the part of DMs who really don’t want to give out magic…oh, and it fills up game time with pestering regularity. Fuck it; Arkayn’s a seventh level mage with a genius I.Q. and he’s had the wand in his possession all this time. I think he’s figured out how to make it work when he wants to.

As for other arguments—obviously the DM just doesn’t want his giants and gnolls adventure to fizzle. The party does! They’re glad they don’t have to fight the damn things and probably die. Too bad for the DM who didn’t remember the wand in advance…not every final encounter has to fit the mold. Sometimes its nice to bypass type.

Indiana Jones, big scimitars, etc. But most of the DMs I’ve known would argue that somehow the guy with big scimitar successfully blocked the bullets.

As a DM, you can’t grip your adventure and your plans so tightly that the real point is lost—that the players are, basically, intended to win. “Losing” would have been fighting the giants without the wand, dying and then thinking, “oh shit I should have used that wand.”

Losing shouldn’t be, “The wand doesn’t work cause it’s wet, so you have to fight them.”

That just brings us back to the rat in the maze thing.

To dungeon master this way, I find that what I have to do is get myself out of the picture as much as possible. I make every effort to have no stake at all in what is going on. I’m the referee. I’m not here to decide which side wins.

Let’s face it; I can make the monster side win any time I want. Can’t I?