The Monster as a Player Character: Part 2

Taking up this matter further.

A person might ask, "Why does it even matter?  Why not just let the baby have his bottle?"

I'm going to tell you a secret about managing people.  People, even hard working people, don't get along very well.  Whenever you give them something they want, you have to look the reward over very carefully, asking yourself, "Is this something that's going to help them work together, or is this something that's going to bend them apart?"  The more you give to a group that bends them apart, the flakier things get.  As Yeats said,

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre / the falcon cannot hear the falconer.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold / mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / the ceremony of innocence is drowned;

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity."

Yeats is speaking of England imbecilically sending troops to Ireland in 1919, but the metaphor holds.  Don't fuck with things just because they can be fucked with.  It just makes a mess.

There are many tangible, creative ways to prove one's individuality in D&D, through problem-solving, self-sacrifice, risk-taking and group dynamics.  Beware players who opt for reskinning their character superficially as a means of "expressing themselves."  Especially avoid players who use specifically those words as an argument.  As hard as it may be to imagine, if you want to keep a good solid group together, you must clamp down on the wrong kinds of individualism.  Make everyone play by the same rules and make them understand there's a reason why the default settings on character creation deliberately minimize options.  Originality comes from within — and not from which race you play.

Let's pick up Gygax's essay again, from page 21 of the original DMG:

"From all views then it is enough fantasy to assume a swords & sorcery cosmos, with impossible professions and make-believe magic. To adventure amongst the weird is fantasy enough without becoming that too! Consider also that each and every Dungeon Master worthy of that title is continually at work expanding his or her campaign milieu. The game is not merely a meaningless dungeon and an urban base around which is plopped the dreaded wilderness. Each of you must design a world, piece by piece, as if a jigsaw puzzle were being hand crafted, and each new section must fit perfectly the pattern of the other pieces. Faced with such a task all of us need all of the aid and assistance we can get. Without such help the sheer magnitude of the task would force most of us to throw up our hands in despair."

Oh, how I wish that what's said here was respected by the author himself, his company or anyone associated with him!  Is it not bewildering to hear these words spoken about plunking a dungeon next to a village from the man who built his career on such an approach?  Of course, I did not know in 1979, the book fresh in my hands, that these words were written by a fraud and a hypocrite.  Let's not quibble.  I ACCEPTED THESE WORDS AS DOGMA.  Without question, without hesitation, without a week going by between my having this book in my hands and my starting on the task, I set out to build a campaign milieu of the kind described.  Granted, that was in part because my first DM was committed to that ideal, as was every other DM I knew at the time, living as I did in an urban hotbed where I'd spoken to no less than 10 DMs before getting my hands on this hardcover book.  And, without a question, that first effort was an unmitigated disaster (about which we shall not speak).  Yet I do not concede the point; if I asked for a justification, for guidance, for emotional support for the creation of a personally built campaign setting, THERE are the words, good enough to be carved in stone on Gygax's mausoleum ... if the man hadn't been a faker and a cheat.

"By having a basis to work from, and a well-developed body of work to draw upon, at least part of this task is handled for us. When history, folklore, myth, fable and fiction can be incorporated or used as reference for the campaign, the magnitude of the effort required is reduced by several degrees. Even actual sciences can be used - geography, chemistry, physics, and so forth."

 Abso-fucking-lutely.

Gygax is speaking of human essentials and foundations, human behaviour, human habits, culture and mores.  He's saying, so much of the work has already been done for you!  Read, find what works for your setting and steal, baby, steal.  The genius is that these things have already proved their worth with millions of storybook readers and fireside tale-tellers.  Not just in this past few decades but for centuries.  These are things that every writer and inventor steals from!  Again and again we go back to the earliest works, the fundamental themes, the science of human endeavour, learning it, sorting it, shaping it in new ways and expressing it to a willing and anxious audience.  These melodies have proven themselves.  We don't have to sweat and cringe and hope the listeners will approve!  If we play the notes and chords well, if we practice our fingering, if we study and stretch ourselves, the spectators will pound the tables and stamp their feet with joy and approval.

But if we hold ourselves above such things ... if we're "too good" for the mass of human knowledge ... well Gygax has an answer for that too.

"Alien viewpoints can be found, of course, but not in quantity (and often not in much quality either). Those works which do not feature mankind in a central role are uncommon. Those which do not deal with men at all are scarce indeed. To attempt to utilize any such bases as the central, let alone sole, theme for a campaign milieu is destined to be shallow, incomplete, and totally unsatisfying for all parties concerned unless the creator is a Renaissance Man and all-around universal genius with a decade or two to prepare the game and milieu. Even then, how can such an effort rival one which borrows from the talents of genius and imaginative thinking which come to us from literature?"

It is in these words that I find my utter distaste for a game like Call of Cthulhu.  My feeling has long been that basing a role-playing games on a small set of books by a single third-rate author, whatever his peculiar appeal, makes for the dreariest game sessions.  Having read a half-dozen of the man's books, I find them formulaic and clumsy, not to mention hackneyed in plot development.  His plot contrivances, used in the same way in every novel, are painful once recognized.  Everything that is written down is always lost in some convenient way.  Every proof is confounded.  Every would-be witness goes mad, or is never found again.  As a juvenile experiment, Lovecraft has his value.  Every 13-year-old should read him, when they're young enough to be taken in by the mystery and bafflegab.  But an adult who strives to spend every Saturday playing out the same themes again and again?  Please mark such places on a map so I can well avoid them.

A "Renaissance Man" (or WOMAN!) would only become such if they were thoroughly steeped in "the talents of genius and imaginative thinking" that has gone before.  Such a person wouldn't think to throw away human resources any more than did Spencer, Shakespeare or Milton (sorry, I know, three people never heard of, and certainly not influential on fantasy literature).  Yet how often do we hear of yet one more DM on a blog or a podcast chatting on about the "new campaign" they're going to make based upon some profoundly esoteric original theme? — only to never hear of these things actually being crafted or envied after.

Willy nilly, I am not a Jedi or a superhero; I am not a vampire or anything else that sounds like a thing I'd get tired of in a weekend.  I'm a human being.  I like human beings.  I'm interested in playing games where human beings take part, where they pursue human achievements and they don't depend on themes that barely extend over the 357 pages of a book.  My players can burn through a book length's store of material in two or three sessions.  I need MORE.  I need everything.  Less is asking me to compromise in my imagination and I'm not going to do that.

I'll let Gygax finish his end of this argument:

"Having established the why of the humanocentric basis of the game, you will certainly see the impossibility of any lasting success for a monster player character. The environment for adventuring will be built around humans and demi-humans for the most part. Similarly, the majority of participants in the campaign will be human. So unless the player desires a character which will lurk alone somewhere and be hunted by adventurers, there are only a few options open to him or her. A gold dragon can assume human shape, so that is a common choice for monster characters. If alignment is stressed, this might discourage the would-be gold dragon. If it is also pointed out that he or she must begin at the lowest possible value, and only time and the accumulation and retention of great masses of wealth will allow any increase in level (age), the idea should be properly squelched. If even that fails, point out that the natural bent of dragons is certainly for their own kind — if not absolute solitude — so what part could a solitary dragon play in a group participation game made up of non-dragons? Dragon non-player characters, yes! As player characters, not likely at all. 

"As to other sorts of monsters as player characters, you as DM must decide in light of your aims and the style of your campaign. The considered opinion of this writer is that such characters are not beneficial to the game and should be excluded. Note that exclusion is best handled by restriction and not by refusal. Enumeration of the limits and drawbacks which are attendant upon the monster character will always be sufficient to steer the intelligent player away from the monster approach, for in most cases it was only thought of as a likely manner of game domination. The truly experimental-type player might be allowed to play such a monster character for a time so as to satisfy curiosity, and it can then be moved to non-player status and still be an interesting part of the campaign — and the player is most likely to desire to drop the monster character once he or she has examined its potential and played that role for a time. The less intelligent players who demand to play monster characters regardless of obvious consequences will soon remove themselves from play in any event, for their own ineptness will serve to have players or monsters or traps finish them off.

"So you are virtually on your own with regard to monsters as player characters. You have advice as to why they are not featured, why no details of monster character classes are given herein. The rest is up to you, for when all is said and done, it is your world, and your players must live in it with their characters. Be good to yourself as well as them, and everyone concerned will benefit from a well-conceived, well-ordered, fairly-judged campaign built upon the best of imaginative and creative thinking."

There are many things about Gygax I don't like.  One of them is the squirmy way he has of avoiding responsibility.  Like the side-step I addressed with regards to poison, he equivocates.  One moment, he says "squelch" the idea, and the next he throws out an ambiguous, "by restriction and not by refusal."  What's that now?  Oh, and hey, while this is a rule book that I've taken a year of my life writing, that's meant to codify the greatest game milestone in a century, by all means, "you do you."  Bleh.

You are NOT on your own with regards to monsters as player characters.  You're at the mercy of your players, whoever they may be, and if you allow yourself to get jerked around by their sob-stories and pretended curiosity, you deserve the jacking you're going to get.  Remember, while you're letting the player have his bottle, as DM you're the one that has to make this slouching beast fit into your campaign.  You're on the hook for writing the details of monster character classes that Gygax didn't add.  It's your time, your imagination, your patience, your game structure that gets fucked with, while you muddle your way through so your player can strut his fucking hour on your stage.  Remember that. And remember that while you're pandering to this monster-runner, there's a shit ton of things you should be doing that you're not.  So no, friend.  You're not on your own.  You're not that lucky.

The Monster as a Player Character: Part 1

Reading over this section, I see immediately why I embraced it so hard and why Gygax's argument against using monsters as player characters failed to convince.  Amid the criticism that I've launched against the DMG, what's wrong with it and what needed improvement, this passage — and others like it — expresses an element to the game that would later get swept under a rug and forgotten.  Gygax correctly interprets the problem; he correctly predicts the damage this practice will cause to the game; and he expresses most clearly what the game is for and the responsibility of the dungeon master.  Ideals that affected me deeply, that sank in and stayed with me ... and ultimately formed me as a DM.

Were I to try and paraphrase it, much of the integrity and meaning would be lost: I couldn't put this passage better than the author does ... which makes me want to believe that Gygax didn't write it, since it is unnaturally clear and free from his usual dichotomy.  Gygax and I have similar styles; in writing sentences, we swing for the fences, we throw in vicious little asides and we write passages that anticipate the reader.  Yet there's very little of that here.  Gygax's usual adverbs have melted away and it speaks much more in the 2nd person than usual.  That doesn't mean this isn't Gygax.  It probably is.  I mention it only to point out that Gygax clearly worked on this passage.  A lot.  His concern is evident; he wants the reader to comprehend what he's saying and take the advice to heart.

I see no way to handle the material except one section at a time.  Let me say, first, that I don't do this to bury the passage, but to praise it.  Gygax writes,

"On occasion one player or another will evidence a strong desire to operate as a monster, conceiving a playable character as a strong demon, a devil, a dragon, or one of the most powerful sort of undead creatures.  This is done principally because the player sees the desired monster character as superior to his or her peers and likely to provide a dominant role for him or her in the campaign."

Direct and to the point.  The motive here is undeniably a selfish power-grab.  Players will invent all sorts of reasons — that they're bored of playing with "ordinary" characters, that they want to have something different, that the game is about imagination and "what's the difference" between playing one kind of race or another.  The argument presages the host of racial classes that would emerge decades hence, including the named dragon type — and the personal problems that arose.  Make no mistake, however, even if the player legitimately believes the excuses made: this is an end run around the DM's campaign.  Since the rules are lacking for running strange and different monsters, even those that are less powerful than the ones Gygax lists, the wiggle-room for the player increases.

"A moment of reflection will bring them to the unalterable conclusion that the game is heavily weighted towards mankind.  ADVANCED D&D is unquestionably 'humanocentric,' with demi-humans, semi-humans and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity."

Gygax is speaking ex cathedra here, where in fact more reason was needed.  He's correct.  He's taken stock of the humanity sitting around the table and from that he's perceived that it will be impossible for human players to be anything except human.  Elves, dwarves and halflings may not be definitively "human," but in game they have human motives, human concepts of emotion and human frailties.  Things that many monsters simply wouldn't have.

Unfortunately for Gygax writing in 1979, he hasn't perceived the nightmare that's ready to be unleashed on culture in the name of "identity politics."  In his era, the 60s and 70s, the common feeling was a sentiment that we're all human and that "getting along" was what mattered ... but marketing and political forces in the 80s and 90s would pressure culture to shift to the importance of individuality at any price, the social fall-out of which we're experiencing now.  Players would refuse to identify as human because it's not enough.  We're going through a crisis of, "More individuality! More individuality!" ... so that the average reader would today see the passage above as a form of conformist fascism.  "I have a right to play a lizard man," shouts the present-day player, because denying the player that right is stepping on his or her identity.

Essentially, however, the lizard man still gets played as a human; with human expectations and human grievances.  The perceived special-case "lizard man" motives invented by the player are necessarily contrived human motives because the player IS human.  And what results are scenes of a lizard man, or whatever character it is, walking into a bar like any other patron, while everyone appropriately ignores any difference between the lizard man, the dragonborne, the tiefling, the minotaur or the lamia, because this is the political culture's present-day guidelines.

Gygax will come back to this point and so will I.

"Men are the worst monsters, particularly high level characters such as clerics, fighters, and magic-users — whether singly, in small groups, or in large companies. The ultra-powerful beings of other planes are more fearsome — the 3 D's of demi-gods, demons and devils are enough to strike fear into most characters, let alone when the very gods themselves are brought into consideration. Yet, there is a point where the well-equipped, high-level party of adventurers can challenge a demon prince, an arch-devil or a demi-god. While there might well be some near or part humans with the group so doing, it is certain that the leaders will be human. In co-operation men bring ruin upon monsterdom, for they have no upper limits as to level or acquired power from spells or items."

Marvellous point that.  Most DMs play the game world with humanity as the underdogs: they're so weak and spongy, so easily speared or torn apart with vicious teeth.   The perspective helps excuse the atrocities committed upon dungeons by player characters.  But if the monsters are the lords of the earth, then why is it the humans live out in the open, in scattered farmhouses and in easy to find settlements, while the monsters live in secret, cowering underground behind trapped defenses?

Gygax is making the argument, why would you want to be a monster?  Sure, they look powerful, but we kick their ass, every time!  Being a human character is cool.  Isn't that obvious?

"The game features humankind for a reason. It is the most logical basis in an illogical game. From a design aspect it provides the sound groundwork. From a standpoint of creating the campaign milieu it provides the most readily usable assumptions. From a participation approach it is the only method, for a11 players are, after all is said and done, human, and it allows them the role with which most are most desirous and capable of identifying with."

Again, Gygax fails here to intrinsically make the point — because he sees the point as painfully obvious.  Oddly, for me to make his point clearer, I have to give credence to the argument that Gygax is writing from the cultural perspective of an entitled white male whose essentially racist.

Where he speaks of the "milieu," he refers to the traditional game setting: cities with human residents, trading with other like cities, surrounded by a settled rural and hinterland production complex that provides raw materials to the manufacturing base.  Because this structure is "logical" and forms a "solid groundwork" for the expectations the players will have of how the world fits together — being that it's the world they know — it stands to reason that threats to that world from the outside, i.e. monsters, don't have a place in this humankind-oriented place.  Therefore, if you're a player character and you want to visit the town, or roam safely past the farmer's fields, or wave hello in the morning to passersby on the road, then it's probably a good idea if you don't look like a demon or a dragon.  Gygax is arguing that the world would rightfully deny you access to the marketplace and the tavern; that no, you wouldn't be welcome at the festival, and that the king's guards would kill you if you showed your face on the city streets.

In short, you'll be deliberately persecuted as a monster if you don't fit the acceptable standard for appearance and race, because we don't want your kind around here.

Get it?  This kind of sentiment is awfully squicky in the present 2021 culture.  Players don't see why it should be this way.  This is a fantasy game.  "If I can fantasize playing a weird-looking monster type character, why can't I also fantasize about a cultural game world that totally accepts that character as 'acceptable' and 'respectable.'  Why all this racism?  I don't identify as a human.  I identify as a gargoyle.  What's wrong with that?"

This is hard to answer.  To begin with, personally I'm not a gargoyle or any other fantasy creature, I'm a human being.  I traditionally (which means, "old white man") view those who seek escape in cherished falsehoods — who then insist that I play lip service to their cherished falsehoods — as part of the abusive small-'e' evil in this world.  From my fool-on-the-hill vantage, I question whether this four-decade experiment with individuality has contributed to our liberty or happiness.  I see the plethora of viewpoints gathering themselves in groups to use the same tactics of accusation, propaganda and ostracization that have permeated world history ... I'll be damned if I see more than a grey sludge of hatred and demands for constant attention, regardless of the individuality in full bellow.

I think it does players good to get a slap in the face when they're told, "Nope, you get to pick from these seven races.  No, I don't give a good gawddamn for your feelings.  No, I'm perfectly fine if you don't want to play.  My emotional pity is not your human right."

Yes, that's right.  Humans are the real monsters.

Let's continue this on another post.

Class-Backward

As I work my way through the wiki, with some of my focus on shifting over old content and some on making what's needed, I can't help noticing how many things in old D&D are never properly explained in the original books.

Things come up because I am following the guidelines of the image on the right.  These show pages that don't exist, that are yet wanted by pages that do.  Right at the top, "cantrip" is mentioned on at least 8 pages in the wiki (and probably more often, where it isn't linked), yet there's no page for it yet.  Logically, this makes it more important that all the other 1600+ pages that are also linked but less often.  "Clan," "natural abilities" and "progenitor" are just as important, but we're going through this process alphabetically, also.  Basically, I want to concentrate on "what's next."  I like that something mechanical is telling me what that is.

This makes it easier to get things done.

As far as I know, none of the original books explains what a "natural ability" is.  It isn't even called that.  Generally it is used on monster pages to describe powers the monster can perform "at will" ... but there are no strict guidelines established for that, either.  How long does this take?  How often can it be done?  If a demon can gate in other demons at will, does this always mean it will do so?  What if the other demons don't want to be disturbed?  Demons are "chaotic," after all ... and if we don't use alignment at all, where is the acceptable limit for the number of associates a demon can pester?  If we're talking devils, who can also do this, surely there must be rules in hell about it.  There are rules in hell about everything.

Most important of all, how many powers can be performed at will per combat round?  One?  Two?  Ten?  No definite idea.  It suggests a limitation on some monsters in the old Monster Manual, but there is no reference anywhere else about this ability, and certainly no standardization.  As DMs, apparently, we were expected to have gotten this information from our mothers while we were in the womb.

This post isn't about natural abilities, however.  I haven't gotten to those yet.  Instead, I completed something today that there is an explanation for -- which, I have to say, I very much do not like.

The damned idiot notion that a character class is a "profession" and not an education comes straight out of the prevailing 1950s university dictum that people go to school to learn how to do a job.  Different job, different schooling.  This has been proved wrong only about a billion times, more or less literally, but it helps sell overpriced university degrees so here it is, still with us.

A fighter's training ought to be sufficient to perform any of the hundreds of character classes that have been invented in the last forty-plus years that stand side-by-side with the original fighter.  As if learning how to fight with weapons and organize oneself in the military can't be applied to hundreds of professions.  No!  We must have a perfectly individual specificity to every operation that humans can perform!  We can't have all this fluidity!  Stamp that person a teacher when they get out of school and DON'T let them use that degree for anything else!

Exactly why do clerics principally function as "supportive"?  True, priests support people, but they LEAD their churches, they don't stand behind the throne.  This is military speak for doctors, not religious leaders ... which is why we had to eventually gut the class and rename them after doctors.  We never gave the religious profession a chance, because it was too "squicky" for atheists.  And I know of no druids whom the players run as support-staff.  Just because a druid has 2 less hit points than a fighter and less armour, doesn't exactly kick them to the curb.  The description might as well say, "Fighters don't think."  It's all hideously two-dimensional and purposefully propagandistic ... and because no effort to do better was ever really made, the subject of what a character class is or what it stands for became hopelessly and appallingly polluted.

This shit is no better than the kobald crap I railed about yesterday.  It just takes less space and, because it is really, really old, it is venerated more.

We should be clear about D&D design always being absolute shit.  I didn't know that when I was 15; but I know it now.  I may run a game "based" on old AD&D, but I am so far from the original philosophy and approach I can't begin to find any relationship between me and the dreck written by Gygax.

The wiki is forcing me to address these things for the first time in writing.  "Character Class" comes up a bunch of times as I'm writing some other page, and I duly make a link to it, thinking, "One day, I'll have to write a definition of that."

Then, it's today.

The idea is to build a functional concept that expands character understanding and conjecture, not one that narrows it.  Don't tell me how a cleric principally functions.  Tell me how a cleric gets made.

With some game play and experience, I'll probably expand this page over time.  It deserves to be.  Given good reason, it would be worth the effort to delve into the exact procedure of education for every class.  But I don't need that just now, and I have a lot of other topics to write on.

Favoured Souls

[You can read today's post on the Higher Path here]

I've written about this several times, historically here, that being my most unpopular post for quite a while until I topped it with less popular posts.  12 years later, being older, moving slower, I'd like to address it as if I've learned something.  Are your PCs "favoured souls"?

I prefer that moniker to "heroes," but for most people it amounts to the same thing.  Right off, I'll say, okay, yeah, the PCs are favoured souls.  If that isn't a departure from my rant many years ago, I don't know what is.

But keep the cork in your champagne bottle, because I'm not done.

The worst sort of plot armour is one in which the character knows they're not expendable.  The very funny and yet obsequiously fan service character Deadpool is the epitome of the trope, in that not only is it impossible for him to die (even when he does, his girlfriend kicks him back), but he's free to break the fourth wall and gab about it at will.  I like the new Ryan Reynolds and I own copies of both Deadpools, so this is not a hate-piece about the character, but there is room in the lexicon of creative writing for just one of these guys ~ and not hundreds of thousands, as I suspect we can find around gaming tables world wide.  Any one of which would have to be an insufferable prick if He (and it won't be a "she") sat at my gaming table.

Here's the thing.  The player characters are favoured; I play a 4d6 drop the lowest dice to roll their stats (1s ignored is a bridge too far), so I'm definitely in favour of giving them a higher average than the hoi polloi.  I give them maximum hit points to start.  When they level, I do keep a no 1s rolled policy with regards to their hit dice, if not their ability stats.  And they do seem to find themselves favoured where it comes to someone stepping out from the bushes to give them highly irregular detail about something tremendously secretive happening which no one else knows about ... really, really often.  Like, irrationally often.

So I get it.  The player characters are special.  But apart from a few benefits, bonuses and unusual kicks at the can where it comes to getting ahead in life, I don't want the players to know it.  I want the players to feel tenuously uncertain about their roles in the next confrontation, in that anyone can die and that a brutal tone shift is always waiting in the wings.  At best, the characters are given a bit of a head start; this means they still have to run, and run hard, because the competition is made of a bunch of mean motherfuckers who aren't going to hold up if the characters fall behind.  This is a case of saying to the characters, "Okay, you've been allowed inside the door; what you do on this side of it, that's up to you."

Therefore, fundamentally, while the party are free to see themselves as heroes, no one else in the game world will; unless the players do something very specific that will make the locals think so.  I like it when the party does something dangerous and they get treated like heroes in front of an adoring crowd; usually, I find, this makes them feel very self-conscious, particularly if they feel this is now something they have to live up to.  The sort of "heroes" I hate are the ones who come into the game feeling entitled to get that treatment, just because.  Deadpool's cockiness is cheerfully counterbalanced by making the character really goddamn suffer for his "gift," so that he makes joy out of it but the joy has a taint of ruefulness.

When some player tries to adopt the Deadpool cockiness, this suffering, sacrifice, misery and so on is Never part of the mix.  We get Deadpool the immortal shithead, not the Deadpool who knows bitterly that he's a freak, or feels bitter about the loss of his true love, or bitter that he's not really in control of his destiny.  The cocky player doesn't want the baggage; they're satisfied with the snark and the immortality, and that is it.  Seriously.  It cries for a good kick in the non-regenerating peacockish nuts.

I suppose that's pretty clear.

Character & Characterizations

In the halcyon days of my youth, mostly during university, I spent hundreds of hours sitting in writers' groups and literary discussion seminars in a quest to learn how to write better.  In that era, I learned about the adoration that writers have for the shape and sound of words, an adoration that does not extend therefore to messages and communication.  I also learned about the love and infatuation that writers have for characters, while simultaneously dismissing any notion that these characters should change or adapt to their circumstances.  Slowly, I learned that for many writers, writing is a fetish.  For many, a group of words or a character is something like building a power drill that is intended to be framed and hung on a wall, never to be used for any purpose except show.

Of course, it doesn't really matter if someone wants to write that way or even to say it's "good writing."  I don't want to read books like that; most people don't, and it's standard among those kind of writers to carry a grudge against people who don't "get it" and "don't appreciate" what they're trying to do.  It is an indisputable problem of fetishistic books ~ if the reader isn't into the same fetish, the writing won't carry the day.  Thus, fetishistic writers tend to be successful when writing about highly popular subjects: teen romances about vampires and rich businessmen, or books about mothers about to give birth to children, etcetera.  In which case, it doesn't even matter how well the books are written, or how long they anguish on with their themes while nothing is actually happening.  If I want to read about 19th century prostitution, and its agonies, there are a number of books I can pick up ... and it won't matter if the characters of those books ever do anything.  I'm not reading the book for it's plot or that plot's relationship with my life.

The habit of making characters an end in themselves, however, bleeds into role-playing ~ where players and DMs alike develop models that are intended to exist as inviolate entities, meant to ride above the waves of the game setting.  My angst-driven overly impulsive half-elven fighter, who feels he cannot be happy as either a human or an elf, will carry on that motif into every battle, every adventure, every conversation, for dozens of sessions, without ever learning anything about anything, and certainly never getting over his entrenched angst.  Because, obviously, that's how I want my elf to be.

This gets exhaustive for everyone else, who have heard every pre-scripted line a hundred times already, who get to where they can speak my elf's words before I do.  Fetishes are like this, even those that are not blatantly sexual or bigoted (though these get noticed at once).  Fetishes are tiresome.  They're boring.  They contribute nothing to game play except for the fetishist ~ and as such are at best selfish and at worst perniciously narcissistic.

I don't expect to change anyone's approach to character building, naturally.  I'm only explaining why these characters grow increasingly unsatisfying over time ... even for the fetishist, who eventually needs to create another like character with a slightly different fetish.  Characters who do not change over the course of time are sterile and ~ more to the point ~ unbelievable.  As "characters," they fall into the uncanny valley of stereotypes ... the sort that makes others around the table roll their eyes when the totally inflexible character decides to face down the dragon one on one or commit suicide for totally stupid reasons.

To them, the answer is obvious: "It is what my character would do."  The more accurate sentiment would be, it is what their characterization would do.  That's not a character.  That's a tool hanging in a frame where it doesn't get used.

Excitement comes from change ~ from the process of learning from mistakes, adapting to new circumstances, accepting that the past is past and making the effort to recreate ourselves from the new ideas we discover as we progress through time.  People who cannot get past their old lives, their old belief systems and their old habits are considered to have sociological and psychological problems.  Since those problems apply to the actual players, who are most likely to play characterizations rather than consider the possibility of character growth, we need to ask ourselves, what psychological drama is being played out at our gaming table.

This is a taboo.  We're supposed to pretend that if a player wants a character that is a stubborn idiot, this is a "choice" and not a red flag indicating the player may have other problems than our game world.  That is, unless those old buggaboos of sex and bigotry arise.  Then we're empowered.

Otherwise, our hands are tied.

A number of features have arisen surrounding the game to cope with this resistance to change.  The DM changes the genre, or the campaign, or shifts from party to party, or runs all adventures episodically, with a complete new list of characters for every one.  In addition, we start characters at 9th or 12th level, so that players are empowered to create their characterizations without having to worry if they're "strong enough" to play that particular ideal.

This is the saddest part: the game is clearly structured to encourage player character change!  The characters are expected to start off weak and legitimately humbled, knowing that virtually everything in the setting can kill them.  With effort and time, the humility is shucked away, the new character potential emerges, the characters are given larger prospects, the player swaggers a bit more knowing what's already been accomplished ~ and everyone can poke fun at each other, talking about the old days when "our characters" were soft and easily breakable.

All that is casually swept away in favor of jumping straight to 10th level, so that everyone can swagger immediately, and create back stories that make sense for high level characters (that would be ridiculous for a 1st level), while stiffening themselves with as much starch as needed to make their characters utterly inflexible.

This turned out to be a large problem with two online campaigns that I ran, in which the players had exact, intractable visions for what they were ... a vision that I began to screw with, because the world just doesn't care who you are.  My game delights in forcing people to lift themselves out of their prejudices, to make themselves suitable for new conditions and a shifting setting.  I want to push my characters into dilemmas, because these create drama without my having to return again and again to the old saws of more monsters and more puzzles.  The players I had, however, came from a different game experience; one where their pigheadedness was encouraged and even celebrated, because it didn't have to last more than a few months or just one adventure.  By next year, everyone is going to have a new character anyway.

I believe this sentiment underlies a great many unhappy game tables, without the participants being even vaguely aware of the problem.  This is my only reason for shedding light on it.  The diehard, steely-eyed character can't even sustain a modern-day, 100-minute film, much less a campaign expected to endure between 20 and 100 hours.  Why are we still encouraging this character in our game worlds?

Think about it.  This character is not interesting because he's inflexible; he's interesting because he's complicated.

The Paladin's Warhorse

Also known as mearas, an unusual breed of wild horses, the largest of which are chosen by a benevolent holy spirit called a luris, or being of light. Thereafter the spirit and the mearas become one, becoming familiar as a paladin’s warhorse. The animal is as intelligent and long-lived as any human or demi-human, and literally exists to serve the paladin once they have achieved sufficient power ~ that is, upon attaining 4th level.

Relationship

At this point the warhorse will present itself, remaining by the paladin’s side, as a companion, mount and protector. The paladin’s warhorse will share an understanding of the paladin’s needs that resembles ESP ~ but while the warhorse will perfectly understand the paladin, the warhorse is only able to communicate with the paladin as would an ordinary horse. Typically, a paladin will therefore speak ordinarily with the warhorse, asking questions to obtain the warhorse’s knowledge or desire.

The warhorse will likewise recognize the value of the paladin’s companions, and will seek to protect them also, if able to do so without abandoning the paladin. The warhorse will allow any rider whom the paladin accepts, and actively take care of such persons to the best of its ability, even if not in the paladin’s company. For example, if the paladin indicated that the warhorse should bear the party’s mage to another land or region, the warhorse would willingly do so, for as long as it took, thereafter returning to the paladin, with inherent success.

Description

The warhorse is almost always a destrier, or great horse, of enormous size, 17 hands tall, with flanks that make for easy riding and a steady, smooth and even bearing, regardless of what particular gait being taken. If the paladin is too small in stature for such an animal, the paladin’s warhorse may be a courser that is 16 hands high and only 1,900 lbs. The other stats as shown on the right hand table, however, are the same.

The warhorse will appear fine and very strong, most commonly in a color that best suits the tastes of the paladin (the player is free to choose) and of a like gender (which may also be chosen). Males will appear as geldings.

The paladin’s warhorse will have powerful hindquarters, so that it is able to easily coil and spring to stop, spin, turn or sprint forward. They have a short back and well-muscled loin, strong bone and a well-arched neck. The mane and tail hair is typically lush and quite long, though it can be trimmed if desired. Overall, the warhorse’s color is startlingly rich, and at night the animal has been seen to shine with a glisten that resembles the surface of frost or rime in moonlight, though no light-source is present.

Advantages

When defending itself without a rider, the warhorse will rear upon its hind legs and kick forward, or kick backwards with its hooves. The warhorse can attack either forward or backward in a given round, but not both. If bearing a rider, the animal will be able to attack with its teeth.

In caretaking a rider, the warhorse doubles the amount of horseback riding knowledge possessed by whichever rider is mounted, when related to horse handling or horse-mounted combat. If the rider has less than 10 points of knowledge, and depends upon assisted riding, the warhorse will gently carry the rider as a passenger.

Other Notes

The warhorse cannot be sold or given to other persons. When its tasks are done, it will always return to its liege paladin. If the horse is deliberately sent away forever, it will wither and die within 60 to 90 days.

See Player Characters

Human Race

I've been exploring a rework of my character background generation system, and that has led me to the above picture.  This is based off this image ... but while a make-up company can be comfortable telling women that they have "espresso" and "walnut" colored skin, I'm not for my game world, so I've done the best I can to produce my own names.  This has meant having to use "cocoa," "mocha" and "chocolate," but I dare anyone to come up with better options.

The only reputable way to talk about skin color on the internet is in the realm of make-up, which is why the only consistent database that's available is one that features women's skin.  Skin color is one of those things that I'm beginning to think of as the "dark hole" of the internet.  We have all the information available that is available to humans, unless that information is politically charged.  As another example, just try to find a definition about "being healthy" that isn't fully based on telling you how to achieve it.  What actual health is, what it looks like, the firm, fixed definition of this thing, simply doesn't exist.

For my purposes, when I tell a player that the character they've just met is from, oh, Senegal ~ or if the player is from such place ~ as a writer I'd like clear, unambiguous language that helps define what that character looks like.  I don't give a shit about racism or the way that racists/anti-racists have decided to co-opt the language to fight their war.  All colors look "good" to me ... but I don't really care about attaching a moral evaluation to the issue.  When I say, that fellow's from Lebanon, I'd like the players ~ who have never been to Lebanon, and who may not be able to accurately separate a Lebanese from a Saudi or a Persian in their minds ~ to have something to go on.  In this quest, the internet is not much of a help.

Which brings me to the bigger thing.  My background generator presumes that as a player character, you don't get a choice about your skin color.  I have the color I have because I happened to have been born to Russian-German stock in Western Canada.  I didn't get a choice about it.  I recognize that for many D&D players, "choice" is the wet dream to which they desperately cling to give their game any value, but frankly I think this self-aggrandizing game valuation strategy is repulsively masturbatory.  And let me be clear about that.  My feelings about ANY person who makes the argument that role-playing is about "living your fantasy" fall into the category of unrestrained contempt.  If fantasy is your object, please explore it in the bedroom or with your hand.  I'm not interested in enabling your fantasy.

The company is, however.  In those dark days when it looked like the company was going to choke and go under, they were grasping for whatever straws they could grab, and the enabling fantasy shift stick was one that came pretty easily to hand.  In my opinion, it has soiled ... well, everything that sort of fanplay usually soils.

I haven't yet had the player who shit a brick because I told him his character was dark in color when he was hoping for KKK white.  I imagine that I have had a player or two online who simply ignored me and believed what they wanted.  This is the real racism that we don't talk about with role-playing.  Not the elves, the dwarves and the half-orcs, but when was the last time your player described a human player character as cinnamon-skinned or molasses?

How much easier is it if your game world is Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms, where everyone can be more easily white?  After all, there's no stigma attached to that bottom third of the map, is there?

Here I was just saying I don't care about racism.

One of the benefits of growing up a social leper is that it's easy to identify with the social leprosy that is attached to so many others.  Fundamentally, however, I'm interested in providing depth and distinction to my game world, to give it as tactile and as gritty a feel as I can provide.  There isn't a colour on the above chart that I wouldn't play proudly.

But then, saying that, someone is bound to boil out of their den to scream at me about cultural appropriation or some other such shit, which is a whole different post about a whole different kind of inventing social leprosy.  Whereas I think I've already made my point on this subject.

Starting with Nothing

My personal feeling is that if a new player joins an ongoing campaign, where the existing players are of much higher level, that new player must start at 1st level.  This is an absolute rule, and applies to everyone who has ever played my game, since I started as a DM in 1979.  I have never run a game in which any character began at a level higher than 1st.

This has meant starting a 1st level character with a party of 9th level characters ... begging the question, how does that situation resolve itself.

To begin with, every 9th or 12th or 15th level character in my world remembers when they were 1st level ... because they all were, once.  Secondly, because of the game tables I build, where players see each other as allies and not as competition, the upper level characters immediately take it upon themselves to protect the new character.  I have no problem with the new character being boosted with spells, being handed an extra +1 sword and fitted with magic armor, given a potion or two and so on ... all of which must come from the stores of the higher level characters, because I absolutely do not allow the purchase of magic items in my world.  However, my characters typically have a few bits and pieces of minor equipment they've kept, since their once precious +1 sword was upgraded when they stormed that castle at 8th level.

The new character gets a bit of a head start.  If the new character dies, the 9th level cleric can raise or use death's door.  If the new character takes a single hit and has to retreat, the 9th level paladin can step in as a shield or the mage can whisk the 1st level out of the way.  There's always a chance of permanent death, but the 1st level is often quite safe in a lot of ways.

Additionally, because of my experience distribution rules, if the 1st level participates in and survives a single no-holds-barred blood match, that is almost certainly going to mean 2nd level.  And 3rd or 4th within a two to three runnings.  With so much experience raining from the sky, all the low level character has to do is be brave.  Others will help the noobie not die.

So much of the game is based on thinking, discussion, planning and innovation, things that don't require raw combat ability.  I've had many new players jump into a game and quickly get to the heart of something, where the older players were confounded.  New players may have skills in role-play, may show unqualified bravery in desperate situations and may boost a team's spirit with good humor and enthusiasm.  None of these things require the player's character to be 10th level.

Most important, the new player entering the campaign starts from a position of humility.  If the other players behaved like a closed fraternity, treating the new player like a menial, this wouldn't work ~ but in my game, it is almost always the players who are asking me to let their friend play.  Their "friend," I said.  None of my players want to treat their friend, or my friend, like a menial.

I'm sorry that we feel that we have to give new players a free ride to the place so they can enjoy what others have sacrificed and struggled to achieve.  I'm equally sorry that DM's feel they have to begin parties at level 5 because they can't figure out how to run a good game with lower level players.  I often hear this chatter about "goblins" being boring.  Well, yes, they can be.  But why in the hell is it presumed that we can't be more imaginative than throwing goblins as a DM?  There's intrigue, mystery and the building of friendships in the game that can be exploited and devised until such time as the players become 5th level.  By which time, they appreciate those first five levels, and run characters, not free puppets who mean no more to them than a teddy bear we roast on an open fire for the lols.

When it is your teddy bear, from your childhood, it isn't funny any more.

If you want to appreciate anything, start with nothing.  Then all those first things you have, those first things you collect, those first things that keep you alive, will always mean more to you than the common riches you will eventually find mean almost nothing to you.

For you Conan fans, I'll remind you how Conan felt about wealth and plunder once he became the King of Aquilonia.

What is Playing a Character?

I wonder if someone who has been a DM as long as I have, without much playing, should give any advice about rolling up a character. I’ve watched many do it; I have seen players create back stories and establish “characters” outside themselves … but I’ve never seen any of these people choose their stats for any reason except to satisfy some mechanical need, such as dexterity to ensure safety checks or a high charisma to help with speaking to NPCs.

Suppose that before we threw any dice, we decided who and what our character was going to be, regardless of race and class. Suppose we didn’t base a character on our die rolls or upon our skill set … what would we base that character on?

The most obvious answer would seem to be alignment: is the character good or bad; a team-player or a loner. My feeling is that generalizations such as these are so large as to be useless. We are all sometimes a loner and sometimes a team-player. We are all sometimes good and sometimes bad ~ and I lean to the argument that villains consider themselves either justified or heroic. Adhering to alignment just creates cardboard cutouts. We can surely do better.

Likewise, I am learning through these last five years that it’s no good to think in terms of ambitions, either. We expect that everyone wants to be rich and powerful, certainly enough to obtain those things they want, whatever they might be. That’s all very well for the future, and it might be a motivation for the present, but it isn’t a personality. It might explain why the character is willing to raid this dungeon, or how hard the character is willing to quest … but unless your character is a one-note monster, it doesn’t make much sense. Nor does it make interesting play.

Does this character, or this player, have any sense of personal growth, beyond accumulation and revenging his father’s death? How about the character’s ideas about community, social responsibility, the state of the kingdom or the world? None at all? What entertains the character? How does the character relax … does the character like doing ANYTHING except killing and hauling away the loot?

We can pretty much assume, “no.” The subject never comes up. A stranger turns up, starts up a story about some secret amulet that a bad person is using to mess with a kingdom’s residents and everyone gears up and heads off to a land we never heard of five minutes ago. Ask someone if they’d like to borrow a strong cabin in the woods near a pleasant pond and spend the week there before the next adventure and we get blank faces.

We build murder-hobos because the adventure format demands we pack up and ship out on a moment’s notice, while most of what we’ll meet is so evil there’s nothing to do with it except kill it. There’s no time to think about having a family or building a future. There’s no time to deliberate the everyday issues of the local troubles of the people. If everyone here is starving, don’t ask us; unless there’s a Macguffin involved, we can’t be bothered.

It is silly to talk about “character” when every facet of the game boils every individual down to pressboard cut-out.

I guess that’s where I am different. I’m happy to go on adventures and kill things. I like hauling away loot. But I want a home. I want a reason to go home, and someone to go home for. As I beat this ogre into the dust of his own bones, I want to be thinking of spinning my kids around and showing them this beautiful new gem I found. I want to be planning the new mill and getting back in time for the festival that begins this year’s harvest. I want to tell the stranger who’s bitching about how some wizard in HIS kingdom is stuffing his face with the blood of his people to get the hell off my land, I have problems in my own kingdom to fix. I want to enter into adventures that are RELEVANT to my needs, my environment and my future.

If I think of the character I want for that, I’m ready to forego some charisma in favor of wisdom; or to suspend dexterity in favor of strength. I’ll pay someone else to do my talking; I’ll pay someone else to backstab an enemy. I want a class that will let me command men; or at the very least, will help me establish an entourage that I can rely upon when enemies begin organizing the local villagers against me. I want to encourage grateful immigrants and hamstring entitled locals who resist my changes. I want to help a scarlet-lettered woman regain her reputation; I want to sully the reputation of a narrow-minded bigot. I’m going to need to be tough; generous; dutiful; self-sacrificing; pleasant to know and fearsome to oppose.

I can do that with any race; there are quite a few classes that will let me manage that. If a fighter, I’ll move to an urban setting; with a ranger, something rural. With a cleric, I’ll seek a mission. If I’m a mage, I’ll need isolation at first, then the opportunity to marry into a reputable family. There’s always some means to make my designs work. My designs are flexible enough for that.

What I can’t bear is to have some DM decide what adventures I ought to follow, or what designs I ought to have, or whether those designs deserve constant harassment from the DM. I’m willing to admit a little bad luck, but when it is orcs this week and last week it was giant grasshoppers eating the crops, and the week before that a chimera was destroying the neighborhood, it gets to be suspicious.

But then, I’m weird. Truly, truly weird. I think this game is about playing a character in a setting, when in fact it is about playing a block of wood in a very small box.

Will the Real Participant Please Stand Up

Continuing with yesterday's post, I'd like to expand some of my points about character, discussing what a character is, as opposed to what a character does or wants.

First, I'd like to express any misgivings that some readers have that this post, or the last one, is a lead-in to any idea of creating game effects to enhance character play.  Far from it.  It is my wish here to explain that characterization is so far afield of role-playing games that it is actually quite foolish to pretend that we're role-playing a meaningful character.  At best, we're manipulating cardboard cut-outs of characters ~ what I called in the last post, "robots."

To understand what I'm arguing, we have to get a better idea of what makes a character.  It's safe to say that the readers and I are helplessly adrift where it comes to any assignation regarding character types, character quality or the meaning of character in a story.  As individuals, we easily fall in love with characters whom we find familiar, or with whom we identify, blinding ourselves to legitimate interpretations of merit or import.  Because we think a character is "cool," we discard all discussion regarding the actual structure, function or legitimacy of the character in the story, becoming hot-headed and insisting to others that they just don't understand why such-and-such is the "greatest character that has ever existed," a belief that is based more upon our visceral sense of that character as it relates to us, rather than how it might relate to others who have different interests or tastes.

It gets worse when a judgment is applied to that belief.  We decide not to be friends, or even acquaintances, with people who don't like our favorite characters, as though these are yardsticks towards determining who is a real person of value and who is obviously a dolt.  The internet is full of this sort of thing; and it makes any instructional discussion of character nearly impossible.

I am, here, going to discuss three types of character, directly in terms of how they functionally act within a story, with an intention to explaining what makes something fictional more like what any real person actually is.  The goal of an artist making a character at all is to relay a certain reality, from the perspective of someone who is not you in the hopes that you will understand the motivation of a perspective other than your own.  Our perspective, however dear it is to us, is limited.  We turn to art to expand our limitations; to understand better how other people think; and hopefully, in understanding, we expand ourselves, so that we become more aware, better prepared for other people and more empathetic of their needs.

And so ... this long-winded effort is simply for this purpose: please put your emotional attachments on a shelf, and listen.

Looking through literature on this subject today, I am unsatisfied by the scholarship on this subject.  Most of us are familiar with the terms round or flat characters; fewer, perhaps, with dynamic vs. static.  I'm perfectly in agreement with these terms; but I find that I want a more definitive separation in types of round or dynamic characters.  Therefore, I'm going to propose three character types that I'd like to discuss: fixed, reflexive and conflicted.

Fixed characters are those that fit into the categories flat and static.  Regardless of the circumstances of the story, regardless of what's happened, the character neither expresses nor functionally acts in a different manner.  For example, He-Man and Skeletor.  Every episode of the children's show features the same characters, acting in the same predictable manner, with the same goals, the same function, employing the same responses, with no real emotion.  An earlier example, from my childhood, would be Dudley Do-Right: utterly without fear, or comprehension really, but excessively brave, ready, tenacious and indestructible.

Virtually every character ever run by a player in a role-playing campaign is a fixed character.  The background fetish, as a feature, is the means by which most players set their character's behaviour or motivation in stone.  Who among us have not noticed when a given fighter, regardless of how many fights, how many close calls with death, how many foolish mistakes, ALWAYS bulldozes into every doorway and every fight without the least hesitation?  Or the thief that always steals, or the cleric that always gives the same sort of speech before a fight, or the dwarf that perpetually argues with the elf, no matter how many years the two of them have spent saving each other's hide?  Players, as a species, love fixed characters.  This is part of their fetish.  Having dreamt up the perfect representation of their character's identity, they will play that identity with unvarying exactitude ... even to where that same identity will float from character to character, as previous incarnations (whatever their skills, class or backgrounds) die away.

Fixed characters, however, are boring.  They may satisfy the player, but they exhaust everyone else.  They are the furthest sort of being from an actual, real person ... and in a way, for role-playing, that is a positive feature.  For while fixed characters don't change, they also can't be really missed when they die.  Another stock character can be easily made on the same pattern.  Therefore, any personal relationship between the player and the made-up character can be dismissed.  Nothing is lost, because nothing was ever really there.

Reflexive characters, which might also be thought of as responsive characters, are quite different.  As the narrative continues around the character, the character is forced to adapt, converting themselves to fit the new world they find themselves in.  Reflexive characters are a kind of dynamic character; but in a very particular way.  Intrinsically, they don't change.  I have hundreds of examples to pick from, but I'll choose something from a film that I'm sure 90% of my readers have seen more than once:  the character Henry Hill from the film Goodfellas.

Throughout the film, Henry is repeatedly forced to deal with the steady, unrelenting changes going on around him, as the mafia/mob lifestyle he lives transforms from the 1950s into the 1960s.  He experiences the lifestyle in multiple ways: as a kid, as an enforcer, as a husband, as a member of a vitriolic set of friends and acquaintances ... then as a struggling drug dealer trying to make it on his own and finally as an informer against the very people he's known all his life.  With each change, he adjusts, he bends his moral framework, he allows himself to participate more fluidly and in an hands-on manner, he submits to the risks he has to take and finally, he submits to the only choice he has left as the walls close around him.

But he doesn't change.  He doesn't question his infatuation with the goodfellas' lifestyle when his dad beats him, or when he sees a man knifed in the street, or when he watches his friends murder Billy Bats, or when he goes to prison, when people are murdered all around him, or when he's lowered to having to deal in coke or even after he's been forced into retirement as a relocated witness.  At the end of the film, Henry's chief regret is that he isn't able to return to the lifestyle he loves.  And while this makes an interesting movie, and it makes Henry into a very interesting, profoundly unique character, the actual character himself is without regret, without doubt, without remorse, without any rational response to any of the awful, criminal, sociopathic activities with which he's connected.  In that particular way, he's a very flat character ... no more changeable than Dudley Do-Right.

This is the sort of character than DMs want when running adventure-driven campaigns that steadily move from adventure to adventure.  The characters need to make the best possible use of their resources, adapting themselves to the circumstances, overcoming the problems they face, and never questioning why their character is always ready for another adventure, always ready to risk their lives again, always ready to put it all on the line for treasure or what other motivation they have.  No one wants a character who hesitates at the start of an adventure, who suddenly questions the point of all this; that is not in keeping with the substance of the game.

Conflicted characters represent much more nearly what we are as human beings.  They, too, are dynamic ~ but not only in the way they respond, but also in the way they recognize that there are multiple choices that they can make regarding any situation.  They're not sure.  They are filled with doubts.  When something startling, unexpected or significant happens, they question themselves, even to where they are ready to separate themselves from the life they're living, and accept the consequences of that decision.  Again, I have many examples I could draw from, going back to the Greeks and Shakespeare ... but none of you want me to explain any of this by pulling out Hamlet, again.  Given that I want an adventure of sorts, and a familiar character, whom most readers have probably seen, I will go with Remy from the film Ratatouille.

Remy, like Henry, is in love with something: being a cook.  However, Remy is far more conflicted over the relationship between his love of food and his family.  He knows his father is wrong; but at the same time, throughout the film, it is important to Remy that his father understands, because Remy isn't capable of just abandoning his family without hesitation.  As such, he lets himself be pushed into situations (being food-tester, providing stolen food for his brother Emile and friends) ... but he knows its wrong and he experiences angst over it.

Similarly, he doubts a lot of his actions, even his bold ones.  He hesitates before fixing the soup.  He runs away from Linguini at first before changing his mind.  He throws away his morals in a fit of pique and lets all the rats into the kitchen; and then experiences remorse when he's exposed and he's lost his friend.  Then he returns to the kitchen to help Linguini anyway, even though he is only a rat and may very well be caught and killed (we know he won't be, obviously, he's the star, but that is not Remy's perspective).  He does it because he knows Linguini can't face Anton Ego without him.

With each change in the story, Remy re-evaluates his belief system.  He's never sure what he wants.  He's never sure how it is going to turn out.  And often, his choices land him in hot water, which he clearly regrets.  It is this conflict that makes Remy compelling: because it is a conflict that we ourselves struggle with every day, as we go to work, as we make plans, as we fight with our families, as we puzzle out the message behind a blog post, as we act like human beings.

A character like Remy would be a disaster in a role-playing game.  Trying to run such a character, inventing the character's inward struggles with each part of the adventure, might be an interesting artistic venture, but it would make a frustrating, undesirable and masturbatory excursion for a group of players ... perhaps more so if every player attempted to do the same, in different ways, according to their personal interpretations of how their conflicted character viewed the world. Admittedly, there might be various drama troupes who found such an activity interesting (though note that when improving, actors always play the scene for laughs, not drama) ... but I don't think a role-playing game would be made better by the experiment.

That said, we ARE playing this experience in one way. We are actual conflicted humans, playing the game with our own conflicted selves.  But we are not, thankfully, trying to puzzle out how some invented personality deals with conflict; we're quite used to our own conflict and we are quite able to put it on a shelf, if need be, so that we can participate in a social activity, like playing a game.

Admittedly, some are not.

When the players struggle with making up their minds about what to do; when they hesitate before fighting a dragon or question if their quest-giver is actually the villain; this is the sort of realistic, pleasant and meaningful conflict that we are seeking from game play.  We don't want this from characters; but we DO want it from players.

And that is why questing to make role-playing a matter of playing a character is the pursuit of lunacy.  We don't want "characters" ~ we want flat, fixed, reflexive personalities that respond to their situations in a predictable manner, so that the REAL PEOPLE can enjoy the game for the contextual dilemmas it provides.  Any role-player waxing on about the "amazing" qualities of an invented character is in a state of delusion; they've fallen in love with a wooden, two-dimensional robot, and not with any being of the substance of a fellow player.

We've missed the fact of this.  We've allowed ourselves to be hoodwinked by words used in a particular way, concocting a particular chicanery, which we've bought into because it "sounded good"; but it doesn't stand up to authentic scrutiny.

It's bullshit.

A Pox Upon Thee

Before I begin, I am deeply conscious that this post might be taken for an argument.  That is not my intention.  Instead, I wish to express the impression I am getting from watching video after video about how to play, run and design for role-playing games, particularly Dungeons and Dragons.  That impression suggests that what is commonly happening at game tables is radically different from my experience at my table.  I only wish to suggest reasons why that may be.

Therefore, because many of the details of 3e, 4e and 5e are unknown to me, I'm going to be general in my descriptions - and when certain details are not known to me, I'm going to say as much.



In light of the previous post, let's take a situation:

The players complete their characters and begin the adventure; they need to climb into the forest above the town, to locate the cabin of a druid, who has information they need in order to locate the Palace of Pickscale Peak.  On the way, the party encounters four giant ticks ... and within two rounds, one of the ticks rolls a 1 in 100 critical attack, killing the party's strongest fighter.

The Reaction I'm Hearing

At this point, the player goes off, ranting about how unfair this is, how wandering monsters or verminous monsters shouldn't have the power to roll critical hits, etcetera, apparently at length and in general disturbing the "good times" being had by the players on the one day this week they are allowed to play.

Here are reasons that I have heard given for why death sucks.  To begin with, the player has spent much time making their character.  I am not sure how long this takes in 5e.  I have heard that in 4e it can take an entire session.  I suspect it was not a short time in 3e either, what with the varying feats and builds that were part of that system.  I have never made a character in any of these systems, so I am only going on the considerable amount of time that people online have given to describing the considerable amount of time it takes to make characters.

3e, and presumedly 4e, had a lot of choices to make, to create the carefully crafted character of the player's intent.  I am guessing this was a cross between pimping out one's ride and buying a car from the worst car dealership in Michigan.  After choosing skills, there is the problem of equipping the character, and according to most descriptions I've heard about present-day games, a lot of time spent writing a backstory.  Now, even a two-page backstory is a steep hill for someone who doesn't write all the time.  If the player really got into the process, the backstory might be longer, or really considered, perhaps even written multiple times between the running when the character was made and the running just before the character died.

Of course, now that the character is dead, the game stops.  This has been described as onerous in the extreme ... though I've heard it said and seen it written constantly that the player is free to leave the table, go to a corner, and roll up their character entirely on their own without any supervision whatsoever.  Which is just ... well, I have no words.

AND it's a big issue of the DM.  After all, the DM has planned everything for Gespacho the Gwistbaker to take the lead in every part of the adventure going forward, and now there is no Gespacho.  What now?  What if the player doesn't come back with another fighter?  What if the new fighter isn't strong enough, or is the wrong race?  What then?

These are all problems that seem to seize the very heart of the gaming community.  I cannot relate.

What Happens in My Game

Because the time needed to roll up the character was about half-an-hour, there's very little investment at this point.  The player hardly cares that the character was killed, unless the character was something really unusual, like having two 18s or three 17s.

Since I generate a background, rather than have the characters invent one, there's not much investment there, either.  Oh, the character might have been terrifically lucky, been of noble birth or with some unusual extra skills, but again, there hasn't been time to play them and at any rate, the background is rich with extra skills.  So there's always an expectation that something like it will turn up again, only better.

The player starts picking out dice to roll up the new character, while the other players make a few jokes about the death or chat amiably about whatever.  There's no sense that the game is "stopped," because ALL the players are anxious to see what the new character is going to be.  They, and I, watch earnestly as the dice are rolled, giving congratulations at each good roll and good-natured humour at each bad roll.  The player may not roll well enough to meet my minimum stats (either at least one 15 and one 16, or a single roll of 17 or 18), which aren't super-high.  No one minds the re-roll.  They want to see how much power is joining the party.

Quickly, the player sorts out which numbers go under which stats, picks a class, picks a race and starts thinking about spells, weapon proficiencies or sage abilities.  These are really easy to choose, especially for anyone who has played in my world a few months, so it is past in 5-10 minutes.  If the player really wants to think before choosing, I'll forego spells until the first combat, or a sage ability until the next running.  I don't care if the player chooses an ability for a specific situation, because the player is then stuck with that ability forever, whereas the situation may not come up again for months.  So it doesn't matter.

15 minutes have passed.  Now comes the biggest timewaster: the player has to pick a name.  Meanwhile, I automatically generate a background, which I post as a file on the net which can be downloaded on the player's phone.  I read off anything that looks interesting, not for the benefit of the player, but for everyone's benefit.  If there is a sailor or an armorer or a physician in the party now, everyone wants to know.

25 minutes gone and the player can now start looking over the equipment table.  The new character is THERE, in the game, buying equipment at the table as they are introduced to the party.  Basically, the character comes stumbling out of the forest, expresses surprise at the party's survival, pity at the dead body, and asks to join.  There is usually no role-playing; everyone has done this dozens of times and they don't care about introductions.  Bang, we're off and the adventure continues unabated.  After a bit, the character says they have finished buying equipment.  Total time before adventuring again: 25-30 minutes.


Concluding Thoughts

I think that the need to tailor characters has resulted in this unhappiness connected to player deaths.  The issue, it seems to me, is that with so much lead effort before actually playing, we are creating a deep attachment to something that hasn't proven itself in the field.

People aren't going to give up this habit.  The later editions have emphasized all these build time and effort, in effect expanding the mini-game of making the character to meet certain expectations of the player (who wants total control over who they will BE).  They're not going to give that up.

I'm glad I never went this route.  By maintaining the class system, the class abilities are standardized across the board - and though these may be boring to many players, actual experience of seeing and doing things seems to be more eloquent in character development than trying to do it all at one go before actually starting.

If a fighter in my world fights, and has little else in their skill list, that means the player has to come up with some other way of defining themselves beyond what they "do."  If the background tells them what their past has been and who their people are, then players can't define themselves by their past.  Instead, they have to define themselves by what they want, what things they wish to acquire, what plans they wish to put in motion ... and then to see if they have the stuff to succeed at that, regardless of what class they happen to be and regardless of where they came from.

I find it curious that as the game moved away from the class system, the need to identify with the job title, or the personality of the character, intensified.  Though there are fifty different ways to be a paladin, or more, the most important fact about a character is still what the character does for a living, rather than the aspirations of the character.  I think that's lacking.

In any case, death is always a hard thing.  If a character that has run in my world for years dies, that's a hard day for the player.  But it isn't a pox on the game.  Not at all.

Making Choices in Player Creation

Enough of this negativity.  Let's get down to unsolicited advice.  Before we can get our characters going, we have to pick spells, abilities and gear.  Here's a run-down of what we want to keep in mind.

Spells

We can break these into five different categories, based on what the spells do for us and for others. I'll discuss them in order of importance ~ that is, what spells do we want to take first and from the beginning.

Offensive: whatever our conception of the character, however we feel about what a spellcaster does or doesn't do, we're acting the fool if we don't take at least one attack spell, right off the top.  The best spells are undeniably those that cause damage.  Influential spells, such as those that charm, hold or physically affect creatures are nice, but most of those are designed for use with humanoids.  During the crunch against a creature without intelligence or with eyes, as is often the case, a strong illusion or light-driven spell is going to prove useless, as are spells that change the environment or the creature's emotional state.  On the other hand, pure damage spells are universal.  They work against everything.

As well, we and our party are going to get into a situation where some creature just won't die, though it must be in the neighborhood of five hit points or less.  This is just the time we need a magic missile or a low-damage chromatic orb.  It doesn't matter if it only does 2-5 or less.  Save it up and use it at that crucial moment that will end this thing, finally.

Protection of Others: there are many spells that provide aid to others in times of distress.  Bless or the cleric's Prayer spell is like that.  Protection from evil (or malevolence).  A wall of fog.  Any spell that will make things easier for as many fellow party members as possible.  I don't recommend that all our spells fall into this category, but we should be sure to take at least one if we can.  Obviously, the most important are healing spells, mostly because they can be the last ditch saving grace when a party member is slipping into the grave.  Take one of them first, then consider the others.

Protection of Self:  these are fine, but they are of secondary importance to any spell that can protect more than one person.  Yes, we want to survive and yes, it helps others if we are still around to cast spells.  But if the others don't survive, we're alone.  We should think about that.  So while eventually we will be taking a good, solid protection of self spell, like sanctuary or jump, we should make sure we're a strong protector of others.

Everyday Spells: these won't keep us alive in combat, but they're useful enough to be of value all the time.  A magical mount that enables us to travel, a familiar that we can find, a hut that protects us at night, something unseen that can serve us continuously or cast a light so we can see in the dark.  These are all good ~ but understand, they are really the 4th most valuable things we should be thinking of.  These are luxuries, not necessities, and too many luxuries will take up magic slots that could have saved the lives of our friends and ourselves.  So limit the number of luxuries to a minimum.

Spells that Solve Problems:  many of the spells available are tremendously useful ~ but only in rare, obscure situations.  Sometimes, the situation might be common enough to consider the spell: the need to climb something or not fall to our deaths.  But really, how often do things need mending, when we can't just do without?  How often does a small rainfall help?  Isn't that remove fear spell just going to sit useless in our pocket most of the time?  Before taking spells that do nothing but solve unlikely problems, we should really, really think.  Perhaps we should be taking a spell we will use, rather than a spell we might use.

Skills

Here I am thinking of my sage abilities, but the advice above that applies to spells should, in some degree, apply to skills as well.

Skills can rarely be applied to causing damage or even to direct physical offense, unless it augments some power we already possess.  We can take advantage of that, yes, but it risks our becoming a one trick pony.  What value has the pony got if it can't do a second trick?  So while hitting really hard is better than just hitting hard, maybe hitting hard is enough for now and it might be a good idea if we can jump the gorge instead of dying in it.

The same applies with regards to skills that help everyone and skills that just help me.  That latter may matter as regards to our self-image, but as skills are in short supply, being that we can only choose so many, we get a better capitalization of those skills if they can be applied to more people.  If they can help the whole party find something or protect themselves against something, we're getting more bang for our buck.  After we make everyone else a little safer, then we should think about ourselves and what we want.

That sounds a bit preachy, I know.  I'm really just talking about the better chance of survival for everyone.  If we are there to help our party, our strong and living party will be there to help us when we need it.  It is a change from an overt dependence on self-reliance to mutually assured survival ~ and yes, it means trusting other people.  For many, that is a damn hard thing to learn.

Armor & Weapons

How I have watched party after party equip themselves!  Armor, then weapons, then maybe they start thinking about clothes, very often forgetting their boots ... and then we begin the selection of tools, toys and, finally, just general stuff.

I don't have much to say about armor.  Players depend on it a lot, are very uncomfortable without it and would rather move slowly and be armored than enjoy the freedom of living without it.  I suppose that we must defend ourselves like a turtle if we have the capacity, so I won't fault players here for taking that route.

With regards to weapons, I have a few suggestions.  Pick one solid hand-to-hand weapon up front.  One-handed weapons leave us open for using a shield, but a two handed weapon is fine.  This first weapon shouldn't be too long, we are going to want to use it in close quarters.  A sword, a battle axe, a mace, a spear, a club or a quarterstaff is best, depending on our class.  Clubs and quarterstaffs break but can be easily, and cheaply, replaced.  Spears can also be thrown, if need be.  If we don't have a strength bonus at all, a mace is better than a sword because it won't roll 1s for damage.  Battle axes are good for breaking in doors and other things and swords are just a good, all-around sturdy weapon, with the benefit that none if it is made of wood.

Most of the time mages and illusionists will take daggers rather than a quarterstaff.  The dagger doesn't do much damage but it can be thrown and hey, the two classes only get one proficiency to start.  My one contention is that daggers thrown by a mage class that start by needing a 21 to hit AC zero makes for a lot of missing and very little damage done when a hit does happen.  How many times have I see a mage throw three daggers, hitting only once, and then for 1 damage!  Might just as well wade in and try with a quarterstaff.  At least if the goblin hits us for 1d6 damage, that's meaningful damage the fighter hasn't taken and it makes a bigger difference to the overall fight than standing to the side tossing metal pieces at walls.  But of course, that would demand our thinking of others ~ which, as I said, is hard to learn.

Okay, second weapon:  take something that can be thrown without loading.  A dagger is fine for a second weapon, a hand axe, a warhammer, a javelin perhaps and, of course, a spear.  We should then get into the habit that the first weapon we pull is not our main weapon, but our secondary weapon, which we're going to start by throwing.  Then we can draw the main weapon while we wade in.

Third weapon: now that we have something we can throw right off, pick something we can load and fire.  A crossbow is fine, but plan on using it once and then throwing it away in favor of our main weapon, because it won't be worth the time it takes to reload it.  If we want to use it twice, we'll hire a servant to reload our crossbow for us, while we kill things.  Nothing is more useless than a fighter standing around loading things.

If we want to fire something more than once, then we should go with a sling or a bow. The benefit of a sling is that stones are cheap and plentiful and the tool weighs nothing.  We never have to worry about having a bow strung over our shoulder while we're climbing through some hole in the ground.  The bow, on the other hand, does more damage and has a slightly better range.  Still, most of the time we're going to be shooting at things within 50 feet.  Range for either will be the same, most of the time.

Finally, a last weapon.  Here we can think about getting a specialty device.  A bludgeoning weapon for things that can't be cut.  A polearm for its reach.  A spear versus charge.  Something that hooks or disarms, if our DM allows that sort of thing.

Gear

Thinking about it, I believe this is going to require a post of its own.  I'll work up a list of ten or twelve things that we always ought to have with us and write that out.