System as Physics Engine, System as Narrative Engine

First off, let me apologize, as my terminology may be incorrect in modern gaming theory parlance; I'm not up to date on it. I'll try to define my terms as I go, and get this out of my head.

I've seen a lot of game systems in recent years (FATE, Powered by the Apocalypse) that have been called more 'narrative' in nature. On a linear continuum defined by two opposite poles, this would be one the poles. The opposite pole would be games that are more 'mechanistic' in nature.

Mechanistic game systems' primary priority is to emulate the 'physics engine' of a given world, including perhaps some unspoken rules of that world's genre. In the case of the Hero System, this allows to take damage and recover from it as people do in heroic fiction (books, comics, TV shows, movies), as opposed to how they do in real life. The game rules reinforce the consistency and therefore in-game plausibility of these things happening.

And plausibility -- strongly correlated to suspension of disbelief -- is one of the cornerstones of science fiction / fantasy stories.

Narrative game systems' primary priority appears to be (I've not played that many, and certainly not as long as I've been playing mechanistic game systems) to emulate the character archetypes and plot tropes of a given genre or sub-genre. The rules themselves enable and enforce the actions of characters and the unfolding of the story within certain parameters -- the good ones allowing for a multitude of stories without falling into the trap of the dreaded railroad.

The responsibility for plausibility here lies with the players and the GM rationalizing the unfolding of the story in a satisfying manner.

You'll note that I've steered away from calling either approach 'story-oriented'. To my mind, both are used to tell stories -- narrative ones seem to focus on the narrative flow of the game, while mechanistic ones tend to focus on the plausibility of the events that unfold in the game. Both seem to retain the agency of the players / player characters (for the most part).

With that in mind, some future posts I'll be writing will try to unpack what things I like about each type of system -- and which things I don't. My preference is clearly for mechanistic systems, as these are the ones that I'm most familiar with, and the type that I most strongly associate with RPG gameplay. But I've always been intrigued by different systems and settings in RPGs, so off I go...

Things I Learned from Champions: The Multiverse Is My (Potential) Sandbox (part 01)

Champions and the Hero System have been on my mind of late for several reasons: the Aaron Allston Strike Force Kickstarter, the DC RPG Hero Points Podcast under the Fire & Water podcast network. So when a recent talk of sandboxes and railroads slammed into the space for RPG thought, my immediate thought was: in a Supers RPG, The Multiverse Is My (Potential) Sandbox.

All my worlds, torn asunder!

What do you mean by sandbox?

You may know what a sandbox is, but my understanding may be different from yours -- so I'll expound on my particular interpretation. As I mentioned in a very old post, my understanding of a sandbox is

"...a style of play where players are dumped into a campaign setting that can be as small as a dungeon or as large as a  world map and are free to pursue whatever agendas they wish..."

Furthermore, my understanding is that sandboxes are often positioned as a diametric opposite to the railroad, wherein a gaming session / adventure must follow a rigid sequence of events, with little tolerance for deviation.

One key point about sandboxes is the implication of edges. In theory, you can do whatever you want within the borders of that sandbox, but beyond the borders -- there's nothing prepared.

But in the Superhero genre, there's a precedent for borderless adventures. Sure, Daredevil may be dealing with crime in Hell's Kitchen -- but from time to time Japanese Ninjas come 'round and kidnap him or his loved ones forcing a trip to the Land of the Rising Sun (and Sailor Moon). And occasionally, there's a team adventure in the Savage Land or some other strange corner of the universe. It's worse for characters who can travel to the other side of the world in the blink of an eye, or can sift through millions of minds in a split second, or can slide-shift into other dimensions.

In fact, that was one of the earliest things I got into when building my character -- years of frustration at not being able to move far enough or often enough in other RPGs led to a high DEX, high SPEED, high movement character build. Someone who could move across the battle mat in a single move (nothing compared to the more experienced characters who could, actually, race across the city in a single segment.

So, at power levels like this, there's no borders to where they can go during adventures, right?

No borders, no sandbox -- right?

The Invisible Borders of a Supers Sandbox

There actually are some borders in a Supers Sandbox. Some of these I've used, and others are those I've learned from my betters in Metahuman settings:

Beware: Here Be Boredom

For all the criticism of super-heroes being reactive, only waiting for crime to take place before doing anything about it, super-hero campaign players are rarely anything but reactive. Give them a mystery and they'll do anything -- even ill-considered, or downright stupid things -- to get to the bottom of it. Hit them with an attack that almost kills them, and they'll buy up a defense for it -- even if it doesn't fit their character concept.

The downside is, for those players who haven't learned yet that part of the super-hero genre involves their characters getting into progressively worse situations before getting out of them, they can start to turtle.

Ain't nothing wrong with being a turtle. As long as you're
teenaged, mutated, and ninja'd!

Rather than strike hard and fade away into the night (only old fans of TMNT know that one), they very unheroically pull into their shells and hide. They avoid encounters with the enemy, avoid following up leads on villains, avoid interactions with their NPCs or innocents in need.

This is why the view that Call of Cthulhu PCs are unheroic is flawed: there's a lack of appreciation about what true heroism is. Being powerful can mean having the fury of a millions suns coursing through your veins, but being heroic lies in using (or not using) that power even if it means that you might die.

So, the reward for repeated cowardice in my games -- beyond shame or ridicule -- is just boredom. Nothing happens to you. No one bothers you. The digits of your wall clock cycle through the seconds and minutes slowly. You overhear people talking about their work, their love lives, their cats, their trip to Japan where they watched a Go tournament. All while their teammates have the time of their lives, risking their lives and sacred fortunes to fight for what is right and true and just in the world.

No, they're not being forced to go back to the "storyline of the GM". They're just discovering that, just like in the 'real world', there are places where nothing interesting is happening right this second / minute / year / century. They have exercised their player agency to place their characters in a state of stasis.

In D&D terms, this is the equivalent of the PCs that refuse to go into any dungeon, or pursue any adventure hook or rumour that the DM dangles before them. They just get to sit in the tavern and ignore the growing table of increasingly drunk mysterious strangers in cloaks grumbling loudly about adventurers these days.

The Gravity of the Situation

Star Trek reference. My job is done here.
Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnn!

On the other hand, before we pull the trigger on that solution, Supers GMs often employ another technique to pull their players' PCs back into the thick of things. Perhaps they have a beloved NPC get kidnapped by the villain (a classic), or a helpless innocent is endangered, or a person / place / thing / ideal very dear to the player or the PC is threatened.

Or, out of sheer coincidence, that dame/dude picks the player's life to walk into, out of all the gin-joints in Gotham City.

These events, very much in the pulp-rooted traditions of two-fisted action and wall-to-wall suspense, will often bring the heroes -- who might be traipsing around in the backwaters of Earth-C -- back to where the action is.

The benefit of this kind of approach is that PCs are exercising a very traditional player agency ability -- the ability to get yourself into the trouble you choose! Yeah, you may not want to go into space to fight the Zekrit Warz, but you're sure down with knocking sense into fools who're trying to grab that bespectacled kid with the lisp and the adorable little chihuahua!

If you're enjoying these movie references, check out the
Film and Water podcast. It's a hoot!

One might say that these are just adventure hooks (as they would be called in the classic D&D milieus), but in a Supers campaign they do act as a sort of border -- much in the way that an event horizon acts as the edge of a black hole. No matter how far the players try to flee, these often pull them back in.

Well, most of the time. The real trick is having some kind of variety to your approaches. Sometimes it's a carrot (you'll get some information on a villain, some useful connection, some artefact of power that will help you in this adventure or in the campaign at large, a new NPC, etc.) and sometimes it's a stick (death, injury, social or financial consequences, ridicule or anger from the general populace, or other heroes hunting you down -- for a crime you didn't commit).

The Weirdness Magnet

This boardgame appeared in the pages of the comic. Fun!

I first encountered this in the Blue Devil comics, where it's posited that when the titular character -- a stuntman by trade -- gets fused into his costume by a blast of eldritch energy, he's been turned into a weirdness magnet. That is, unlike when he was a normal stuntman, he now 'coincidentally' runs into super-villain schemes, supernatural plots to destroy/transform the world, meets new and super-powered humans and aliens, and generally lives a life of constant excitement and bewilderment.

Yes, you no longer need to find trouble; trouble finds you! Constantly.

In fact, if you have to live a life of peace, you'll have to earn it -- by figuring out what the common thread of all these ninja attacks have (why do all their clan names have an appendage in them?), or by figuring out who's behind all these attacks on their loved ones (why do crooks always rob the store my mom's at?), or by determining why they're only ever safe from being bothered by homicidal maniacs and swarms of locusts when they're near holy ground or a holy symbol (I think someone done cursed you, Johnny. Now get outta my house, I gotta turtle.)!

Audience participation

What are some of the borders that you implemented (or experienced) in your super-heroic campaign? 

2016: The Year of D6 and Diceless Gaming?

2015 was largely eaten up by other priorities. But this coming year I plan to post a lot more regularly.

Oddly enough, my game reading has begun to follow a pattern that may help in promoting RPG play in the Philippines (in some small way). And that is: studying games whose mechanics use regular d6s, cards, and/or tokens.

The games currently taking up digital space in my tablet for reading are:

• Night's Black Agents
• Lords of Olympus
• Lords of Gossamer and Shadow
• Champions Complete
• Fiasco
• FATE (Core and Accelerated)

Projects involving these for next year include:

• A FATE treatment for the Calidar setting
• Night's Black Agents + Dracula Dossier + Doctor Who setting (Torchwood / U.N.I.T. special ops crew vs. vampires)
• A continuation of the Lords of Olympus in Mystara idea
• Lords of Gossamer and Shadow + Doctor Who + TimeLords + Sapphire & Steel mashup

One can dream, yes?

Games Endure; Game Sessions are Emphemeral

With the return of D&D PDFs to DriveThruRPG and RPGNow, a thought that has forever echoed in my mind returns to the fore: Games Endure, Game Sessions are Ephemeral.

Games endure in the books where their rules appear. Games endure in the understanding of the rules that echo in the heads of the GMs and Players, often passed on to other gamers through the years. To some extent, it is the same for game adventures / modules that are published.

But game sessions don't find similar immortality. While some of them may find some partial, twisted, modified, aggregated, ghostly existence in our memories, they fade with time. And as we pass on ourselves, they grow ever fainter.

Do GMs let PCs kill other PCs?

This awesome cover comes from here.

Does this happen in your games?

Do your players have their PCs willingly kill other player PCs for any reason (and we're excluding Paranoia games here for obvious reasons)? And do you, as GM, step in and stop it?

In an old AD&D campaign I was in, almost every character was evil or chaotic neutral. I was one of two good alignment PCs. I was the neutral good elven fighter/thief who sometimes sided with the bloodthirsty lawful good paladin. We worked together, but sometimes some folks were cut out of the loop out of selfishness or sacrificed willingly.

Which is not the same as killing another PC directly.

No, that happened in Champions, of all RPGs. Players would have their 'superhero' PCs kill other 'superhero' PCs because the concept was stupid, or because the player was bragging, or because of sheer spite, or because of sheer idiocy. Here are some examples with names and concepts tweaked to protect the guilty and remorseful:

• U.S. Secret Agent Alan Blackbird kills a new hero inspired by a Zulu warrior and a prophet (because the player doesn't like the hero's name and character concept). And so Shaka Jesus dies without having thrown a single punch, or even managing to turn the other cheek;
• The player of the mutant alien soldier Ranger is so ticked off at the player of electrical superhero Tesla Ivanovich's constant belittling of his character, and gets treated to a headshot through the eyesocket in the middle of the game, killing him instantly;
• Once again, Alan Blackbird kills a powerful fire based hero. This time, at the insistence of the player -- to show the other PCs just how tough his character is, he tells Alan Blackbird to shoot him in the chest. Alan Blackbird complies, but all Fire Laddie's defenses are based on activation rolls (there's a chance that the each of the defenses won't activate), and none of them activate. Fire Laddie dies, in game, to a sucking chest wound.

We always let these things lie, as the dice and the choices were considered sacrosanct. And the GMs in our group did too (though they would sometimes fudge if the heroes were acting particularly heroic when fighting villains).

In our defense, we were young and foolish and insecure and teenagers at the time.

How do you handle situations like this, if at all?

RPG Theory: Story and Storytelling -- Part II

In the first part of this series of posts on Story and Storytelling in RPGs, I talked a little bit about the difference between the two terms, and how they might be tackled in RPGs.

Moving forward, I wanted to talk about how I perceive RPGs are used in creating a story (which I'll term Story Creation) and then how RPGs are used in telling a story (Storytelling). Hopefully, my exploratory ramblings will make sense to other folks reading this mess.

Story Creation

I'm going to start off by positing that in traditional RPGs (which is a dangerous term, but hey), there are three major pillars that define or create the elements of a story. Those pillars are the Game Master (GM), the Players, and the Game Mechanics.

The short list of two major elements of story that I'm tackling here (which I'm sure I'll be taken to task for by real literary academic types) are the following: plot and character.

As for the contribution of the pillars to each of the elements, I'll use qualitative terms to explain my perceived 'percentage contribution' of each pillar.

Plot

The plot of any game story is generated by the pillars I mentioned above, but the contribution of each varies with the preferences of the GM and the Players, and to some extent the Game Mechanics of the game system used.

For example, in a sandbox style game with a very impartial GM, the determination of the plot might breakdown as follows:

• Players - 45% (in true sandbox play, the players decide where they go, what they fight, etc.)
• Game Mechanics - 45% (the rules are applied, and dice are rolled impartially; wandering monster tables contribute to the 'fairness' of encounters)
• GM - 10% (not everything is covered by module, setting, notes or rules, so the impartial GM makes up for that portion of the plot with judgement calls)

In an adventure path style game, still with an impartial GM, the plot might breakdown as follows:

• Players - 33% (player agency still in effect, with PCs able to throw monkeywrenches into the path given sound GM judgment)
• GM - 34% (without a sandboxy setup, the tendency is to follow the various contingencies allowed for in the adventure path, or fudge a few rolls, or to make up stuff; once the PCs have deviated too much from the adventure path, it essentially ceases following the path and either becomes another 'path' or transforms into sandboxiness)
• Game Mechanics -33% (still used to determine of PCs successfully jump through the hoops given to them, or succeed in their game-wrecking 'alternative option' thinking)

There are more than these two approaches of course, but they're the ones that easily come to mind and are easy fodder for this thought experiment.

I'll return to this when I start tackling different game systems in the future.

Character

Players tend to define their Player Characters (PCs). They either roll up their characters and then give personality and backstory before the game starts or as they play, or they create their character by making choices and assigning points, and again refine personality and backstory as they play.

GMs tend to define the NPCs -- either creating them from scratch or fleshing out/modifying NPCs from available game source material, and then solidifying the characters during play.

In traditional RPG play, the GMs have the ability to affect the character of PCs indirectly (and occasionally directly).

An example of indirect characterization of PCs by GMs is when the GM modifies a certain part of a PCs backstory (your childhood friends remember you being nicer than you make yourself out to be, your entire past is a lie, you are secret royalty). It may have no bearing on how the PC is played in game by the Player, but from a literary perspective (and from the perspective of players into roleplaying) this is part of characterization -- actions, formative experiences, consequences, etc. The fact that it takes place in the past makes it indirect, at least by my definition.

An example of direct characterization of PCs by GMs falls under the banner of really bad railroading. It is when significant PC choices or actions are made by the GM as the PC. For example:

When you return from the dragon's dungeon, you run into a priest with a bunch of orphans attacked by a paladin for some strange reason. After killing the paladin, you realize that the orphans will starve and task the priest to take care of them, and you leave most of the dragon's hoard with them as aid. Happy with your good deed, you set off to the nearest town...

... and the players cry bloody murder. These are character-defining actions that were taken from players by the GM.

Non-traditional RPG play (some of it anyway) seems to mess around with this formula by allowing both indirect and direct characterization of NPCs by any Player. It sometimes allows Players to affect other Players' PCs as well, essentially taking from what is traditionally the GM's fiat basket (though usually this is part of the RPG rules and therefore technically part of Game Mechanics -- but the decisions are clearly made by the Players).

Now it should be said that almost anything that messes with a PC, from changing their backstory, to modifying their abilities, to stealing their gear, to changing their personality, to killing them is a traditional hot button in RPGs. Appeals to 'better story' often fall on deaf ears when a Player disagrees with what happens to their PC. Then again, appeals to 'that's the way the dice came up' don't always work either -- even if those are the rules that everyone agreed to at the beginning of the game.

However, unlike cries about how someone's favorite character was killed (justly or unjustly, plausibly or implausibly) in a novel -- theses PCs are considered the 'property' of the Players. They can be modified to an extent given perceived fairness and the agreed upon rules of the game, but if it goes beyond that hazy threshold, then the experience of the RPG is broken for that Player (and perhaps for others too).

RPG Theory: Story and Storytelling -- Part I

I've posted in the past about my love for OSR style play, but I'm sure that regular readers know that it's not the be-all and end-all for me. Like almost everyone else in the hobby, my interest in RPGs didn't stop at D&D, and that's because RPGs have such broad potential for entertainment, education, inspiration, and introspection. I wanted to explore different systems and different settings. I wanted to see different GMing styles and approaches. I wanted to see different player approaches to character generation/creation/selection and actual gameplay (from roll-playing to roleplaying and everything between and around those two poles).

But one of my other passions is fiction -- particularly Speculative Fiction (which a group of us tend to use as a catch-all term for all types of fantastic fiction, and yes I know that it has been used to mean other things) especially things along the Fantasy and Science Fiction axes -- and there is an expectation even in D&D, which has been accused of being anti-story, of recreating similar scenes or entire stories that could have been taken from your favorite short story, novelette, novella, novel, trilogy, pentalogy, or what-have-you.

So, before we start tackling if RPGs can be used to tell stories (spoiler: yes), I think it's important to raise some aspects of story, my views on them, and hopefully see how other people view these things.

Story vs. Storytelling

The first thing I have to raise is the difference between story, and storytelling. I'm sure we can get into debates about how the storytelling is the story, how the medium is the message, and so on -- but for now, just accept the axiom that they're different and separate (spoiler: debatable) so that I can define my terms.

The story is what happens -- the plotline of events, the arcs of the characters, the consequences of action and inaction, etc. The storytelling is how all that is related to the reader.

For example, if the story is about a powerful wizard fighting a rampaging orc; the storytelling approaches could be as follows:

• very clinical 3rd Person Omniscient POV -- you know everything that both characters are thinking or doing, you are privy to all their tactical decisions and their fears that they might die in battle, you are shown their approaches to combat and appreciate both as worthy opponents.
• very opinionated 1st Person POV -- you only know what the powerful wizard senses or thinks, and known nothing about the orc except whatever he says or does, you know a bit about the wizard's past and are shown in flashbacks how he picked up little combat tricks that buy him time to unleash that massive spell he needs to cast to kill his opponent.
• unusual alternating 1st Person POV, documentary style -- combat progresses as per action, but with no thoughts, only words and deeds; intercut with each exchange is 1st person POV interview ala reality show/documentary, spoiling the fact that neither dies, but making people wonder how either survived given the seemingly do-or-die stakes in the battle.

To those who feel that story and storytelling are interchangeable, I point them to a more modern invention: wikis for a universe covered in a series of novels. It's quite arguable, especially for the novels with rabid fans maintaining the wikis, that the wikis hold all the story visible in the novels and more (given speculation, interpretations, and reminders of potentially forgotten facts about the characters and settings, higher quality maps, and so on). And yet, the storytelling approach in the wiki is different from actually reading the books.

My point -- storytelling decisions matter, even if your story and characters are the best the world has ever seen, because they impact how readers first experience that story.

So how does this relate to RPGs?

So, yes, RPGs are another medium. And yes, RPGs can be used to tell stories -- the storyteller camp obviously firmly believes in this, while the simulationist camp has raised the argument of 'the emergent story' in their style of play, and from a strict perspective, even short-lived characters can conceivably have something that is a story (however boring or pointless).

What are we fighting about then?

It seems that we're fighting a lot about two huge areas: the creation of the story itself (is it just the GM, or is it just the players, or is it some kind of mix between the two -- and where do the dice come in?) and the telling of the story (GM style, Player style, system rules, dice/no dice, etc.) and which approaches are best.

And right there is where I state my belief: just as in the case of fiction, some techniques work better for certain audiences, for certain genres, for certain stories and all the variants of all of these. Sure, there are best practices that always tend to yield good results, but there are also some pretty startling approaches that can yield wonderful results.

What becomes important, therefore, is determining what techniques are best for the stories you want to create / tell / experience -- given that RPGs are not quite novels or TV or movies or video games. What may also be important, therefore, is finding out what new techniques and approaches can be mashed-up with older ones to achieve new stories and storytelling approaches in the hobby that we love.

Next: Part II

RPG Theory: Parallels to Theater

Years ago, I encountered and tried to wrap my mind around the whole GNS (Gamist, Narrativist, and Simulationist) theory. I failed.

However, I did appreciate the attempt to understand RPGs in terms of different goals and priorities. It started me thinking along similar lines, though peppered with my own experiences with games, stories and storytelling, and simulating experiences.

What to call this series of ramblings? No idea, but I'll start on something that doesn't normally get discussed when talking about RPGs (well, okay -- I have not idea if it's discussed regularly in RPG theory): parallels to theater performances.

RPGs -- How are they like theater?

When I talk of theater, I speak inclusively about two types of theater performances -- scripted plays and improvisational theater. Because I'm not sure about my terminology, I'll define them.

Scripted plays for me refer to performances wherein a written play is interpreted and performed by a company of actors and a director.

Improvisational theater for me refers to performances wherein a situation is framed, characters are established, and a story is revealed and shared through the impromptu interplay of the actors and perhaps a moderator / director of some kind.

The parallel of the improvisational aspect is pretty clear -- except for the most railroady of games, there are questions as to which characters will perform significant activities to move the plot along, there is variance in terms of how successful the characters are, and certainly the words and interaction of PCs and NPCs are not scripted. All this is very much in line with improvisational theater, with a little bit to a lot of game mechanics and GM influence to adjudicate or guide the game's flow and progress.

There is, however an aspect of scripted plays. Certainly, railroaded plotlines may be seen as scripts. The classic modules where room descriptions were meant to be read out verbatim can be seen as scripts. Perhaps even the rules and game mechanics can be seen (if squinting and downing some alcohol) as script-ish in that it limits what a player's PC can do -- unlike most improvisational rulesets that encourage a "yes, but--" or "yes, and--" approach to things. Rules and Game Mechanics serve to negate or narrow elements of the performance that would otherwise be totally up to the performers to include or not.

RPGs -- Not Theater

And yet there are differences. In theater, the audience is really the, er, audience. The people watching are the targets of the performance, not the actors themselves.

The GM doesn't merely adjudicate or guide, he/she often plays the role(s) of other characters that the actors encounter.

Elements of the story aren't revealed as exposition from the PCs, unless the GM decides he must do the heavy lifting of a one-human Greek Chorus.

And, depending on the game chosen, there are rules that determine how successful physical, mental, emotional, psychic, and spiritual conflicts are resolved -- things that would be invisible to the audience (especially those who don't understand the game rules or setting). In plays and stories, deserving a success or failure is often up to story logic (good or bad), while in many RPGs, there are game mechanics to regulate said triumphs and tragedies.


Next RPG Theory post: Stories and Storytelling in RPGs

Things we don't handle in RPGs (usuallly)

In the past (and in the present, and I'm sure, in the future), there have been many discussions on realism / plausibility in RPG systems.

Which is fine -- we do shoot for some kind of internal consistency and some kind of congruence to the reality we're trying to emulate (real world physics, TV physics, movie physics, fiction physics).

There are some things that we don't tackle because, really, part of the game is an escape from reality. You can talk about how (like other media) RPG holds up a mirror to our reality, helps us realize truths, and so on and so forth, but you can't get away from the fact that we're selective about what truths we try to tackle. For example:

• how often do your PCs have to answer the call of nature?
• how often do they suffer from colds or the flu?
• how often do they catch an unforeseen mundane disease and die from it?
• how often do PCs deal with things like cancer, heart problems, gout, and so on -- unless they get points from it in a point-buy system?

RPGs are a selective reality, and I'm comfortable ignoring certain things from 'real life' because -- the dignity and wonder of the human condition aside -- sometimes it can be a real drag.

Civilization vs. Borderlands; Village vs. Wilderness

In an earlier post on fun in D&D, I mentioned touched on the adolescent power fantasy and the ability to explore different personas as one of the fun things in the game.

One of the dangers here is, of course, reinforcing certain behaviors that are supposedly not acceptable in normal society. This includes being rewarded for following tenets like "might makes right" and "if no one else sees it, it didn't happen".

Well, yes, as adults we know that these tenets have some truth to them; as kids -- in much the same way that we devour rulebooks on the 'right way' to play the D&D game -- we are looking for instruction. As kids, we want black and white answers, clear black lines that divide one thing from another; as adults we're hard-pressed sometimes to say, when we're in a certain shade of grey, 'this far, no further'.

This is one of the great things about two of the classic modules of D&D -- B2: Keep On The Borderlands and T1: The Village of Hommlet -- that makes for an interesting comparison between civilization and the borderlands, between the village and the wilderness.

It can be very liberating to adventure in the wilderness -- there are no rules other than outfight, outwit, outlast. The party (and sometimes the individual PCs) are only answerable to themselves. Unless the GM is strict about the cleric's doctrine, there is no higher power other than the PCs and their opposition. Alignments may define what's right and what's wrong for some, but ultimately there is no god, there is no law, there is no 3rd party saying "you done wrong, bud; you gotta pay".

Heading back to civilization -- the village, the town, the city -- is a return to a society that we're somewhat familiar with. It may not have CCTV cameras, but it does have a neighborhood watch; it may not have a fully-funded police force, but it does have a militia or city guard; it may not have overworked judges in criminal courts, but it does have local laws and customs that are enforced by the community. Sometimes this fact is skipped over; the village is just a place to rest, eat, buy food, replenish supplies and improve weapons, and head back out again.

In B2, it's a bastion of order against the chaotic hordes at the border of the realm. You can bet that the rule of law and the maintenance of order is important there -- misbehaving or unruly visitors may find that the community there, regardless of alignment, doesn't like a party of adventurers throwing their weight around. In T1, not all of the residents are obsessed with keeping the peace or the status quo, but are protected by the civil nature of the village, by their reputations, and by an unspoken 'we know him and her, we don't know you' view of the outsider PCs who might start slinging accusations without proof.

This contrast can really be played up to great effect for players. It helps place into stark relief why civilization is sometimes beneficial and sometimes a bane to the individual.

It will also help players come to grips with moral questions and quandries, without necessarily giving black & white answers. And it may teach us something about human nature -- about a sense of identity separate from what other people tell us we are or should be.

As Lord Whorfin said in the cult movie Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension, "Character is what you are in the dark."

In the dark dungeons of D&D, sometimes it is the bright light of personal identity and personal choice that shines the brightest during gameplay.

Fun in D&D and AD&D

ZakS and his blog posts on Playing D&D With Porn Stars [sometimes NSFW] usually get me thinking about RPG adventures and scenarios. Occasionally, however, he does post on what I like to call gaming philosophy (because game theory is already an official mathematical term) and RPG theory is short to type but hard to say.

His recent post on Playing D&D With Porn Stars does bring up a lot of long unexamined thoughts on gaming philosophy in my head, but the most important thing that was triggered was an anecdote about someone else's anecdotal evidence that no one had fun playing D&D / AD&D. Please note that this is not the main point of his post, but one of the many bits of story, evidence, and arguments that sum up his thesis.

Anyway, it got me thinking about D&D and the things I found fun about it.

1. Building A Character
It would not surprise people who know my fondness for the Hero System that one of the things I enjoy about AD&D and RPGs in general is the process of building a character. Whether it's character generation (mostly random) or character creation (point-based or priority-driven) or character customization (pick a template, modify it a bit), it's always a fun experience having the physical appearance, mental persona, and personality quirks take shape in your head.

Character generation's randomness is often an exercise in gradually rationalizing good and bad rolls, and slowly building up a mental backstory on how the character came to be represented by these combined stats and these traits.

Character creation often requires that a general character concept is the starting point, often being refined as player runs out of points or resources to make the character as awesome as he/she/it is in the player's imagination.

Character customization, if the template selection is broad enough and the customization is easy but granular enough, can be the fastest route to a defined character. It's akin to being give a broad stroke characterization of the character to start with in fiction, and then being allowed to tweak and add surprises here and there.

The various editions of AD&D have afforded all of these options, and I must admit that I have my preferences per edition. Basic D&D and Advanced D&D is a character generation must for me -- there's no choice, though iron man AD&D may be a bit too much. I remember folks who rolled up hundreds of characters and just played the once with the best stats so things were 'fair'. 3rd Edition is both character creation and character generation for me as a matter of taste -- a lot of your time is already spent optimizing Feats and Skills, so having someone gripe about bad rolls for their character isn't really my thing.

2. Exploration: a journey into fear and wonder
The dungeon crawl is a big part of my enjoyment of the game. I enjoy being presented with scenes like closed doors, darkened hallways, cobweb-covered chambers, shadowy caverns, and twisting passageways. I enjoy trying stuff out -- kicking in doors, grabbing the rusty sword with strange runes, cautiously tapping every other tile to see if it triggers a trap. I enjoy wondering if that really interesting statue is going to be a boon or a bane.

It's nicer if there's some logic, some underlying rationale that you're meant to figure out. Especially if it adds to the wonder -- and the fear that there's something nasty that you have to fight.

3. Combat: killing things
Yeah, so combat gets a bum rap sometimes. Well, a lot of the time. Probably because a lot of the early games centered so much on it -- new monsters to kill, new spells to kill with, new places to kill things in.

But you can only Indiana Jones it for so long, with the traps and the strange artifacts, and dark underground corridors that you're desperately trying to map.

Sometimes you don't want to reason with something, you're just there to kill something -- and doing it by being the smartest, fastest, toughest, and luckiest sumbitch in the dungeon.

It's possible that if the first really popular RPG had been primarily centered around social challenges, political struggles, and mindgames, someone would have invented a combat-heavy "indie RPG" just to for a change of pace.

4. Looting: taking stuff
This gets a bum rap too. But it adds another layer to character progression beyond leveling up.

You get powerful stuff that can be useful in or out of combat. You get more tactical options. You get a free "I'm not going to die just now, thank you" card. You get something with a backstory that you can brag about to players who were there with you, and to players who are hearing it for the first time.

5. Being Awesome. Sometimes. Sorta.
The adolescent power fantasy gets a bit embarrassing, especially if the person enjoying it doesn't seem to appreciate the fact that this awesome hobby is both "really important" and "just a game", the same way that you can be really awesome at your job, but it's just a job.

And yet it's fun when they do appreciate that strange truth. AD&D lets you escape from the world that you live in, lets you become someone who can change the world (eventually), lets you do away with your preferred choice of morality in real life, lets you try out things that you'd never try and see what other players or GMs believe should happen to you.

You could be a thief who always, always steals from the party. You could be a ridiculously straight arrow paladin who imposes his beliefs on others, or a mysterious mage who taunts others with their lack of knowledge about the true nature of things. You could also get the girl, save the town, kill the Evil Overlord, or burn the Emperor's Palace to the ground (or die horribly trying). You say "screw this, I'm running away."

All the things that you don't get to do in real life because you can't, because others won't let you, or because you wont.

AD&D, D&D, and RPGs are awesome.