Thursday, April 16, 2009
NTRPGCon
Just to let everyone know I will be attending the North Texas RPG CON June 5-7. I will be DMing my Castle EL RAJA KEY there. For more information go to this link.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Up The Beanstalk
A follow-up on the fun of role-playing. Thanks to Greg from Ontario for inspiring this entry!
Earlier on this blog, I alleged that gradually, modern game design discarded the Enchanting value of role-playing games in favour of a self-contained, self-fulfilling gaming logic. The fun of the game came from the rules, and the rules provide the fun of the game. To improve the fun of the game, one must then improve the rules.
I believe this is a false premise that just ends up divorcing role-playing games from their unique nature as products of our imaginations.
We play role-playing games, I believe, because one day we felt enthused by the idea of being Jack, now and forevermore, climbing up the beanstalk.
What does this mean? What made this moment so special? What happens then that does not occur, or to a much lesser degree, when playing Diablo, World of Warcraft or when reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time?
I believe the answer resides in countless tales and legends we’ve heard, read, witnessed ourselves at a very young age. This is the substance of what built the Arthurian tradition, the appeal of Greek Myths, the allure of Sagas. What made the stories of Cuchulain, Hercules and Erik the Red ring true for us as young lads. What Jean Markale called this “Eternal now where all the contradictions blend into each other”.
This is the nature of Myth which gives us this ability to connect with what it means to be alive. To quote Jean Markale from Le Roi Arthur et la Société Celtique (King Arthur and the Celtic Society) :
This, I believe, is why we play role-playing games. It is not necessarily, and as a matter of fact, often isn’t, a conscious decision on our parts. We might play because we want a pause from the tribulations of our daily lives, what some would call “escapism”, of all things, while in fact we are doing exactly the reverse: we reach forward to share this perpetual movement of thought that existed since the dawn of time. We take part, not only as witnesses like so many before us, but as actors, due to the inherent magic of role-playing, in a tradition that depicts humanity in its moments of suffering, despair, hope and glory, a Now that makes sense of all contradictions and communicates to us what it truly means to be Human.
I know some will scoff at this. “I play to have fun. D&D is just a game”. It is absolutely true. What I am trying to wrap my mind around here is what, exactly, is fun about role-playing games. It’s not about some pompous definition designed to make the game greater than it already is. It’s not to create some sort of agenda that would point out right and wrong ways to enjoy role-playing games. Not at all.
It is about what makes role-playing so appealing in the first place. It’s about that very first moment we played role-playing games and felt Enchanted by the premises before us.
This notion points out not only the fundamentally social nature of this game which reaches well beyond the gaming table into the unknown depths of our very own souls, but also why the game may feel so right, so personal, so engaging to many of us. This is where we trim ourselves to our bare bones and gaze at ourselves through the eyes of fictional characters in a land of make-believe. This is where we feel we exist, where we can grasp the vibrant reality of our very minds.
We climb up the beanstalk and stare at what makes us truly alive.
Now, and Forevermore.
Earlier on this blog, I alleged that gradually, modern game design discarded the Enchanting value of role-playing games in favour of a self-contained, self-fulfilling gaming logic. The fun of the game came from the rules, and the rules provide the fun of the game. To improve the fun of the game, one must then improve the rules.I believe this is a false premise that just ends up divorcing role-playing games from their unique nature as products of our imaginations.
We play role-playing games, I believe, because one day we felt enthused by the idea of being Jack, now and forevermore, climbing up the beanstalk.
What does this mean? What made this moment so special? What happens then that does not occur, or to a much lesser degree, when playing Diablo, World of Warcraft or when reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time?
I believe the answer resides in countless tales and legends we’ve heard, read, witnessed ourselves at a very young age. This is the substance of what built the Arthurian tradition, the appeal of Greek Myths, the allure of Sagas. What made the stories of Cuchulain, Hercules and Erik the Red ring true for us as young lads. What Jean Markale called this “Eternal now where all the contradictions blend into each other”.
This is the nature of Myth which gives us this ability to connect with what it means to be alive. To quote Jean Markale from Le Roi Arthur et la Société Celtique (King Arthur and the Celtic Society) :
Imagination is real in the sense that it is a reality of thought and that the one imagining is persuaded of the reality of that which he imagines at the very moment this process intervenes. Once again, reality is movement, movement of thoughts which can only cease to exist in the stasis of death, of non existence. Imagination, in this regard, is a personal, subjective movement of individual thought, which can however be transmitted to others, alienated within the context of the tale. Others are then free to consider the tale as real or imaginary: it will in any case result in a movement of another’s thoughts, and this movement will thus acquire a quality of reality, however different this reality might be from the original input. Epic tales, legends and myth are thus perpetual movements of thought which now and forevermore create the Now where all contradictions blend into each other. There is no more Past or Future but an eternal Now which is the only existing proof of a reality of the Mind.
This, I believe, is why we play role-playing games. It is not necessarily, and as a matter of fact, often isn’t, a conscious decision on our parts. We might play because we want a pause from the tribulations of our daily lives, what some would call “escapism”, of all things, while in fact we are doing exactly the reverse: we reach forward to share this perpetual movement of thought that existed since the dawn of time. We take part, not only as witnesses like so many before us, but as actors, due to the inherent magic of role-playing, in a tradition that depicts humanity in its moments of suffering, despair, hope and glory, a Now that makes sense of all contradictions and communicates to us what it truly means to be Human.
I know some will scoff at this. “I play to have fun. D&D is just a game”. It is absolutely true. What I am trying to wrap my mind around here is what, exactly, is fun about role-playing games. It’s not about some pompous definition designed to make the game greater than it already is. It’s not to create some sort of agenda that would point out right and wrong ways to enjoy role-playing games. Not at all.
It is about what makes role-playing so appealing in the first place. It’s about that very first moment we played role-playing games and felt Enchanted by the premises before us.
This notion points out not only the fundamentally social nature of this game which reaches well beyond the gaming table into the unknown depths of our very own souls, but also why the game may feel so right, so personal, so engaging to many of us. This is where we trim ourselves to our bare bones and gaze at ourselves through the eyes of fictional characters in a land of make-believe. This is where we feel we exist, where we can grasp the vibrant reality of our very minds.
We climb up the beanstalk and stare at what makes us truly alive.
Now, and Forevermore.
A Boy & His Dragon - "Jotting" #1*
The teak wood floor planks of the bath are lain with open gaps between them, providing for a simple drainage & sweepage, which enriches the villagers who daily gather the fallen scales of the mystical creatures from beneath the house. These scintillating scales continue to grow for a few days after collection, and are thereafter used as a form of holy currency called Fayr.Fayr glows in the dark with a feint golden light, by which one may either see the glow of virtue in men's faces, or else recognize the dullness of their uninspired minds. Thus, the children of the village are able to be chosen at an early age for their magical potential. Those glowing and fearless are considered apt for the dragonry and a future life of tending and growing with the dragon spawn, whereas, those with minds more suited to the drudgery of everyday life remain at home, indefinitely.
--
Thayish Dragons spawn of the coastal mists of Thayland, without kinship to each other. Occasionally, one of the dull minded villagers witnesses a glint of light, called an inkling, which leads them deeper into the shore's permanent haze, where they disappear. The inkling continues to travel the mists while gathering an ever longer tail of followers, whose energies feed it until it matures and spawns in the high reeds of Grick swamp, down the shoreline.
None dare enter this swamp on foot, as the reeds are set in an untraversably deep muck. Thus, the Dragon boys of Thayland ride their immature dragons into the Grick to harvest the teak trees that grow out of its occasional islands of scorched clay. Rarely, a dragon spawn presents itself, gripping the trunk of one of these trees, which the boys then harvest, whole, by enticing the dragon with their magics, leading them into the village in flight. A dragon unable to magically uproot a teak tree is considered too immature to make the return, and the boys are prohibited from assisting with their own magics, in just this one case.
Apart from dragon magic, the dragonry's armory finds teak swords, story books and soap are sufficient tools for developing the kinship bond between boys and dragons.
* "Jottings" appearing on Lord of the Green Dragons blog remain the copyright of Eric Nelson Shook, however incomplete and imperfect they may be!
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
David L. Arneson Passed On
From the family:
Shortly after 11pm on Tuesday, April 7th, Dave Arneson passed away. He was comfortable and with family at the time and his passing was peaceful.
The Arneson family would like to thank everyone for their support over the last few days, and for the support the entire community has shown Dave over the years.
We are in the process of making final arrangements and will provide additional details as we work them out. We will continue to receive cards and letters in Dave's honor. We are planning to hold a public visitation so that anyone wishing to say their goodbye in person has the opportunity to do so.
Cards and letters can continue to be sent:
Dave Arneson
1043 Grand Avenue
Box #257
St. Paul, MN
55105
Visitation will be on April 20th
Time: yet to be determined
Address:
Bradshaw Funeral Home
687 Snelling Avenue South
St. Paul, MN 55105
Link to the original post (which the family checks regularly).
Shortly after 11pm on Tuesday, April 7th, Dave Arneson passed away. He was comfortable and with family at the time and his passing was peaceful.
The Arneson family would like to thank everyone for their support over the last few days, and for the support the entire community has shown Dave over the years.
We are in the process of making final arrangements and will provide additional details as we work them out. We will continue to receive cards and letters in Dave's honor. We are planning to hold a public visitation so that anyone wishing to say their goodbye in person has the opportunity to do so.
Cards and letters can continue to be sent:
Dave Arneson
1043 Grand Avenue
Box #257
St. Paul, MN
55105
Visitation will be on April 20th
Time: yet to be determined
Address:
Bradshaw Funeral Home
687 Snelling Avenue South
St. Paul, MN 55105
Link to the original post (which the family checks regularly).
Role-Playing Must Be Fun
This gradually became, within the past few years, how all instances of evolution of the game's design have been explained to the masses.
D&D is a game that ought to be fun. To increase the fun, it thus needs to be faster in game play. It needs to be easier to grasp. It needs to provide all sorts of elements that help players and DMs imagine as quickly as they possibly can, with the most "fun" value out of it. Okay, I guess, but... what kind of "fun" are we, in fact, talking about?
Never, in the last edition's text, do we get a comprehensive explanation of what, exactly, is supposed to be fun when playing role-playing games. I suspect that's where the fallacy of Fourth Edition began: the challenge of 4e's "design team" was to pick up Third Ed and instantly wonder "how do we get this game to be more fun?" rather than "what makes role-playing games fun?" in the first place!
I suspect that the fun that makes one play role-playing games has in fact nothing to do with "game balance" (which truly means "rules' balance in a vacuum" - maybe more about this later). It has nothing to do with the relative complexity of a game system, though it can affect the long term engagement of a player with a particular game.
Nope.
The Fun of role-playing games has to do with that very first day we were given the occasion to play them. It surely varies in tone, feelings and experiences for each and every one of us, but I suspect it always comes down to "wow. I can actually be part of the fantasy world". Some will call it immersion. Others will call it escapism.
I prefer, like others, to call it Enchantment with a capital E.
Yes. Enchantment.
This "wow" factor of "Yes! This time and forevermore, *I* get to be Jack climbing the beanstalk!"
This has been ignored in game design for some time now in favor of a self-contained, self-contaminated, self-inflicted obsession about the rules and how these rules bring about fairness, choices, support to the fun of the game.
This is my theory, and this is why I think it is valuable to get back to the Lake Geneva campaign as a sort of cartharsis to our own first role-playing experiences. A way to understand why role-playing was so fun in the first place, and how, so that we can make our own games profit from this experience and become more "fun" themselves.
I suspect this post may be quite controversial to some people, and to tell you the truth, this is fully intended. Am I wrong in thinking this way? Then please, tell me so by leaving your comments! Whatever your thoughts may be, I hope you will share them and fuel this conversation. I feel this is part of the reasons why we are all here.
D&D is a game that ought to be fun. To increase the fun, it thus needs to be faster in game play. It needs to be easier to grasp. It needs to provide all sorts of elements that help players and DMs imagine as quickly as they possibly can, with the most "fun" value out of it. Okay, I guess, but... what kind of "fun" are we, in fact, talking about?
Never, in the last edition's text, do we get a comprehensive explanation of what, exactly, is supposed to be fun when playing role-playing games. I suspect that's where the fallacy of Fourth Edition began: the challenge of 4e's "design team" was to pick up Third Ed and instantly wonder "how do we get this game to be more fun?" rather than "what makes role-playing games fun?" in the first place!
I suspect that the fun that makes one play role-playing games has in fact nothing to do with "game balance" (which truly means "rules' balance in a vacuum" - maybe more about this later). It has nothing to do with the relative complexity of a game system, though it can affect the long term engagement of a player with a particular game.
Nope.
The Fun of role-playing games has to do with that very first day we were given the occasion to play them. It surely varies in tone, feelings and experiences for each and every one of us, but I suspect it always comes down to "wow. I can actually be part of the fantasy world". Some will call it immersion. Others will call it escapism.I prefer, like others, to call it Enchantment with a capital E.
Yes. Enchantment.
This "wow" factor of "Yes! This time and forevermore, *I* get to be Jack climbing the beanstalk!"
This has been ignored in game design for some time now in favor of a self-contained, self-contaminated, self-inflicted obsession about the rules and how these rules bring about fairness, choices, support to the fun of the game.
This is my theory, and this is why I think it is valuable to get back to the Lake Geneva campaign as a sort of cartharsis to our own first role-playing experiences. A way to understand why role-playing was so fun in the first place, and how, so that we can make our own games profit from this experience and become more "fun" themselves.
I suspect this post may be quite controversial to some people, and to tell you the truth, this is fully intended. Am I wrong in thinking this way? Then please, tell me so by leaving your comments! Whatever your thoughts may be, I hope you will share them and fuel this conversation. I feel this is part of the reasons why we are all here.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
To Send Dave Arneson Your Best
I received this e-mail today from Dave's family in which they asked me to post this for the community, fans and Daves's friends. I imagine that similar requests went to other forums/contacts, also.
"Please pass along the following from the family of Dave Arneson:
As of this writing, Dave is still with us. We have moved him into a facility where we can focus on keeping him comfortable. We have been and will continue to watch the forums and blogs and are passing along everyone's thoughts and prayers. Right now our focus is on getting Dave into the best possible position to maintain his comfort and his dignity. We will update the community as we can. We want to thank everyone for your thoughts and prayers and ask that you continue to send Dave your support in whatever form that means to you.
An address has been established to receive messages to Dave.
Dave Arneson
1043 Grand Avenue
Box #257
St. Paul, MN
55105"
"Please pass along the following from the family of Dave Arneson:
As of this writing, Dave is still with us. We have moved him into a facility where we can focus on keeping him comfortable. We have been and will continue to watch the forums and blogs and are passing along everyone's thoughts and prayers. Right now our focus is on getting Dave into the best possible position to maintain his comfort and his dignity. We will update the community as we can. We want to thank everyone for your thoughts and prayers and ask that you continue to send Dave your support in whatever form that means to you.
An address has been established to receive messages to Dave.
Dave Arneson
1043 Grand Avenue
Box #257
St. Paul, MN
55105"
Monday, April 6, 2009
Round... About?
I recall the very first time I sat at a game table with a battle mat. The DM drew a long, 20' wide passageway and asked us to place our figures in marching order. Someone asked if one of the squiggly lines was just a mistake, since it exceeded the grid marks by a 1/4 square in several places, so the DM used a folder edge to redraw & conform the line to the grid. Instantly, I knew he was going to map out everything ahead of us as we moved through the dungeon. I was stunned by a sense of loss, where everyone else seemed to think of it as a convenient innovation.
Previous to crossing this dividing line, I had endured years of getting lost on maps made for their difficulty. Frustrating though that often was, my sense of loss at the battle mat was my sense of adventure being sucked out of my brain. I quickly became bored, as we were constantly watching the DM draw the map in front of us, often erasing huge portions, like a lecturing professor who thinks they must write everything they're saying out loud. During these moments, I went off the grid, so to speak. I spent time imagining the shock of the character's as a great hand constructed the walls of their world ahead of them. I tried to imagine exactly how that absurdity would work. I recall also being particularly amused by the theological implications resulting from moments when the DM would reconsider his map and make painstaking alterations to his battle mat pen work.
Undeniably, the supplies we've used to create our worlds have conformed them to subtle metaphysical rules. Millions of pages of graph paper have conformed the adventuring experience to a basically square experience. Anthropologists describe the world we westerners live in as a square world. Our houses and streets are relatively square. Whereas, many tribal cultures live in a round world, where their most basic structures are round (by no coincidence, Gary's college work was in anthropology.) Of course, the popular interpretation of this difference is that round is organic and natural, and square is artificial. This also correlates well to the idea that pen and paper gaming is natural and computer gaming is artificial, as if pen and paper gaming wasn't also constrained by limiting conventions.
Robert and I disagree a bit on this. I'm a computer geek, and I believe there is hope for a more fluid and virtuous computerized fantasy role playing experience, even if I suspect that I may be doomed to begrudgingly admit he's right. Computerized play may never admit to the beauty of direct interpersonal experience. But, we do watch movies instead of attend the theater, and there was a time when theater in the round was considered the best way to holistically experience a play. Still, I'm recently drawn to experiment with virtual tabletops, such as Fantasy Grounds or Battlegrounds. However, it appears that one of them might not allow you to mask parts of the map, which means you have to chunk your map up into presentable parts in order to limit the player's view. And how do you chunk up organic settings like the fluid turns of caves? In any case, the move from smooth hewn passageways into caves, perhaps carved by erosion or burrowing, marks more adventure. Imagine the surprise possible where monsters live in the square spaces and humans live in the caves of the dungeon - the grid/non-grid exepectancies reversed.
Sometimes you know you're getting into some adventure when you encounter a pattern that can only be interpreted on a large scale, which only had a loose structure on the small scale. Now, just how do you discover this on a battle map or when using a virtual table top? The magic of gradual realization is lost in such mediums.
For example, consider this map on the right here. Imagine the odd spiral of chunks as gigantic stepped pillars. The ceiling is too high for light to touch, thus the chunks appear on the map as walls, not gigantic stepping stones.You can see how I am gradually realizing the extent of my agreement with Robert, even if I am stubbornly pro computer. But what does this mean?
I see the rigid artifacts of our gaming materials, wherein we see that we have already conformed ourselves to a grid, in the same way as I see the effects of computing on gaming, or movies on plays. It doesn't mean there isn't a magnificent art to delight in. It just means that different signs and methods are used to reproduce Peter Pan's magic. Our magical Pan may be strung up on stage, while on TV he's framed by a rectangular viewing port, yet his flight appears free of attached strings. There's a trade off. And to end these thoughts, since they could sprawl into the gigantic "extense" of another 30 columns of text, we can be certain there were critics of theater in the round, who must have seen within it the hand of the devil... perhaps descending upon the audience... from above, where balconies no longer protected the aristocratic viewer... who could be seen by anyone looking through the play....
“Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.” - Exodus 23:20
My thoughts go out to Dave, tonight, may peace be with him.
Of David Arneson
I just came upon the news of Dave Arneson's sudden health decline via James Mishler's posts at TLG, quoting this account:
David's cancer has unexpectedly worsened just this week, to the point that he is in the hospital. He is heavily sedated and not doing well. He is not expected to live for more than a couple days, if that long.
Obviously on a human level this is very sad news, and one wishes Mr Arneson and his loved ones courage and comfort at this time, and also a calm and conscious passing. It has also struck me a little oddly in its timing, mainly because I've just been musing a lot on Dave Arneson's role as a midwife at the birth of roleplaying as we know it. I must own that I come to this lacking much historical information, likely possessed by those who were present to the original time. But based on what has accrued since, on various boards and blogs and journals, and from secondary sources, it strikes me that Arneson has been a much less 'visible' elder than E G Gygax, and I wonder about this.
I also wonder about the ways in which these two idiosyncratic and fecund imaginations met and interpenetrated, and how through the friction of their connecting in the conditions that prevailed, they helped to seed the form we came to know as D&D. Perhaps this is not the time for such speculations, and I will leave the details to those who have more developed connections to the man and his work. But I do want to note the sense of an era ending. For me, well, seeing the news moves me to feeling a bit like I did when John Entwhistle died, leaving just the two surviving members of The Who.
I'll end with an expression of gratitude, and acceptance, from the fitting pen of Walt Whitman
To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier
Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes
David's cancer has unexpectedly worsened just this week, to the point that he is in the hospital. He is heavily sedated and not doing well. He is not expected to live for more than a couple days, if that long.
Obviously on a human level this is very sad news, and one wishes Mr Arneson and his loved ones courage and comfort at this time, and also a calm and conscious passing. It has also struck me a little oddly in its timing, mainly because I've just been musing a lot on Dave Arneson's role as a midwife at the birth of roleplaying as we know it. I must own that I come to this lacking much historical information, likely possessed by those who were present to the original time. But based on what has accrued since, on various boards and blogs and journals, and from secondary sources, it strikes me that Arneson has been a much less 'visible' elder than E G Gygax, and I wonder about this.
I also wonder about the ways in which these two idiosyncratic and fecund imaginations met and interpenetrated, and how through the friction of their connecting in the conditions that prevailed, they helped to seed the form we came to know as D&D. Perhaps this is not the time for such speculations, and I will leave the details to those who have more developed connections to the man and his work. But I do want to note the sense of an era ending. For me, well, seeing the news moves me to feeling a bit like I did when John Entwhistle died, leaving just the two surviving members of The Who.
I'll end with an expression of gratitude, and acceptance, from the fitting pen of Walt Whitman
To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier
Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes
Sunday, April 5, 2009
The 2009 Spring Gaming Hoopla!
I am posting the following for John Bobek in order to raise awareness of this event:
****
The 2009 Spring Gaming Hoopla!
April 25th, 2009 (8am - 10pm)
and April 26th, 2009 (8am - 4 pm)
Lake Como Beach Clubhouse
W3730 Clubhouse Dr., Lake Geneva, WI 53147
Only $7 for one day, or $10 for the weekend!
Pre-register and pay only $5 for one day or $8 for the weekend!
Remember, ALL proceeds from the Gaming Hoopla are being donated to the American Cancer Society through a local Relay for Life team!
Food and beverages will be available on site for very reasonable prices.
There will be plenty of room for open gaming, with a games library of over 220 games to check out free of charge! (Valid ID required)
GO TO here to pre-register!
John Bobek
****
The 2009 Spring Gaming Hoopla!
April 25th, 2009 (8am - 10pm)
and April 26th, 2009 (8am - 4 pm)
Lake Como Beach Clubhouse
W3730 Clubhouse Dr., Lake Geneva, WI 53147
Only $7 for one day, or $10 for the weekend!
Pre-register and pay only $5 for one day or $8 for the weekend!
Remember, ALL proceeds from the Gaming Hoopla are being donated to the American Cancer Society through a local Relay for Life team!
Food and beverages will be available on site for very reasonable prices.
There will be plenty of room for open gaming, with a games library of over 220 games to check out free of charge! (Valid ID required)
GO TO here to pre-register!
John Bobek
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Erik Mona's Pictures
Posting will be light for me over the next week so I encourage other contributors here to keep articles flowing. And as there has been much discussion of late, and many words flying here or there, I am distributing some popcorn and invite folks to relax and enjoy a picture show, courtesy of Erik Mona. It's really neat what you find while perusing various subjects on the net.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Old School vs. New School
I find revitalizing movements exciting until they degrade into fundamentalism. The initial excitement revs everyone's engine like a Spring cleaning spree! This opens up space and makes it more useful, but quickly devolves into a set of repetitive instructions that eliminate making messes in the first place. These repeatable instructions, these rules, seek to preserve the openness, but make the openness that of a museum: "Don't touch!"
One can honestly read about "old school" and predict only one outcome: fundamentalism. The reason why is rather simple. Rules are more tangible than the fantasy adventure, so the rules lawyers have something they can easily discuss as if it were representative of the actual game. The rules are, after all, titled Dungeons and Dragons. Whereas, what actually happens in them, fantasy, is not so easily measured.
In all honesty, I can, and have, used any rules to produce the magic of my campaigns, and in a certain sense, I have never played Dungeons and Dragons in my entire life span. When I was introduced to the game the rules were up in the air. The rules books gave the initiate a sense of the mechanics, like a script outlines a movie, yet can say nothing about the effect of the final performance or directing. Back in the day, the script/rules were under constant change in order to better accommodate the actors and directors. The rules were a tool that could be rearranged rapidly and easily, to greater dramatic effect. Thus, everyone in Lake Geneva had a different version of Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, when someone else put out a new rules set, we were often quite eager to borrow whole cloth to see how it wears. At one point I was probably judging Rob using half D&D, 1/4 Chivalry & Sorcery, and 1/4 rules I'd made up or borrowed from the dozens of games in which I was participating.
Tell me if it isn't true that this exact same openness to rules isn't still taking place right now, throughout the role playing community? One can only imagine the answer is “more so!” I can hear you all shaking your heads in agreement here.
We are a community of strong minded individuals that pleases in a shared experience, which we might not otherwise have if it were not glued together by our amazement! It is the power of fantasy that permits us to open each other’s minds and dance inside of them, not the rules. The idea of our revival is to win over more members to the movement in order to extend and gain its greatest wealth. We need to generate a broad appeal. This is not accomplished by walking away from the future and only investing in the past.
Calling it old school is immediately limiting. At best, what we share is a certain sense and feeling of the game that we wish to return to, but that's not possibly achievable by settling upon a set of rules that wasn't even used for longer than a snapshot in time by its creators.
The successful and enduring mechanic of D&D can be found in almost all of the other games descending from it. Frankly put, once you've played one role playing game, you're far past the conceptual learning curve of any other. This is not true in the realm of board games, where one must compare Stratego to Candy Land to Monopoly to the thousands of counters and 32 square feet of map for Drang Nach Osten. The core goodness is much smaller than OD&D. It’s a more basic pattern.
The coin of the role playing realm should be the world. When comparing rules sets, we’ve not yet realized that what makes one rules set better over another are its organic elements. Do the rules abstract excessively, or are the mechanics closer to how things would really work? In other words, if I can cast a spell called magic missile without learning neurology, I'm better off. This means that the mechanics in a role playing game should correspond to what's found in the world. For example, there should be rules for pounding spikes, not rules for abstract success given the ratio of strength to skill additionally rated by experiences with hand held tools. We want to pound this flocking spike now, for heaven’s sake. We do so within the game world, not within the rules set. We must then ask, do the rules take us too far out of the world in which we are acting?
Of course, the more basic the rules set, the more likely we are in the world. But the truth is, the more organic the rules set is to the world, the more we are in the world and not the rules books. It is only happenstance that we find ourselves more attracted to OD&D, simply because we can see the more simple kernel of its truth. We certainly cannot be attracted to it because it makes the play any easier! It was terribly incomplete.
The idea of old school sounds to me like a well intended invitation to a retro dance, which seeks to honor the past. Right now I like the energy, the spirit, the intellectual endeavor, and the honest search for enjoyment that the movement seems to entail. However, I don't see anything new to adopt. I've been there. I'm hardly returning to it. I see no new ideas that would change my game. I have no reason to buy the rules. I knew them by heart in my childhood, but I’ve forgotten them on purpose, much preferring a D10 for fighter hit points over a D8. In fact, when I first encountered the phrase, “First Edition without its excesses,” I immediately thought, how about “OD&D without its excesses?”
If you want to go really old school, who's to say you shouldn't roll your character's hit points every morning when they wake up. So a fighter that rolled an 8 on that D8 yesterday may only start with a 1 today. Thus, the adventurers would need to consult with each other about how they're feeling before deciding to sally forth, or else wait until tomorrow. Does anyone really want to go back to that excess? It's how it was done for a period, and straight out of OD&D.
Frankly, OD&D introduces more uncertainties than most will realize. But folks don’t notice these differences because they apply what they already assume about the game to the rules set. OD&D isn't "D&D" anymore than 1st edition or 3rd edition.
And let’s admit it. Whenever we’ve been to someone’s game that intends to play exactly by the rules, we’ve quickly lost the enchantment of the evening, instead realizing we’re playing with someone that has very little understanding of what fantasy entails. The dim fact in these cases remains true: the DM can’t maintain consistency without recourse to the rules, therefore they also can’t adequately present the risk of chaos inherent in any conflict that fuels fantasy. Fantasy demands an imbalance if there is to be anything worthy of our rapt attention.
The game's essence is captured in the play. The proof for this is quite simple. We instantly recognize a suck-ass game when we're sitting there waiting to see who acts the fastest because we have to slowly figure out the dozen or so modifiers involved in the initiative system. Can anything be more ironic, waiting to see who’s not waiting?
It doesn't really matter what the rules say, too many rules and it's stupefying, not enough and you're assuming things. And what’s more, I haven't seen a single copy of D&D that fits my needs, because they are ALL merely guidelines. One could almost go as far as to say that a real and true fantasy campaign doesn’t have rules. It has only guidelines.
The chunkiest part of these guidelines would be the Action Resolution System (ARS), which would tend to seem mechanical, but which can be hidden using certain ideas as guides, such as class, rather than detailing out every single skill a character might have. Class is fairly organic, and while the idea of skill is also organic, a vast skill system such as one finds in roll faster (Role Master) is certainly not.
But even a most basic ARS is a guideline, since it can quickly be turned upside down on its head in a fantasy world. For example, a planar gate can transform strength into the force of one’s thoughts and intellect into the raw ability to hover in an amorphous, non-physical reality. How solid can any system be in such a place as magic rules? I’m more concerned with a DM’s consistency and ability to seamlessly lie than I am with rules in a fantasy setting. The lies of fantasy require convincing stories to hold them together, not a single, reliable mechanic. The idea of fantasy makes such a thing patently IMPOSSIBLE.
But what if a movement seeks to coalesce around guidelines? I can't imagine how that works. Where's the soul in that? Thus, there is an insecurity inherent in the idea of an old school movement. The strongest voices will tend to be the rules lawyers, those whose lack of imagination will succumb to fundamentalism.
Thus, while I am enjoying the feeling of the movement’s heart, I prefer to identify with the concept of the Old Guard, which implies honor, virtue, foundation, and generational preservation. I must refuse the term 'old school,' since I'm not part of a series of fads, not even if the succession of editions causes one to think in such terms.
Old school implies done and used, and anyone participating in fantasy is hardly that unless they embrace the limitations of the past, in which case they are defying the natural magic of the game's profusion and unpreventable advancement. And, magic is the one thing you cannot defy in fantasy without resulting in something boring and altogether unfantastic.
But are YOU really old school? Do you embrace the excessive limitations of OD&D? It doesn't even say how often you roll your hit points. Were you aware of that? Or, more likely, did you bring a core set of assumptions from your experiences with other gamers and editions to the table and simply didn’t notice how rudimentary and poor OD&D was due to these cultural aspects of the game that carry forward? A rules system is not a grail. It's a system that should be subsumed by the play of the game, not something we pride ourselves in using or are aware of on any level while immersed in a fantasy realm. I pride myself as a fantasist. How about you?
In all truth, I've noticed that much of the conversation about the old school is inaccurate. Folks are digging up the original game and making assumptions about it that were not present in that time, and therefore they are working a subtle revisionism. A canon is being created, not found. The story is identical to fundamentalism, where you return to an alternate past composed only of those parts of the past that conveniently fit the desired interpretation of the past. You end up interpreting reality to fit with a literal interpretation. You end up with unreal limitations that had no place in the movement’s heart at the outset, but which take it over due to the nature of talking versus doing.
If we all adventured together, the rules lawyers would have less weight. They tend to be less likely to come up with innovative ways to play. They tend to focus on the rules. They become the priests of any movement depending upon mechanics. But that’s not a revitalization, since the life of the game is in the play. How does it play? Not, what are the rules.
What do you do to make fantasy happen and how do you preserve it and propagate it? Are those specifically rules questions? No.
What will truly preserve the game would be the embrace of a “new school” that finds what is best and propagates play the easiest. But this isn't possible if you term the movement old school and tend toward fundamentalist rationalizing.
Any successful movement needs robin hoods more than altars. We need to steal back what is good without worshipping its wealth as if it were the end all.
One can honestly read about "old school" and predict only one outcome: fundamentalism. The reason why is rather simple. Rules are more tangible than the fantasy adventure, so the rules lawyers have something they can easily discuss as if it were representative of the actual game. The rules are, after all, titled Dungeons and Dragons. Whereas, what actually happens in them, fantasy, is not so easily measured.
In all honesty, I can, and have, used any rules to produce the magic of my campaigns, and in a certain sense, I have never played Dungeons and Dragons in my entire life span. When I was introduced to the game the rules were up in the air. The rules books gave the initiate a sense of the mechanics, like a script outlines a movie, yet can say nothing about the effect of the final performance or directing. Back in the day, the script/rules were under constant change in order to better accommodate the actors and directors. The rules were a tool that could be rearranged rapidly and easily, to greater dramatic effect. Thus, everyone in Lake Geneva had a different version of Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, when someone else put out a new rules set, we were often quite eager to borrow whole cloth to see how it wears. At one point I was probably judging Rob using half D&D, 1/4 Chivalry & Sorcery, and 1/4 rules I'd made up or borrowed from the dozens of games in which I was participating.
Tell me if it isn't true that this exact same openness to rules isn't still taking place right now, throughout the role playing community? One can only imagine the answer is “more so!” I can hear you all shaking your heads in agreement here.
We are a community of strong minded individuals that pleases in a shared experience, which we might not otherwise have if it were not glued together by our amazement! It is the power of fantasy that permits us to open each other’s minds and dance inside of them, not the rules. The idea of our revival is to win over more members to the movement in order to extend and gain its greatest wealth. We need to generate a broad appeal. This is not accomplished by walking away from the future and only investing in the past.
Calling it old school is immediately limiting. At best, what we share is a certain sense and feeling of the game that we wish to return to, but that's not possibly achievable by settling upon a set of rules that wasn't even used for longer than a snapshot in time by its creators.
The successful and enduring mechanic of D&D can be found in almost all of the other games descending from it. Frankly put, once you've played one role playing game, you're far past the conceptual learning curve of any other. This is not true in the realm of board games, where one must compare Stratego to Candy Land to Monopoly to the thousands of counters and 32 square feet of map for Drang Nach Osten. The core goodness is much smaller than OD&D. It’s a more basic pattern.
The coin of the role playing realm should be the world. When comparing rules sets, we’ve not yet realized that what makes one rules set better over another are its organic elements. Do the rules abstract excessively, or are the mechanics closer to how things would really work? In other words, if I can cast a spell called magic missile without learning neurology, I'm better off. This means that the mechanics in a role playing game should correspond to what's found in the world. For example, there should be rules for pounding spikes, not rules for abstract success given the ratio of strength to skill additionally rated by experiences with hand held tools. We want to pound this flocking spike now, for heaven’s sake. We do so within the game world, not within the rules set. We must then ask, do the rules take us too far out of the world in which we are acting?
Of course, the more basic the rules set, the more likely we are in the world. But the truth is, the more organic the rules set is to the world, the more we are in the world and not the rules books. It is only happenstance that we find ourselves more attracted to OD&D, simply because we can see the more simple kernel of its truth. We certainly cannot be attracted to it because it makes the play any easier! It was terribly incomplete.
The idea of old school sounds to me like a well intended invitation to a retro dance, which seeks to honor the past. Right now I like the energy, the spirit, the intellectual endeavor, and the honest search for enjoyment that the movement seems to entail. However, I don't see anything new to adopt. I've been there. I'm hardly returning to it. I see no new ideas that would change my game. I have no reason to buy the rules. I knew them by heart in my childhood, but I’ve forgotten them on purpose, much preferring a D10 for fighter hit points over a D8. In fact, when I first encountered the phrase, “First Edition without its excesses,” I immediately thought, how about “OD&D without its excesses?”
If you want to go really old school, who's to say you shouldn't roll your character's hit points every morning when they wake up. So a fighter that rolled an 8 on that D8 yesterday may only start with a 1 today. Thus, the adventurers would need to consult with each other about how they're feeling before deciding to sally forth, or else wait until tomorrow. Does anyone really want to go back to that excess? It's how it was done for a period, and straight out of OD&D.
Frankly, OD&D introduces more uncertainties than most will realize. But folks don’t notice these differences because they apply what they already assume about the game to the rules set. OD&D isn't "D&D" anymore than 1st edition or 3rd edition.
And let’s admit it. Whenever we’ve been to someone’s game that intends to play exactly by the rules, we’ve quickly lost the enchantment of the evening, instead realizing we’re playing with someone that has very little understanding of what fantasy entails. The dim fact in these cases remains true: the DM can’t maintain consistency without recourse to the rules, therefore they also can’t adequately present the risk of chaos inherent in any conflict that fuels fantasy. Fantasy demands an imbalance if there is to be anything worthy of our rapt attention.
The game's essence is captured in the play. The proof for this is quite simple. We instantly recognize a suck-ass game when we're sitting there waiting to see who acts the fastest because we have to slowly figure out the dozen or so modifiers involved in the initiative system. Can anything be more ironic, waiting to see who’s not waiting?
It doesn't really matter what the rules say, too many rules and it's stupefying, not enough and you're assuming things. And what’s more, I haven't seen a single copy of D&D that fits my needs, because they are ALL merely guidelines. One could almost go as far as to say that a real and true fantasy campaign doesn’t have rules. It has only guidelines.
The chunkiest part of these guidelines would be the Action Resolution System (ARS), which would tend to seem mechanical, but which can be hidden using certain ideas as guides, such as class, rather than detailing out every single skill a character might have. Class is fairly organic, and while the idea of skill is also organic, a vast skill system such as one finds in roll faster (Role Master) is certainly not.
But even a most basic ARS is a guideline, since it can quickly be turned upside down on its head in a fantasy world. For example, a planar gate can transform strength into the force of one’s thoughts and intellect into the raw ability to hover in an amorphous, non-physical reality. How solid can any system be in such a place as magic rules? I’m more concerned with a DM’s consistency and ability to seamlessly lie than I am with rules in a fantasy setting. The lies of fantasy require convincing stories to hold them together, not a single, reliable mechanic. The idea of fantasy makes such a thing patently IMPOSSIBLE.
But what if a movement seeks to coalesce around guidelines? I can't imagine how that works. Where's the soul in that? Thus, there is an insecurity inherent in the idea of an old school movement. The strongest voices will tend to be the rules lawyers, those whose lack of imagination will succumb to fundamentalism.
Thus, while I am enjoying the feeling of the movement’s heart, I prefer to identify with the concept of the Old Guard, which implies honor, virtue, foundation, and generational preservation. I must refuse the term 'old school,' since I'm not part of a series of fads, not even if the succession of editions causes one to think in such terms.
Old school implies done and used, and anyone participating in fantasy is hardly that unless they embrace the limitations of the past, in which case they are defying the natural magic of the game's profusion and unpreventable advancement. And, magic is the one thing you cannot defy in fantasy without resulting in something boring and altogether unfantastic.
But are YOU really old school? Do you embrace the excessive limitations of OD&D? It doesn't even say how often you roll your hit points. Were you aware of that? Or, more likely, did you bring a core set of assumptions from your experiences with other gamers and editions to the table and simply didn’t notice how rudimentary and poor OD&D was due to these cultural aspects of the game that carry forward? A rules system is not a grail. It's a system that should be subsumed by the play of the game, not something we pride ourselves in using or are aware of on any level while immersed in a fantasy realm. I pride myself as a fantasist. How about you?
In all truth, I've noticed that much of the conversation about the old school is inaccurate. Folks are digging up the original game and making assumptions about it that were not present in that time, and therefore they are working a subtle revisionism. A canon is being created, not found. The story is identical to fundamentalism, where you return to an alternate past composed only of those parts of the past that conveniently fit the desired interpretation of the past. You end up interpreting reality to fit with a literal interpretation. You end up with unreal limitations that had no place in the movement’s heart at the outset, but which take it over due to the nature of talking versus doing.
If we all adventured together, the rules lawyers would have less weight. They tend to be less likely to come up with innovative ways to play. They tend to focus on the rules. They become the priests of any movement depending upon mechanics. But that’s not a revitalization, since the life of the game is in the play. How does it play? Not, what are the rules.
What do you do to make fantasy happen and how do you preserve it and propagate it? Are those specifically rules questions? No.
What will truly preserve the game would be the embrace of a “new school” that finds what is best and propagates play the easiest. But this isn't possible if you term the movement old school and tend toward fundamentalist rationalizing.
Any successful movement needs robin hoods more than altars. We need to steal back what is good without worshipping its wealth as if it were the end all.
Monday, March 30, 2009
High Adventure and Low Humor
But if serious purpose is integral to a successfully ongoing campaign, there must be moments of relief as well. Such counterplots can be lesser and different themes within the whole whether some side dungeon or quest, a minor altercation between petty nobles, or whatever. Occasional "pure fun: scenarios can be conducted also. That is, moments of silliness and humor help to contrast with the grinding seriousness of a titanic struggle and relieve participants at the same time. After all, ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost a game, a pastime for fun and enjoyment. At times the fun aspect must be stressed.The above quote appears in Gary Gygax's magnum opus, the Dungeon Masters Guide, immediately before sections in which are offered rules conversions between AD&D, Boot Hill, and Gamma World. As a younger person, this section was one of my favorites, precisely because I could still find enjoyment in flinging the PCs, via a cursed scroll, to Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881 or having them face off against a band of Knights of Genetic Purity, armed to the teeth with blasters and photon grenades. I'd not yet taken the game too seriously, which was a common malady afflicting some of my older contemporaries in the hobby and one to which I eventually succumbed in turn.
It's a very common story in my experience. Nearly everyone I've ever met in this hobby started off with an expansive understanding of "fantasy," one that could accommodate literally anything their mind could conceive, no matter how outlandish or "silly" it might seem. Then, bit by bit, that understanding contracts, becoming more rigid and codified, with clear boundaries distinguishing what is acceptable and what is not. Gone is the genuine open-mindedness of childhood, replaced by the feigned seriousness of adolescence. Banished along with that open-mindedness are the infinite possibilities that first drew us into the hobby in the first place.
If we're lucky, we eventually grow out of this serious phase and recognize the wisdom in the paragraph quoted above. No, not everything in one's play must be silly or nonsenical, but then neither must everything be deadly serious. As with so many things in life, balance is key. Knowing when to introduce a little levity is one of those skills all good referees acquire, just as all good players learn to enjoy it and introduce some of their own.
My friends and I long ago realized that the most satisfying fantasy campaigns were those that freely mixed high adventure with low humor. Many of the situations that arise in a long-standing fantasy campaign are genuinely absurd, if looked at with a dispassionate eye, and there's absolutely nothing wrong in occasionally allowing that absurdity to step into the foreground. Indeed, we would argue that it's essential that this happen every now and again, to ensure both the freshness of the campaign and to maintain interest in it. Nothing is surer to kill an ongoing campaign than unrelenting seriousness, which is why, even now, I try very hard to remember how I originally approached the game and to use that knowledge to keep the game fun for everyone, most especially myself.
E.G. Palmer's Crocaparrot
Just in case you don't read Old Guard Gaming Accoutrements, E.G. Palmer's recent creation, the crocaparrot, deserves your attention. Not only does he get points for creativity, but each time he uses humor he pairs it to a perfectly delightful rationale. Add to this the crocaparrot's characteristic attack and method of feeding, which are sure to produce post encounter horror and fun, and the piece simply lights up the imagination.
Grok the crocaparrot!
Grok the crocaparrot!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
