Dungeons and Dragons, "Bullshit"

Introduction

            Hello, I am a Dungeons and Dragons player.   On this blog, more and more frequently I have been discussing Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) because I like to write and I often can spare time to write about one of my favorite hobbies.  While I am professionally qualified to talk about politics and world events… I do that professionally and need a break from that.

            Recently, I moved to Arlington, just south of the Pentagon.  This move, coupled with the change of career, has left me with little time to play DnD, so I suspect I will just be writing about it from time to time on here till I can find a group again.

            You might be wondering why I am telling you this when the title to this blog is so harsh.  “Bullshit?  Why that sounds rather derogatory.  What do you mean by that?”  Well, to be clear, I am not calling the game “Bullshit”.  In spite of it being a game and gigantic time sink, the fact is any and all downsides to playing the game are invariably off set by the educational, social, and creative benefit its players gain by learning the mechanics and making the most of their time playing it.  I know that I am better at math, writing, and history all as a result of playing DnD.

“Bullshit” in this instance, refers to something that shows up in the game that players complain about, but I have to tell them… it is not going to go anywhere, and they should be glad. 

This is going to be a bit rambling.  Hopefully it is entertaining enough to justify hanging in there and opening a dialogue. Let me get into this.

To listen to while reading maybe?

Players Versus the DM

DnD is a “game” in that you play it.  But much like a creative writing exercise there really is no “winning”.  You win by having fun.  Facing challenges, playing a character, learning about and influencing a fictional world, and spending time with fellow players.

Certainly there are instances in which “victory” can be achieved.  Getting past a puzzle, convincing a non-player character (NPC) to do something, beating a bad guy, and all the other tasks the players can do in order to progress the story.

Unfortunately, players come to see the DM, the person constructing these challenges as an adversary.  They are not the guy who takes hours each week to think up stories, traps, and encounters… they are the guy trying to kill the players.  In this mindset the DM is not the person dispensing fun, they are an obstacle to fun.

Conversely, DM’s often run into situations where they put in a lot of effort to make sure that the game is optimized when played a certain way.  Here is a fun combat encounter, here is a fun riddle, here is a cool NPC… They are trying to make a game world that is fun to play in, but the players are trying to defeat for the pleasure of ‘victory’.  Players might come up with an interesting way to bypass encounters, they might kill the cool NPC, they might not be interested in the story at all.  AND THAT IS FRUSTRATING.

Speaking as someone who has DM’ed many more times than he has been a player, the fun part is giving your players something fun to do… THAT IS THE GOAL OF DM’ING.  But when you put in a lot of work (or buy a supplement) that has well designed elements and the players do not encounter those elements you feel (for lack of a better word) betrayed.  That the fun of seeing this thing you spent time making or learning is going to waste.  That way leads to madness and to wanting to punish the players for behavior like creative problem solving… or discretion.

These two big elements “Players wanting to Win” and “DM’s wanting to Show Their Work” begin to bang into each other and that is where “Bullshit” starts to creep in.  The DM starts to push the players in a certain path.  NPC’s keep bringing up the same plot hooks, combat encounters outside of the “good” one become punishing, the bad guy always manages to get away before the killing blow can be struck.  It is nearly tantric in how it keeps the players from experiencing what they want from the game, to “beat” the DM.

And let me be clear, DM’s can be awful when it comes to hammering players into doing things the “right” way.  But there has to be some allowances for the DM to show off the cool thing he created otherwise the players are kind of cheating the DM out of a lot of the fun the DM gets out of DM’ing.  DM’ing is often hard.

“Beating” the DM

Beating the DM in the context of the game is impossible by the very nature of DnD.  Dungeons and Dragons is an asymmetrical game.  Players cannot “beat” the DM.. in the game.

The DM has infinite resources. They can create whatever trap or challenge that they want. Therefore, they will always "win" because they can create unwinnable scenarios.

The objective for the DM is to create scenarios that are fun to play, thru a combination of creativity, challenge, and story value. A confrontation with an NPC or group of NPC's that is in a unique area, with strange powers, and for a good reason is the ideal… and if the players are trying to “beat” the DM by just not engaging with the story, with the encounters, with the material that he is giving them… EVERYONE LOSES.

Conversely, DM’s who come to resent the players, and just keep hammering them with encounters that are too hard, NPC’s that are too stubborn, or environments that are too narrow and dull, then the DM is only defeating themselves.

DM's "win" when everyone, including themselves, is having fun. If you only have fun by utilizing your infinite power to slam the player’s, then you are not winning.  If you are trying to “win” by playing less, then you are defeating yourself.

What is Bullshit?

I am an intensely intelligent person.  I am not going to run down my credentials in the real world because having lots of degrees is not guarantee that someone is smart, and it just comes off as bragging.  But believe me when I say, “I am smart”.

That being said, I do not have a “20” in Intelligence.  I am not Doctor Doom.  I can only devout so much time and mental resources to a game, even a game I love like DnD.  I do not have every scenario planned out that Doctor Doom would have in an encounter with the heroes, let alone the wisdom of ages that an immortal multispatial cosmic power has.  If I am roleplaying as Baccob, god of Knowledge and Magic… Expect me to still be me, just more cryptic.

When players seek to thwart me with some clever use of the rules (and when it comes to 5e, I am still learning the rules… 3.X is still sitting heavy on my brain) I may end up with my 20 intelligence wizard being caught off guard by something that a super intelligent mad wizard would have planned for.

When that happens I have two options, 1) have the big bad taken out by something he would have seen coming, or 2) have the clever use of the rules get thwarted with the understanding that… it is a super-wizard, they would have had something prepared.

What is fun is, 5e knows this is a thing.  Legendary Resistance, the ability for boss monsters to automatically make saves is a stand in for DM’s inability to think of anything ahead of time.  This represents the Boss’ ability to have some unseen backup plan that keeps them from losing to something that would have taken out a less prepared individual.

But then, you are destined to hear the words, “That is such Bullshit.”

And it is.  It is bullshit.  It is the same thing that happens when you play a strategy game and turn up the difficulty settings, the game’s AI is not getting “smarter” it is just getting stat boosts to give it an edge because creating a thinking computer capable of playing the “Civilization” series better than a person would be insanely complex.  The answer is giving the AI more money and production to make up for the game being pretty dumb.  It is bullshit.

But it is a necessary part of the game and DM’s might have to use bullshit more often than just Boss Fights.  They might have to give more clues or weaker clues, they might have to make the cliffs harder to climb or the river harder to fjord, they might have to make teleport or fly not work, or they might want to make it so your character is not pulverized immediately in the first round of combat… Because sometimes restrictions have to be put out into the world to keep one’s sanity.

I can’t plan for everything; therefore I might just say, “That doesn’t work and you can’t figure out why”.

The Problem

            The real thrust of this whole long diatribe comes here: if you are a good DM that is winning by doing what I mentioned above, “…to create scenarios that are fun to play, thru a combination of creativity, challenge, and story value…” then players will understand the Bullshit you have just utilized has a point and is not a cheat.

            If you have an adversarial relationship with your players, then they will see it as a cheat, and the game might very well enter a death spiral.  It will diminish people’s fun if you use your infinite resources to jerk the players around.  It will diminish your fun to have to do that.  You will “lose” Dungeons and Dragons.

 

Another way to lose at DnD is to be the only member of your friends who is really into it.

A Solution?

            I do not have a solid answer for this.

            The best thing I can offer is this: explain to your players that while DnD is an open ended game, that you (the DM) are a finite, mortal person who can only think of so many things and that sometimes the bad guy will have an escape plan that WILL WORK, because the bad guy did not get to be the bad guy without that kind of thing being in his repertoire.

            Tell them, “roll with it, it is part of the game.”

            Beyond trusting your players to forgive you fudging the numbers against them from time to time, I suggest the other kind of bullshit… Narrative Bullshit.

            Here is one I really like, “The villain has a dampening field for magic in his tower, but it is limited, it only blocks certain types of elements or schools and not others… But he keeps changing it.  There is a strong chance that if you go there, that resources you have come to rely on might not work at all or backfire and you won’t know till you get there.”

            It adds an inherently unfair advantage to the bad guy.  Just to be clear tho, don’t have him throw a fireball if you have already said, “no fireballs”.  Like, have a couple different lists of spells that you can jump between to keep things consistent… or just have the bad guy be a fighter who has found a magic do-dad that cancels magic and he is clever enough to use it like that.

            It is still bullshit, but it is bullshit with an explanation.  It feels less cheap.

Comment

            I don’t know.

            This kind of meandered around a lot more than I anticipated.  I mean, look at how long this blog entry is, and it is mostly just talking about how players should be more forgiving of DM’s and DM’s should be more willing to cheat because the standards of “Good DM” are just too high.  I am sure that will win me lots of friends from the “play what is rolled” crowd.

            What do you think?  If you have a blog of your own on the topic, by all means, link it.

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Dungeons and Dragons, "How I Got Started"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 1- How I got Started

            I got started in Dungeons and Dragons via what I would consider a typical arc.  I was a fan of horror (here is a blog on my affection for Goosebumps books) and fantasy (here is me talking about Xanth) as a kid and early teen.  My budding interest in genre conventions coupled with my knack for math drew the attention of a few of my teachers who introduced me to Magic the Gathering (I have tried to integrate some ideas from Magic into DnD).

I am gonna briefly talk about a different fantasy game first.
F-ing Swerve!

            Magic is a collectible card game in which you are a wizard who is battling another wizard with spells and monsters.  Understanding the odds of drawing a particular card, managing risk, and managing resources were all aspects of the game and I attribute to it my almost intuitive understanding of statistics beyond my usual knack for math.

            Anyway, I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons by a fellow teenager when I was 15.  I was at Books-A-Million one Sunday looking at comics and saw some guys playing Magic, they invited me to play and I said, “Sorry I don’t typically roll with my deck.”  That was meant to sound silly.

            I began hanging out with those guys on the weekends at the bookstore to play Magic and invited a few more people out to play.  After a month, one of them decided to introduce us all to DnD and it went from there.  It is funny to me in hindsight how little I really understood about the game, and since this was pre-internet, or at least all the really useful parts of the internet like Wikipedia, Youtube, and other places that would serve as nerd reference sites in the age to come I couldn’t really learn except for reading and doing.

            These days there are online demos, message boards, and any number of cliques that will help you learn, and a bunch that will treat you like shit and turn you off the whole internet.  But back then I just had to read the 3^rd edition book I bought, while the guy who introduced me to it was trying to have us play 2^nd edition and all the wires getting crossed.

For all the reading I did in this thing it was mostly the fluff and story aspects.
Even after playing 3e and 3.5e for 10+ years there are still numerous spells and rules that I do not get.

            There was also the terrible and contrived writing I would suffer from.  Basic missions and I didn’t really know how tough monsters were or how to set up interesting challenges.  On the other side when I was playing the story was frequently so epic I had no idea what I was supposed to even do, an alcoholic half-orc blackguard did not have much to offer when the mission was, “stop a wizard from controlling an army of dragons from taking over the world and rewriting reality”.

            It is a testament to how fun and freeing the game can be creatively that I stuck with it thru the difficult early part to move on all the way to now.  A present in which I write about the game habitually and make effort to find venues for play beyond just going along with those that are offered.

            A great deal of my creativity has been shaped Dungeons and Dragons.  A lot of my abilities in mathematics has been given endless practice by all the casual uses of math.  My ability to quickly play the part for interviews, group discussions, presentations and other professional venues for talking to people about who I am and what I can do, that was learned from playing Dungeons and Dragons all the time.  In real life, I don’t have a character sheet, but when someone asks me who I am and what I can do I am better at presenting that information in a consistent and tight fashion than I would have been had I not been making characters and playing them for fun all these years.

            I often recommend Dungeons and Dragons as fun, but frequently market it to other people based on the academic aspects of the game because I think those have had a real positive impact on me and could have similar effects on others.

 

Seriously, I don't think the value of this game as a teaching tool can be overstated.

Coming Tomorrow

            I am going to talk about my favorite edition of the game.

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Dungeons and Dragons, "Rocks or Boiling Oil"

            I am putting off doing movie reviews this year, since few movies really inspired or surprised me in 2015 I am kind of not-all-that-motivated to write about them.  I may get around to it, but I just have more pressing matters for the moment.  However I still want to write and have been kicking around stuff, here is a little of that.

            I play Dungeons and Dragons.  For those who do not know Dungeons and Dragons (henceforth DnD) is a table top game, a group of players use some loose rules for characters, events, monsters, and magic to collectively write a story together.  One person is the main writer, called the Dungeon Master (henceforth DM) who creates the world and adventures, and the rest are the players who each control one (and in rare cases a few) characters that go thru the adventures.

            A good DM makes efforts to encourage creativity in the players by giving them obstacles and a variety of resources with which to combat them.  Rather than just a straight up sword fight, you must sword fight while balancing on rafters, swinging on chandlers, and dodging arrows fired from other enemies.  Instead of just attacking the enemy army you can cast spells to make the terrain slippery or muddy, you can poison their rations, sneak in at night and kill the leaders, or cause a stampede of wild beasts thru their camp.  A DM wants the players to be participants in the story and make the adventure their own.

            Bad DM’s do not suffer the creativity of their players and instead push their players to play the game the way it SHOULD be played.  Rather than fostering creativity they instead take the track of, “I’d really like to discourage this behavior.”

            There is a lot of online material focused on DnD, it is a cultural institution in many ways and served to inspire countless video games, novels, and movies (for good and ill).  One of these websites is “Table Titans” which is primarily a comic strip about a group of friends playing the game, and the epic fantasy adventure that their characters get up to.  However the website also has a section called “Tales from the Table” in which various stories are told about funny or strange stories that can come up in a game of DnD.

This is the start of the comic's 3rd season and introduces an interesting fantasy world to explore.

Most of these stories told in “Tales from the Table” are caused by DM’s who are complete assholes.  Either taking things literally, shutting down creative ideas, or not playing the game the way the players are interested in playing (or vice versa, players not showing respect for their friend who often times puts lots of work into stories and adventures that the players in turn ignore or complain about).  The website has no comment section or boards on which to discuss these stories and as such I can never level any criticism on the situation, and since one recently came up that I thought was especially bad I decided to respond to it here.

“Rocks or Boiling Oil?” is an example of a DM being both lazy and vindictive and putting the blame on the player.  If you ever feel a creative bug encouraging you to DM a group of friends (not just in DnD, but other games like Gamma World or D20 Future) please do not be like this guy.  Try to find a FUN way to resolve the situation, getting pelted with rocks for a few minutes before inevitable failure finally arrives is not fun.

Future of Video Games

            I would like to make a prediction right now about the future of one of my favorite hobbies, Video Games.  The next gaming system, be it the Playstation 4, Xbox 720, or the Super Wii Cube Virtual Revolution, will be as different from the current disk utilizing and motion control tom-foolery as the current generation is from the Cartridge utilizing systems of years long forgotten.

            My prediction is this: Video Game consoles will stop using game disks.  No more having to go to Game Stop, Best Buy, or Wal Mart to pick up the latest title, they will all be streamed to a large hard drive found in the system utilizing the Web connection you have.  This will give you what you want more or less on demand.  The game companies will sell new hard drives, but really they won't have to.  You will have an online account which will keep track of what games you have purchased and if you ever delete a game from your hard drive for space you can just download it again at any time from the internet, you essentially will be purchasing the right to play a game at any point you wish, forever.

            What in the world makes me say such a ridiculous portent?  Many things, not the least of which being that it already exists and is insanely profitable, efficient, and well liked by gamers all over the world.

            Currently there are services that do this very thing, and you have used them recently to rub yourself off with the pleasurable thoughts of nostalgia, and to add on fresh content to a title that was of particular interest to you.

            The Playstation network allows you access to movies, news, international multiplayer, and more importantly, downloadable content that takes the form of classic games and extra levels, weapons, maps, and just pointless bullshit like clothing all without having to leave your chair to get a new game disk.  Wii has the virtual store, again a source of news, multiplayer (which is balls), and classic games.  XBLA is the best of them as they get you to pay them for the pleasure of playing "Halo" against racist fat kids in Michigan, while downloading classic games.  All of them allow you to download independent titles that showcase new game mechanics, art styles, stories, and other risky ventures that major studios wouldn't put out for fear of loosing money.

            And forget those titans of industry, lets look at Gametap, the Netflix of games, allowing you to stream titles for a monthly fee, which is fucking awesome, at least in theory, my internet connection couldn't handle it I'm sure.  And there is also Onlive, the new system which much like a cable box allows access to games on demand using their own library.  And there is the mach daddy of services, "Steam" which is produced by Valve, makers of "Left 4 Dead", "Portal", and "Half-Life"; Steam has allowed the company to become the go to in online content acquisition for the PC, and I wouldn't be surprised if Valve did the reverse of Sega and moved into Hardware production, creating a system just for the utilization of the Steam network.

            Also, World of Warcraft, and the entire MMO style of play.  Or if you are really interested in throwing out internet related content, lets look at the huge number of flash games on Newgrounds.com, or the staggering number of bullshit available in any given ap-store for tiny little touch screens.  Oh, and Farmville.

            Why in the world would these companies do this?  Abandoning a business model that is tried and true?  Simple: they are getting screwed over by the retail system, and the used game marketplace.  Currently Gamestop is of the practice of buying back games and selling them at a discount, none of that second sale money goes back to the holders of the IP's, none of the coders, none of the development teams, none of the companies who made the games see any of that money.  Gamestop is making a killing as a fucking pawn shop, and none of that money is going toward the creation of new IP's and game technology.  The worst part, Walmart and Best Buy are planning on opening up a used game market themselves, using their superior store placement and technological culture to steal away Gamestop's customers (assuming of course that Best Buy just doesn't buy out Gamestop and use them as the front for this circle jerk).

            The only way to keep money flowing to companies like Double Fine, Bioware, Valve, and Bethesda, the real producers of what we want, is to cut out the retail companies altogether.  And they should.  Retail companies produce nothing, they fence the goods produced by others with a mark up, and pay employees very little.  They are fostering a dystopian future of a Libertarian ideal gone mad.

            I personally do not buy used games.  And in general I dissuade others from buying them.  Other people tell me that a used copy is cheaper but just as good, but fail to realize that it would be cheaper still if we just bought stuff direct from the creators rather than through a middle man who currently offers less and less.  I dream of a world in which we can buy things instantly, play them, and go back to working on creating things for others to instantly buy, be it entertaining junk, food, or clothes, or anything, rather than living in a world where we are all paid tiny amounts working shitty retail jobs, and have to buy used and repacked stuff because it is the only thing we can afford.

Go Play "Gamma World"

            For my very first Blogspot post I am going to talk about a game my friends and I have been playing for the last few months since its release: "Gamma World".

The latest edition of the game available from Wizards of the Coast

            "Gamma World" is a role playing game.  The players are either the central characters in a story, or the one who is telling the story and acting out the villain and monster characters.  The game uses dice and cards to resolve different decisions taken within the story: hard wiring computers, shooting at monsters, or tracking a biker gang.  However, the watch word of the game is humor.  The setting is a cross between "Boarderlands", "Fallout", "Mad Max", "Futurama", and "Doctor Who".  This is a game in which you can battle killer robots, pygmy aliens, or mutants of various stripes.  It is fun as hell.

Basically it is one step below this on the "Nerd Porn" scale of things

            The setting itself, while containing elements of each of the aforementioned sci-fi properties has its own origin, that in 2012 the Large Hadron Collider caused a large number of parallel realities, and alternate earths to be smashed together into one world.  So on one earth Humanity ended in an atomic war back in the 60's, on another planet humanity never exited and instead large humanoid bunny rabbits were the dominant species.  It allows the Guy running the story to throw whatever they want at the cast of characters and it be accepted and cool.

            In the last game, in which I am the story teller, the characters encountered a caravan of dog people who came from an alternate Earth which rock and roll was the dominant philosophy to life, they just wander the wasteland of Gamma World leading 'The Pack' a massive band of hippies and roadies, performing at all the remaining areas of civilization and gathering from the waste a massive collection of music from all the alternate Earths they can find.

Yeah, it is Kinda like that.  If you don't know this is a "Penny Arcade" comic, but really, if you have read this far, you know who these guys are and what they are all about.

            This encounter led me to envision an alternate world in which Rock and Roll was the dominant way of life for a world of humans who were at war with the demons from the cover of every single heavy metal album cover.  Meat Loaf was president, and that just before the 2012 disaster that merged the worlds together Meat Loaf had led a massive "Return of the King" style war against the hoards of hell while riding a flying motorcycle and the song "I would do Anything for Love" blaring over the battlefield as humans in stylized heavy metal war regalia clashed with a legion of demons in a Ragnarok of Rock... Then someone made a joke that if we made anymore references that we would create a singularity of nerd-ness and tear open reality.  Cause who needs the Hadron Collider when you have pure nerd imagination?

I vote him into office if he promised to kill whatever that is.