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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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

10 Short Audible Reviews

            Here are Ten short reviews of the last Ten books I have listened to with Audible.  That is to say, these are books, not the Audible originals I also received which are often more complex productions and good in their own way… But I am just going for books on this one.

            I should note that I only listed the authors and not the audio performers, this is my own bias because I am reviewing these first as books.  That being said, the audio performances were good in all of these and in some cases I would argue elevated the material.

“Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell

            This is a less focused thesis statement than his previous books, but regardless it introduces numerous instances of communications theory and practice that have broken down in some keyway leading to trouble.  Recommended for those who like non-fiction having to do with communications and current events.

“Outland” by Dennis E. Taylor

            This is the start to a new science fiction series by the author that appeals to the same part of my brain that really liked Gary Paulsen novels growing up.  I would most compare it to “Tunnel in the Sky” by Robert Heinlein.  If you like high concept science fiction I would recommend it, but I would recommend his “We Are Legion (We Are Bob)” series first, it is SO GOOD.

“Blindspot” by Mahzarin R Banaji and Anthony G Greenwald

            This was reading for my new position as a student at George Washington University, as it details how hidden bias exists in ways that are often too subtle to detect.  It also explains how these things developed within society and how recognizing them can be useful.  If you like social science then I recommend it.  I talk about it more here.

This book series deserves a special commendation because it is legendarily good at being self published.
No Joke, this is an inspiration to all writers who want to be successful one day.

“Age of Legend” by Michael J Sullivan

            This is the latest in a series that I like overall, but I actually think this is the weakest entry in the series.  I genuinely enjoy all of the work by Sullivan that I have listened to and have talked to him via email, where he complimented my solution to his use of the term “underscore” by a society that had no concept of written language (my solution was to say it referred to scoring the underside of a boot or shoe to give it traction and grip, rather than underlining a word).  I talked about more of his material here.

“Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d’Art” by Christopher Moore

            I am legitimately shocked that I have not mentioned this author before in this blog.  He does magical comedy and has written numerous titles I would recommend without hesitation.  This one I am hesitant to recommend because it is WEIRD.  I like the concept, that some mysterious supernatural being is responsible for the murder of Vincent van Gogh and it relates to a magical blue paint… but boy does it take a turn into crazy town.  I would only recommend it if you are okay with the sort of, “it is so weird that it makes it seem real” that you get from Joe Hill stories about a magical car that turns children into hook toothed monsters.

“Siege Tactics” by Drew Hayes

            Another, “4^th book in its series”.  I wrote a longer review for this one on Audible and I will share the thrust of it here: the series is getting bloated with too many characters and WAY TOO MUCH explanation of the world’s metaphysics.  I still like the books because they are creative, and adventurous, and the characters are good… but I kind of want there to be an epic final conclusion to the overall story soon.

             I talk about the first book in the series here.

I find pretty much all of the art surrounding this story to be just neat.

“The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett

            No joke, this was part of a three book effort started in May of 2017 with “A Canticle for Leibowitz”, continued in May 2018 with “Silence”, and finished in April this year with this.  My goal was to try and read books whose CORE had to do with the Christian faith and how it is explored in various contexts.  “Canticle” was about a post apocalypse, “Silence” was a historical about the persecuted outsider, and “Pillars” is very much about it being a core and powerful player in day to day life.

            I genuinely consider “Pillars” to be one of my favorite books of all time.  As a civic planner, political scientist, and student of history the exploration of the technical, political, and social dynamics present in this book hit every part of my brain.

            I should definitely write more about my journey thru Christian (Catholic) fiction and my thoughts on the subject matter.  Probably juxtapose it with thoughts about my trip to Vatican City last year… I will have to think about it.

“The Vexed Generation” by Scott Meyer

            This is the 6^th book in its series, and it is also a soft reboot.  I consider this a return to form for the series’ writing in regard to humor and fresh characterization, especially after almost quitting the series in frustration after book 5 (which I consider the absolute nadir of the series).  What once was old is now new again as the children of the original protagonist have to step in, learn things, and then save the day.  It is neat.

I do have one big complaint: The book is trying to have things both ways on the topic of the reboot.  Either be a jumping on point, with fresh characters seeing things for the first time and having to learn it all from an outside perspective… Or start the book with a, “This is the premise” rundown.  Don’t do both.  Write the book as if no one has read the previous, and that means not putting that at the start and trusting the readers (even long-time readers) to appreciate the sense of discovery the rest of the book offers.

 

This story is just what you would expect from the cover.

“Pawn of Prophecy” by David Eddings

            If you tried to write the most archetypal fantasy story ever… Well you would probably get something like a shitty “Lord of The Rings”… but if you tried to do such a task while aware of and avoiding comparisons to LotR then you might write “Dawn of Prophecy” and its series The Belgariad.

            It is a solid FINE.  I would consider it part of the “canon” of fantasy, as it was written with the idea of being a quintessential fantasy story in mind, but it will not give you anything you haven’t seen in other fantasy books.

“14” by Peter Clines

            I like Peter Clines well enough… because he is kind of what I would see myself as were I to really go for broke writing a novel instead of just talking about it all the time.

            This book is well structured, has natural dialogue, has character arcs, fun and inventive set pieces, and stakes.  Sure I called certain things that would happen, but the way he visualizes certain things, the creepy elements being creepy, and the adventurous nature of the story all come together well.

            If you like science fiction mystery stories, dialogue driven humor, and cosmic horror I can recommend this.

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Dungeons and Dragons, "The Preserver"

Gods of Dungeons and Dragons

            I really liked writing up my unique take on Orcs a while back, that their society has a different take on religion that I think makes them more interesting than the simple brutal monsters they are often portrayed as.  I did a short follow up to that not too long ago with a pair of orc characters in that context.

            I also never really went anywhere with my discussion of Religion as an aspect of settings that I wrote about Years before that.

            There was also my creation of "The Five" a pantheon of deities that act in concert with one another.  I did a follow up to that one in which I created a team of characters that each serve as an exemplar of the various members of The Five.

            To that end I figured I would write up some of my stranger and off the beaten path religious aspects of my own campaign world and see what people think.

Preservation

Holy Symbol: Celtic Knot

Cleric Domain: Life

World View & Mythos: The world is adrift in a vast swirling sea of energy and matter that has no form or intelligence.  The world formed spontaneously out of this energy and has been slowing dissolving back into it since its creation.  In eons past a powerful and wise being known as the Preserver ascended to a higher plane and was able to harness the raw energies to protect the world from dissolution, this being is called the Preserver.

            The Preserver sees life as worth protecting in all its forms and understands that life must consume energy to exist and perpetuate and allows life to take from him the pure energy of the sun and stars to make life well and beautiful.  However, the natural inanimate state of mater and energy causes the world to often move toward burning itself to a lifeless cinder.

  

Beliefs: 

The core belief system can be broken down into 3 large commandments.

1. Limit entropy in the world around you, this can mean refraining from eating to excess or from keeping a fire burning when people are no longer in the room.
2. Cultivate life, this can be expressed in a number of ways, either by planting trees or helping someone who is sick until they get better.
3. Seek peace, conflict destroys and peace preserves, this can be taken to its logical extreme of pacifism or be the commitment to not use violence unless threatened with violence.

Practices: 

In general the practices of “Preservers” is looked on kindly by Druids and Rangers as most communities tend to be small, docile, and try not to over clear, over hunt, over till, or otherwise over tax the land.  These communities are however not a source of surplus and rarely trade with outsiders.  These communities are vulnerable to the rare instances that crops do fail.  Preservers are good foragers, and their peaceful presence means that they often can depend on the kindness of neighbors or strangers who trust that the Preservers will not take more than they need and will make amends in the future.

Superstitions and Taboos: 

It is taboo to kill for sport, start a wildfire, or leave something to rot that could be put to use.  Lucky charms are common in the faith, they tend to be crafted by hand from stones or fallen branches and use a braided knot patterns of lines.  There is an emphasis on air, earth, and water in the elemental symbolism of the faith.  Seeing these as stable elements. Some believe that fire is symbolic of the chaos that the world sprang from, lifeless, shifting, consuming, and without meaning.

“It is a cold flame that lights the lanterns of an undead mind, that is the fire of a world annihilated, that flame is the light by which we set our course to the truth of truths.”

Social Organization: 

There are three major sub-groups of Preservers.

1. The first is the most pious and are only called Preserver Ascetics.  These individuals wear little cloths, scavenge for food, and wander the land in small pilgrimages planting trees and often doing simple manual labor on farms in exchange for small amounts of food.  They wish to take as little from the world as possible and ultimately pass on leaving the world a little better off for their presence.  They are strict pacifists and tend to eat a very raw diet.
2. The second are the Common Preservers.  These are typical farmers who seek to live in small villages or towns and rarely produce more than subsistence levels of crops and livestock.  Priests that serve these groups will tend to live and work in simple cottages and conduct lessens in groves or other areas of natural beauty.  Communities of this type will endeavor to plant trees in previously barren areas, and will often put large stones in rivers to slow the flow, symbolically staving off entropy (and allowing more plant life to grow without being swept off by the rushing water)
3. Guardians are the third and smallest group.  An order of knights that live simply and charitably they seek peace thru preparedness for war.  They are known to be decisive when attacking, merciful in victory, and kind to those who host them.  They are much more the type to prioritize hunting demons, undead, and aberrations rather than coming into hostile conflict with terrestrial creatures and humanoids.

Churches and Denominations: 

There are two large Preserver Churches and the schism happened 250 years ago over the role of written texts and dogma.

            The first church are called Text Preservers.  This group is so dubbed because they saw the value in not only preserving life but in preserving knowledge.  They see books as valuable and sacred materials, and to be generally knowledgeable to be a virtuous quality.  This group is more favored by Wizards who make use of the public libraries and composition schools that these churches host.  This is the church that can be found in larger communities and cities.

            The second are called Ballad Preservers.  This church prefers an oral tradition to pass on their knowledge.  They use music and rhymes to help keep the information easier to remember without aid of writing it down.  They are less committed to nuance and more the living spirit of the information.  These groups are preferred by smaller communities that do not have the space needed for a library.  This church is also valued by barbarians that see them as more accessible to their illiteracy, and Bards (called Skalds) are seen as favored by this church.

Cults & Heretics: 

There is a single large cult that formed in opposition to the Preserver belief system, this group is called the Order of the Black Fire.  This group believes that life itself is a mistake, a perversion of the natural state of endless swirling energy without form or meaning.  This group performs acts to encourage chaos and suffering.  Arsons, assassinations with the hope of causing war, and the poisoning of wells and crops to cause famines and plagues are all acts of terror they might be responsible for.

            They seek to destroy on a large scale the perversion of life.  Undead are rampant within the group and it is part of their text that, “It is a cold flame that lights the lanterns of an undead mind, that is the fire of a world annihilated, that flame is the light by which we set our course to the truth of truths.”  Their battle cry is, “Death to all”.

Heretical Symbol: Twisted and Blackened Wire (often in the shape of a flame)

Heretical Domain: Death

Heretical Texts: 

The core text of their religion is “The Antithesis” which is often written in Abyssal with a translation in Common printed alongside.  This book details the philosophy of Thanatos, or Death Instinct.  That all beings on some level know that they should not be alive and seek oblivion and freedom from the constraints of being alive.

            Rather than simply embracing this impulse and committing suicide, believers are encouraged to work toward relieving others of their delusions about the sanctity of life, and to spread destruction in ways both small and large.

1. Acts like breaking windows, burning feeding pens, or despoiling supplies are small acts, these are often called “transgressions”.  
2. Larger acts of faith include the destruction of holy sites, the murder of people of special repute (this can include one’s own family), or the incensing of war, these are dubbed “desecrations”.  
3. The largest of acts that can be accomplished would be “cataclysms” which involve using magic to upend natural forces causing such widespread upheaval and destruction that the world is fundamentally changed for the worse.

Also, the fun part of cults is that you can insert a bigger evil behind them.
For instance, this is Mandrakk, the EVEN BIGGER EVIL behind Darkseid in DC's "Final Crisis".
Mandrakk is a cosmic vampire that was going to drink the universe dry of the blood of creation...
...I think...

Inspirations

I don’t think there will be much surprise here that I was inspired by environmentalism.  I feel that while there are large movements toward a spiritually guided faith in nature that such movements are completely eclipsed in modern society by various flavors of Christianity, Islam, and other major religions around the world.  I took elements from numerous larger religions and grafted them onto a nature-oriented faith. Positioning the Preserver as a messianic figure that preached conservation efforts as a virtuous lifestyle sets this in stark contrast to any nature-oriented religion I know of in real life. 

Other elements, like the Preserver Ascetics were taken from Eastern depictions of Buddha in the early days of his explorations of faith.  While the popular image of the Buddha in the West is a laughing fat guy, a large part of the journey of that religious founder was his time as an ascetic.

The small religious communities, Common Preservers were taken from self-sustaining religious communes like the Amish.  The Guardians, a religious order more based on idealized versions of the Hospitallers, an order of knights that emphasized battlefield hospitals over conquest (again, “Idealized”) but also mixing in elements of Sikhism, a religion that practices some of the largest acts of charity in the world and is more and more vegetarian, but at the same time has a core tenant to carry a weapon in readiness to defend itself.  I find the Sikh religion intriguing in general.

Lastly, comes the Order of the Black Fire.  Originally that image of a black flame was the metaphor I used to explain how undead work in my game.  That they consume and move, but they cast no light or heat.  I liked the image, but beyond that I see it as sort of a Satanic version of Nirvana.  That life is an aberration that needs to be stomped out.

Rather than try to teach people the 8-fold path or bring them enlightenment, they instead just annihilate all life in an attempt to end the cycle of rebirth.  I also wanted to create a villain that is uncomplicated in their evil, too often since I started reading more and more political literature and fantasy stories like “A Song of Ice and Fire” my bad guys have gotten too complex and my players often feel ill equipped to debate them and too disheartened to try and stop them.  Having guys who just want to cause an apocalypse and use various flavors of undead and “kill it all with fire” to accomplish their goals makes for an easy adventure.

“Nothing like stomping out a cult to bring a community together,” said Gaul, the orc paladin.

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Audio Book Discussion, "Blindspot"

I am returning to higher education in the coming weeks.  I have been futzing about with a longer and more navel gazing blog on the topic, mostly having to do with how I decided to try, the hoops I jumped thru, and what I hope to accomplish… That is for another day.

                Today I am going to briefly talk about a book I am reading for my return to Graduate School that I have been listening to on Audible.  This is part of the University’s summer reading and… kind of a mission statement for the University.

The School

                I am going to be attending George Washington University in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington DC.  I will be seeking my Doctorate and I hope to study voting systems, my ultimate goal would be to get a popular referendum passed… Somewhere… that would allow for ranked choice voting, a system I was surprised to learn is gaining traction in the United States and I think is the key to saving the Republic.  Or at least hitting the snooze button on our inevitable collapse for another couple decades.

The Book

                George Washington has decided to emphasize learning about hidden biases.  To do this they have put out for summer reading, “Blindspot” by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald.  Not the TV show, “Blindspot” starring the intensely hot, Jaimie Alexander… I like athletic women with tattoos.

                The book is about biases and mental categorization with the key analogy being the literal blind spot all human eyes have but we are not aware off without doing some deliberate effort to “show” it to ourselves.

                What has surprised me most so far reading the book is how much of it I already knew or anticipated.  Studying politics you begin to understand how people have a mental image of certain jobs, certain ethnicities, and misconceptions about every other possible way to categorize people.

Stereotypes

                In “Blindspot” one of the chapters deals with stereotyping, and it begins with this old… Riddle I guess would be the best term.  The riddle helps frame the rest of the chapter.  Here it is,

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A young boy and his father are on their way home from soccer practice when a distracted driver crosses the center line and hits them head-on. The father dies at the scene of this horrible car accident, but the boy is still alive when the emergency medical technicians arrive. The injured boy is transported in an ambulance to the hospital, where's he taken immediately into surgery.

However, the awaiting surgeon steps out of the operating room and says, "Call Dr. Baker stat to the operating room. I can't operate on this boy. He's my son!"

The question: Who is the surgeon?

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                If you are unfamiliar with the riddle take your time to think about it.

 

This is from an article about Daylight Savings time.
I hate Daylights Savings as a concept.  It is cosmically stupid.

                The answer is that the Surgeon, a role that is typically MALE, is actually the boy’s MOTHER.  Gasp!  Twist!

                Not really.  I had heard it before all the way back in middle school along with other problem solvers… I figured out the answer then too.  Something in retrospect I now attribute to having watched a lot of diverse media growing up (you can read a little about that here).  I mean, Doctor Crusher was a woman and a doctor on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.  The idea of a woman doctor is not all that world flipping.

                But I also get the point.  People do often default to certain mental images that shape what they expect and how they react to the world around them.  The book goes on to talk about one of the first studies on the topic of stereotypes that has been replicated in recent history to show the evolving nature of stereotypes.  FYI: Germans, for the last hundred years, have been consistently thought of as industrious and scientifically minded.

                The topic then moves into what would more often be called intersectional identities, or intersectionality.  That by layering different categories you can picture in your minds eye a distinct individual.  Their example was to first picture a professor, which they said, “white male, tweed jacket, pipe, etc…” they then started talking about how you could build a person by stacking certain ideas.  For instance, “Professor, French, Black, Muslim, Lesbian”.  To show how your mind can construct an image.

                Their idea is that stereotypes help humans to construct individuals based on these categories layering on top of one another until a unique person is constructed.  This allows you to see people as individuals, but also as the sum of their “parts” for lack of a better word.

Again, this chapter was nearly an hour long on the audiobook, I am not giving you all the material.  I do have a reason for explaining all of this.  To set up for an insight I WAS EXPECTING, but NEVER SHOWED UP.

The Un-Twist

                See, the chapter starts with the Surgeon riddle, and at several points during the chapter sexual orientation is mentioned.  The Muslim, French, Lesbian being the one I relayed to you.  So I was EXPECTING, that the chapter would end with a subversion of the Surgeon Riddle.

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A young boy and his father are on their way home from soccer practice when a distracted driver crosses the center line and hits them head-on. The father dies at the scene of this horrible car accident, but the boy is still alive when the emergency medical technicians arrive. The injured boy is transported in an ambulance to the hospital, where's he taken immediately into surgery.

However, the awaiting surgeon steps out of the operating room and says, "Call Dr. Baker stat to the operating room. I can't operate on this boy. He's my son!"

The question: Who is the surgeon?

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                I was expecting the new answer to be, “The surgeon is also the boy’s father.  His parents are a gay couple.”  Apparently, I am either ahead of the curve on subverting expectations in the world by acknowledging that gay surgeons exist in the context of a riddle… Or maybe I should just get around to writing a novel because I am apparently pretty good at writing twists that book end a quasi-narrative.

This is not a well composed photo.  There is so much dead space to the left.

Other Book Elements

                The final thing I want to mention is that the narrator, Eric Jason Martin, has a cadence almost exactly like the opening narration of “The Outer Limits”.  It is not distracting, I kind of like it.

To School

                I am very close to the last day of my current job, less than two weeks.  It is in many ways somewhat scary-exciting.  A life roller coaster for which I am in an interminably long line waiting to take off down the track.

                I am so eager; it is kind of exhausting.  If for no other reason that I will get to read books and have people ask me my thoughts on them.  I had no idea I would miss that so much.

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Dungeons and Dragons, "Character Ideas" episode 6

Ideas for Future Characters

            A while back I wrote up some short biographies for characters I thought about using in a 5^th edition game of Dungeons and Dragons.  While I ended up using only one of them and have since moved on to running a game rather than playing in one.  However, and let’s be honest here, the most fun there is in Dungeons and Dragons is making a character.

            Since I like doing it, I figured I would make a chart in Excel and start checking off class/background combinations, by the end of this writing exercise I will have 156-character ideas.  I have decided not to include races, sub races, sub classes, or the backgrounds from supplemental materials.  Just the Players Handbook… FOR NOW.

            For fun, I will also give a numerical rating for whether I think something is “Interesting”.  There are characters that are so common as to be arch typical or even cliché, but maybe there is a reason they are so common, because they are just that intriguing.  Feel free to disagree or offer your own suggestions and objections in the comments.

            If you would like to share some of your own unused character ideas, do so in the comments, maybe use this format (maybe get it to catch on, I like its simplicity) and try and keep to a shorter length, you don’t want people to “tldr” your stuff.

            One more thing worth mentioning, I will make an effort to include a variety of different fantasy races in my character creation.  I have written before that I could run an entire fantasy world with just humans and see most fantasy races as too bland to be seen as meaningfully different from humanity (elves, to me, are too often played as just tall humans with pointy ears).  I also know that this is not an opinion shared by most and I want to try and expand my own horizons.

What Have I Got?

            I recommend as a DM, that if you have the luxury of having your players making characters as a group, picking a theme of 1-5 words to serve as an inspiration seems like a good idea.  For these two I decided to make a pair of Orcs that are not typical to what people think of as Orcs.

Name: Strathuz

Class: Cleric

Race: Orc/Half-Orc

Background: Hermit

History: “There is no God, but God.  And he is such a prick.”

Orcs have found themselves in conflict with the other intelligent races of the world for… always.  And in spite of what you have heard there are some legitimate reasons for this.  For instance, you all won’t stop praying.

It is undeniable that the divine which rules our universe is just the worst.  How can anyone justify the universe being such a brutal, random, and cruel place and claim that the creator of such things is not an asshole?  Elves believe they are the chosen people because their “God” made them beautiful… while ignoring that their race is split between the supposedly good light-skinned and supposedly evil dark-skinned breeds that are locked in mortal combat… and they blame it on the gods.  Some days it feels like I am taking crazy pills.

The Orcs know the real score.  Our universe is the product of an evil or deluded or just insane mind.  There are some prophets who claim that God is merely an idiot, but I give God no such credit.

Goals: It is time for me to come out of my long-spent isolation, where I contemplated the nature of the divine, and spread the word of my faith with my new insights and candor.  I am on a crusade in three parts, first to destroy the most vile of cults who would use religion as an excuse to propagate war, second I will challenge those tyrannical governments that claim their rule is a gift from the divine, and last, I shall refute the religious doctrine that makes people complacent to God.

Too many people who follow a faith are led into the afterlife like lambs into the mouth of a great wolf, I shall spur people to throw off the false dogma of trusting in the divine, and instead tell them to train themselves to defy God, to harder their minds and hearts for when they reach the afterlife they will have the fortitude to punch that fucker right in its fat gob!

Methods: Strathuz is a Cleric who believes that there is only 1 God, and that God is evil.  His divine powers come not from God granting them to Stathuz, but from Strathuz stealing power from God with the strength of his hardened heart and mind.  Strathuz uses the War domain, channeling his contempt for the divine and those that follow the divine into magical boons.

            The emphasis in on destroying any sight used for veneration, not just those of evil people.  If he is brought into conflict with a temple or church of a good deity he will not hesitate to oppose them, and will point to the conflict as evidence of the temples acting in ways that are contradictory or harmful (there is a lack of self-awareness here, the issue of thinking oneself absolutely right means that you see anybody who disagrees as being inherently wrong… and then using some poor reasoning will transfer that wrongness to that person’s advertised belief system).

Rating: 3/5

The inspiration for Strathuz is a continuation of my previous blog on the religion of Orcs.  That they are monotheists that believe the 1 true God is evil, and they oppose that God’s will on earth whenever possible.  This is a concept that is SORT OF explored in the Planeshift setting.  I could see Strathuz being a fan of the Lady of Pain and other powerful beings who are ostensibly in conflict with the gods’ plans.

The idea of an anti-cleric stealing magic from the gods has also appeared the Ur-Priest from 3^rd editions “Book of Vile Darkness” and the Ur-Priest sort of fits the “Hermit” background.  “Ur-priests rarely congregate, which is largely due to the fact that any gathering could attract unwanted and possibly lethal attention from the gods. They are frequently solitary, in fact, though they often find partnerships with other classes useful. And for obvious reasons, they rarely associate with other divine spellcasters, who see them as abominations of the highest order.”

            However, while I have some clear influences within DnD and history with the ideas behind Strathuz via my own writing, there are reasons I think he is not as good as he could have been.  I often find it difficult to use the Hermit background.  In general, loner types are difficult to include in team game like Dungeons and Dragons, and being someone who has spent so much time in isolation that it is your backstory… Well, you kind of have to justify why you are no longer in isolation.

            The best I could come up with for Strathuz to not be a hermit is that he was in a self-imposed religious retreat to harden himself for a crusade.  It is a generalized call to action, very easy for the DM to give out a quest, lots of potential enemies, Kuo Toa are the easiest guys to pick on for this, their whole deal is creating weird cults to fake gods.  But at the same time, there is a lot of potential for the DM to have “Good” guys come into conflict with Strathuz for doing questionable things.

Here is a possible adventure that Strathuz could pull the party into: a church is offering aid in the wake of a natural disaster, but only to people who convert to their faith.  This conversion will include a pledge of service and conscription in a coming religious conflict with another temple.  This is immoral, even if the coming crusade is against a temple of Bane, Vecna, or another evil god.  Beyond that, the idea of a “natural” disaster being used as a recruiting tool adds to the, “God is cruel” idea.

There have been anti-religious movements in the real world of various flavors.  The Cult of Reason comes to mind (mostly because there was a pair of videos on the French Revolution on Over Simplified History recently and those are a scream).  But there are other movements like, the Iconoclastic fever which led to all the churches in the Netherlands having their statues crushed and stained-glass windows smashed out.

The potential for moral grey areas and the seemingly infinite number of evil gods oriented bad guys would allow for Strathuz to have lots of opportunities for adventures.  So many opportunities for adventure that he could pull the campaign in a coherent narrative direction.  This long-term potential makes him a good character in spite of the limitations I feel the Hermit background puts on him (and puts on all characters really).

Name: Talib the Student

Class: Barbarian

Race: Orc/Half-Orc

Background: Sage

History: Nothing makes a person angrier than knowing lots of things about the state of the world.  I know, because I am very knowledgeable and very angry.

            My people have been characterized as uncultured monsters for too long.  We are seen entirely in the context of being bandits, squatters, and raiders.  The idea that my entire race could be so characterized based on… what?  The testimony of brutal mercenaries?  Everyday my people are killed by knights and wizards seeking to make the land “safe” from us!

            I have traveled the land gathering stories of brutal conflicts against my people and our allies with the dubious claim that we were somehow trespassing in the lands where we were attacked.  Upon further research the only claim on that land is by the warlord ancestors of humans and elves who think that just because their current king claims fealty over an area then my people must be denied entrance!  Why are they allowed to bar us entry?  Who are they to make claim on the forests and rivers!

            I have found archaeological evidence to suggest my people lived in numerous areas as nomadic bands and in small villages for generations before being driven off by the brutal and violent actions of men and elves.  We are owed the use of that land just as much or more than those who try to drive us off.  Our freedom to move and live thru territories peacefully must not be infringed.  We deserve to build our camps and our houses in the lands of our ancestors.

Goals: With the records and evidence I have gathered, siege will be laid on the minds of all the thinking races of the continent!  And should the light of reason not illuminate their sense of decency then I shall bash their brains from their skulls!

            Ethnic violence has no place in this world, and I will fight to end its continued use against my people!

Methods: For the first time in this series of blogs I will be referencing “Xanathar’s Guide to Everything” as I think that the best fit thematically for this combo is the “Ancestral Guardian”.  The idea that the Sage is knowledgeable of a heritage that is being erased so as to paint his culture as savage and the response to this is anger makes sense.

            Beyond that, the idea of “Consulting the Ancestors” with some deviation abilities fits a character that emphasizes learning.  The idea that Talib’s “Sage-ness” is his ability to listen to ancestral spirits and thus he is less the Sage and more “The Student” hence the name also adds another level to it.

You could also look at the idea that he may not entirely understand what he is fighting for.  That while Talib thinks his people are being unfairly oppressed and he is mad about it, that he might not have an end goal beyond punching people who disagree until there aren’t any left.

Rating: 2/5

            This is one I really had trouble with as I consider the Sage and Barbarian to be nearly antithetical.  Keep in mind, the whole concept of Barbarian is a stereotype used to dehumanize foreigners.  They are uncivilized, and that means whatever it needs to in order to make fearing and killing them easier.

            By contrast, a Sage is the pinnacle of civilization.  Having knowledge that could only exist in a society with the resources to gather that knowledge together and have a person whose defining characteristic is knowing stuff.

            So, when making a character with these two diametrically opposed ideas you have to deconstruct the archetype embodied by the words themselves.  I could only think of two ways to go about that.

            The first idea was the Incredible Hulk.  A scholar who is the embodiment of knowledge warped by a product of that knowledge and turned into a rage monster.  The idea there was to have someone who was a Sage in some kind of capacity but was driven to a form of madness by learning something not meant to be known… And… That would kind of work…

But, the idea of the Hulk in this way felt more like a Warlock tho… And looking at the current run of “The Immortal Hulk” with the Green Door in Bruce Banner’s mind… Well, he is starting to look more like a Warlock too.  So, I decided to kick that idea down the road a bit.  If you are reading this and thinking that you want to make that character, please do, and post a link to it below.

            The other side is what I went with.  That the idea of a barbarian is not from a primitive culture, instead plays on the root of the word “Barbarian” which refers to ancient Greeks thinking that foreign languages all sounded like “bar-bar-bar” in a sort of racist cartoon.

            I decided to run with the idea of a character that was foreign, from a race that was considered Barbaric but was a learned member of that society… But was still all about getting angry and punching things… because he is mad about stereotyping?  I guess.  Look, I set out to make pairings and oftentimes they just go together like orange juice and gravel.

            I am grading myself on a curve.  By all means do a better job of trying to buckle these two ideas together.

Outro

            What do you all think?  Do you have a request for a class/background combo?  Did you play one of the combos I have featured and want to share your spin on it?  Post in the comments.

Listed below are the past episodes of this blog for your reading pleasure.  If you want to read more Dungeons and Dragons stuff from me, here is a 3-part diatribe on the Celestial Warlock from “Xanathar’s Guide to Everything” (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

If you want to read about my world’s version of Orcs (I am giving this a sequel at some point), my Dwarves, or my Kobolds.

Otherwise, Have Fun.

Episode 0

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

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