How D&D is Like Doctor Who

One of the truisms about Doctor Who is that your favorite Doctor is almost always the first one you ever saw on a regular basis. So, in my case, I happen to think Tom Baker completely embodies the character, and it's no coincidence that growing up in the 1980's, his was the only version of Doctor Who I was exposed to for years on television (PBS here in the New York City area, followed eventually by Peter Davidson and Collin Baker, but not until the stamp had left its mark). I think the same thing can be said, to some extent, with D&D.

In my own case, I first dipped my toe into D&D during the White Box days, but really glommed on to it as AD&D. I played 2nd edition, but 1st was always my true love, RPG-wise. That hasn't changed.

What occasioned this observation was the latest episode of the Dreadcast podcast, "Momanatrixs Old School Woes", which describes the reaction of someone who was first exposed to D&D through 4th edition (gads... it's even hard for me to accept that there are people playing who've only picked up the game in the last 4 years) after playing a couple of sessions of 1E/OSRIC. Some of her pithy observations (do listen to the whole thing; it's only 15 minutes and a valuable insight into what is clearly a generational rift D&D-wise):

“I don’t know where I am without a map. Why is there no map?

“These guys are around here somewhere, you’re somewhere over here, so what do you want to do? I’m like, I don’t know, how, how far or how close? I don’t know.”

“Like, I play a druid, and I don’t really have, like, that many… I have barely any… like, spells that I can do in combat. They’re mostly out-of-combat spells. … And that, I’m fine with that, for the most part, that’s okay. But, like, I have this long list of spells, and I don’t have, like, there’s no, like, cards that I have. I have no idea what they do, I have to, like, just look through the book every time? Or am I just supposed to memorize this, like, long list of spells that I have?”

“Yeah, because I like to… what I like to do is I like to pay attention to everything that’s going on, and then when my turn comes around, I’ll be, like, oh! Well, since I’m right here, and this is right here, and I have this spell that can do this to this many people, in this area, of this distance, then I can plan it all out. But now in this game, it comes to my turn, and I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on. And I have to ask, like, five questions before I can even decide what I’m going to do, and I… it makes me feel, it makes me feel dumb.”

At the end of the podcast, they invite commentary, so I'm going to provide some. First off, I would point out that the use of miniatures and battle mats is not limited to 4th edition. It is entirely possible to do so with 1st, or 0E, or 2E, or 3.x. However, running an RPG without recourse to visual aids such as miniatures is a skill unto itself, and it is entirely possible that the DM in question was a little overly vague in his descriptions, or capricious in his adjudication of combat. Obviously I have no way of knowing, but the lack of minis and a battle mat isn't a design flaw of 1E. Heck, we're told that 4E doesn't have to be played with miniatures (good luck with that, though).

As for the spells, well, you need to look up spell descriptions in 4E, too. I don't really see the issue with having to look up the spell description in a book, but as was mentioned in the podcast itself, the descriptions of specific spells could be put onto 3x5 cards if that's easier for you (and I think such a thing was actually done for 1E way back when). But those cards aren't standard 4E issue, either; you need to look up the descriptions in a book either way. Plus, I'm not an expert on 4E spell descriptions, but I don't remember them being any more explicit in terms of effects than the descriptions in 1E.

As for druids not having so many combat-oriented spells, I might disagree. Looking at the 1E spell list for druids, I see all sorts of spells that can be used in combat. But then again, I don't define "used in combat" as "deals out lots of damage to enemies". And that begins to pry open something of the disconnect, I think.

If you listen to the podcast, it becomes clear that it's the ambiguity of older school games that flummoxes the player. She wants everything laid out, "cut and dried". The problem, of course, is that doing so doesn't just cut down on DM caprice; it also limits creativity on the part of the players. So for every time the DM can't say "it's a cloudless day, so you can't use your call lightning spell", there's going to be a time when you can't use stone shape to cause a piece of wall to fall down into the pool of acid, splashing it on the ogre shaman while your thief swings over on the flower stems that were made bigger thanks to a plant growth spell. As a confirmed old school player, I prefer ambiguity that allows for more creativity, rather than certainty that requires conformity.

Having every possibility spelled out in the rules limits creativity in the game by definition, because it takes away from the ability of the DM to either create or respond to situations that the designers of the game never anticipated. Or, taken to the opposite extreme, it forces the rules to become so bloated in their attempt to cover every possible contingency that the game becomes unplayable. 

I find it very interesting that someone whose first introduction to D&D was 4E finds it so difficult to adapt to the tropes and expectations of 1E. Specifically that her objections stem from the fact that not everything is laid out with definitive rules covering it. I've said that I think 4E is much less a role-playing game than it is a skirmish miniatures game, and I predict that Angela would find a game like Malifaux or Heroclix exceedingly to her liking, much more so than a game that encourages extra-rules activities on the part of the DM and players such as 1E.

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Raid on Frederikshavn Playtest #2

Saturday saw us venturing forth to the FLGS to give my Ogre Miniatures scenario "Raid on Frederikshavn" another test-run. We had done one playtest of it back in November, and many good lessons were learned, resulting in a much tighter set of rules for the second run-through, mostly concerning the victory points. I'm going to be running this twice at Dreamation next month, so I wanted to make sure it was solid.

The basic thrust of the scenario is that the Combine is attacking a PanEuropean spaceport in Frederikshavn, Denmark, with a coordinated attack by GEVs and an Ogre MK-IIIB sent across the North Sea. The PanEuropean player has to hang on long enough for enough reinforcements to arrive to push back the invaders.

The biggest changes were that victory points were now given only for destroying the critical objectives; the spaceplane itself and six critical structures (adminstration buildings, fuel depots, and workshops). No points are awarded for destroying enemy units or the various town areas.

Here's the setup for the game before the units were placed. The spaceplane is near the upper edge of the board, buildings and fuel depots scattered nearby, with swamp and forest in the middle of the board. The thin brown strips are road, the large brown blocks are town areas, which favor infantry greatly (triple defense!).

The PanEuropean defender (me) placed my Fencer (an Ogre with a whole lot of missiles and weak guns, code named "Rommel") right in the middle, with a mobile howitzer, a couple of missile tanks and infantry scattered about. The Combine attackers decided to divide their forces into two groups, each running up one edge of the board. You can see them in the upper-left moving through the few strips of solid ground between the swamps and forest. Unfortunately for the attacker, the defenders scored a very lucky roll right off the bat and took out two GEVs with one shot thanks to spillover fire (those two white puffs on the right side).

Eventually the attackers moved their remaining GEVs and Ogre MK-IIIB (code named "Skorzeny") up the left flank and took out the large building. 35 victory points in the bag. One of the GEVs was lost in the process, but the attacking Ogre was completely undamaged.

Meanwhile, on the right flank, the attacking force of GEVs and a GEV-PC carrying a platoon of infantry raced up and got close to striking distance of the spaceplane itself. 10 structure points of damage and it would be a guaranteed marginal victory for the attackers. Fortunately, the defenders had committed their Fencer to staving off the threat. Between the Fencer and the mobile howitzer (which, despite the name, wasn't all that mobile in the town area, only moving one inch per turn, but it did have the advantage of double defense) the threat was largely neutralized (completely so in the next turn or two, especially thanks to some fortuitous reinforcements in that sector).

Finally, the attacking Ogre Mk-IIIB was left alone. Only the one building had been destroyed, all of its screening GEVs destroyed, and the Fencer and scads of reinforcements (mostly GEVs and Light GEVs) rushing to engage. In two turns, the Fencer and the defending tanks and GEVs took out almost all the weapons on the Mk-IIIB, and the attacker threw in the towel. End result: marginal defender victory.

On the whole I'm very pleased with the way the scenario has turned out. Although this was something of a lopsided result, things would have turned out very differently had the attacker simply switched his forces running up the sides of the board. As it was, his Ogre ended up on the side that was furthest from the primary objective and most of the victory point-rich buildings. If the Ogre had been on the right instead of the left, we could easily have seen a couple more buildings taken out for a tie or even a marginal attacker victory.

Now, on to the con! (I'll post the pdf of the scenario after the convention, for anyone who might be interested.)

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Erseta Campaign #11

We had a much more focused session this evening, due in large part to two new players (one the wife of one of our regulars, the other an old friend of two others, so nobody was a new newt dropped in the fishtank). This was a "caper" evening, where the players were presented with a problem that seemed pretty simple on the surface, but spent three hours planning how to pull it off.

First off was a little more intelligence gathering about "The Cleavers" and their leader Osterbeck. Since the party had learned last time that the magical lantern needed to reactivate the gate back to the ruined dwarven city of Glitterdark was in their possession, they decided to ask their shadiest contact in the city about them. Said contact, Thrivin Mossberg, a halfling fence, provided them with a little more information than they had; the Cleavers were a pretty low-rent band of thugs who mostly worked the area near the docks, but not exclusively. He didn't think too much of the Cleavers, apparently. He did, however, offhandedly ask if the group was open to another job-- several sessions ago they agreed to bring in some merchandise from the docks without it being inspected by the sheriffs for tax purposes.

At first they didn't bite, and that was fine with me (from a GM point of view). But then somehow they decided that the job might lead them closer to the Cleavers, and accepted. The job turned out to be bringing in two wagon loads of fruit into the city for a "secret society" in time for something happening on the Full Moon in 6 days. The catch? The fruit was a "surprise" and nobody could know that it was being brought in.

After being assured that the fruit was legal, and merely "a surprise", they set about their task, and this was where my fun began.

Was it really fruit? Was that just some euphemism for something else? They went to the farmhouse a couple miles out of town where the wagons were being kept and, yep, it's fruit. Bushels and bushels of some rare fruit nobody'd ever seen before. What was it for? The farmer's wife had no idea, but pointed out that the Feast of Deliverance, which commemorated the end of the Drowning Death in the town of Ritterheim, was going to be celebrated on the same day as the Full Moon. When this information was relayed to the party, you could just see the wheels turning. Why? What was this secret society going to do with rare fruit? The Cleavers were long forgotten.

Then came the planning of the caper. For three and a half solid hours, they argued and planned and plotted and schemed and came up with idea after idea. Our usual asides into movies, other games, and shiny things catching our attention were minimized as everyone focused on the problem of how to get two wagons full of fruit through a guarded gate and past the watchful eye of a tax-collecting sheriff. They'd use barrels, no, illusions, no, cover the wagons in straw, no too obvious, cover the fruit in dung, no, that would squish the fruit, maybe cover it in tarps and then cover those in dung, no the fruit would still get squished, maybe pack it in barrels and cover them in dung, no, fill them with fish, no, take out empty barrels, no, that would be suspicious, hire a third wagon and take it out to the farm to fill it up with fruit, no, that would attract attention, so go out one gate and return through another, no, there was no road connecting them outside the town... round and round they went. It was glorious.

They eventually settled on a scheme involving a facade of a third wagon, empty barrels, tarps covering the actual fruit, and the illusionist using his mirage cantrip three times to fool the sheriff into thinking the fruit was just empty barrels. While the two clerics staged a diversion at the gate involving a fascinate spell, because no plan would be complete without a clerical diversion. All the planning paid off, for they thought it through to the point where no obvious roadblocks stood in their way, got the wagons through the gate and to the home of the secret society. Which was known as The Shockers and whose headquarters was decorated with black and yellow bunting. The fruit was delivered to several men wearing masks and dressed in black and yellow motley (surely this had to be the most conspicuous "secret society" ever seen), the PCs got their pay from their halfling employer, and all was right with the world. At least until the mystery of the Shockers and their "secret fruit" is revealed...

What really excited me about this session was it was all role-playing. The players might be feeling a little frustration that there haven't been any goblins to hack through lately, but this time it was because the game just went in a different direction, not because we were distracted by other non-game-related things. And their forethought and planning paid off. The caper went off without a hitch.

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The Specious Model Railroading Analogy

Recently, Ryan Dancy was quoted in an article in The Escapist where he repeated the canard that the tabletop RPG industry is "becoming a dead hobby", because it's falling into the same pattern as the model railroading industry:

"Kids stopped playing with trains, and the businesses that remained dedicated to hobbyists who got more disposable income as they grew up, until the price of the hobby was out of reach of anyone except those older hobbyists. Eventually, it became a high-end hobby with very expensive products, sold to an ever-decreasing number of hobbyists. As those folks die, the hobby shrinks. That is what is happening to the tabletop RPG business."

The exact same argument (nearly word for word, interestingly), was recently featured in an anonymous guest post over at Wise Fugaros' blog:

Historically there was a time when model trains were a popular gift, the sort of thing that you give a child to occupy their time, or to play with with their friends. Then over time the trains got more complex, and the hobby got more and more focused. The kids grew up and kept their model trains, but not too many new kids came in. Now we see an interesting situation: it is hard to find a model train set for a kid to just get into, and you don’t go looking in a toy store for one, you go to a hobby shop.

Likewise, there was a time when an RPG (“Red Box” Dungeons and Dragons) was a popular gift, the sort of thing that you give a child to occupy the time, or to play with friends. Then over time the games got more varied, and the hobby got more and more focused. The kids grew up and kept their games, but not as many new kids came in. I’ll stop there to avoid belaboring the point, but the parallels are pretty clear.

The fallacies here are numerous, so I'll start with the most obvious.

The Hobby Manufacturers Association estimated that in 2010 alone the model railroading industry had sales of some $424,770,000. The tabletop RPG industry wishes it had sales anywhere near that. You can find model railroading magazines-- at least a half-dozen different titles-- at every Barnes & Noble in the country and a couple even in my local convenience store. That's hard copy, not some dubious "online magazine". If that's Dancy's idea of "a dead industry", then I say bring on the mourners. As for the claim that "it's hard to find a model train set for a kid to just get into", well, this.

But the more general notion is that tabletop RPGs don't attract enough kids. Without kids, the thinking goes, the hobby is doomed to die as the older players die off and aren't replaced with fresh youngsters clutching a red box to their breast.

That, of course, is specious because it presupposes that all growth must come from kids. While it is true that a large segment of newcomers to the hobby back in the 1980's were tweens and teens, I would argue that any attempt to recapture that golden era is doomed, and any attempt to make comparisons between the market today and how things were in 1983 is just not credible. Those times are gone, the product of a number of different factors that will never be repeated.

And you know what? I'm fine with that. Who says the hobby only has to grow through kids?

I'm perfectly fine with entrants into the hobby skewing older. Disposable income is not a vice! Just to take some anecdotal evidence, the folks I see playing D&D or Pathfinder at the local stores are in their early-mid 20's. They're not stymied by the lack of an introductory boxed set (a holy grail that some seem to think is the key to bringing back the hobby to its 1983 levels). They buy the core rulebook(s) and start playing. Whence this notion that people advancing from Pokemon when they're young to RPGs when they're older is a losing proposition? Why the need to dumb things down?

Plus, I would point out that most games today don't have the same model as Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder. Not every game is an attempt to get the customers hooked through a "gateway drug" cheap and easy boxed set so they'll feel compelled to step up to the heroin of endless $50 rulebooks. You buy Swords & Wizardry, or Labyrinth Lord, or Diaspora, or Call of Cthulhu, or Tunnels and Trolls, or any one of hundreds of games out there, and you don't really need anything more than that. There's no "starter set" required because the whole thing is self-contained, and can be played entirely as-is, with maybe an adventure module or pre-made setting for those who are inclined to use such.

That may not be good news for the RPG industry (which is built on the "call R&D and see if there's a way to make the pages physically addictive" model), but it's terrific news for the RPG hobby.

And every day dozens of new designers and publishers, often the much-maligned one-man-startups, are coming out with new games, new accessories, new ideas, and new twists on old ideas. That's where the future of the hobby lies. There will always be a few Big Players, who can afford full-time staffs and salaries, R&D budgets and television advertising, but experience has shown that innovation rarely comes from such corners. Once the lean newcomers "make it big", they begin to ossify, and are left in the dust by newer, leaner, entrants (I'm looking at you, White Wolf).

Personally, I don't really care what happens to the RPG industry (aside from the personal effects on friends of mine who are in it), because it is distinct from the RPG hobby. I am most decidedly a hobbiest, and proud of it.

The RPG industry is changing and facing challenges from new technologies. Does that mean that we should all give up and start playing MMO's? Well, Ryan Dancy might want us to, and belittle those of us who still think that getting together with friends... you know... across a table is an enjoyable thing, but I think it's hardly inevitable. But even if Wizards of the Coast went out of business tomorrow, and Dungeons and Dragons went unpublished for 20 years, the RPG hobby would still endure, and probably flourish. Or at least be as "dead" as model railroading. And I'd be okay with that.

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More Medieval Erudition: The Lament of Sudden Wealth

Life and customs were hard in Lombardy [at the beginning of the 13th century]. Men wore cloaks of leather without any adornments, or clothes of rough wool with no lining. With a few pence, people felt rich. Men longed to have arms and horses. If one was noble and rich, one's ambition was to own high towers from which to admire the city and the mountains and the rivers. The virgins wore tunics of pignolato [rough cotton] and petticoats of linen, and on their heads they wore no ornaments at all. A normal dowry was about ten lire and at the utmost reached one hundred, because the clothes of the woman were ever so simple. There were no fireplaces in the houses. Expenses were cut down to a minimum because in summer people drank little wine and wine-cellars were not kept. At table, knives were not used; husband and wife ate off the same plate, and there was one cup or two at most for the whole family. Candles were not used, and at night one dined by light of glowing torches. One ate cooked turnips, and ate meat only three times a week. Clothing was frugal. Today, instead, everything is sumptuous. Dress has become precious and rich with superfluity. Men and women bedeck themselves with gold, silver, and pearls. Foreign wines and wines from distant countries are drunk, luxurious dinners are eaten, and cooks are highly valued.

-- Galvano Fiamma, 13th century, as quoted in The Taste of Conquest by Michael Krondl

While Galvano Fiamma was complaining about the changes in lifestyle brought about by the conquerors returning home with wealth from the Crusades, he could just as easily be bemoaning the wealth that would be attendant to a steady stream of adventurers hauling boxes of gold and jewels from the depths of a nearby megadungeon. Gary Gygax spoke briefly of such inflation, but when I saw the above quote, I thought it said it much more eloquently than I could.

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Convention Plans for 2012

Unfortunately, my convention plans for the upcoming year are going to be much as they were for 2011, despite my hopes to get westward this year. I'll be sticking close to home, and only attending the local conventions. Fortunately, Dreamation (February), DexCon (July), and newcomer Metatopia (October) are close enough to not need a hotel and really nice conventions with plenty of games and other stuff happening. My only wish is that the dealers room for Dreamation and DexCon would be better, with actual game companies showing up rather than just retailers. I might squeeze in Ubercon (November) as well.

Alas, no GenCon (August) in my future this year, nor Origins (June), North Texas RPG Con (June) or GaryCon (March). Finances just don't allow it this year, with everything else I've got happening.

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Mysteries in a Magical Universe

The Classical and Medieval worlds were rife with mysteries that were supposedly solved through complex theological, philosophical, and other means. We, in our modern scientific world, see these solutions as quaint superstitions at best; the setting of the sun is explained by a Geocentric universe, the origin of humanity is found in the myth of Adam and Eve (or, if you wish, Ask and Embla, Phaenon, etc. etc.), myths of afterlives, the existence of demons and angels, and so forth.

However, in a world permeated with magic such as those most often found in fantasy RPG campaigns, this becomes harder to sustain, as magic allows a level of certainty on these sorts of answers that is rivaled only by modern technology. Not sure what happens to souls after death? Use your astral spell to travel to the outer planes, and get a first-hand look. Is the world round or flat? A jaunt in a spelljammer ship can show you definitively. Do demons or angels exist? Well, yes, and so do gods; they take physical form and walk the earth. In many ways, "mechanistic" magic gives more certainty than technology ever could, thus robbing the world of mystery.

In such a world, mysteries come from paradox.

One mage ventures to the outer planes and reports three infinite layers of Hades, "adjacent" to which are four layers of Gehenna and six layers of Tarterus. A few years later, another attempts to recreate the journey and only finds a single plane, also called Hades, but which is home to both demodands and daemons. Who is right? Who is wrong? It's a mystery, and the Oinodaemon isn't talking. The mystery grows when the player characters, on two subsequent journeys, find both conditions, or maybe one that is completely different. Instantly, mystery is reintroduced into the campaign, through paradox.

In such a situation, the players will likely try to come up with a rational explanation. Was one an illusion? Let them attempt to come up with logical explanations, but never, as a GM, allow yourself to be boxed in by them. Even when they see what they believe is "conclusive proof" that one or another side of a paradox is "the truth", the inherent mystery of the universe is always there, lurking in the background, ready to turn their rational, machine-like understanding of the world on its head.

Allowing for paradox also allows for radically different cosmologies adopted by different cultures, none of which has to be The True Cosmology. The worshipers of the Holy Family in my own campaign believe in a Sacred Island where all the faithful go after they die, and a fragmented underworld of Hell, the Abyss, Hades, etc. for evil-doers. Does the fact that the people of the Golden Kingdoms believe that when they die their soul will go to dwell on one of the stars in the heavens, with each star being home to a particular family, invalidate (or is it itself invalidated by) that view? Can both be true? Could neither be true, despite the fact that both are based on direct observation or revelation at one time or another? Of course, all of the above.

Even in a world with magic, nothing says that the universe has to be cataloged, logical, and 100% rational. Much like with the concept of mythic time, don't let your own modern predilection for absolute certainty and logic get in the way of introducing a little mystery into your campaign now and again, even if it's a mystery that is destined never to be solved.

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