The DM as "Sacred"

So, there are about a dozen blog posts I want to make right now and not enough time to do so.  So, I'm going to go in order and discuss today the first thing on my mind which is a response by an anonymous commentator to my last post on Religion in D&D: Sacredness.  The commentator has some interesting things to say so I encourage the reader to click the above link and scroll down to his or her comments because this entry is going to be a response.

The timing of this blog entry is fortuitous because Alexis over at The Tao of D&D just posted on the rock star position of the DM and seeing his "smug superior mug" accentuated and subordinating the players' images in online game videos on YouTube.  Yeah, read all about it here.

Anyway, my anonymous commentator (henceforth I'm going to refer to him or her as "Anon") indicates a grandiose shift in gaming away from emphasis on the DM and toward the players and the removal of the "arbitrary" and to the rigid, governable world in which the DM is marginalized.

My response is, frankly, one of mystification.  I'm not certain I see what Anon is talking about.  All over the internet, on YouTube, on blogs, on RPGnet, the DMs are Rock Stars and are all centers of juvenile controversy as well (see this post over on The Alexandrian to see just how ridiculously pedantic and politically droll some of these feuds can get--especially "enjoy" the comments section to see the flames spill forth).  Alexis' blog references I Hit it with My Axe as an example of a heavily followed and syndicated series of game sessions viewable online.  I can go on YouTube and watch a dozen-and-one DMs explain how they run, why they run, what rules or systems are best, how their house rules really improve things, etc.  There's definitely a smugness about most of these guys.

So here I am, humbled by Alexis.  Yeah, okay, people may think I'm a suck-up.  That's your prerogative.  The fact is, I'm also called an arrogant and elitist bastard quite often.  I respect experience and knowledge, especially if those two components are combined with metacognition and self-criticism/self-reflection to produce sweeping changes in one's own behaviors for the better, despite whether one likes the harsh truths of their conclusions or not.  That way lies intellectual honesty.  Even Socrates admitted he didn't know anything.  That's why I always appreciated Alexis' blog.  Here's a man who speaks with authority because he's criticized himself personally as well as his DMing quite a bit.

Now I've been reading his How to Run and it's been kicking my butt.  No, rest assured, there are things Alexis asserts with which I have disagreements but here's the kicker--I respect all of the work and research and experience that have all gone into those assertions and I'm obligated to challenge myself and figure out why I disagree with Alexis here and there and, most importantly, if those disagreements stem from my own preferences, insecurities, and personal foibles (limitations of perspective or simple, raw self-centeredness, for example).

Why do I bring up Alexis?  Because both The Tao of D&D and How to Run pound the idea that the DM's fun is secondary to the players' fun and the DM is performing a service to the players by running.  The players should be the rock stars.  There should be a bit of a trade-off, of course, because the amount of work the DM puts into constructing the world and making sure it serves the players' needs and wants, the players should have respect for that world and all the time and effort of the DM and not simply run around willy-nilly killing blacksmiths and seducing barmaids.

The number-one problem with all of these DMs I see online is that their fun takes precedence over the players' quite often (or at least is considered equal in proportion to the combined amount of fun being had by all the players').  I have to admit, I fail in this regard quite often.  I don't have fun running certain campaign settings or systems, frankly, even if my players' love them.  There are times when my players are having a great time and I'm fighting off boredom trying to project enjoyment and confidence that isn't there and I really just want to go do something else.  The problem here is that by picking up the mantle of DM, I've also shouldered a serious responsibility to those who play my game to provide fun for them, not for myself.  I should achieve satisfaction from seeing how they enjoy the game I run but that's not the same thing as having fun.  Indeed, satisfaction is something that's more important because it means I've put work into something and achieved a goal--a goal that not just anybody could.

This also means I have to do things I don't want to do in game.  This includes trying to kill the PCs if that is what the world demands.  I have a tendency to get attached to PCs and I have to remind myself to react as the world would react.  It has to be believable or I do a disservice to both my world and to the players.

So, let's take a look at some of what Anon has said about the loss of sacredness with the DM.  First, Anon indicates that in the 1980s and 1990s, before the "anti-game master movement" gained momentum, that the DM embodied the sacred, unquantifiable aspects of reality.  Anon references the Judeo-Christian God as a great example of a DM in action through a manifestation of the sacred (assuming, for argument's sake, that Moses was a PC in a role-playing game, of course), or when Krishna confronts Arjuna, etc.  These are instances when the DM (if these were events in an RPG) acts through the world to determine the sacred.

I disagree because I see this as post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning.  The expressions of sacredness coming through the world by arbitrary DM fiat are justified by examples in these works after the fact.  The situations in which DM values and ethics are expressed in game are explained by the DM being God.  Instead of The Tanakh, The Gospels, The Bhagavad-Gita, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad, etc. being the model for the intrusion of DM values they are redacted into being the excuse here.  Perhaps I'm misinterpreting Anon's argument, however, so I could be mischaracterizing what he or she is trying to demonstrate.

Well, I'm going to let Anon speak for him/herself here:

In the gaming of the 1980s and 1990s, before the anti-game master movement came into power, that sense of the sacred was inherent in having a game master embody the campaign reality.

Just as secular science can be expressed in formulae and books of rules or "laws" that can be leashed and driven forth by anyone with enough knowledge of science and/or its practical crafts, so the campaign's physical science is expressed in game mechanics formulae and game mechanics rule books.  Want to know the composition of water?  Look in a chemistry book and realize that (barring a miracle) water is always two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.  Want to know how to cast magic missiles or aim a starship phaser?  Look in the rule book for the unvarying game mechanics involved. 

However, an individual game master would have his or her own aesthetics, interests, sense of humor, eccentricities, etc., many of which could be noticed and taken into account but none of which could be quantified into controllable rules because humans are not dry iterations of formulae and rules.

Interesting.  So far, so good.  I can't say I disagree.  DMs are human beings, after all and have foibles.  However, it is incumbent upon the DM, in order to be honest, fair, and provide the best possible service, to minimize these idiosyncrasies or at least make the players as aware as possible of them in order to best facilitate the players' enjoyment of the game.

So the player who was attuned to the underlying meaning provided by the game master's unconscious humanity--i.e. the sacredness of the campaign world--would notice that when this particular game master had to make a sudden judgment call about whether the horses were spooked, the PCs who had been kind to cats were more likely to be able to calm their horses.  A bad player would say, "Oh, Bill likes cat-lovers, damn his bias!" but a good player would say to himself, "Ah, I see, cats have something to do with the poetry of this universe." 

Similarly, the player would notice that moments of good luck came more often to those PCs who did not torture.  A bad player would grumble, "Ah, Mark's subconscious wussiness is giving an edge to the good PCs, and that ain't in the rule book for me to find loopholes, so damn him!" while a good player would think, "Hmmm, there seems to be a universal morality to this universe beyond what we can play 'rules lawyer' with."  Or the player would notice that this game master tended to describe safe magic fountains as silvery but cursed magic fountains as flashy, and instead of personalizing this as an eccentricity of the game master's descriptive habits, she or he would realize this is one more manifestation of the underlying patterning of the campaign universe provided by the game master who had created it for the players.

Here is where I start to take issue.  It is incumbent upon the DM to be conscious of his behavior in this regard.  If all of these situations are in-game (i.e. if the DM is not penalizing a person for out-of-game hatred of cats or vice-versa not rewarding a player for out-of-game kindness to cats) then it is fair game and the players should start putting two-and-two together and understand cats are somehow sacred in this reality.

The thing is, these ideas must be something the DM is aware of because he or she must present an understandable and believable world.  In other words, not torturing being a cause for receiving a little bit of luck, while not necessarily a quantifiable game mechanic, must be a part of the universe of which the DM is consciously aware.  This way, the players can start keying into these ideas and their characters can interact with the world more effectively.

The problem is when the DM is unconscious of these things.  Then it is arbitrary DM fiat and it is not part of maintaining a believable world that makes sense.  As Alexis says in How to Run, it doesn't have to make perfect sense objectively but just has to make sense enough to the players to facilitate suspension of disbelief (I'm paraphrasing a bit, here, I don't feel like flipping through pages and finding the exact quote--I'm lazy, whaddya want from me?).

Anyway, Anon continues:

These were not seen as acts of conscious or unconscious favoritism any more than an American would label karma as cosmic favoritism or accuse Jesus of favoritism for choosing apostles instead of letting anyone who could make a d20 saving throw become an apostle.  They were seen as an underlying pattern of meaning that any genuinely involved game master could not help but impart to a campaign by dint of his or her humanity, and they welcomed not resented. 

Of course, that all changed with the decade plus of anti-game master outcries.

Anon is right that the over-mechanization of game rules is somewhat problematic because it gives power to rules-lawyers.  However, I've played with really horrible DMs/GMs/STs who were pretty arbitrary and governed their games by fiat instead of trying to be impartial referees.  Rules lawyering became essential to survival in some of these settings but the thing is, if I have to resort to that then I'm not truly having a good time and I don't trust my GM/DM/ST/etc.  If I don't trust them and they obviously don't trust me, then what am I doing here?  I'd be better served doing something else with my time.

The problem here is the swing of the pendulum.  Sorry, Gygax and Arneson were not model DMs in my opinion.  Similarly, neither is the DM who gives players whatever they want without any challenge.  I think a lot of players convince themselves they've had a good time despite actually having had pretty terrible experiences both with tyrannical and lenient DMs.  Rules should not exist to shackle either DM or player but to provide an action resolution system, plain-and-simple and the more effective those rules are, the better they serve the needs of DM and player alike.

This means if the rules need to be changed to suit different moods, themes, and goals of both the DM and players, then by all means change them.  I love White Wolf's game system but I wouldn't want to use it too often in a combat-heavy setting with super-powerful demigods--its one of the problems I ran into with running Exalted last year.  Actually, White Wolf is well-suited to low-combat, investigation and interaction-heavy games full of intrigue, politics, mysteries, plotting, dealing, and rare, sharp, lethal combat situations.  Simultaneously, I wouldn't want to run such an intrigue-heavy low-combat game involving vampires or werewolves in D&D.  I mean, it could be done but I think White Wolf's system is much better calibrated for that sort of game.

The rules are a tool.  Nothing more.  Indeed, I certainly agree with Anon, here, that the fetishization and deification of rules have served neither player nor DM.  The search for the perfect system, though, is not a lot of fun, either.  Although I love 3rd edition/Pathfinder the rules-bloat is something I find problematic.  Granted, characters can be very easily customized and more interesting.  You can run an entire party of just fighters and have a great time because every fighter is different.

On the other hand, the DM is not God.  God has an agenda, the DM should not, unless, of course, that agenda is to provide a believable world with which the players can interact.  If anything, the DM should represent what Yehezkel Kaufmann calls "the metadivine realm" in his History of the Religion of Israel.  The metadivine realm is impersonal and can be called upon through magic and supernatural ritual to coerce, force, or bypass the gods in order to achieve an effect.  It simply exists and the gods themselves are subordinate to it (at least, in a polytheistic world).  If you're running a campaign set in a monotheistic universe where the Judeo-Christian God runs the show... well, the DM frankly should detach himself entirely from whether the Devil or God wins.  Even if the DM believes fervently in the Judeo-Christian tradition, his world is not the Real World, it is imaginary and the DM is presenting this world to his players for their entertainment not for the confirmation of his/her beliefs or to make converts.  Frankly, given an individual DMs beliefs, it may be considered a conflict of interests for a Christian DM to run a game in a setting where the Christian God is sovereign, especially if the players are not all Christian.  That's asking for trouble on all sorts of levels unless the DM can seriously reign himself in and understand that he's not running for himself or herself but to provide entertainment for his or her players.

Thus, while I agree with Anon that a lot of the anti-game master sentiment that has led to rules-bloat has been somewhat detrimental to the game, I feel much of it was a reaction to shoddy DMs when the hobby was still in its nascent stages.  I disagree, however, with Anon because I reject the notion of the DM as sacred or as some kind of representation of the sacred.  The DM is a referee period and the DM's job is to facilitate the best experience the players can possibly have.

Religion in D&D

A couple of years ago, I did a brief workup of faith and ritual in the Forgotten Realms' Shadowdale.  This was a small overview of some ideas I had to deepen and broaden how I could handle faith and religion in The Forgotten Realms campaign setting.  I should clearly note that I do not use nor am I interested in any of the changes to the setting brought about in 4th (or now 5th) edition.

A great 2nd edition resource is the Faiths & Avatars book, which gives a really good write-up on the gods and the beliefs of their followers but the truth is, The Forgotten Realms, as presented, is a somewhat unrealistic approach to ancient polytheistic belief systems.  So, drawing upon what I know from Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, Burkert's Greek Religion, Yehezkel Kaufmann's History of the Religion of Israel, and a couple of other sources on pre-modern polytheistic belief structures.  I would love to have gotten my hands on M.A.R. Barker's article "Create a Religion in your Spare Time for Fun and Profit."  (I hear they have a copy at DriveThruRpg.)  This blog entry over at Game Over provides a nice review and summary of the article for those interested and it has helped me quite a bit.

To build on this, we honestly need to isolate a number of cultural/linguistic groups that inhabit the Realms and determine how tradition and ritual (which are very, very important parts of religion) interact with the societies. There is one, singular pantheon for all of Faerûn and that is something that really just pulls me right out of that precious suspension of disbelief because of how dramatically unrealistic it is.  After doing some thinking, I managed to pull together some ideas about how cultural interaction and communication led to a diffusion of deities throughout the Faerûnian ecumene.  This would be similar to how, during the Hellenistic and Roman periods of Mediterranean history you start seeing gods being identified with one another, mixed, and new gods form, like Serapis in Graeco-Roman Egypt, Zeus' syncretistic identification with other chief deities, and the introduction of entirely foreign cults, like Mithraism from Iran.

So, I started working backwards through Faerûnian history to break down the human deities into distinct and isolated pantheons of gods.  These are based on language groups that are also cultural groups of humans that dispersed through Faerûn--Talfiric, Calishite, Luskan, Damaran, Netherese, and Chondathan.  The Netherese gods are detailed in the 2nd edition boxed set entitled Netheril: Empire of Magic, although it is important to know that Chauntea (whom I identify as a Chondathan grain goddess) was synonymous with the Netherese goddess Jannath.

From there I started to do some work mixing and matching, looking at which gods were worshiped the most where through the sourcebooks and discovered, low and behold, that I could pull out a logical sense of consistency for a lot of these different pantheons.  It took some work but hey, back then I was a lazy college student who liked wasting time applying my new scholarship skills to frivolous stuff like D&D back in the day.

So, what are the values of these cultures?  Well, for starters, I'm going to take a look at the Chondathan culture before I start tackling other ones.  Chondathan culture is a very distinctly Western European plus good ol' corn-fed United States red-blooded American sturdiness.  The Chondathan diaspora has spread out from it's titular lands, through the Vilhon Reach, Cormyr, Sembia, the Dales, and out into the Western Heartlands where they mixed with and culturally replaced the Talfiric peoples.  Basically, the population of the Heartlands of Faerûn, from Waterdeep to the western Sea of Fallen Stars littoral, is almost entirely of Chondathan linguistic speakers.  Language and culture are intrinsically tied, so much so as to be difficult to separate one from the other, therefore, even if the genetic stock of a region isn't Chondathan, if they speak a Chondathan language, it is safe to assume they have overall Chondathan cultural traits.

Anyway, I'm digressing.  A lot.  So, let me circle away from this tangent and back to my main points.  Alright?  Okay.

Now, while reading the review of Barker's essay at Game Over, the blogger emphasizes one of Barker's key arguments about how to build these religions in his summary:

It's not just a matter of phoning it in by whipping up a few names and one-paragraph descriptors for your gods either; these are entities which are going to govern the lives and livelihoods of player characters, and so you're going to want to answer a lot of questions about the gods and the religions from the players. ...

That said, the single-paragraph description of the god is still there; Barker demonstrates just how much of a religions' nature can be derived from examining a detailed and well-written description of its god.  However, it's not actually Barker's recommended starting point. ...

...  I bring this up partly to illustrate that the essay has considerable value beyond the issue of building religions in fantasy games, and partly to demonstrate how Barker actually recommends building religions: from the ground up.  Worry about the social, the political, the economic situation on the ground, in the cultures where the player characters move - then get your arse up there and think about what kind of gods might appeal to those cultures, or might have formed those cultures through exerting influence on their situations.  Treat religion as the social process it is and you'll get something rich and deep for your trouble.

Start at the bottom then work your way up.  The problem with most DMs, setting designers, etc., is that they never, ever, ever consider the actual duties and functions of their deities within the actual structure of the society itself.  Oh, yeah, in the 2nd edition The Complete Priests' Handbook the writers and designers give all sorts of advice for creating gods, religions, clergies, etc.  It's only the tip of the iceberg.

Where can one start?

With studying actual polytheistic faith systems that really exist in the world.  No, I'm not talking about Wicca, Witchcraft, or Paganism in the modern world.  Sorry, they're honestly new inventions and while they seek to reclaim and restore much of the lost religions of the old gods of Europe, they are still very influenced by modern perceptions of those cults than the actual worship and practice of ancient religious belief.

But permit me to digress, once more, by citing an excerpt of the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book.

Some Faerûnians zealously follow one deity.  Others make sacrifices to many deities, while upholding one as their personal patron.  Still others sacrifice to as many deities as possible, shifting allegiances as their circumstances and needs warrant.  It's a rare Faerûnian who hasn't occasionally hoped to avert the baleful influence of an evil deity with a propitious gift, or thanked a good power for an unexpected blessing.  The belief system of most Faerûnians generally centers on a particular deity whose interests and influences are most likely to affect them, but acknowledges other gods as significant and important, too.  --The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, 3rd edition, pg. 93.

The first sentence in this paragraph describes henotheism.  The second sentence as well as the last sentence describe monolatry.  Everything in the middle describes standard polytheism or (at most) kathenotheism.  In function, however, especially through the cleric and paladin character class, what we mostly get in Faerûn is henotheism and monolatrism.  This smacks me as problematic, especially because the common needs of the populace will require frequent appeals to a variety of deities.

If you read pages 93 and 94 of the 3rd edition Campaign Setting, it paints a fairly believable and solid picture of religion in theory but in practice most DMs simply take the easy way out--monolatry and henotheism, all clergy are paladins, monks, and clerics, etc.  The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting makes it clear that "most of a Temple's clergy are not clerics."  It goes on to say, "They're experts, aristocrats, even commoners who serve as advisors and counselors to the faithful and officiate at routine observances.  A cleric usually leads any particular temple, shrine, or order, judiciously using her spells to aid sick or injured followers and assist the local authorities in maintaining law and order in the community as it suits the deity in question."

Here, the authors actually undo some of what they were trying to build--true actual polytheism.  The key here is where they say, "the faithful" and "followers."  This can mislead players and DMs alike into the assumption that the clergy of a temple only administers to those who follow their deity and their deity alone.

When studying polytheistic belief systems, I tend to lean toward the Graeco-Roman traditions (specifically because I specialized in Graeco-Roman history, society, and culture in my undergrad and grad school days) and modern-day polytheistic traditions like Hinduism and Shinto.

I have a lot of exposure to Shinto through my stuc., and receive a good-luck charm that would bless their efforts in study with hopes that they would pass their university entrance examinations.  These students were not henotheists or monolatrists like the bulk of D&D non-player-characters and player-characters.  The temple provided a specific service to the students by taking offerings dedicated to Tenjin and interceding with the kami in order to grant his favor to the students.

So what do temples do?  They provide services to the populace but also to the state.  Their job is to be a basis for tradition so as to curry favor with the gods so that peace and prosperity is ensured, misfortune and catastrophe are prevented or warded off, and the cultural traditions continue.  The D&D campaign worlds are far too influenced by Christianity (whether players and DMs like it or not) in that each god has a sort of salvation or promised afterlife for their worshipers.  Relationship with the divine is a part of Judeo-Christian faith (more Christianity than modern Judaism, though).  Polytheists don't often seek to have a personal relationship with the divine unless they're rulers or dies of Japanese history and culture, as well as having visited a couple Shinto temples in Japan.  What I saw, for example, at the Tenman-gu shrine to Tenjin, the Shinto god of scholarship, made me realize that D&D (in particular) and role-playing games' designers (in general) have religion all wrong.

I arrived at Tenman-gu around the time when Exam Hell was just starting to ramp up.  Students would come to the temple and make offerings to Tenjin in money, incense, etoracles and even then it is rare because too much attention from the gods invites calamity as much as fortune.

So temples don't exist for the individual to develop a relationship with the god.  They're not where the populace go in order to commune with the deity.  They're where the populace go to offer sacrifice and store-houses or treasuries for various offerings.  They could also be a place where certain things are stored safely, like how the Temple of Saturn in ancient Republican Rome was the site of the Roman state's treasury and also where legal documents (like contracts, wills & testaments, etc.), archives, seals, and original measurement templates were kept.  They could be clinics, like the temples of Asclepius, the Graeco-Roman god of healing, or places where sacred prostitutes were sought, like the Temples of Ishtar or Ianna in ancient Mesopotamia.

Alright, what does the clergy do?  The clergy has knowledge.  This knowledge could take many forms.  It could simply be the knowledge of when and where to plow, when to sow and when to harvest.  It could be analysis of the calendar in order to decide what days are fasti and which are nefas.  It could be knowledge of medicine and healing, or how to examine entrails or flights of birds to divine the gods' will.  Some clergies may have knowledge of exorcism and warding against ghosts, evil spirits, or plain bad luck.  Still others will observe and maintain the markers of boundaries.  Even irrigation and water management has been known to fall under the auspices of temples in Bali.  Most importantly, however, the clergy of a temple has knowledge of how to carry out tradition, how to avoid ritual impurity, how to be cleansed of ritual impurity, when and how to store and display sacred relics and cult statues, when and how to perform ritual dances, how to offer sacrifice, what hymns to sing and their words, what songs or stories to tell and when, how to recreate and commemorate sacred events, and how to communicate to the gods both the fidelity of the populace and their needs, wishes and desires.

Notice that I say "the populace" and not "the people."  Polytheistic deities were often perceived as detached and distant.  This is especially apparent in Republican Rome where the primary gods were gods of the state.  The gods were more concerned with Rome as a whole than with each and every individual living in the city or countryside.

A major important concept to note is that religion is going to vary from region to region, especially in the form of traditions, cultic practices, sacrifices, festivals, and other details.  While in a wide Faerûnian ecumene it is likely that specific similarities in practices and traditions are going to be common, there is not much likelihood of there being any strict set of doctrines and dogmas.  Shinto doesn't have much in the way of guiding texts or dogmatic scriptures, for example.  Hinduism has numerous holy texts and different sects of Hinduism value the various texts differently.  Buddhism has a great many holy texts.  Greek, Roman, and Egyptian religion didn't have much in the way of holy texts that were monopolized by the temples and considered specifically holy and sacred.

Thus, a great starting point for actually building a believable religious tradition for your role-playing world will start at the ground and work its way up.  A phenomenal example of a compelling religious tradition can be found in the video game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.  The Tribunal Temple, the primary religion of the dark elves of the setting, is full of lore, hierarchies, functions, dogmas, traditions, rituals, and volume upon volume upon volume of in-game sacred texts, scriptures, and writings that the player can read and participate in.

Ruminations--Narrativism, White Wolf's EXALTED, and "Buying In"

For a year (with about nine months' of hiatus) I've been running an Exalted game for Luke and DJ.  Exalted was originally White Wolf's answer to D&D, released around 2001 with much fanfare.  For those of you who don't know, White Wolf arose in the late 1980s as an answer to the "dungeon crawl" model of D&D adventure.  It touted itself, through its original game and flagship line, Vampire: The Masquerade, as an edgy, mature, and literary role-playing system in which the aim wasn't to acquire loot and level up but instead to deliberately and consciously tell a story.  In a lot of ways this was a response to the growth of railroads in modular D&D game design (cf. Grognardia's ruminations on the Hickman Revolution) like the original Dragonlance modules.

The problems with White Wolf are legion, true.  If you subscribe to Ron Edward's theories on game design and implementation, White Wolf appears to be Story Now (a.k.a. Narrativist).  A lot of this comes down to application and the Storyteller System indeed has the trappings of Narrativism on the surface.  The games have a mechanic to enforce dramatic tension absent in most other role-playing game lines--Vampire has Humanity, for example.  Dramatic tension increases as player-characters lose points in Humanity and begin to succumb to the animal urges and wanton blood lust of the Beast within them.  Unfortunately, White Wolf as a whole and the Storyteller System as an engine fail to actually elucidate how, precisely, to run a truly Narrativist chronicle.  Numerous "stories" (read: modules) and "chronicles" (read: campaigns) have been produced for many a White Wolf line, the most noteworthy being The Transylvania Chronicles.

I both love and hate The Transylvania Chronicles.  Why do I love them?  Well, coupled with Transylvania By Night, a sourcebook (more properly, a toolbox) full of people, places, and objects with which the player-characters can interact, these books craft a wonderful setting and track the events of Transylvania through the late medieval period into the modern era.  What I hate is that The Transylvania Chronicles are a complete and total railroad--a set of encounters to navigate the players through and giving them little or no actual choice or agency in the long-run (the type of game a Typhoid Mary GM would run, cf DM of the Rings and So You Want to Write a Railroad?).  They are complete and utter pawns throughout the entirety of the campaign.  Granted, one of the major themes of Vampire: The Masquerade and its Dark Ages adjunct line is the power-relations between Kindred and their Elders, Childer and their Sires, young versus old, and how the frustrated childer are always oppressed and kept carefully in check by those vampires who embraced them.  However, The Transylvania Chronicles handles these themes artlessly, bullying the players into obeying their sires even after they've become Princes of their own cities.

This is not Narrativism.  Heck, for most imaginative and intelligent players, this isn't even fun.  Indeed, Ron Edwards argues that playing these sorts of White Wolf games can actually damage your brain, causing emotional trauma that inhibits your ability to comprehend and appreciate stories.

White Wolf lacks a defined mechanic for the very social contract that needs to take place before the players even sit down to play.  As a Narrativist game (or at least, a game that claims to be Narrativist in nature), Vampire: The Masquerade, its fellow White Wolf lines, and its successors (such as Vampire: The Requiem), really require rules for establishing the game's Premise even before the characters are rolled up.  This is something I've only recently realized through playing Exalted.  The various Storyteller Guides and Storyteller chapters of the book are rife with ideas on how to incorporate themes into the story, weaving mood and premise, thematic elements, and other literary concepts into each chronicle.  This is great... but there is no such advice for the player.  Instead, all the player gets is advice on how to roleplay a convincing vampire from Clan Tremere in its attendant splatbook.

What is required is for the Storyteller System is a mechanic or section where the players and Storyteller sit down together, before the characters are even created or the first statistic is jotted down, and decide in concert, what the game's premise will be.  And by premise, I don't mean "the quest to kill the dragon" but rather some sort of situation that will 1) resonate with everyone at the gaming table as a reflection on the human condition and 2) will be resolved through 2a) the choices the characters make and 2b) the Storyteller's fair adjudication of the setting's reaction to those choices.  This not only gives the players agency as characters, it explicitly makes them the protagonists of the story and the narrative resonance of the game's subsequent themes is doubly poignant because they are going to identify with their characters more than they would with the protagonist of a book.  The problem is, do they "buy in" to this sort of social contract about the game?  It requires the players being extremely proactive in deciding some very, very major aspects on the tone, theme, and mood of the game and may even weigh heavily on some fundamental elements such as time and place.  It demands that the GM/DM/RM/ST/etc. effectively cede control of a huge amount of creative authority to the players before the game has even begun.  It also demands that the players actively keep these themes in mind when creating characters and role-playing those characters' decisions.

Take, for example, the Eberron game I mentioned in my previous post.  Let's assume that we all sat down together and together we created an idea for a game like the one I had proposed.  Now, let's assume that the players all agree to the various tropes, setting details, tone and mood, time period-appropriate behaviors and speech, and dramatic themes.  If the players, then, failed to create characters that satisfied these genre-specific elements nor evoke the necessary atmosphere or role-playing required to capture and explore these elements, then the failure of the Eberron game to get off the ground would not have been my fault (as it actually was) but 100% their fault.  In this sense, the players must "buy in" not only to the campaign's style but also to the concept of Narrativist play as a whole.

How does this translate to a game like Exalted, which I've been running for some time?

Last Winter and Spring, I ran a game for Luke and DJ in which they started out as unExalted mortals.  The game was extremely challenging and the lethal nature of Storyteller System's combat resulted in the players having a profound respect for their own mortality and an awareness of just how fragile life is.  Near the end of last year's games, they finally Exalted, imbued with the Essence of the Unconquered Sun.  As Chosen of Sol Invictus, they are closer to being divine, similar to demigods of Greek myth.  They heal faster, they can fight with insane moves like characters from a wuxia martial arts movie or an over-the-top anime, they can use magic powers to speak other languages and punch down buildings, live for about five thousand years, and they can even soak lethal damage (as opposed to just bashing, like a mortal can).

The hiatus allowed me some time to get a breather and figure out how better to run this new sort of game and deal with all the new thematic elements and dramatic tension.  The "Limit Break" mechanic now functions as a source of dramatic tension--each character's highest Virtue (Compassion, Conviction, Temperance, or Valor) is matched with a Virtue Flaw (haughty arrogance, for example, with high Valor and low Temperance and Compassion; a character with high Conviction and Valor but low Compassion might have a Flaw in which they are willing to do anything to achieve what they see as the Greater Good, even if it means being an absolute murderous genocidal monster).  This can lead to some fantastic role-playing and some incredible drama if done properly and, frankly, has worked better as an inspirational guide and personality metric than D&D's Alignment system ever was (at least, in my personal experience).  When a character acts against their highest Virtue they have to roll dice--if they fail, they can act as they wish (the Virtue fails to force the player to act in character, essentially) but if they succeed they must either act in accordance with their Virtue or they must tick off a point of Limit and spend a point of Temporary Willpower to act against their own character.  If too many points of Limit are acquired, the character has a Limit Break, during which they have a meltdown of some sort appropriate to the Virtue (they may go completely berserk and kill everything around them or they may collapse into a sobbing puddle of tears, for example).

With that in mind, let me summarize a bit of the last few sessions now that we've started the game back up.  Luke's character, Ren, is trying to make the opium trade in the city go out of business by essentially creating his own syndicate, bullying, bribing, and buying up all the small-time dealers in the slums and 1) forcing them to sell only to those of whom he approves and 2) taking a substantial cut of their profits--if they refuse to comply, they most likely wake up in a crate or box in one of the haunted and ruined sections of the city (effectively a death sentence).  Ren uses the profits he gains to build an orphanage, the youth of which he intends to raise as his own small army of spies, assassins, and Batman-style vigilantes.  The payments are made through a dropbox in a ruined building, from which an old beggar retrieves the money and drops into another dropbox for a small fee, which is then retrieved by one of the orphanage workers.

Ren gets word that a new opium merchant has moved into town.  After digging around, Ren and Dekland (DJ's character) find out that one of this secretive, anonymous merchant's distribution centers.  Ren wants to start destroying the competition and, once he has total control of all of the city's opium distribution, cut it off entirely and destroy it while setting up safeguards that the drug will be kept out of the city thereafter.  Hence, Ren wants to take this up-and-comer out.  So he and Dekland concoct a plan to infiltrate one of the distribution centers (a bathhouse for nobles) with Dekland disguised as a slave working there.

Dekland is a soldier and is used to following orders so it seems like a good idea.  However, he's not a slave-soldier but an honorable, highly respected soldier in his homeland so his demeanor comes off as "uppity" to the managers and paid staff at the bathhouse.  This creates dramatic tension.  They start putting Dekland into situations where he's tempted to fight back (his highest Virtue is Valor, which means every time he backs down from a challenge or has to run away, he has to roll against his Virtue).  Finally, they begin to openly mistreat, abuse, and beat Dekland, forcing a couple of rolls for his Valor.  Dekland snaps and begins to beat the everliving crap out of these guys, forcing Ren to come in and help him.

In this way, the system works well--dramatic tension is heightened through a situation in which, in D&D, wouldn't have nearly as much dramatic tension because there is no such associated mechanic enforcing players to deal with the various side-effects of their character concept.  By statting out Virtues and their attendant heroic flaws, methods for dilemmas are introduced that can be mechanically resolved but also give the players the necessity to make meaningful choices because of those mechanics.  DJ could have spent a point of Temporary Willpower and ticked off a point of Limit (bringing him closer to a Break) or he could cut loose, drop all pretense of disguise and infiltration, and just wreck house.  DJ weighed the various consequences and was happy to let Dekland give in to his nature.  Skulls were cracked with big, meaty fists.

As the story progressed, Dekland and Ren made their way through a series of tunnels that night beneath the city and burnt down six out of seven different bathhouses--all containing hidden opium dens.  This made waves.  The merchant, furious that half of his distribution centers were destroyed (he also owned a number of bodegas in the city but the bathhouses were the most profitable), as well as his hub, set his two henchmen after Ren and Dekland.  The henchmen called on connections and contacts, greased a few palms, and ran across one of Ren's slum dealers.  The two henchmen began tracking them all down and killing them.  Then, they tortured and killed Ren's homeless drop-off man (who managed to warn Ren that he was being followed before he was captured, so Ren could tell his orphanage workers to lay low and not make any more pick-ups lest they be next).

So, because of Ren and Dekland's actions, an innocent man died and a number of other not-so-innocent drug dealers died.  Ren's highest Virtue being Compassion, he was pretty upset that his actions led to the death of the old homeless guy.

We can see a number of themes developing from this but the big premise that comes to the fore is that actions have consequences, good deeds often come with a high price, and power and responsibility go hand-in-hand.  I never planned for these themes to happen--they just emerged.

The thing is, I've failed at running a Narrativist game.  This was more Simulationist.  If it was Narrativist, DJ, Luke, and I would have sat down together and hammered out those themes as the central theses of our story.  It would have been a deliberate, not an accidental, exploration of those themes.  I had not initiated these gaming sessions with the intention of having Ren's entire network slaughtered in response to his actions.  I had no idea that it would happen.  I simply rolled for the various stages of the henchmen's investigations and decided what they were most likely to do given the results of their rolls and their particular motivations and personalities.

Running a Narrativist game is something I've never done and am not sure how to do effectively while still preserving a realistic set of consequences.  I think, instead of considering what would be realistic, I would have to react to player choices with the guideline "what would make a good story given our game's overarching premise?" instead of "what would realistically occur?"  Right now, we're just Ouija Boarding, essentially acting as though Simulationist play will yield Narrativist play "without any specific attention on anyone's part to do so."  Currently, I'm running Dekland's quest for his previous incarnation's tomb--something he requested as a story arc.  While this is a step in a Narrativist direction, I'm still in control of where it is, what is there, who is there, what he'll encounter, etc. while he only controls when he goes there, with whom he goes, and (to a degree) how he gets there.

I did warn DJ and Luke that, being Exalted, they're going to be much more like Hercules, Achilles, and Odysseus.  There's going to be a lot of death and tragedy around them.  Hercules killed his entire family.  Achilles lost his best friend/lover (depending on your interpretation) and died after defeating the only man who had a hope of matching him in combat, and Odysseus was away from his wife for twenty years fighting a war and sailing around (not to mention directly and indirectly getting every single member of his crew killed).  They were on board with that but they weren't explicitly involved in the creation of that concept.  It was great that they got to experience it first-hand as players but they were not fully co-authors of the tale.  They didn't craft the overarching premise of that story with me.  They didn't consciously "buy in" to the Narrativist take on the story.

Work, work, work...

I am getting slammed by work right now and don't have time to update, really.  Which is a shame because I really, really want to talk about the Epic 6.  It is a modified version of D&D in which the maximum level is 6.  Period.

This makes the game a lot more gritty.  Your characters are mortal.  Very mortal.  This means that almost no one in the game world can cast spells above 3rd level.  Well, no mortal, anyway.  And not without powerful rituals, sacrifices, ley line nexuses and other house-ruled stuff.

The benefits are that it is rules light and makes for a much more realistic game.  Many times I've complained that a 25-year-old knight who has years of combat experience, when faced with a T-Rex, will probably die, horribly, in real life.  Yet somehow, paladins are constantly slaying dragons, which are much worse than a T-Rex.  Wits, preparation, a solid plan... these things can overcome a dragon (if you are lucky) in Epic 6.  Straight up combat won't.

There's a lot I want to talk about with regards to Epic 6.  Frankly, I think it is awesome.  If you're interested, there are some forum discussions on Epic 6 here and here.

Religion in D&D: Faith in the Forgotten Realm's Shadowdale

It's late and I'm musing on some of the things I did to deepen religion and illustrate faith-in-practice in the Dales.  I was heavily influenced by Walter Burkert's Religion in Ancient Greece and Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane.

Let me zero in on one specific area of the Dalelands--Shadowdale.  It has three temples, one to Tymora (goddess of luck), one to Lathander (the god of mornings and light), and one to Chauntea (the earth goddess).  Each one is a cultic center and each has its own rites, rituals, and means of currying favor with the gods.  In addition, there's a shrine to Mystra (goddess of magic) and Tyr (god of justice) in the village environs.

Let's start with Chauntea, the earth goddess.  This temple is vitally important to the village, as it's surrounded by farms and therefore very rural and agriculturally oriented.  The priests of Chauntea are keepers of agricultural lore and as such, they are called upon by the people to perform ritual cleansing ceremonies and blessings of the soil before it is tilled.  The details are simple in my head, but if the characters investigate, I can make them more complex.  Perhaps a procession around the boundaries of the field is conducted and holy water is sprinkled along the border to ward off evil or blight.  Songs and chants are sung during this procession and incense is burned.  Then, maybe, an offering of last year's harvest is given to Chauntea and burned at the center of the field.  The officiating priest plows the first furrow and sows the ashes into the ground.

Simple.  And yet it creates a deep and powerful meaning for the players.  The gods are real, their favor is curried.  They are called upon to aid the works of their devotees.  Although each NPC and player may have a patron deity, the inhabitants of the world will seek the benevolence of the gods.  Rituals in which sacred time is experienced and sacred events are reenacted may be crucial to the cults of each temple, bringing the celebrants and the god in closer communion.  For example, at the dawning of the sun during the winter solstice, the first rays shine upon a golden disc in the Temple of Lathander.  Before that, the priests may intone drearily that all is primordial darkness and chaos rules.  Once the sun breaches the horizon, the priests will praise Lathander with song, crying out that light is born and order is generated--the sacred reenactment of the first dawn in which the sun is reborn and begins its journey from the southern to the northern skies brings the priests and the people of Shadowdale into closer communion with Lathander.

Each town may have their own traditions and rituals.  In Shadowdale, during the midsummer festival, the children will make small paper or wooden boats, each with a wafer, berry, copper coin, or other minor offering, and set it into the River Ashaba as an offering to the water wizard who died there and gave the river its name centuries ago.  In Mistledale, they throw flowers into the river in the wizard's memory during the festival and ask the wizard to protect the village.  These offerings may, indeed, bear fruit for if Zhentil Keep sends forces to conquer the settlements, the river may remember these deeds and rise up against the Zhentarim and protect those who made the offerings.

Thus, the wizard Ashaba is a saint to the people of both Shadowdale and Mistledale.  Sylune, the Witch of Shadowdale, who fell defending the settlement from a dragon, may also be worshiped and honored as a saint, with offerings of flowers, coins, incense, food, or candles at her grave and shrine beneath the village citadel.  The remains of her hut where she died may be the site of an annual gathering of all the women in the village, who perform a ceremony that reenacts her brave death and commemorates her sacrifice.

When my players enter my worlds, I do endeavor to make those worlds real and breathing, even if I didn't create those worlds myself.  I still want the players to feel that these worlds are alive.  I want them to know that clerics and paladins aren't just character classes with duties demanded by role-playing mechanics.   They are a part of a religious continuum and have social and religious roles to play in the party and the world at large.

Religion in D&D

So I'm taking a break from working on lecture notes and my syllabus for HIST316 to talk about a feature of role-playing that I feel is woefully misunderstood by gamers, specifically D&D gamers--the role of religion in an RP setting.

These days, skepticism and postmodern deconstruction have played a powerful role in misinforming people about religion in society.  For example, read any book on Augustus' political maneuverings that involved religion and you'll run across a deeply postmodern viewpoint that the first emperor purposely manipulated religion to bolster his reign.  This gives the reader the sense that Augustus didn't really believe in the religion, but saw it as a method to dupe people into surrendering political authority to him.  Granted, there is no doubt that Augustus was cynical and well-versed in realpolitik.  However, to suggest that he simply saw Roman religion as a means to power-acquisition imposes a skepticism onto his character that is thoroughly modern and somewhat anachronistic.  It is possible he was agnostic enough to see religion as something that could be manipulated, but to think that he actively disbelieved in the gods, did not fear their power over reality, or seek to gain their support is absolutely erroneous and unhistorical.

After reading Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, as well as numerous works on ancient religion by Walter Burkert, I can't help but shake my head at the woeful understanding of religion's role in pre-Enlightenment societies that gamers have.  Gods exist as plot coupons, granting spells and standing for good or evil but not really playing a viable role in the societies of their settings.  The traditions, the demarcation of the sacred, the rituals and rites, the concept of purity and hallowedness, don't exist.  Holiness or unholiness are simply the side-effects of alignment or alignment-based spells (such as hallow).  There is no real understanding of the relationship between magic and the divine (or metadivine).  Clerics' roles in the gaming world are limited to being healers or buffing stats for player characters.  They don't play a real meaningful role in determining what a society values, how it organizes itself, or how it determines what is virtuous, moral, bad, or evil.

I'm reminded again of the role of Ronald Lacey's character in Flesh + Blood.  There's a phenomenal scene where he sanctifies Martin (Rutger Hauer) as leader through interpreting an omen.  He is instrumental in determining what is good for the group and what must be opposed, all filtered through a powerful religious lens.  In this pre-modern, medieval world that the characters inhabit, heaven and hell are very, very real places, God is omnipresent and always judging, and the priest is His mouthpiece.  Nevermind our modern notions of power and politics; these people really believed because belief was all that they had with which to determine the nature of reality, good and evil, and meaning itself.




Ronald Lacey's militant priest should be one of the models for a D&D cleric.  He commands respect and perhaps even fear.  He has the ear of God and the power to interpret signs and wonders, omens and visions.  He is a link between the invisible realm of Good and Evil and the mundane, drab world of physical reality.  He has power.  Not just spellcasting power.  Power and understanding.  He knows.  And he has the power to purify and sanctify, the power to declare who is good or evil and whom shall be damned.  In effect, he has a finger on the pulse of the afterlife and that scares the shit out of people and demands their respect.  Only another priest can really counter him.


These powers are largely ignored in the D&D worlds.  Clerics form largely a support role.  They are evidence that the gods are real because they cast spells.  Hell, half the time in D&D, the gods manifest themselves in visible and undeniable ways.  Yet D&D religion is largely myth-as-fact and little else.  For example, the D&D 2nd edition The Complete Priest's Handbook advises a DM create a mythic history for the setting.

One of the first things the DM can do to add color and detail to his campaign world is to work up that world's mythic history. Such a history will help establish, in his mind and those of his players, the relationships between the gods, and between gods and men. It will help set the tone of the campaign and the attitude of the player-characters' culture. It will give the players some idea of what their characters expect from their gods and their future. And once it's done, the DM can then elaborate on it and decide how each individual god relates to other gods and to the sentient races of the world.

After that, it gives instructions on how to create gods, their ethical dimensions, alliances and oppositions... and that's it.  It doesn't discuss rites or rituals, traditions, holidays, or deeper philosophical and ethical ideas beyond a cursory sentence or two.  This is profoundly manifest in the Dragonlance setting, in which the gods exist, are divided by alignment, but don't really have any set of traditions.  Their priests don't exist to demarcate the sacred in opposition to the profane or mundane in any sense that Eliade or Burkert describe.  There is no sense that ritual and ceremony re-enact mythical events or bring the celebrants into a sort of communion with their gods.  In a sense, each god's dogma is that of henotheism or monolatry.  There's not a lot of depth there.  There are next-to-no sacred texts (the Disks of Mishakal being the only text mentioned in the Dragonlance Chronicles), no factional splits based on dogma or interpretation, no local rituals or traditions.  The gods are simply there to fight out the whole Good vs. Evil battle.

This deficit makes gaming in the setting easier, but not necessarily more rewarding.  The setting suffers from lack of depth.  Similarly, role-playing also suffers.  A good DM should at least give Eliade's Sacred and Profane a cursory reading, and perhaps to some research into real-world religions, especially Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Shinto if their religions are polytheistic, henotheistic, or monolatric.

Monte Cook Leaves D&D Design Team

I just had to post on this.  I'm delaying my personal opinion on the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle in favor of this particular story and its implications.  Monte Cook has left the WotC design team for 5th edition D&D.  I have to admit, this gives me a very "I-told-you-so" sort of feeling, mixed with a bit of Schadenfreude.  I can't help it, I think 4th edition was very much not a roleplaying game and am perplexed by those who say it is and enjoy it (read this if you haven't already).  The announcement of 5th edition pretty much made a Part II of my diatribe against 4th edition kind of pointless, admittedly.

The implications of Monte Cook leaving 5th edition's design team because he and WotC had creative "differences of opinion" should be apparent to almost everyone--WotC has learned nothing.  D&D 5th edition is probably going to be a disaster.  I don't blame people for holding out hope for 5th edition, but I'm not holding my breath.

See, by trying to create a versatile product that can be customized to satisfy the OSR player, the 3.5/Pathfinder gamer, and the 4th edition adherent, WotC is going to make a product that satisfies no one.  I don't care about all of the fans playtesting it and saying it's great.  Research states that focus groups don't work.  Psychology and in-group acceptance help to shape our perceptions and make us biased.  Therefore, people playtesting a game are predisposed to rave about it even though, six months later in their friend's basement, they're going to realize that the game is the opposite of fun and get this very sour taste in their mouth.

When you try to make a product that pleases everybody, you end up pleasing no one.

Now that one of the most creative minds in tabletop RPG gaming and game design has left the WotC design team, I have pretty much shed all doubts I had about the poor design and unplayability of 5th Edition.  What's worse is that the D&D community might fracture even more as a result!  If 4th edition fanatics dislike 5th edition, that's an entire faction that WotC just lost.

I keep saying that WotC should just sell the entire franchise to Eric Mona and the guys at Pathfinder.

Twenty Questions

I got these from Dennis over at What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse.

1. Ability scores generation method? Grid method. Roll 3d6 six times for each ability score in six columns. You can choose one score per ability but once you do, you can no longer select any scores from that column. This usually creates heroic characters without too many super-high or super-low scores that satisfy the players and enable them to qualify for whatever class they want to play.
   
2. How are death and dying handled? As per the rules. -1 to -9 is dying (unconscious and losing 1 hp per round). -10 is dead. Some campaigns I choose negative Constitution.
3. What about raising the dead? As per the rules.
4. How are replacement PCs handled? You meet them in town, on the road, or rescue them in the dungeon. Whatever is faster and more expedient.
5. Initiative: individual, group, or something else? Depends on what is more expedient. Small skirmishes are usually individual. However, if the PCs are being attacked by 20 goblins, group initiative makes more sense.
   
6. Are there critical hits and fumbles? How do they work? As per the rules for critical hits. Critical fumbles either result in the character losing a turn or the enemy getting a free attack/attack of opportunity depending on the situation. Ranged critical fumbles into melee combat result in friendly fire.
   
7. Do I get any benefits for wearing a helmet? As per the variant rules (if any) for helmets. Otherwise, I assume they're part of the entire AC adjustment for any armor worn.
   
8. Can I hurt my friends if I fire into melee or do something similarly silly? As per the rules. If they say so, yes. If they don't, then only on a critical fumble.
9. Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything? Use your best judgment. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. If you read my previous posts, yes, players have run from encounters.
   
10. Level-draining monsters: yes or no? As per the rules--the monster can drain a level? Yes. If the rules say it's temporary, fine. If they say permanent, it's permanent.
11. Are there going to be cases where a failed save results in PC death? Yep.
    
12. How strictly are encumbrance & resources tracked? I try to make the PCs keep these things tracked. I keep up on them to make sure they're being honest.
13. What's required when my PC gains a level? Training? Do I get new spells automatically? Can it happen in the middle of an adventure, or do I have to wait for down time? You gain the level next time you sleep a full 8 hours. No, you do not automatically gain new spells unless you are a cleric/favored soul/etc. that would.
    
14. What do I get experience for? Killing stuff. Good roleplaying. Clever ideas. Self-sacrifice. Teamwork and comraderie. Spending gold frivolously (1 XP per gp spent carousing/wenching/drinking/etc.).
15. How are traps located? Description, dice rolling, or some combination? As per the rules. Perception/Spot checks. However, if you ask questions I'll give you clues. Keep asking and no rolls are needed. Same with secret/concealed doors, hidden compartments, etc.
    
16. Are retainers encouraged and how does morale work? As per the rules of the system. Morale is based on "what would they do in real life?" Morale checks in 2nd edition were a pain to keep track of. If half your team drops in one round, you're going to probably try to escape.
    
17. How do I identify magic items? Spells to identify them. Detect magic spells while using Spellcraft skill to try to get hints or clues. Testing them. Trying to figure out command words. Research and comparing them to items in old tomes. Knowledge (arcana) rolls to recognize what sort of item it is by its appearance, design, sigils/runes, markings, etc.
18. Can I buy magic items? Oh, come on: how about just potions? As per the setting. Does the town have an alchemist? An apothecary? A powerful wizard? Do they have shops? Depends on when, where, and who.
    
19. Can I create magic items? When and how? As per the rules. If we're playing 3.5 or Pathfinder, you need the feats. If we're playing 2nd edition or earlier, you follow those rules. Either way, I'm going to come up with ingredients and other stuff you need to make it and you have to find it. (Example: for a wand of lightning bolt you need the heartwood of a tree that had been struck by lighting and survived).
    
20. What about splitting the party? If you don't mind sitting and waiting while I deal with the other half of the party, knock yourselves out. I wouldn't recommend it--it's more fun to not split up and stick together.

My Philosophy of Game Mastering

First, a general announcement that I'll no longer be blogging about my game sessions. The reason for this is two-fold. 1) It takes a lot of time and doesn't really encourage much of a readership, and 2) it has started to really dominate my blog posts. The game is continuing and I'll keep posting about it from time-to-time.

Now, I'd like to talk about some things I've learned and put into practice in this latest game I'm running.

Setting Immersion
I like to run immersive settings. That's why one of my all-time-favorite settings is The Forgotten Realms. Most of my players really enjoy the aspects of travel, visiting new places and locations, and seeing the sights. I've gotten positive feedback on the detail I try to inject into my games. This becomes a problem, however, when one or another player decides that he wants more focus on the narrative and the travel and interaction with the world detracts from the mission.

Currently, the PCs have just arrived in Highmoon, where they hope that they'll find clues to the location of the Giant's Craw, where Shraevyn's Tomb is located. The journey from the village of Shadowdale to Highmoon in Deepingdale has taken almost 20 days of game time and three full sessions of real time (that's three weeks). A lot has happened during those three weeks, though. Three weeks ago, the PCs had spent most of the session discussing strategy, buying provisions, planning, and commissioning weapons and armor with the loot they'd taken from the drow tunnels beneath the Twisted Tower. Two weeks ago, they'd enjoyed the festival of Greengrass in Ashabenford, Mistledale, where Drog and Baravis romanced a few locals and Drog nearly won a wrestling contest. Then, they hired an elven scout to guide them along the Dark Road through the Vale of Lost Voices to Essembra, where they were met with the ghosts of elven warriors. Lots of roleplaying ensued and Baravis learned his father was a dead evil god and his brother (whom he didn't even know about) is imprisoned beneath Zhentil Keep. Last session, Luke (Baravis' player) mentioned how he loved one of the details I'd thrown in from Volo's Guide to the Dales--the Riverman inn at Blackfeather Bridge, Featherdale, had signs posted saying "No Magic." They met a scholar in Tegel's Mark that told the PCs Shraevyn's Tomb was in some place called the Giant's Craw (but he didn't know where that was). Baravis bought a chess set and he and Sven started to play together. They fought off osquips and a cockatrice, practiced some archery in Arrowmark, Tassledale, and Baravis made everyone in town nervous with his eldritch blast.

But for some, all of those events could have been compressed. I understand that perfectly. There's a story going on--the quest for the Sword of the Dales--and I'm derailing it by focusing so much on travel and experiencing the Realms. How to handle my own (and many of my players') desire for detail and depth when it conflicts with the more narrativistic desires of other players who want to keep the story going and are getting bored with all of this wenching, shopping, camping, etc.?

Not sure exactly what to do except truncate some of these more bucolic moments. I'm working on creating balanced sessions where there's a little bit of action, a little bit of story, and a little bit of world immersion all rolled together.

Player Agency
I love it. The players create their own adventures. They tell me what they're doing, I prep the next session. Sometimes, it requires them to do a lot of planning ahead. I prep travel ahead of time because I like to know where the PCs are going and what they're going to run into ahead of time. That way, I know what random encounters they're going to have and I can prep them ahead of time. I like to know what towns they're going to visit so I can read up on them in Volo's Guide and other supplements and present it to them as real and vibrantly as possible, full of people, customs, and flavor.

The players are in control of their destinies, not me. Baravis is a great example. Luke had originally designed him to become a sort of information and influence broker--he's the guy everyone owes a favor. However, after making friends with Drog, realizing Drog trusted him, and having his prayers answered, Baravis has had a life-changing experience.

I was hoping Vlad would work out similarly but unfortunately Vlad's player felt that he couldn't roleplay Vlad effectively if things changed much, so he discontinued playing Vlad and rolled up a new character. That's fine.

But I digress. Baravis' destiny was altered by the choices Baravis made. Now Luke has plans for Baravis and is looking at The Book of Exalted Deeds and The Power of Faerun. Baravis has changed but also has the potential to change the world. As a prophet or saint of Marthammor Duin, he could spread worship of the god beyond dwarves and to other races as a god of wanderers, trails, and friendship between dwarves and all races. He's already planning to help the Iron House retake the Mines of Tethyamar--something that never happened in Realms canon.

There's some talk of Drog attempting to unite the Dales as well.

Who knows where the game will take the PCs? Who knows where the players will take the game?

What to Prep and What Not To
Does this require lots of prepping? Yes, but that's because I'm meticulous and thorough. I prep encounters, NPCs, and places but I never prep the plot. I try to map out the routes PCs will take overland, yes. That's because otherwise, travel would be a lot less descriptive and require a lot more time rolling on random encounter tables. If I know where the PCs are going (or will likely go) I can, like designing a dungeon, roll for encounter chances at specific locations, so when the PCs hit that location, they hit the encounter. I also roll for weather ahead of time and keep the effects on hand so we don't get bogged down looking it up. If you consider the campaign map one big dungeon, you can work out what the chances are of running into an encounter in a given hex. Then, similarly to designing a room in a dungeon, you can design the wilderness encounter (or even town encounter!). Don't use it this week? Recycle it! You planned it, you may as well use it elsewhere. Scaling it isn't so hard, either.

Also, create lists of ready-made stock NPCs. This is really good for baddies. I have lots of stock Zhentarim agents, Zhentilar soldiers, Zhentarim wizards, and priests of Cyric, that I can simply scale or plug into a location. I used to use index cards for stock NPCs. Now, with Maptool, I just have a bunch of templates.

So Who Makes the Story?
We all do. I gave the PCs a potential conflict in which to involve themselves in Session 1. After they chose to follow up on it, I stepped back and just worked on the NPCs and places. Like I said, I do that with meticulous care. But the PCs don't just pass through a town once, honestly. And a lot of the details already exist in printed supplements that I own, so the most challenging thing is pulling off roleplaying the NPCs they encounter and effectively describing what they see, hear, taste, and smell. (Yeah, those last two get neglected a LOT, but I try to remember to get some description in those two as well.)

I'm the referee? Alright. It's my job to adjudicate fairly. Yes, I have metaplot going on, but I have no control over how the PCs may react. Luke may decide to go free his brother or he may not. Heck, the PCs could have gone to Thay with Vlad to find out more about his deity, Jergal. Certain things can and will happen in the world. The PCs can derail those events, change them, help them, accelerate them, whatever.

Powergaming Much?
No, not really. The PCs are actually behind in how much gear they should have considering their character levels (mostly 5th). Besides, at their level, they're exceptional people and DESERVE to be able to wade through a few extras with nary a scratch or two. Most people in any game I run are 1st-3rd level. If you hit 5th level, you're noteworthy. If you hit 10th, you're a legend. If you go beyond 15th, you become viewed with awe--you're going down in history and myth whether you survive or not.

Its the old medieval knight vs. T-Rex thing I like to joke about. A medieval knight on his valiant steed charges A TYRANNOSAURUS REX. What happens? Most likely, the T-Rex crushes him in its jaws and spits him out (he's wearing not-so-tasty metal) and eats his horse (assuming it doesn't bolt out of sheer terror). How much bigger is a dragon than a T-Rex? And dragons can fly and breathe fire/lightning/acid/whatever you want?

If a knight can kill a T-Rex, we're going to think that knight is absolutely amazing. Superhuman. Or possessed of an incredible luck that is unfathomable. The stuff of legends is in there.

Adventure Paths
I like these, but I don't really run them. Rather, I use them as a basis for running a campaign. The problem with adventure paths is that they require a bit of railroading to pull off.

Knowing the players and the PCs helps a DM plan future events, though. For example, if the PCs are of good alignment and the players generally want to be heroes, when they find the Chalice of the Rising Sun, they're going to bring it back to King Everlund so that the Kingdom of Varia can be rejuvenated. They COULD take it to the Desert of Desolation and turn it into a garden instead and just say King Everlund is out-of-luck. But if you doubt they'll actually do that, it is fair to plan for their eventual return to Varia.

The thing is, taking the Chalice to the Varia as they were tasked has to be THEIR choice. And if they chose not to do it, there have to be consequences. And the consequences have to be realistic. Perhaps the god of morning gets angry at their misuse of his artifact (or perhaps he doesn't care). Perhaps King Everlund sends his best knights after the party to get the Chalice back. Perhaps the Kingdom of Varia succumbs to famine, collapses into civil war, King Everlund is slain and Lord Darkmoor takes over, beginning a new dynasty that rules through terror and oppression. Perhaps all three. Shit happens.

My job is not to tell a story. My job is to collaborate with the players to tell the story. In the above example, all three options (and the "all-of-the-above" option) result in a story... just not the happiest ending. Actually, they may be a springboard for further stories and adventures. What if the PCs realize they made a mistake and now try to rectify it? What if they DIDN'T make a mistake (in their opinion), their new kingdom becomes totally awesome, but the people of Varia become angry, hateful, and under Lord Darkmoor seek to invade it? What if the campaign eventually comes to a close, the PCs retire, and the players roll up new PCs that want to free Varia from Darkmoor and give the Chalice back to Varia?

Adventure paths are restrictive and constrictive. They're "paths" after all, not adventure flowcharts with nigh-infinite options. They're linear by their very nature. What to do with an adventure path, then?

Mine them. Ruthlessly. Mercilessly. Rip them into their constituent components. Break them down into:

Locations
Villains
Allies
Encounters

Once that is done, step back. Heck, maybe you can do this with index cards and get a nice visual. How does it all fit together? Do the PCs really HAVE to go to Location 12 after Location 11? Can Encounter 5 happen anywhere or JUST at Location 5? What are the bad guys' plans and what choices can the PCs make to thwart those plans?

So far, in my game, the PCs have thwarted the plans of Colderan Morn and Eragyn the Dark. But Colderan and Eragyn are still busy doing stuff. They're going to pop up again. Indeed, I could have them pop up anywhere the PCs go. Or, I could have them staying home and building power and influence, getting ready to strike again. Yes, I ran a module or two. But frankly, it was the PCs who decided to follow those adventure opportunities, not me. Indeed, this quest for the Sword of the Dales that the PCs have undertaken is completely their own decision. Depending on what happens, there may be deviation from the established canon timeline for the Realms. That's cool! That's the impact they're having on the setting.

If I was railroading them, yes, we'd have probably done a lot more adventures. But it would have been far more linear. Using a more node-based campaign design, the GM/DM avoids writing a railroad and the game is more rewarding for the players. Indeed, it takes less work this way. If the setting already exists in published format, that's half the work already done for you! You can focus on bringing it to life for the players.

Softie DM/GM?
All this talk of player agency may make me sound like a softie, especially since I don't mind the PCs having an easy time of it fighting NPCs 2 or 3 levels beneath them at this juncture.

Nothing could be further from the truth. There were several points in the previous sessions where they all could have died but they pulled themselves out of those situations, alive and kicking, on their own. That's incredibly rewarding and memorable. They triumphed in the face of adversity several times. They're 5th-level now. They've earned it. They took big risks, learned lessons, fought smart. They deserve everything they've achieved, including their strength and prowess.

They've also learned that actions have consequences. They know that the four of them could probably take eight 2nd-level drow fighters. But they also know that they couldn't take twenty. They are keenly aware that the dice could go against them. Even though they fought off the osquip nest successfully only losing about 25% of party total hp (including horses), they still got nervous and more than once a player remarked "we may just have to try and run away."

And run they have. They certainly fled the drider with a quickness, even though they were all 4th level and may have been able to take it. Still, in doing so, at least one of them would have certainly died, possibly all of them.

I'm not a softie. But I don't see any point in going out of my way to try and kill them just for the sake of challenging them. When they escape with their skins intact, that's cause to celebrate for them. At the climax of the adventure module Doom of Daggerdale, the PCs took a risk and rode down a swift underground stream in order to escape the Zhentilar. When it deposited them in the River Tesh not far from the Eagle's Eyrie, they stood up and cheered in triumph. Moments like that are why I run and play in role-playing games.

Conclusion
I'd rather be the GM for Darths & Droids as opposed to the DM of the Rings. In the former, the players have absolute freedom of agency and their actions have consequences. In the latter, the DM railroads the players and frustrates them a great deal. Their frustration in turn frustrates him and nobody really has any fun, nobody really learns from their mistakes.

Note
My cousin DJ (Drog's player) reminded me of something:

Not to mention your reactions. The priceless jaw-dropping of our last action hero stunts. The Dice love us when we do a John Woo escape or fight. Minus the doves of course.

The dropping jaw was mine, of course. In desperate situations, DJ and Shaun threw their dice at the wall and prayed. However the dice landed was the result. Both times the results were highly successful (at least one natural 20). They've been pretty darn lucky.

That's why the game is so much fun. The players. Desperate times call for desperate measures and I'm the DM that will let you pick up a chair and throw it at an opponent or overturn a table. And these players will do such. Which I love. They're not afraid to pull stunts and I'm not afraid to let them try.

Hungover Heroes Guild, Part Twelve

A dozen sessions and running strong! This latest session was mostly roleplaying. However, the PCs managed to finish the dungeon beneath the Twisted Tower of Ashaba, freeing nearly 40 dwarven slaves from the drow and chasing the overmage off. Their raid on the drow fortress resulted in a humongous haul. They emerged from the tunnels, gave a full report to Thurbal, and were given 20% of all loot as per the agreement, amounting to nearly 3,000 gp all told. Lord Mourngrym and Thurbal (captain of the Shadowdale guard) were so impressed that their payment was tripled, to 300 gp per person.

A lot of character development took place. Vlad discussed his secret god with Lhaeo, who dug up some information from old tomes and identified Vlad's benefactor as Jergal, an ancient deity of death and endings once worshiped in Netheril thousands of years ago before Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul won most of his portfolio from him (allowing Jergal to retire to the position of seneschal of Myrkul's Bone Castle). With the death of Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul during the Time of Troubles, Cyric usurped all of their portfolios and now Jergal is a very frustrated deity due to Cyric's chaotic and vengeful nature.

Sven discussed the death of his Harper parents with Storm Silverhand, resident of Shadowdale, one of the legendary Seven Sisters, Harper, and former Knight of Myth Drannor. Later, as the party traveled south toward Mistledale through the elven forest, Sven's felt a calling in his elven blood. He keenly felt the loss the forest has experienced since the Retreat of the elves from Cormanthor. This has made him a bit moody and introspective. We'll see how he deals with the mixing of human and elven blood in his veins as the adventures continue.

The PCs paid many of their commissions, bought horses, a wagon, an alchemist's lab for Vlad, and a chest with an amazing lock for their communal treasure, then set out along the Mistle Trail beneath the eaves of Cormanthor along the River Ashaba. After many days journey, they arrived at the town of Elven Crossing, where they spent the night, then arrived the next day in the town of Ashabenford. When we next meet, perhaps their journey will continue toward Deepingdale, where the sage Rhauntides and the Leaves of Learning (the Temple of Oghma) may harbor knowledge that will lead them to the home of the wizard Finott or the location of the Sword of the Dales.

Sessions like this are why I love the Realms. Through the PCs' explorations, I get to see the Forgotten Realms come to life. Having Vlad interact with Lhaeo, Elminster's apprentice, and discover his benefactor is an ancient Netherese deity was really cool, but so was all of the development Sven has been experiencing as well. I never would have thought that I'd get to portray one of Ed Greenwood's original PCs, Storm Silverhand--legendary Harper and Knight of Myth Drannor. There are a variety of paths the PCs could take to reach Deepingdale. I'm excited to see where they go and what happens to them along the way! Let the dice fall where they may!