"Natural 20" & "Double Damage"

   You haven’t really played Dungeons & Dragons until your very first roll of 20 on a d20. It really is the hallmark moment of the game, and one of the greatest thrills in all of role-playing games.

   But where does the expression “natural 20” comes from? Why was it coined in the first place? And why don’t we ever mention natural 12s, natural 17s, or natural 1s?

   It comes from the Attack Matrices in First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Each character class had its own Attack Matrix, and there was one for the monsters, too. This one here is for the fighter types. Look at how the To Hit requirements progress on the table: 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 20, 20...

   The number 20 is repeated 6 times. It is the same on all Attack Matrices.

   The first “20” there is a normal die roll, which can include all the usual bonuses. Your fighter has a +2 To Hit bonus because of her strength, and she wields a +2 magical longsword; she rolls a 16, add her bonuses, and the final result is 20. It’s a hit.

   The 5 subsequent 20s are a different kind of beast. Regardless of your character’s bonuses and magic items and spell effects, she’ll need to roll a 20 if she wants to hit that opponent. So, you get 5 rows of Armor Classes that are not exactly hit proof, but... your character is gonna have to roll heroically. Who rolls multiple 20s in the same fight, right?

   In the AD&D heyday, we only ever used this expression when someone or something attacked someone else or something else whose AC put them right into those five “perfect hit” rows for that class.

   “You’ll need a natural 20 to hit that will-o’-wisp.”

   “But I have my +6 flaming vorpal holy avenger two-handed relic blade thing!”

   “Won’t do you any good this time.”

   Here’s what Gary Gygax wrote in his 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide:

   “Consider the repeated 20 as a perfectly-aimed attack which does not gain any benefit from strength or magical properties of any sort – spell, missile, or weapon. That is, the 20 must be attained by a roll of natural 20. All bonuses accrue only up to and including a total of 20, so that even if a character attacked with a bonus for strength of +3 and a +3 magic sword he or she would have to roll a natural 20 in order to score a hit on any creature normally hit by the second or successive repetitions of 20, i.e. the bonus (+3 for example) could not exceed a total score of 20 unless an actual 20 is rolled.”

   Regular readers know that I have been running a First Edition AD&D campaign since 2014, and yet I never had to tell a player he needed a natural 20 to hit an opponent. The party never faced anything so strong that their Armor Class placed them within those five dreaded rows of the Attack Matrix.

   That gives you an idea of how rare an occurrence this is: it wasn’t put to use at my table in over 20 game sessions.

   It is a level 1 fighter trying to smite Demogorgon. Literally.

   In 5e, rolling a 20 doesn’t entail anything special besides giving you your highest possible To Hit score. If all your bonuses amount to +8, then you can hit Armor Class 28, and that is quite impressive, since Demogorgon in 5e has an AC of 22.

   Chris Perkins still uses the expression whenever he rolls a 20, but it is just an old habit and nothing more. 5e Dungeon Masters never ask players to roll natural 20s – it is simply not part of the game mechanics anymore.

   In 2018, my players were fighting a giant troll in a giant swamp. The ranger rolled a 20 on his To Hit and instinctively yelled, “Natural 20!”

   He remembered that those words had some special meaning; but in this case, it wasn’t relevant, since the ranger needed 17 to hit the troll. Anyway, all the other players latched onto that like it was the Second Coming of Christ or something. Now they say “natural” ALL the time.

   Player: “Natural 11.”

   Me: “But what’s your total – with bonuses?”

   Player: “Natural 15.”

   Me: “There you go. It’s a hit!”

*

   I only ran Empire of the Petal Throne once, and it was a rather short campaign. The City Half As Old As The World proved deadlier than Lankhmar, and the party never even made it out of the Underworld. Plus, the guys (it was an all-boys school) were obsessed with Middle-earth, and few were interested in Tékumel. So Greyhawk was a good compromise, with all the usual Middle-earthy kingdoms, and some nice, exotic realms to the south and west. Ekbir, Zeif, Tusmit and Ull certainly had some EPT undertones – and you could still get your hands on puzzling technology à la Tékumel if you ventured to that mountain range called the Barrier Peaks, or to the “City of the Gods.” But I digress.

   At school, in the days of the D&D club, I introduced my players to the mechanics of Empire of the Petal Throne. In that game, an attack dealt double damage whenever you rolled a 20. Plus, you could get an instakill if you were lucky enough to roll a second consecutive natural 20 or a 19.

   So, you had one table playing regular D&D, and another table playing EPT. Once in a while, someone at the EPT table screamed, “20! Double Damage!”

   Some of the players sitting at the other table naturally assumed that double-damage-on-a-nat-20 also applied to D&D, but it didn’t. I saw several DMs hopelessly scour their books to find the elusive rule – to no avail.

   Here’s what Professor M. A. R. Barker wrote in his 1975 Empire of the Petal Throne:

   “A 9^th Level warrior who hits a 1^st Level opponent (i.e. an opponent with one hit die) does FOUR 6-sided dice of damage – almost certainly killing him! This becomes important, of course, in melee conditions where one advanced-level person fights more than one low-level opponent. [...]

   If a player hits with a 20-sided die score of 20, he does DOUBLE hit dice damage.”

   That’s how it happened for me, in ’84. And it must have happened to countless other gaming groups all over the world. Even today, players I didn’t know back then can roll natural 20s and shriek, “Double Damage!”

   Most of the time they have never heard of Empire of the Petal Throne.

   The double damage feature is the one thing most AD&D players know about EPT, without knowing that it comes from EPT.

   Dungeon Masters are welcome to use it, though. If you want to implement that rule in your campaign, why not?

   Personally, I prefer the “full damage” rule. Indeed, what’s the use of dealing double damage if you roll poorly on your damage dice and do just 10 points? You’ll never deal just 10 damage with the full damage rule, unless you play a magic-user with a non-magical dagger.

   This concludes our little piece about the origins of the natural 20, as well as another year of blogging.

   Adios, 2020.

40Kriegsspiele

   In ’87 or ’88, one of my AD&D players told me, “There is a new game with no role-play, only miniatures, and the entire table is a battlefield!”

   I was curious.

   Of course, there really wasn’t anything “new” about miniatures wargaming. They’ve been around since the early 1800s under the common name Kriegsspiele.

   From the get-go, I knew it would be an expensive hobby. The price tag for a standard army today is around $600. With magnetization, add another Benjamin or two for those tiny magnets and a half-decent drill. And that cost may have been higher in the eighties, because the figures were all metal. I couldn’t afford any of it.

   The setting didn’t appeal to me all that much, either. Empires and eagles and ginormous plasma guns. It was just too aggressive. I remember walking into the local game store one day and coming face-to-face with this issue of White Dwarf:

   I was rattled. What with all the live, obnoxious skinheads that prowled our streets in friggin’ 1989. Games Workshop didn’t see any problem whatsoever with putting up that kind of artwork on the cover of their magazine? Really?

   Many people have discussed Warhammer’s problematic imagery over the years, and I won’t get into that here. I just want to address the seriousness of it all. For me at least, it all boils down to one simple thing: do I wish I’d be right there in that room with those guys? If the answer is no, well, I won’t play that game.

   I remember seeing pictures of a 40K convention in Greece. It was a huge room full of bald guys dressed in black, with tattoos. I did not want to be there. I don’t have the required clothes, anyway. Wearing all black all the time, for fear of passing for – what? Not serious enough? A noob? Are we still this insecure?

   When I catch an episode of Acquisitions Incorporated, I always want to be sitting at that table with that bunch of lunatics. Every. Single. Time. That’s it. That’s the magic recipe.

   The seriousness I’m talking about stems from competing. 40K ain’t casual: there is a winner, and there is a loser. Even Magic: The Gathering isn’t casual, because there’s a winner. D&D can be taken very seriously, too; but it is – mostly – casual. There are no winners or losers in role-playing games. It makes a big difference.

   I’ll buy one Space Marine and put it in my D&D campaign. He’ll be stranded there in the world of Greyhawk. His powered armor ran out of energy months ago, but he keeps wearing it. And he had to learn how to use a crossbow. It’ll be funny. Especially when he crosses paths with a cowboy from Boot Hill and a Chaotic Good, “Drizztian” renegade Mind Flayer!

*

   Obviously, avid gamers are gonna get curious from time to time – about other styles of play, alternative mechanics, different settings, and so forth. A year ago, Sly Flourish was pondering “lightweight” game mechanics based “on 2d6.” Well, that is Dave Arneson’s original Blackmoor – the First Fantasy Campaign. They didn’t have funny dice back in 1971, so everything was rolled on 2d6. A 12 was a crit, and a 2 was a fumble. Every once in a while, curious gamers feel the need to return to that. Back to their roots. Curiosity is a good thing. It’s a sign of intelligence.

   Every once in a while, some tabletop gamers, not all of them, but some of them, will want to go back to the basics that is miniatures wargaming. It’s okay. Just know that 40K isn’t the only option.

   Why not go rogue and create your own system? One of my friends did it a few years ago, and I actually blogged about it on here. If you want to read that post, go to the Archives and click on 2015-11-25. Basically, he printed a (very) large color map of a besieged city in his campaign world, created cardstock counters and tokens, and then our regular characters each had to lead a squad of militia and battle the invaders block by block, sometimes house by house. With a DM, the whole thing is less competitive, and much more enjoyable. I recommend it.

   If and when I decide to do something similar, I’m gonna go full H. G. Wells and download Little Wars. Imagine the thrill of playing with wargaming rules that were written in 1913!

   We’re gonna push lead around a table the old-fashioned way.

*

   Saying that “Warhammer is for everyone” is like saying that model trains are for everyone – and, evidently, they are not. Those miniature railroad sets are costly, and it’s a time-consuming hobby. Sure, Games Workshop has hired a media relations manager, and they have to say that. And then, of course, 40K YouTubers will disagree for all the wrong reasons, simply because they don’t want change. It’s the battles you choose to pick that ultimately reveal your true colors.

   Here’s a bit of sage advice that is found in AD&D’s Battlesystem (1985).

“Because of the profusion of strange monsters, magic spells, and magical items in both the AD&D and D&D games (and the likelihood of much more to come!), and because of the different playing styles that each player can adopt, it is inappropriate of us to tell you what is the only ‘correct’ way to play.

However, we can tell you that the use of common sense will greatly improve your enjoyment. [...] Of course, there’s nothing to stop you from putting together an arbitrary and silly battle for an evening’s pleasure.”

   I think that it validates my whole point, which is: go ahead and play any kind of miniatures wargame, any way you want to play it.

   Teenagers living in war-torn countries can still whip up a game of D&D once in a while, theater of the mind; but they certainly can’t build an entire village with a miniature railroad looping through it. Some hobbies are “for everyone,” and some are for restricted segments of the population. It’s just the way it is. Soccer: accessible. Golf: privileged.

   Kids in Africa desperately want to play soccer, even though they can’t afford a ball, and sometimes, not even shoes. Still, they find something round, locate an area which is relatively flat, and play soccer barefoot. The goaaaaaal here is to play the game, right? Why nobody plays MTG with photocopied cards is beyond me. Maybe the collecting really is more important than the playing itself.

   In D&D, if you want an evening of over the top powergaming, it’s easy enough to set up. Roll a couple level 25 characters, equip them with ultra-powerful magic items, print out Orcus’ stat block and a few hundred zombies, draw a battle map – and go for it.

   In MTG, you can’t.

   In 40K, you can’t.

   You’re a kid in Africa who wants to play soccer, but it’s impossible. “Let’s put together a ridiculous battle just for tonight: my Space Wolves against a humongous, 6,000-point Necron army! Let’s see how fast my guys are wiped out!”

   But you can’t do it. Your pal Josh only owns a standard Necron army. You would have to find two other guys with similar armies who are willing and able to partake in such madness.

   It’s terrible when games are restrictive like that. Video games, I get it. Tournament games, I understand. But when you’re at home with your friends, what gives? I paid good money for this game; can I please fight Orcus tonight?

   Warhammer, The 9^th Age, Frostgrave and other miniatures games are somewhere between D&D and model trains. You can’t just whip up a game for someone’s birthday, and yet it requires less hardware than model trains. It’s not for everyone – but more people can access this hobby than the model train thing. The makers of The 9^th Age actually insist that you play with any kind of gaming aid: paper standees, Lego characters, homemade tokens, anything you want. This is definitely cool.

   The 9^th Age is a game, not a mammoth line of paint / models / terrain. That is the major difference. As I said, just getting started in 40K will set you back $600 at the very least. One 24ml pot of Nuln Oil is $10. Games Workshop makes most of its money with the hardware that goes in and around the game – not the game itself. In that regard, GW may have more in common with Lego than Chaosium.

   “Hardware” and “game” should be independent from one another, but they should be compatible as well, across the board. I’m pretty sure you can somehow take the hobby of model trains and turn it into something gameable. Make two trains run side by side, crisscrossing the entire basement, add some Car Wars rules and weaponry, and fire away. It could very well be the craziest, whackiest, most memorable wargame ever.

   The opposite is also possible. Take an entirely gameable thing like 40K, add a global pandemic, and it reverts to being just the simple hobby of collecting and painting models in your room, all by yourself.

   It is possible to play miniatures without Warhammer, and it should also be possible to play Warhammer without miniatures. And it is. They call it “Paperhammer,” and it’s great.

*

   So, there you have it. Different people are certainly curious about different things in 40K. The setting. The crafting. The collecting. The competing. The community. It’s all good. If you attend or want to attend tournaments, keep at it, the Emperor needs you. If you want to start collecting, go for it, and make sure to check out Corvus Belli’s store. But if you’re just “40Kurious,” then why not go completely off the rails and create your own fucked-up pharaoh motorcycle Barsoom crossover wargame? You know, like Dave Wesely and M. A. R. Barker – and Gygax – used to do on a weekly basis? There are no rules. The gaming fun ain’t tied up with any specific system or brand. It never was.

   Miniatures wargaming is the mother of tabletop role-playing games, and Warhammer 40,000 is just another iteration of it.

A Blessing and a Curse of Strahd

   Anne Rice’s vampire novels were published between 1985 and 1992.

   The role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade hit the shelves in 1991.

   But Ravenloft rocked the AD&D world waaay back in 1983.

   It is safe to place the peak of the vampire craze around ’92. So the Hickmans were almost a decade ahead of the curve. Ravenloft was like an isolated skirmish before the war.

   When I am with my old gaming buddies, if I utter the name “Ravenloft,” the guys will remember the map first and foremost, and talk about that. Indeed, tabletop role-playing games’ first ever isometric map struck the imaginations of millions of AD&D players. The actual adventure – not so much.

   There was a minor debate on Twitter during the pandemic: was it possible to really “fail forward” in a game of D&D? Some said no, it’s impossible. And I thought, what’s wrong with these people? Fact of the matter is, they kept looking at the whole thing on a micro scale. Of course if you roll a 1 your fighter won’t be able to carry that critical miss over to the next two rounds, but that’s not what a fail forward is. Not at all. Forget the dice. A fail forward is on a macro scale. Always.

   I blame the video games mindset for that. If you die in a video game, you respawn at the beginning of the current level – it’s a fail backward, not forward. So, if you can’t fail forward in the [macro] gameplay, what’s a fail forward anyway? It must be on a micro scale then… right?

   I can’t imagine how people are unable to grasp such a basic thing.

   As an adventure module, Ravenloft wasn’t so good. But Tracy and Laura Hickmans redeemed themselves in 1986 with Ravenloft II.

   Simply put, Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill is the best fail forward in the history of D&D.

   After dying in Barovia, the PCs awaken in Mordentshire. If they die in Mordentshire, perhaps they awaken again in Barovia. It’s a full-on gothic nightmare: which one is real, and which one is the dream? “Through some freakish warping of the cosmos,” even the Dungeon Master doesn’t know…

   Before there was the Vampire, there was the Alchemist. Count Strahd Von Zarovich was a good man, a sage, no less, but he was deeply obsessed with the dual nature of the mortal soul. Strahd the Alchemist spent years honing his skills and refining his knowledge. Finally, he built a towering machine called the Apparatus.

   This Apparatus embodies the real, literal curse of Strahd.

   With his machine, the good Alchemist attempted to “purify” his own soul, but the arcane contraption ended up generating an evil twin, which is referred to as “the Creature.”

   The Creature is concentrated, grade A, 100% pure evil. It seized the Apparatus and used its power to transpossess random inhabitants of Mordentshire, effectively replacing them with his own evil minions – wraiths, ghasts, gargoyles, et cetera.

   That “transpossessed” gimmick really is at the heart of Ravenloft II. As they explore Mordentshire, the player characters can come across “a rather slow and oafish lad” who is also a wight, or “a charitable, kindly and forgiving woman” who is also a lich! Imagine the role-play here. This is gold.

   Just like in the original Ravenloft, a standard deck of playing cards is necessary to run this adventure. This time around it’s not for a fortune-teller, though. The cards are a way for the DM to determine which townsperson has been transpossessed by which monster.

   Instead of a fortune-teller, Ravenloft II gives you Doctor Germain d’Honaire, head of the Saulbridge Sanitarium, and a gifted mesmerist. The PCs can choose to be hypnotized by the good doctor in order to gain more clues – or perhaps regain lost memories of when they were in Barovia.

   Opinions about Ravenloft II vary wildly. The French gamers call it a pure gem. Tom Zunder loved it, and James Maliszewski, not so much. Some bloggers are still pretty confused about it. The fact that the Alchemist looks like Strahd, bears the exact same name, and has the same title of Count, was not a big enough hint for some people, apparently. They think Ravenloft II is about an alchemist who manages to transfer Strahd into another dimension...

   That Alchemist is Strahd Von Zarovich. Ravenloft II is his origin story.

   The title of this adventure can be misleading. They wanted to capitalize on I6’s fame, and that’s fine. But this module can be played independently, and even if you haven’t played Ravenloft. If you choose to run it this way, and not to toggle between worlds, then it definitely has nothing to do with Castle Ravenloft. And even the titular House on Gryphon Hill isn’t really central to the story: the Apparatus is no longer there, the Alchemist no longer resides there, the Creature isn’t there, Azalin the Lich isn’t there, and there’s only a 66% chance that the all-important Rod of Rastinon is hidden on the premises.

   Even the cover illustration is misleading. The Alchemist Strahd is in love with Lady Virginia, the daughter of Lord Weathermay, but the Creature does not care about her. This was a decision made by the artist

   Everything of importance happens on Lord Weathermay’s vast estate, or in town. The encounters are quite tough – this is indeed for 4-6 characters, levels 8-10. A trapper, a lurker above, a band of 83 orcs, 15 ogres, 60 skeletons, 4 quasi-elemental lightnings, and a squad of 28 ghasts, just to name a few. There’s even an angry mob of villagers. Don’t kill Silas Archer, the butcher, and his wife, Violet, simply because they’re “a Mummy and a Groaning Spirit!” How do you intend to explain that to an angry mob, especially since you know that more transpossessed minions are in that mob, and possibly steering it?

   Back in 1986 when I ran Ravenloft II, I remember casting Azalin the Lich in the role of mentor to the Creature. The Strahd of Mordentshire isn’t really a vampire in the classical sense. He wasn’t “turned” by another vampire. He was mechanically, alchemically expunged from the mortal body of Strahd the Alchemist. So the Creature is a newborn – only about one month old at the time of the adventure. I had seen Return of the Jedi five times just three years before, and I couldn’t help but perceive Azalin as Palpatine, and the Creature as Darth Vader. And it worked pretty well. We had fun.

   Depending on your DMing skills, the adventure’s climax can be truly epic, or a huge clusterfuck of who’s who and what’s what. An out of control Apparatus transpossesses everyone at the same time, quasi-elemental lightnings flit and dance about the machine, Hellhounds and Shadow Mastiffs run wild, the player characters have to face evil, foul versions of themselves, and obviously “the vampire form (actually the Alchemist) springs towards the good Strahd (actually the Creature).”

   Running such a scene can be a handful.

   But don’t worry if it’s headed straight for a TPK. You can fail forward yet again and have the party awaken in Barovia, Chult, Khorvaire, Ravnica, Livyánu, or somewhere else entirely. After all, this is D&D. Sky (i.e., the Material Plane) is the limit.

   “It seemed so real! The great towers of some place called Ravenloft… the misty vales and the terrible tragedy of a man who had sold his soul to unlife. Too much to drink? Och, last night! Perhaps the mutton was not quite done.”

Why I Don't Do It

   I don’t watch Critical Role.

   I don’t play or run games remotely.

   I don’t stream my game sessions.

   I don’t do Adventurers League.

   I haven’t run a game for kids in over 10 years.

   I rarely play tabletop role-playing games with women.

   WAIT ! – Don’t leave just yet.

   Let me tell you why I don’t do it.

   Until seven years ago, I still ran a normal, traditional campaign, and we played once a month, like clockwork. I called it Cthulhu Gypsies, and it was set in Turkish-occupied Romania around 1840-45. It had quite a complex story, loosely based on HBO’s stellar Carnivàle. There were several overlapping plots, and a flourish of NPCs. The players had to take plentiful notes during and after every session. Player characters were detailed, each with their own secret goals and beliefs. This campaign ran uninterrupted from early 2007 up until late 2013. Roughly, seventy-five game sessions. A decent campaign.

   Then the game became more sporadic and much more difficult to run because of real-life issues. The three players were rarely available. Game night was moved from Saturday to Sunday... and then to Wednesday between 6 and 9. Eventually, I pulled the plug. I began working on something else entirely: a good old First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign, with seven players instead of three. This way, if one, two, or even three guys cancel at the last minute, the session is still a go. Each game is a standalone scenario. “Here’s what you have to accomplish today. Here are the possible rewards. What do you do?”

   Plus, I tend to trigger the big fight scene within the first half of the game. The players are more alert, and we actually have enough time to finish the big fight – which was not always the case.

   The seven PCs (recently bumped to ten) are rather simple and straightforward. None have a five-page background like the investigators in Cthulhu Gypsies. Brother Thomas is an orphan. He was practically raised in the temple of Boccob. He searches for arcane secrets and eldritch knowledge – like any good cleric of Boccob, the god of knowledge and arcane secrets. Brother Tom’s uncle was a powerful wizard. That’s it. That’s his whole background. And it’s enough. After all, we only play twice a year. Players just need a simple baseline they can remember. The rest is role-played live at the table. Such characters would seem depthless and two-dimensional in a TV show – but which TV show only airs two episodes a year?

   My point is: we’ve adapted. Complex storylines and monthly game sessions were not feasible anymore because of careers, wives, children, and so forth. We had to move on to standalone scenarios and occasional gaming events. It’s okay. Role-playing games are very versatile and customizable. The game has to adapt to its players’ circumstances, not the other way around.

   When I was 14, we literally played every weekday for an hour, and at least ten hours every weekend. That’s sixty hours of D&D per month, and over seven hundred hours per year. Now, we hardly play two or three games a year; fifteen hours of D&D as opposed to seven hundred hours. Obviously, they cannot be the same game.

   If you’re lucky enough to play on a weekly basis, or twice a month, or even once a month – go right ahead: enrich your PCs’ backgrounds, think about character motivations, secret objectives, and continent-spanning story arcs.

   In my current campaign, these are unnecessary.

*

   I was in an all-boys school when I first started playing D&D. My real “first game” actually happened at summer camp: it wasn’t much, and we had to roll a pair of quarters for everything, since we didn’t even have dice. But I really got into it at school. No girls for the first 3-4 years. An institutionalized sausage fest.

   In the late eighties, we did play a long campaign with two very cool girls – our DM’s own sister, Julie, and Julie’s roommate. Then, all through the nineties, we didn’t come across any female players. Today of course, we could find them easily enough, but our reasons for playing are different now: we do it as a way to remember the good old days. Same guys, same old games. We’re done trying new stuff – realism, diceless, dice pools, you name it.

   If a woman walks up to me at the FLGS and says, “If you ever need an additional player...” I’m not saying I won’t include her in the lineup at some point. But first, I’ll ask, what kind of tabletop RPG is she looking for? In my campaign, we don’t have time for one character’s five-page-long backstory. Remember Brother Thomas’ background? Orphan. Temple. Wizard uncle. The End. And yet, we’ve been playing since 2014. Twenty game sessions – and mayhem ensued several times. We cut to the chase, and roll a lot of dice, because that’s what we’re here for. It’s never boring, even with such simple, bare-bones backstories all around. It’s that kind of game. As I said earlier: customized to the players’ circumstances.

   This is also why I don’t do Adventurers League. I have a large circle of potential players at my disposal, and I know each one pretty well. I know which one’s crazy, which one’s a good manager, and which one’s an actor. I can run my two games a year without having to recruit outside that circle. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for organized play, and one day I shall try my hand at it, when I’m rich enough to attend Gary Con or Origins. But right now, I can’t. It’s too big a commitment. I prefer writing this blog on the side. It’s my humble contribution. You’re welcome.

   Adventurers League needs to be fair for all. That means rules. Lots of fixed, absolute, unambiguous rules. In some situations, I make up rules on the fly – but since the players are also my old friends, they won’t argue. Almost all of them gave up DMing years ago. I suppose they’re just grateful I didn’t. And if they do argue, I can always say, “Suck it up, Marco. This ain’t World of Warcraft. You’re a guest here, not a client.”

   Another friend’s wife once asked us, “At what age will you finally quit role-playing games?” She is a behavioral psychologist, so she was genuinely curious about this. “Why would we ever give up such a great hobby?” was my reply. Indeed, when poker was invented somewhere along the Mississippi, I’m sure somebody’s wife asked the exact same question. Almost two hundred years later, people still play poker. There are hundred-year-old players out there, and I bet they kick some serious butt.

*

   It’s been fifteen years since I last ran a game for kids. Two 11-year-old boys, plus one of the boys’ mom. It’s not a good memory. Kids are definitely not used to the slow pace of tabletop role-playing games. Their entire toolkit comes from video games. So they kill the innkeeper, kill the other patrons, collect all of their belongings, and move on to the next tavern. Then, militia shows up, and they kill the militiamen, too. Half an hour later, two paladins track them down, and one of the kids asks, “Why do you keep punishing us?” I say, “I’m not here to punish or reward. It is a real world, a real city with an entire society inside its walls. You tell me what you do, and I tell you what the rest of the city folk do.”

   No Thank You, Evil is for the young ones. Like seven, eight, nine and ten. Then, testosterone happens, and it all goes sideways.

   You know. Murder hoboes.

   I’ve been there. My friends and I did that. We actually did it for several years, if you count Stormbringer – a game where one could easily become much more powerful if one sacrificed sentient people in demonic rituals. As in: slaughtering innocents, aye. And we listened to Slayer’s Reign in Blood and Metallica’s Kill ’Em All while we did it.

   It took us quite a while to realize how stupid it was. Testosterone is way stronger than IQ. I simply cannot go through that whole process again with a bunch of pre-teens. I don’t have the time nor the mental fortitude. Believe it or not, it’s already difficult enough with experienced players. You’re never just a DM. You’re also an event planner, a shrink, a coach, etc.

   So, why would I try to push tabletop role-playing games on my nephew and his friends? My parents didn’t try to make my brother and I love Zorro or the Lone Ranger: they let us fiddle around with our Kenner action figures, and I’m grateful for it. I myself am not a parent, but why try to impose what we loved on the next generation? They’ve got their own stuff to appreciate, like Super Saiyans and Mega Charizard X.

   Here’s one important thing I have learned about kids today. If they want to learn how to do something, they’ll learn it on their own, because YouTube tutorials. My nephew learned how to play Dragon Mania Legends on his own, as well as Animal Jam, Pokémon, and several other games. He learned PowerPoint all by himself, and Adobe Premiere Pro. If he and his friends ever become interested in D&D, I’ll go visit sometime, and they’ll already be playing and already be level four. I’m not worried, like, at all. They’ve learned much more complex things all on their own.

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   I don’t stream my games because I don’t have the necessary equipment. It’s that simple. Plus, I only run two or three games every year – which wouldn’t make for a very popular channel. I actually blog more often than I play, so I’ll keep blogging for the time being. It’s a text-based stream of sorts.

   I don’t watch Critical Role because I like the public, the Acq Inc audience. There is an additional character at the table. I love it. The audience’s reactions to the players’ comments, decisions, and dice rolls. The audience yelling, “Green Flames!” or “Blood! Blood! Blood!” It’s awesome. When you don’t have that, it’s just not the same.

   I love Matt Mercer. I’ll never forget that time when he played Boo the space hamster, flying “the bat out of Hell.” That was a D&D moment for the ages. And with a cheering audience. Fantastic.

   I also watched the game session Mercer played with Stephen Colbert, and it was amazing. But I prefer Acquisitions Incorporated. They are my people.

   That leaves us with remote gaming.

   I don’t do it, because I don’t have WiFi. I only have Internet on my phone, with a monthly limit of 2 Gig. Watching one Black Magic Craft video devours about 5% of that. Imagine the damage if I spent six hours on Roll20 or Discord. It’s a no-go.

   My own games are designed for in-person, large-group gaming. I regularly put 200 hours of work in the terrain I build – and that’s for one, I repeat, one 5-hour game session. All I ask in return is to see the looks on my friends’ faces when I set the whole thing up, see them move their minis around the terrain, hear them discuss strategy, and see them throw their hands up in the air when someone rolls a 20... or a 1. That’s it. You don’t invest 200 hours to build scenery that your players only see in a tiny window at the lower left corner of their computer screen.

   This year, the “big” game probably won’t happen. Local game stores haven’t reopened their tables yet – not for MTG, and certainly not for large-group D&D. I won’t be running my usual crazy birthday game next month, with seven excited, unmasked players: it’ll have to wait. I’m okay with that. I don’t have any FOMO. The cool terrain shall remain in a sealed box throughout next winter, and we’ll see if it can happen in 2021. Meanwhile, I may run a couple smaller games with three players max, like that quirky scenario I ran last December, The Lich and the Elephant (you can read all about it if you scroll down 4 posts). One such game is scheduled for August 1^st, and we should be able to play outside, in a gazebo. Fingers crossed. If it’s my only game this year – so be it. I certainly won’t be the only one with no 2020 birthday bash to speak of.

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   There you have it. I’m not a monster. I’m just playing with my old buddies, and they happen to be guys – all of them. I don’t have the mental energy for kids or organized play. I’ve got neither the equipment to stream nor the WiFi to play remotely. And I prefer Acq Inc to CR or Dice, Camera, Action.

   Large, epic, noisy, in-person game sessions will happen again on the other side of this pandemic. New PAX Acquisitions Incorporated episodes will be recorded in front of packed theaters. A little patience is all we need.

5e Generation: What Lies Ahead

   In the last post I’ve written before the pandemic, I mentioned how Sly Flourish had said that 51% or more of all D&D players had now only been playing for three years. And it got me thinking. Because, you know, we all had lots and lots of time to think during corona, didn’t we?

   The 5e crowd may look like a solid, monolithic bloc right now, but it won’t remain that way. The AD&D crowd of the early eighties sure looked like a monolithic bloc. Forty-odd years later, it has exploded in hundreds of scattered pieces. The exact same thing will naturally happen to 5e. Some players will try dozens, if not hundreds of other RPGs; some will become hardware buffs; some will become collectors; some will become wargamers only; at least a few of them will open up their own role-playing games companies, like Monte Cook and Shanna Germain; at least one of them will become a talk show host, like Colbert.

   Yes, there might be a Sixth Edition. Maybe a full-on crossover with Magic: The Gathering. Your D&D Beyond character made available as a custom, print-on-demand card. Literally anything can happen within the next ten years. If you had walked into the TSR offices in 1980 to proclaim in a clear voice that ten years down the road, Dungeons & Dragons would be dead and buried, everyone would have laughed their heads off, including Gary himself.

   Much, much more people are playing D&D now than four years ago. This is great. But not all those people will stay with the hobby of tabletop role-playing games for the next thirty-seven years. A lot of them will eventually move on – and never come back to it again. It’s like the Harry Potter craze. Some fans went on to read numerous SF/F authors, and some never read any more fantasy after they’d finished J. K. Rowling’s books. Some became lifelong fans of the genre, and for others, it was just a phase, like inline skating in 1990 or Tamagotchis in 1997.

   I have two cousins that played First Edition AD&D back in the eighties, like maniacs, and then quit playing around 86-87, never to touch a tabletop role-playing game again. I’m pretty sure they can’t even name another TTRPG besides D&D. Today, if I share an AD&D memory with either one of them, they hardly remember it at all. One of them even seems to be annoyed when I touch on that subject.

   This phenomenon will reoccur. Part of the 5e players will quit after 4-5 years – but some will become lifelong RPG aficionados, and that’s the awesome part. Some of them are going to experiment with other systems, other styles, more rules, less rules, weird rules, diceless, et cetera. They’ll come up with their own stuff. The shift towards “more realistic” role-playing will happen for them, too: it’s inevitable. They shall have their own HârnMaster, sooner or later. They shall play those late-nights games in unfamiliar apartments with that one stoned guy who keeps repeating, “I wanna CAST A SPELL!!!” and that other, slightly less stoned guy who answers, “You’re supposed to be wise like GANDALF – he doesn’t cast spells willy-nilly!” and the first guy who replies, “Go fuck you.” The 5e generation shall witness those absurd game sessions with the two jocks who keep killing each other’s characters, immediately rolling up new ones, and again fighting to the death as soon as the new character walks into the blood-soaked inn, with no consideration whatsoever for the adventure at hand.

   Yes, the 5e generation shall have to endure through that also. All the steps. That is – if they keep at it for thirty years. You have to write two or three bad books before you can write a good one. You have to cook several disgusting meals before you’re able to whip up a tasty feast.

   Under what assumption do we believe that the Fifth Edition crowd somehow become mature, multi-tooled, level-headed players in a matter of weeks? Like it or not, it’s a process. A journey. You can’t click the Matt Mercer button or the Jerry Holkins button, and be there already. Same with everything else. If you’re a budding writer, you won’t be able to go directly to “Stephen King.” If you take up cooking, you can’t go directly to “Gordon Ramsay.” Of course, some people would like you to think that you can – but it’s impossible. You gotta put in the hours, that’s all. The infamous “10,000-hour rule” has been disproven, aye. Some gifted folks become excellent at something in less than 5K hours. Some require even more than 10K to hit that excellence plateau. There is no fixed, universal number. But one thing’s for sure: you need some time. Meaning: more than a hundred hours – at the very least.

   Ten thousand? Jesus. I’m not even sure I have that.

   Well, maybe.

   Luke spent time training on Dagobah, but Rey doesn’t need that – she decides to order a stormtrooper out of the room, and succeeds on the second try. This illustrates the “You Have It In You” doctrine. It’s Disney. Screenwriters must love that doctrine, because you save so much screen time when you don’t have to waste 40 minutes on Dagobah. After all, if one doesn’t need any kind of experience to become President of the United States, what good is experience in anything anyway?

   But, please, don’t be like that. You need to put in the hours – lots of hours. And you really need to go to Dagobah. Trust me, you won’t regret it. Read the blogs. Read all of Grognardia. Read as much of Chirine’s Workbench as you can. Read Greyhawk Grognard and The Mule Abides and Havard’s Blackmoor Blog. Read David Hartlage and Sly Flourish. The Force is strong with them.

   I don’t want to afflict and discourage anyone – it’s definitely not my goal here. A woman recently tweeted: “Going to three rallies won’t make you an activist.” And you know what? She is absolutely right. I went to one Black Lives Matter rally. I am not an activist. Someone who played one game of D&D last January is not a tabletop role-player – not yet.

   It ain’t gatekeeping. Just plain old logic.

   You need that investment of time and effort. Well, “effort” is such a big, scary word these days. It won’t feel like an effort. You know what they say. If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life.

   If D&D for you is just a phase, congratulations are in order, because you’ve picked something truly amazing. You’re gonna have a LOT of fun, and actually learn more about yourself and other people than with any Tamagotchi.

   If you’re in it for the long haul, I cannot wait to hear about the crazy homebrewed sci-fi barbarian mummy crossover you’ll come up with 10 years from now. And I’ll make sure to read your blog, your quantum-indeterminate holofeed, or whatever these things are called in the year 2040.

   And if you host a late-night talk show – you can count on me, I’ll watch it!

Tabletop Role-Playing In Your Dreams

   Once in a while I’m lucky enough to dream about things related to role-playing games. Some of those dreams are overly vague, and easily forgettable. But a lot of them are actually quite wonderful. So much so that, for more than six years now, I have devoted a section of my gaming journals to the recording of such dream-episodes.

   Documenting dreams, describing them, putting them down on paper, is notoriously fastidious. Dreams don’t follow any of the rules of storytelling or dialog.

   Bear with me, folks.

   Plus, this is my first article since the pandemic and months of staying at home. Let’s begin with something light and funny, shall we?

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   In one memorable 2016 dream, I found myself in a garage with Chirine and Tim Kask, and we were busy converting miniatures. Especially, I remember a series of Efreet and Efreeta with diamond-shaped turbans. The turbans were little acrylic diamonds: I don’t recall exactly how we got them to fit on the figures’ heads, but the end result was amazing – and I was gonna get to keep one of the finished minis for myself.

   But what I remember the most vividly about that garage is how I felt. Did we have neon lighting on the ceiling, or individual lamps? I don’t know. Was it day or night? I don’t know. What I know is that it was the best damn feeling ever. A totally awesome sense of camaraderie and creativity and boundless gaming possibilities. I wanted to remain in that place forever. Really. Assembling and converting and painting miniatures – and maybe crafting terrain – with other tabletop enthusiasts for all eternity: isn’t that one of the planes of Elysium, or one of the Seven Heavens?

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   My funniest RPG-related dream from last year was the Lich Convention. In this dream, I was an unidentified character attending a huge convention full of liches – and at the same time I seemed to be the DM running it... You know how dreams can be convoluted and illogical.

   The event took place in some enormous underground temple. As a character, I was shocked and amazed at the number of liches, demiliches and dracoliches I passed in the halls and corridors; and as the Dungeon Master, I kept thinking: “Even if I get my hands on all the lich miniatures ever produced in metal and plastic, I don’t have nearly enough different liches to run this!”

   Waking up from that dream, I immediately picked up a pencil and drew this little booth with the sign: Lichdom: How To Get Started. Note that I didn’t actually see any such booth in my dream; the sketch was just a quick, silly way for me to remember the Lich Convention, a fascinating con where I seemed to be the only non-lich wandering the halls – and yet no one ever accosted or bothered me. I didn’t have the balls to talk to anyone, either!

   For months afterwards, I kept thinking about turning this into a real adventure. What would the player characters’ goal be? What would they want to achieve and / or prevent? As of now, I still have no idea whether I’ll actually use it or not. It’s on the back burner. But what an awesome D&D dream it was!

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   Dated November 14, 2015, one full page of my “Dream Log” is about a very atmospheric Empire of the Petal Throne / RuneQuest crossover. It took place within a sheltered valley shaped like the number 8, with a lake shaped like the number 6. Someone in the dream said that verbatim, and I jotted it down the next morning. “The valley is shaped like an 8 but the lake is shaped like a 6.”

   Oddly enough, that 8/6 valley was a hidden enclave of Tekumel within the world of Glorantha, led by a little 5-year-old seer who spoke of Pavar and the wizard Subadim. This young seer also possessed the only technological device in the valley: some sort of advanced spyglass with a blinking yellow light on it. I don’t know if the valley’s denizens were Tsolyani or Yan Koryani, but they lived mysterious, superstitious lives within the confines of the “enclave,” while Gloranthan heroes and travelers passed them by without ever noticing the place.

   This is a scan of my original sketch. It’s not much, but it was made right after I woke up from that dream.

   The lake was lined with dwellings and shrines, and I remember a big temple of Sarku under construction on the island, near the base of the southern volcano. There were two (inactive) volcanoes in there. In my notes there’s also this line that was part of a song:

Far from the last city and the ultimate oasis...

   In the dream, somebody sang that song at dusk, after the sun had set; it had much more lines, of course, but I couldn’t remember them. It was a sad melody, but utterly beautiful. That dream was amazing, and I still think about it from time to time. I really wish I could return to that wonderful, secluded place, if only for a few minutes – see if Sarku’s temple is finished and if that little seer is now 9 or 10 years of age.

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   Last but not least, I’ve had numerous “Game Store dreams” over the years. It’s never the same FLGS, but it’s always packed with breathtaking, unfindable sourcebooks, maps, accessories, miniatures, and pieces of terrain. There was this one time when I walked into an unidentified “dream” store, and lo and behold: they had the entire line of miniature trees and flora for Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, each weird plant and thorn-bush in its separate box with never-before-seen Erol Otus art! I was ecstatic. It was like I had just discovered the Ark of the Covenant with the Holy Grail inside of it.

   Game Store dreams are the most common of all RPG-related dreams, but I still love them. I have them perhaps once a month or so. It’s always a bummer to wake up and realize you didn’t actually buy this or that rare item – but I’m still very happy when it happens. It makes me smile from ear to ear.

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   There’s no “practical” point to this post, except to say that sometimes it appears that I continue in this hobby just to keep my brain immersed in it – and dream about it every once in a while. Indeed, those dreams are more frequent than the actual games I get to run in any given year.

   I also wanted to write this post because I never came across any article broaching this particular topic, and I’m genuinely interested by it. Really. I’d love to read about some of James Maliszewski’s RPG-flavored dreams, and David Hartlage’s – and Jeremy Crawford’s, for that matter.

   Tell me yours in the comments section.