Fall of the Dungeon Master

 

   So you’re a Dungeon Master? Okay, listen, I gazed into my crystal ball, and your future looks pretty grim. Let me tell you all about it. Free of charge.

   More and more now, Dungeon Masters find themselves standing between Wizards of the Coast and the millions of players who enjoy the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Those players want total, absolute freedom, and their Dungeon Masters are a “necessary evil” — or at least it’s starting to feel like it.

   The game’s marketing is directed towards players, not Dungeon Masters. If every D&D player buys a book, that is a lot of money, but if every Dungeon Master buys a book, the sales remain quite low. Players make up the bulk of the customer base, and that’s nothing new: it’s been that way since 1974. So, every six months, Wizards gives out “player candy” and introduces a new, overpowered subclass. The DMs have to adjust. Constantly.

   These days, it’s a perpetual tug-of-war between players and Dungeon Masters — and not just with official material, mind you. KibblesTasty published a fan-made artificer class that soon became a contentious issue. DMs didn’t want it. Players really wanted it. Some players even hoped Wizards would copy it and make the stuff official, so that DMs would have to accept it.

   But that’s only the beginning. Ha ha.

   Dungeon Masters are also being challenged by a drastic shift in the playstyle. You see, Dungeons & Dragons is a shared story. Dungeons & Dragons is a live, freeform experience. Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t need an all-powerful, dictatorial arbiter, and perhaps it doesn’t even need a written plot with predetermined encounters.

   No written adventure, no fixed story, just peers sitting together and riffing off of each other’s in-character improvisations. No spotlight hogs, either, as everyone gets the same amount of time to talk.

   Dungeon Masters have always been the worst kind of spotlight hogs, haven’t they? Wink wink.

   John only wants to tell the rest of the party about his Aasimar rhapsodist’s dark musings, and Jane only wants to be allowed to play her super optimized Tortle dragon tamer pirate ranger. You happen to be their DM. What do you do?

   Some want to quit.

   Some DMs really don’t like this ‘improv’ reframing of the game that is obviously being brought about by Critical Role.

 

   So, let’s recap:

   Storygamers don’t want a classic Dungeon Master who occupies way too much narrative real estate.

   Powergamers don’t want somebody who can decide if this feat or that subclass is legal at the table.

   DMs are being questioned on both sides of the role-playing spectrum.

   On the far left, they think a DM is just like any other player, no more, no less; they all tell their part of that shared story, and the DM’s own contribution isn’t bigger or more relevant than any other part.

   On the far right, tactical wargamers don’t really need DMs anymore, except maybe to roll for the monsters; but if they only need the DM to roll some dice, isn’t that the waste of a player? Let the monsters run themselves with an attack deck, Gloomhaven style, and get an extra player character in your party.

   Here we should take a timeout from discussing the Fall of the Dungeon Master, and look at the possibility, however remote or preposterous, of getting rid of other fundamental D&D components.

   There were folks who criticized the fact that most treasures are “questionably sourced” in Pathfinder and, by extension, D&D; I’ve broached that subject in a previous post (“Bad” Treasure, April 2021).

   Let’s recap again:

   No predetermined story or plot, no omnipotent referee, no dungeons, no monsters, no treasure, and no violence. The player characters sit in a tavern, drinking, talking, laughing.

   It’s a creative drama workshop.

   I get it, though. When I was 17 and 18, I too questioned everything. “Fuck The World” was my motto. You know: the golden age of punk. Society sucked, and I wanted none of it.

   Today, it’s the same phenomenon, expressed differently. Why should we pay rent? Why should we have student debt?

   What are monsters even for?

   What are spells even for? What is armor even for? What is experience even for?

   If we go the nihilist road, we’ll end up playing nothing and caring for nothing and doing nothing, like in Withnail & I.

 

   Everything D&D (apart from movies and board games) requires a Dungeon Master. It is an unpredictable situation that might make business-savvy investors nervous, and they have addressed it before — you can bet your entire game collection on it. “Do we have a contingency plan in case we experience a catastrophic drop in the number of individuals who are willing to enable this product without compensation?”

   Is Robert going to feel confident enough to take on the duties of Dungeon Master? Is Myriam going to have enough time to DM on top of studying for her master’s degree? Dan had a stroke last year; is he going to resume his campaign? Jenna did not do any DMing since before the pandemic — is she going to come back to it eventually? Case-by-case uncertainty.

   They’ve already had a few meetings about this. Trust me.

   Gary and Dave envisioned the Dungeon Master as a sort of deity, sometimes malevolent, sometimes benevolent, and sometimes completely indifferent. Many things have changed since those early days. Increasingly now, the DM is but a proxy for the mechanics and rules; they are more or less expected to run what Perkins, Winter or Crawford have written, as is.

   But DMs do not work for Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. They never have.

   With the advent of One D&D, the Dungeon Master is about to be reduced to a simple role of software manager. Indeed, they won’t need a DM to describe the guttering candles and spooky cobwebs: it’s all been rendered in 3D; and they won’t even need a DM to track initiative: it’s all been programmed right into that VTT.

   The same isn’t happening in Call of Cthulhu, for instance, because that game still needs its DMs, a.k.a. Keepers. There are still innumerable locations to flesh out and describe, from creepy mansions in Poughkeepsie, NY, to abandoned mausoleums in Chepachet, RI, to haunted lighthouses off Pollock Rip, MA. Nobody in Call of Cthulhu is asking What Are Monsters Even For? (they’d lose 2d10 SAN if they did.) There’s a lot of storytelling left to be done in this genre.

   And what about little indie gems such as Nibiru or Moriah? For sure, they need a GM to work their awesome, heartbreaking magic.

   I chose the title “The Fall of the Dungeon Master” and not “The Fall of the Game Master” for a reason.

   If and when D&D doesn’t want you — or need you — anymore, don’t worry, there is a plethora of exciting worlds out there that await and value your energy and dedication to run amazing adventures.

The Differences Between Story and Game

 

   Imperial officers refrain from shooting down the escape pod, because “there’s no life forms” on board… AND because there would be no Star Wars at all if they’d actually destroyed it. There really is no other reason.

   Boba Fett falls into the Sarlacc’s gaping mouth because the trilogy draws to an end, and Fett just isn’t relevant anymore. There is no other reason.

   When you reach chapter 19, and your book has 21 chapters, start tying up loose ends; it is what the producers of Lost famously failed to understand.

   Eagles fly into Mordor and pick up Frodo and Sam because, again, the trilogy draws to an end, and two additional chapters with the Hobbits scrambling to get out and Gandalf and Aragorn desperately searching for them in and around Mount Doom would be both painful to write and painful to read. Sometimes you need shortcuts — mostly towards the end. Ask any writer.

   About Tomb of Horrors, someone said, “Use divination magic to find out where the treasure room is, then dig directly down until you hit it.” Nice shortcut, aye; but that’s a game, not a story. On one hand, you have the supra-genius intelligence of a millennia-old demilich, and on the other hand you have the down-to-earth cleverness of a garden-variety tomb robber. Don’t you think Acererak would have thought of that even before his servants began building his eternal resting place? My money is on the demilich.

   Don’t you think Sauron would have thought of the eagles flying over Mount Doom and dropping the One Ring straight into it? The guy is at least 50,000 years old; give him some credit.

   Someone else asked on Quora, “Why not give the Ring to Ungoliant? Ungoliant eats the ring, destroys it, and kills Sauron. Game over.”

   Well, we’re talking about a story, not a game.

   People nowadays are so accustomed to Pokémon cards, it literally never occurs to them that all the creatures and items of a legendarium don’t necessarily exist at the same time and in the same killer deck. With Tolkien, you just need a teeny-tiny bit more attention to detail.

   Ungoliant vanishes from Middle-earth at least two thousand years before the One Ring is even forged; it’s like asking, “Why not give the Maccabees an AR-15 to help them win the Battle of Elasa in 160 B.C.?”

   But if you gave the ring to Ungoliant and she devoured it — what then? No Lord of the Rings trilogy? It’s the Star Wars escape pod conundrum all over again; they shoot it down, Beru and Owen live, Luke stays home, Han never meets Leia, etc.

   Do you want writers to tell rich, compelling stories… or do you want to be fed daily puzzles to solve? Make up your mind already.

   Our computer-programmer hive mind is getting very good at solving practical, mechanical problems. So we take the stories that we used to love, and turn them into mechanical tidbits.

   “Where was Radagast the Brown during the War of the Ring?”

   “What were the Valar doing during The Lord of the Rings?”

   Expert puzzle solvers high on Red Bull.

   The thing is, it’s not a game, it’s a story, and you don’t need to min / max it.

   Radagast has never shown any interest in the affairs of Gondor, Rohan, or even Rivendell. It’s like asking, “Where was Gandhi during World War II?”

   The Valar are gods, and they left Middle-earth at the close of the First Age. Some of the Eldar elected to stay, but it was their choice. Don’t ask, “Where were Yahweh and Archangel Michael during World War II?”

   In a wargame, you’d be stupid not to use every single one of your assets. Don’t leave any wizard on the sidelines. Maximize your win percentage.

   Stories are a completely different animal.

   When you sit down to read a story — kill the switch; you’re not on your Xbox anymore.

   Still on the subject of the Tomb of Horrors, somebody else said, “This is the kind of dungeon that needs a respawn mechanic at the entrance just to be tolerable.”

   This one’s interesting. Tomb is indeed a game — but it also has a story. If you are an undead archmage who ruled for millennia over a kingdom of the living dead, and now you’re building a final resting place for your earthly remains, why in hell would you include a “respawn mechanic” at the entrance? It defeats the purpose.

   The person who writes such a comment chooses to ignore the Story aspect and focus solely on the Game side. Video gamer, for sure. They’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands of dungeons, and they’re all pretty much the same to them.

   But it is not the same.

   Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and Acererak’s tomb are both “dungeons,” yet they are two very, very different stories—

   I’m not a video gamer myself, but I saw my friends play lots of video games over the years, from World of Warcraft to L.A. Noire to Assassin's Creed, and one thing I keep witnessing is the player skipping over old letters lying on tables or desks, because it’s usually a whole page of text that would take them too long to read. They prefer moving on immediately to the next stage or dungeon level. And I guess the designers know this very well: they make it so that players can still finish the game even though they haven’t read all the clues and / or pieced together the whole puzzle / backstory. Except perhaps in something like Myst, where the puzzles really are the main thing.

   Games — all games, not just video games — had a pervasive effect on our collective consciousness: they made us dumber. On forums, you regularly come across questions like, “Why is Gandalf afraid of Sauron if they’re both Maiar?” Indeed, why is someone afraid of someone who is the same Thing / Class / Order? A level 9 wizard shouldn’t be afraid of a level 9 wizard, right? An Orange magic item should be more powerful than a Blue magic item, but it souldn’t be less powerful than any other Orange magic item, right?

   I’m letting you in on a big secret here: magic items don’t have colors, and wizards (or any other class for that matter) don’t have levels. Those are just game mechanics; even in the fictional world of the game, they are not “real.”

   Every single sword +1 has its own story, who created it, and why. Magic items aren’t created in batches and according to spec, so there’s no reason why they should be comparable or equivalent.

   Green lightsabers, blue lightsabers, red lightsabers, fuchsia lightsabers, darksabers: it doesn’t mean a thing. People were startled in ’83 when they realized Luke’s lightsaber had changed colors, but that decision simply came from the fact that blue wasn’t really popping out against the perfect blue skies of Buttercup Valley, California (where the Sarlacc scene was shot). That’s all there is to it. Green ain’t better than blue. Stop obsessing over the thing. It’s not a ranking system like red belt, blue belt, black belt. It’s just a color — like the color of your neighbor’s Honda Civic.

   Now, let’s replace the word Maia with the word Aristocrat. During the fifteenth Century, the Dukes of Burgundy were among the most powerful of all Aristocrats. But you could find a lowly Duke somewhere in the Italian backcountry who had almost no power or influence whatsoever… and yet he was still an Aristocrat. The lowly Duke of Gravina would piss his trentain trousers if he were ever summoned to Burgundy to appear at the court of Duke John the Fearless. But how can that be? How can a Duke be afraid of a Duke when they’re both the same Thing?

   It’s because life is much, much more complicated than a game.

   Ainur, Valar and Maiar — they’re not just plain categories like “Break” or “EX” or “Mega” or whatever. It’s a pantheon, not a kid’s game.

   One YouTuber complained that Ralph Bakshi’s Saruman wore a red robe. “What Part of Saruman the WHITE Didn’t They Understand?”

   Again with the damn colors.

   “The White” is a title, not a dress code. The Black Prince never wore black, and only wielded his black shield in battle — once or twice a year. Again, this thing is an entire pantheon, not a cards game.

   When Lucifer first rebelled, did God banish him from Heaven using a level 4 slot or a level 9 slot?

   See what I mean? It’s absurd.

   Well, I’d rather know whether Moses’ staff is a Staff of the Serpent or a Staff of the Magi, because it obviously can’t be both at the same time, right? That’d be BREAKING THE GAME, DUDE!!!!!

   It’s right there in the very name of the channel: Game Rant. As in, Game.

   A literary work ain’t a game.

   Every story ever told don’t need to be gamified.

*

   Explaining everything all the time is exhausting, but some folks can’t help it. For instance, Steven Erikson’s books were inspired by years and years of tabletop role-playing — and it shows. Now, some readers feel the urge to “break down” the series’ magic system, and perhaps take it back to something gameable.

   So you play TTRPGs, write a book about it, the book gets published, one of your players also writes a book about that game, it gets published too, you go on and write nine more books in the series, it becomes very popular, and then someone turns the magic in those books into a RPG-like system… We’ve come full circle, haven’t we?

       Game → Story → Game

   Now, explain The Laundry Files’ magic system. It’s definitely not your classic Chaosium stuff.

   And what about the magic in American Gods? And what about the magic in Ash: A Secret History? Try explaining that.

*

   In a fantasy novel, you’ve got a story, but no game mechanics.

   In a video game or tabletop RPG, you’ve got both story and mechanics.

   In classic arcade games like Gauntlet or Gauntlet II, there is essentially no story, just rooms, monsters, treasure, more rooms, more monsters, more treasure, on and on and on.

   Don’t let it all become one single big messy entertainment goulash, and you might want to thank me later.

   A final note to aspiring fantasy authors: avoid building your intrigue around a tangible MacGuffin, because the relentless Red Bull gamer brains will unquestionably find a way to “solve” your great story without the need of your great story. Keep your MacGuffin vague, like Helen of Troy’s stunning beauty, like Adrian Veidt’s convoluted deceit — stuff that can’t be devoured by Ungoliant or dropped into Mount Doom.

Everyone vs Just Us

 

   This silly title sums up the debate that goes on right now with things like Warhammer and The Rings of Power and TSR.

   Companies try to make stuff for Everyone. That’s just Economics 101. Nobody wants to make things for a niche — it’s bad for business.

   But some fans seem to think that those “things” and that “stuff” should be made exclusively for them.

   If you read more than 3 mangas, you are a fan; that is, you’re the same thing, the very same thing, as that Japanese teen who read five thousand mangas.

   If you drink kombucha at least once a month, you are a fan — the very same thing as that woman who drinks kombucha every day.

   A fan is a fan, period.

   If we try to make fandom more complex, it’s a very slippery slope. Indeed, who’s to decide if you’re a worthy or unworthy fan? Who is going to be the judge of that? It is gatekeeping.

   Someone who read The Hobbit when they were 10, but not any of the other books since then, and who haven’t seen any of the movies. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who only ever saw Ralph Bakshi’s movie, back in 1978, and only ever read the first half of The Silmarillion. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who saw the first two films of the Peter Jackson trilogy, but not the third one, and not The Hobbit trilogy. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who played a heck of a lot of MERP in the late eighties and early nineties, saw all the movies several times, but never read any of the books, because reading is hard. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who did a PhD in Fantasy literature with an emphasis on Tolkien, but only ever watched the first Peter Jackson movie and disliked it. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who’ve seen every movie 35 times, read every book 9 times, and have their own YouTube channel devoted to the realm of Lindon. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who named their open-source medical imaging service “Orthanc.” Fan, or Not A Fan?

*

   Fandom does not have levels. You can’t be a Level 5 fan or a Level 12 fan, or a Level 20 superfan. That is my opinion. Of course, lots of folks will disagree.

   My belief is that fandom is declarative, just like becoming a Muslim; if you say the words out loud, you automatically become the thing. There is no trial period, no probation, no test, and no prerequisites. For instance, if you say, “I am a huge fan of the Royal family!” you just became a fan of the Royal family — it really is as simple as that.

   Like saying you love something.

   “I love strawberries.”

   “No you don’t. You don’t KNOW strawberries like I do, and I love them WAY more than you ever will.”

   Preposterous, right?

   What we have here is a dad protecting his children from “everyone” and effectually keeping things “just between us.” Ernie Gygax got in trouble for that one, even though it was his business partner who posted the image.

   It means that TSR (that’s the sixth or seventh one) wants to keep playing tabletop role-playing games in the same style as before. But the picture here absolutely sent the wrong message.

   Same goes for this—

   Warhammer wants to keep its lore exactly as it was established in the beginning — but they still need Lyla Mev’s and Dana Howl’s and Senasuke’s and Sword ’n’ Steele’s business, as well as the countless other female gamers and hobbyists who don’t have YouTube channels but play the game and paint miniatures nonetheless.

   So, Just Us needs Everyone’s business, or else they’re gonna go bankrupt.

   “True” Tolkien fans still need everyone else to watch the movies and subscribe to Amazon Prime… or else there would be no movies or shows.

   If you remove all the people who don’t know Middle-earth all that well, and if you subtract the money they spent to see Peter Jackson’s movies or buy the DVDs, those trilogies would’ve flopped for sure.

   Amazon is making a show for everyone — your mom, your fourteen-year-old niece, your Sri Lankan landlord, people in retirement homes, et cetera.

   Hardcore fans will always disagree. Obviously.

   One YouTuber said that The Rings of Power is fake fan fiction. At first, I was puzzled by that. I’m a fan of Conan the Barbarian… I write a novella about Conan… but… it’s fake… so I didn’t really write it? WTF?

   Then I realized the guy didn’t mean [fake] fan fiction, but rather [fake fan] fiction. Okay, that makes more sense, sorta. But it brings us right back to: what in the name of God is a fake fan? Who decides if you’re worthy to love something? Who has that kind of authority?

   It is frightening.

   In MMORPGs, noobs are the Everyone to level 60 trolls’ Just Us.

   And, to a lesser extent, D&D is the Everyone to Pathfinder’s Just Us.

   But this is definitely not restricted to gaming and entertainment.

   The ultra-rich are the biggest of all Just Us clubs. Any society that allows 1% of its people to control more than 50% of the wealth is in R’lyeh-deep trouble.

   Again, Just Us needs Everyone’s business — and debt — in order to be able to remain “Just Us.”

   For the tip of the pyramid to remain the tip of a pyramid, it needs the rest of the pyramid, but for the base of a pyramid to remain the base of a pyramid, it doesn’t need the tip.

   That’s why I believe the base shall win. In the end, Everyone will prevail over Just Us.

Who Can Enter The City

 

   I wouldn’t have thought in-game gatekeeping was still an issue in D&D, but a recent episode on Twitter made me realize that it was still around indeed.

   Someone said that their DM wouldn’t allow one specific character to enter a big city, because of the character’s race. “One of my friends now plays an outcast Mind Flayer,” I replied, “and nobody bothers the party because of it.”

   I got some angry comments.

   One guy said that the townspeople were secretly preparing a bonfire for the entire party.

   Another guy essentially said that my parents should have beaten me when I was a kid. For real.

   I did not reply to such an offensive thing, of course.

   Next would have been something along the lines of “The Catholic priests at the private school you attended when you were 12 should have raped you.” I mean, what’s the difference between being way out of line and being way, way out of line? It’s just one more “way.”

   Yeah, those bois are intense. Don’t mess with their game.

   Are there haters like that in the Monopoly fandom?

   I once played Monopoly with the Arkham Horror monsters and gates active on the board, and no one took offense to that. I once played Munchkin without the curse cards, because my nephew was bummed by those, having drawn five or six in a row. Again, no reprimands from the community, and no threats.

*

   Back in ’85 or ’86 my friend Thierry insisted on playing a Drow magic-user. They all told him he was crazy — although nobody said his parents didn’t beat him enough.

   Three years later, the first Drizzt novel hit the shelves; suddenly, Thierry wasn’t that crazy after all.

   Same goes for Illithids.

   Nowadays, Drows can pretty much go wherever they want. And what about Tieflings? They literally look like little devils — no bonfire for them? Kill the squid man, but the devils are okay? It’s absurd. Try to be coherent in your bigotry, at the very least.

   In Gloomhaven, nobody bothers you at the city gates. Inox have three colossal horns on their heads, like demons. Valraths look terrifying. And what about those Harrowers? They’re just like Mind Flayers! What are the city guards doing?

   I’ll tell you what they’re doing — they’re not discriminating based on physical appearance. Horns? Tentacles? Green skin? Welcome to Gloomhaven, as long as you’re not EVIL.

   Burning strangers at the stake just because they don’t look like everybody else: are we still there? And who is “everybody else” exactly?

   Maybe in Warhammer Fantasy, with the mistrust and paranoia and zealous Witch Hunters everywhere, I get it — the militia won’t let you through Nuln’s gates if you have tentacles on your face. But D&D? This is a game that has Aasimars and Loxodons and Dragonborn and Autognomes, for crying out loud!

   Anyway, if a fantasy city is ever attacked from within, OF COURSE the culprits are gonna be people who look perfectly innocuous. So.

   Since you have no way of telling who’s dangerous and who isn’t, why not let everyone in? What’s the use of stopping some races and not the others?

   Who even makes that call? The city guards? They’re not experts—

   What about all the spells like polymorph or alter self? Perhaps this person is just a Grey Elf who missed their save and were polymorphed into something vaguely resembling an Illithid. Do the guards manning the city gates have any idea what an Illithid actually is? A level 14 wizard, sure — but a city guard?

   What if a Duodrone shows up with three Monodrones in tow? I’m sure they have their reasons, since the One and the Prime works in mysterious ways… but what will the city guards decide? They have probably never even heard of Modrons. Allow these baffling beings into the city, or not?

   And while we’re at it, why do people role-play the actual “entering the city” part? Just say, “You get to Waterdeep, you settle in the usual tavern / inn, and the next morning, right on time, your contact shows up with the map and the advance payment agreed upon.”

   You just saved three hours there.

   Seriously, how much time do you have on your hands? Cut to the chase.

   My friends and I only play about 8 hours of D&D per year.

   The Tomb of Horrors begins with the lines, “The party has arrived at the site of the demi-lich’s last haunt. Before them is a low, flat topped hill, about 200 yards wide and 300 yards long. Only ugly weeds, thorns, and briars grow upon the steep sides and bald top of the 60' high mound.” Have you any idea how much longer that adventure would have been if it actually began in a big city like Irongate or Greyhawk? The ranger needs new arrows, but the arrowmaker is a Montague, and the ranger is a Capulet… It’ll never end. You’ll never get to that Tomb.

   The Illithid homeworld is the size of the rings of Saturn. How many North Americas and South Americas and Africas and Europes and Asias and Australias can you fit on the rings of Saturn? Hundreds of them. So there must be trillions of Illithids living there. D&D adventurers only ever encounter the ruling class — privileged, high-psionics Illithids — the ones who get to sail out into space aboard Nautiloid ships, and the ones who get to probability travel.

   But there ought to be so many, many, many others.

   You’ve got your Illithid Leonardos da Vinci, your Illithid Oprahs, your Illithid Confuciuses, your Illithid Kanye Wests, your Illithid Angela Merkels… And any one of those might leave their homeworld unbeknownst to their Elder Brain or Illithid Putin, because random rifts happen and freak wormholes happen. If your Tabaxi rogue went from Faerûn to Khorvaire just by stepping through a weird light, it can happen to Illithids, too. And perhaps some of them are quite glad to leave their hive world. Statistically, not all of them like it there.

   I said it before in my August 2019 post: if a race is monolithic, if each and every member of a race is exactly the same, then it’s not a race but a caricature.

   Gith led a slave revolt a long time ago. Why wouldn’t it happen again? Those low-psionics Illithids can — and will — be pissed at some point, won’t they?

   The Illithid in my game is such an outcast; he led an all-too-brief thrall uprising, but the whole thing was quashed in a matter of days.

   You have Jarlaxle and Drizzt, a Drow rebel and a Drow heretic; they exist, and nobody denies that, not even the guy who wants parents to spank their kids. So why not an Illithid Spartacus?

   Bottom line is, I don’t care what Venger Baphomet thinks. It’s the fun that matters, not the rules and not even the lore.

   If one of my players wants to play friggin’ Asmodeus, I’ll find a way to make it happen. Maybe there was a coup — a hostile takeover of Asmodeus’ physical form. The real Asmodeus is now trapped in a puny Human body — someone named Junko — while Mephistopheles himself now occupies Asmodeus’ body. “Junko” needs the help of the PCs to expose the usurper and reclaim his throne. Something like that.

   Forty years ago, they wouldn’t allow a Drow to enter any city or town.

   Now you’ve got K’thriss working for one of the Masked Lords of Waterdeep.

   Stay ahead of the curve. Let the people in.

   (Further reading: Flintlocks and Witchery has a great article titled “Evil or Something Like It,” published August 28, 2019.)

The Optimization Community

 

   As a game designer, the more tools you give to the players, the more options you provide, the more combinations and sequences you allow, the more you’re chipping away at your game’s human experience. The more things players need to compute, manage, or plan, the less they really interact with each other socially.

   In chess, the players usually don’t talk at all — there are way too many scenarios and moves to consider. In MTG, some players talk, but not that much — there’s a lot to keep track of. In Gloomhaven, since it’s collaborative, the players do interact — but there are long periods of silence at the table when each one is busy considering which initiative to pick, which action combo to select, depending on which room they’re in and which monsters they’re facing.

   I played enough Gloomhaven to retire my Brute and start playing a Beast Tyrant, but I’m convinced my Brute could have been much more effective in combat. Hardcore players would have looked at my deck and character sheet, and said, “This sucks. You need this perk, and you need to add two of those things in your attack deck, and you need to pick that third level action card and always couple it with that fourth level card… and then you’re gonna kick some serious butt.”

   Dicebreaker have a nice video on YouTube in which they explain why they loved Old School Essentials. No skills! No feats! Just say what your character is attempting to do, and roll the dice! They’re absolutely right. It’s liberating. 5e can be so complex sometimes, it’s almost Gloomhaven — the DM rolls dice for the monsters, and nothing else. Players already have all the information, all the DCs they need, in their feats’ descriptions. The DM is only there to witness.

  

   This screenshot was perfect for a post about optimization — but I didn’t take the time to properly research this so-called “invincible” build. If you’re interested, look it up yourself. I have full confidence in the capabilities of those who make such things.

   If there is a way — any way — to do something in a game, somebody’s gonna find it. I mean, these guys are relentless. You have to admire that.

   If there is a way to finish Scenario number 15 in just 8 rounds in Gloomhaven, somebody’s gonna do it.

   If there is a way to build an invincible wizard in D&D, somebody’s gonna do it—

   Look at good old Mille Bornes. There isn’t an infinity of choices there: you can only ever have 6 cards in your hand; you want to hold on to any Remedy Cards you happen to draw — spare tire, gasoline, repairs — but also want to keep a few Hazard Cards up your sleeve (so to speak) to be able to slap them on other players when they make too much headway. And you want the biggest Distance Cards, of course.

   

   You can’t optimize Mille Bornes much. It’s not MTG. It’s not Gloomhaven. There is no “deck building” to speak of. But the players interact with each other and trash-talk a lot, but in a friendly manner.

   “Another 100 miles? Here’s a Speed Limit for you. Boom!”

   “You bastard. I’ve got an Accident right here with your name on it.”

   “Slap it on Julie: she’s at 525 miles already!”

   “She’s got the damn Safety.”

   “I hate you!”

   I said it before and I’ll say it again: in D&D and in any other tabletop role-playing game, the most important part of your build is you. Not which feats or Archetype or subclass you pick. You. Your personality. Your attitude. Your sense of humor. Your ability to gracefully accept failure, and perhaps even overplay it a little, just to make everything more dramatic.

   Viari was a memorable character, not because of Dual Wield Mastery, not because of Supreme Sneak, but because of the player himself: Patrick Rothfuss.

   Optimization is a marketing gimmick. There are more players than there are DMs — so why not give more agency to the players? why not sell more books directly to the players?

   Wizards of the Coast may be putting some DMs in a tight spot by doing that. Indeed, if something is in this or that book, why wouldn’t you accept it at your table? It’s like if an actor showed up on a movie set and said to the director, “I can jump 200 feet. I can do it once in the film.” But the shoot is Schindler’s List, and there is no 200-foot jump anywhere in the script…

   I’m still DMing in an old-fashioned way. I’m the one who spends 300 hours building terrain and painting minis, so I get to decide.

   Want an example? Here’s one: invisibility no longer exists in my game, except for some very specific monsters. The spell, invisibility, doesn’t exist, and Potions of Invisibility are merely a legend.

   Why? Here’s why.

   Between 2007 and 2013, I ran a campaign based on the HBO’s Carnivàle, and the party’s wizard had the ability to make himself and up to 3 of his friends invisible. As soon as a remote possibility of danger arose, that’s the first thing they always did. “Okay — we’re all invisible.”

   After three or four years of that, I decided to give them a taste of their own medicine; the coven of witches knew they were coming, and all 12 witches were invisible, too. They had left all the doors ajar, just not enough for anyone to be able to slip through: whenever a door moved, a witch targeted that area with attack spells.

   But it proved to be one of the most boring fight scenes I ever ran in my entire life.

   A month later, a curse deprived the wizard of his mass invisibility spell. Good riddance.

   When this whole “Carnivàle” campaign ended, I started a new miniatures campaign — something I hadn’t done since 1987. And I thought: if I start buying and painting minis again, I don’t want invisible characters or monsters. Your miniature is here but this monster can’t see you but you can see the monster but not this other monster there which is invisible too but I’m still putting the miniature on the table because I worked 9 hours on it…

   My point is, if you don’t want to suffer through something tedious and painful — don’t. Aren’t you the one who invests most of your time in this thing? You also deserve to have fun; you’re not there just to roll dice for the monsters.

   Invisibility is a pain in your ass? No more invisibility!

   Invincible Tortle wizards cramp your style? No Torles in your world!

   The Players Handbook / Dungeon Masters Guide divide was bad for business, because players didn’t buy the DMG. In 1985 when Unearthed Arcana hit the shelves, both players and Dungeon Masters snatched it — a win for TSR.

   Now, every new sourcebook is marketed towards players and DMs. Always.

   But DMs still have the last say.

   I can imagine a new D&D player who buys three different books at $30 a pop, reads them all, studies them, places sticky notes throughout, and then builds the most awesome, the most perfectly optimized character… and when they find that elusive group to play with, the DM says, “This race doesn’t exist in my world, neither does that Archetype—”

   What a bummer for new players, right? They bought three books, studied them thoroughly, and for what?

   Perhaps we’re seeing the beginning of a D&D schism: WotC vs individual Dungeon Masters. Maybe one day individual DMs are gonna be the game’s biggest problem.

   In MMORPGs, that split does not exist, because the Dungeon Master is the video game company itself — a bunch of servers stacked in a datacenter somewhere. If the company “publishes” a new race, a new feat, it’s automatically approved, and allowed everywhere in the game; there are no fussy individual Dungeon Masters to say, “Actually, my world doesn’t have that.”

   Unless you are an Adventurers League DM, you really don’t have to allow anything you don’t want at your table. Hell, I got rid of invisibility, and no longer allow multiclassing, either, because switching careers all the time is Warhammer, not D&D — you were a pedlar, then a bodyguard, then a bounty hunter, then a slaver, then a mercenary captain, then a judicial champion, and finally, a witch-hunter? What the bejesus is going on? Who does that?

   

   Why not a Rat Catcher Pharaoh Shukenja Troubadour, while you’re at it?

   So — is there a way to reconcile the two sides?

   In my opinion, those two sides can be mutually exclusive in a good way.

   My nephew plays in 4 or 5 different games of Minecraft. One game is just for building castles and stuff all by himself. Another game is to interact with his friends and have a good time. Another one is to get bullied by powerful (i.e. adult) players wielding “hacked” superweapons. Et cetera.

   Same goes for D&D. If you have fun building optimized / invincible characters, have at it, go crazy, build 10 of them if you want. That’s an entire long weekend of pure fun, all by yourself.

   But then, come game day, you can play that Miniature Giant Space Hamster with 1 Hit Point, and if you are a really great player, the Space Hamster’s gonna steal the show, and be way more memorable than any dragon tamer pirate ranger.

   The short answer is: You Can Do Both.

   The long answer is: sooner or later, you’ll have to be able to do both.

   You claim to be a veteran tabletop role-player, don’t you? That’s great. But you have to be able to play puny roles, too.

   In Pendragon, I once played another player’s squire. It was my choice. I wasn’t forced to do it. Some of the other guys at the table made fun of me, because we were young, and full of testosterone — but I don’t regret playing this character: it was an awesome, formative experience.

   In Nephilim, I once played an entire game as a rat. My human host had died in combat, and we were right in the middle of the desert, with no other humans to possess. So, instead of losing lots and lots of precious Vitae, I reincarnated into a nearby rat — and played the rest ot the adventure like that. Another player (whose host had survived the desert encounter) carried me in his backpack. Later in that adventure, I had to fight a ferret. A normal ferret. And it was hard. I still remember that combat. When my rat finally killed the ferret, it was more satisfying than cutting down a goddamn Mind Flayer!

   In Star Wars, I once played a protocol droid. No combat skills. Just talk. So, I talked a lot.

   In Bloodlust, I once played a magical scimitar. My human wielder was played by another guy, and I constantly had to deal with him and try to make him do what I wanted, and go where I wanted to go. Like Elric with his evil, sentient sword.

   Optimize all you want, build fine-tuned characters, but if you aspire to become a well-rounded tabletop role-player, one day or another you’re gonna have to play somebody else’s henchman — or scimitar — or Space Hamster — or droid. You have no choice; it’s like medicine; you’ll have to perform every procedure at least once, or they won’t give you a degree. Yes, that includes at least one rectal exam⸻

   

   This one’s too much for me. It reminds me of that cream pie blunderbuss in Steve Jackson’s Toon. Sure, it’s perfectly optimized — but what the hell, are you a Sun Elf, or Bugs Bunny?

   

   So, should you “ready your ranger” in minutes, or build that super-optimized troll slayer maharajah ranger?

   Again — and in conclusion — why not do both?

   Things are not gonna change. We get a new sourcebook every 4 months. We’ve got more numbers to crunch, and so we crunch more numbers: we keep trying to emulate what AIs do, instead of getting better at what humans do, and optimizing that.

The Universal Rule of Crap

   Let’s hop on that buzz train and talk about The Rings of Power — but not right away. It’s a 10-minute read before we actually get to the Rings. I’ll make it worth your while, My Precious Reader.

   At first glance, this post may seem like a lengthy rant, but it isn’t. It’s just that this time around, Yours Truly is gonna have to list a lot of crappy things before he gets to the point. I’m not mad. I’m not cranky. But Chris Gore is right: 99% of films today are garbage.

   Important things need to be said — so bear with me, ladies and gentlemen.

   Here we go.

   I saw all three Lord of the Rings movies, and they were crap.

   Gimli doesn’t even know that Khazad-dûm has fallen over a thousand years before. It’s absurd.

   Somehow, Saruman knows there is a balrog lurking within the mines of Moria; he’s got a god damned book with a PICTURE of the balrog in it. What the actual fuck bucket? That’s ridiculous.

   Shelob, one of my favorite characters, doesn’t even speak. Why?

   And please, can we all agree that the Eye of Sauron is a metaphor? With the palantír stolen from Minas Ithil, Sauron can “see” things far away, but it’s not a huge flaming eye sitting on top of Barad-dûr.

 

   In the book, Gandalf and Saruman never fight. In Ralph Bakshi’s movie, the wizards do have a clash of sorts, but it is rather abstract and very elegant, like a Certamen in Ars Magica. In Peter Jackson’s film, Saruman and Gandalf violently fling each other against walls and ceilings — two disheveled old men fighting with their canes.

   This scene is getting worse with each new iteration.

   It’s a mess. It’s a disgrace.

   Nevertheless, for an entire generation, Peter Jackson’s trilogy is the best thing they ever saw.

 

   I get it. Teens and young adults were awestruck in 2001 and 2002 and 2003; The Lord of the Rings movies arrived at the best possible moment — like D&D for Gen X, or like the first set of Magic: The Gathering for older Millennials. Right into that sweet, sweet spot, and right when you’re ready to embrace it and fully, wholeheartedly enjoy it.

   It’s okay.

   But — still — those movies are crap.

   Don’t worry, though; for my friends and I, the magical-thing-that-completely-changed-our-lives-and-rocked-our-world was First Edition AD&D — and it was crap.

   I saw The Hobbit, part 1, and it was embarrassingly bad. I did not bother with the other two, and I never will—

   Thorin and Company are attacked by orcs, and — outta the blue — Gandalf finds the entrance to a VERY LONG tunnel that leads directly to Rivendell. Seriously?

   And it happens to be the one night of the year when Elrond can decypher the moon-letters on Thrór’s map. Moon-letters? What is that?

   And Radagast somehow managed to steal the Witch-king’s own blade? Appalling.

   [refills coffee cup]

   I’m not done yet. Like I said — bear with me, please.

   The Phantom Menace was crap.

   Attack of the Clones was crap.

   I didn’t see Revenge of the Sith, but I assume it was crap.

   I saw The Force Awakens, and it was hard sun-baked donkey manure.

   I haven’t seen The Last Jedi nor The Rise of Skywalker. I don’t watch The Mandalorian. Haven’t seen The Book of Boba Fett... So I can’t comment on those films and series.

   Even Return of the Jedi was crappy. Luke walks a penis-shaped plank floating over a giant, gaping vagina full of teeth. Really? And those Ewoks. Come on…

   The Dungeons & Dragons movie with Jeremy Irons was horseshit. Why would the next one be any different? Are the people involved not almost the same as in 2000?

   The American Gods show was a glistening pile of stinking crap, despite Neil Gaiman’s personal involvement. I can’t imagine what the man had to endure with countless TV execs vetoing his every decision literally all the time.

   By now, you’re probably thinking, “So this guy believes everything is crap?”

   No, I don’t. Some things are excellent. You just need to find them.

   Remember The Incredible Hulk, the 1978 TV show starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno? That was awesome. Bixby is so good as doctor David Banner — he makes you feel all sorts of emotions for the character. This show wasn’t overly “Marvelized.” It wasn’t at all infantilizing. And Lou Ferrigno, well, he is to the Hulk what Adam West is to the Batman: a legend.

   Remember Conan the Barbarian, the first one, back in 1982? Now that was something, wasn’t it? It’s not a cinematic monument, but it isn’t annoyingly clean and cliché, and it isn’t a god damn caricature of an age past. It’s grim, ugly, and brutal. Even Ridley Scott’s Gladiator looks like an upbeat period piece next to Conan.

   The Laundry Files, by Charles Stross, is an excellent series of books. Smart, engrossing, funny and terrifying all at the same time. Nothing in there is either easy or lazy. Stross challenges your brain, and your brain takes on that challenge. It’s a wonderful treat.

   Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen, the 2019 TV show, is as close to perfection as you can get. In his movie, Zack Snyder refused to include the squid; he said, “it would take 15 minutes to explain the squid.” Without any explanation, Lindelof showed us the squid in all its grotesque glory — and his Watchmen won 11 Emmys. Do not explain, ever. Just tell a story.

   The X-Files. The Sopranos. Breaking Bad. Sherlock (the one with Cumberbatch)…

   Good things exist out there… but they are few and far between, that’s for sure.

   It is our unkillable, gullible optimism that seems to be the problem. We always assume that the next thing will be mind-blowingly good. Like Dune. Like Kenobi. Like The Rings of Power.

   Before that infamous Vanity Fair article came out, I saw people say stuff like “Counting the days already! CAN’T WAIT!!!” or “September 2: date reserved and locked in!!!”

   We’re so dumb. We never learn.

   We assume the next thing will be good — and it’s almost always crap.

   And it is positively futile to suddenly realize that something is crap 3 years after the fact. You already paid for the thing. You already fed the system.

   Again, I haven’t seen The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, but I witnessed SO MUCH hype when those movies first came out. And now, 3 years later, I keep seeing things like this—

 

   Where were you 3 years ago? We needed people saying those things out loud back then; now, it’s useless, because The Crap Factory already made its money, because The Steady Production Of Crap continues unabated. We need to learn to sniff out the crap earlier — waaay earlier — in the process.

   It’s like “the Emperor has no clothes.” In the beginning, no one says a damn thing, but as soon as one voice states the obvious, everybody start to pile up like crazy. It becomes a pop-up echo chamber.

   YouTuber PhilosophiCat said that George R.R. Martin’s books were “about nihilism — where good never triumphs, and potential heroes die meaningless deaths, and the world descends deeper and deeper into misery, chaos, and despair.”

   Well, that’s Tuesday in the Middle Ages.

   Yes, the Cathars were brutally exterminated — a senseless mass murder. Babies, too.

   Yes, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake — a meaningless death.

   It’s real life, it’s not Disney.

   If and when you give the audience exactly what they want, it becomes absolute crap.

   I remember the series finale of NBC’s Grimm. Literally five minutes after it ended, someone tweeted, “EVERYONE’S ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

   That’s your audience. That is us.

   In CBS’s Blue Bloods, all fans seem to care about is whether Danny is gonna end up with his detective partner, Maria. They don’t understand that the screenwriters already used this storybeat once in the show, when Jamie got together with his partner on the job, Edit. Writers won’t do this twice in the same show: it would look stupid. And then what — Frank with Abigail?

   I’m fed up with Mulder marrying Scully, Patrick Jane getting together with Lisbon, and Castle getting together with Beckett. The audience is dumb.

 

   There are two or three different fan film “trailers” of The Silmarillion out there, and they’re all unadulterated crap. You get a glimpse of some dark tower with a red thing glowing on top of it; there’s something resembling a volcano in the distance, with legions of orcs marching next to it; then you see 8 or 10 silhouettes walking in single file on a mountain ridge in an astounding vista. In short, stuff that you have seen before. There’s absolutely nothing new there.

   But it gives you an insight into the public’s mind. We’re begging for the same movie over and over again. We don’t want new. We want recognizable. We want well-known.

   For me, it’s a huge relief whenever potential heroes die meaningless deaths and the world descends deeper and deeper into misery, chaos, and despair.

   Indeed, it is real. It hurts. It stays with you.

   Planet of the Apes, the first one, doesn’t have a happy ending — and it sticks with you for a long while.

   Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem doesn’t have a happy ending — and it sticks with you.

   Good shows are being cancelled because of poor viewership. Networks shouldn’t do that. For Life was excellent, and we needed much more than just two seasons of it. What we don’t need is 10 Fast and Furious movies.

   As I said at the beginning: I’m not mad, and I’m not cranky. I won’t even watch The Rings of Power, because I don’t have Amazon Prime, have no intention of getting it, and the whole thing is gonna be crap anyway.

   Believe me, I’d like them to prove me wrong, but they won’t.

   It’s gonna be crap.

   Not because of Sophia Nomvete, the actress who plays Disa — she’s probably awesome. Not because of Ismael Cruz Córdova, the actor who plays Arondir — he’s probably amazing. Not because of full metal jacket Galadriel. But because Crap is a recipe, and most industry execs follow it to the letter.

   They are physically, intellectually, and most of all, contractually incapable of writing good, compelling stories.

   Even when they BEGIN with a good, compelling story — like American Gods, the novel — they end up turning it into vile, inexcusable crap. Really, what else can I say?

   If Amazon were to actually deliver a splendid, formidable story, like HBO’s Rome, for example, then all the rest wouldn’t matter anymore — who should or shouldn’t have a beard, who should or shouldn’t wear a full suit of plate mail, et cetera.

   Since the Vanity Fair article and the Super Bowl trailer, we have this enormous shitstorm going on, and the focus of all that indignation is on a couple of small, immediately noticeable points. Almost no one seems to focus on the true, concealed, overwhelming, central issue: a deep-rooted bulletproof entrenched systemic crap-factory culture.

   That’s the real problem.

   We have a living body lying on a table in front of us, and that body is the entertainment industry. It has cancer, a couple warts here and there, and an ingrown toenail. Since we’re powerless to cure the cancer itself, we just stand there and argue about how to best cure those warts and that nail—

   But the body’s still dying, and it’s the cancer that’s killing it, not the damn warts.