Checklist For a Middlebrow Media Piece on D&D in 2014

HOW TO START

[  ] Receive Wizards of the Coast press release from editor, noting "40th anniversary" and "New Edition."

[  ] Write keystone paragraph on this basis, consulting universal trend story template 44B, "Hip to Be Square."

IN SOME ORDER, INCLUDE MOST OF THESE

[  ] Recall either: A: dim memories of your own high school campaign;  B: those weird kids playing in the corner of the student center

[  ] Note nerd stigma

[  ] YET! IT IS NOW HIP TO BE SQUARE: mention two or more trends from list: Peter Jackson films, World of Warcraft, "Game of Thrones", Community 

[  ] Note satanic panic

[  ] Disseminate, without exactly dispelling, one further stigma from list: no girls play; mental instability; steam tunnel high jinks; table play in costume; game revolves around killing and stealing

[  ] Recite cool and successful people who have played, including at least three of: Vin Diesel, Stephen Colbert, Junot Diaz, any big name SF/fantasy author, anyone from D&D With Porn Stars

[  ] Google "history of D&D", follow link to Amazon, read two pages of Playing At The World, glaze over, fill in facts from Wikipedia instead

[  ] Describe play, including funny dice/DM control/player freedom, complex rules/wild imagination, obsession with achievement/no way to win; point out paradoxes if writing high-middlebrow

[  ] Illustrate with dice, figures, nerds, game art in some combination

[  ] Cite/invent benefits of playing including creativity, literacy, numeracy, problem solving, preparation for an increasingly surreal "real" world predicated on escapism and self-invention, favorable comparison to video games

[  ] Find parent teaching their kid to play, or be that parent; makes good "face to the future" closer

Is-Book-Isms

In fiction writing you may have heard of the said-book-ism -- the overly descriptive dialogue synonym that went out of style around the 1970's largely due to its naming and shaming in the Turkey City Lexicon.

Well, if you're writing adventure scenarios you shouldn't be writing dialogue. Really. But there's a parallel in scenario descriptions: let's call it the "is-book-ism."

An idol of a horned demon looms over the room.
An idol of a horned demon dominates the room.
An idol of a horned demon commands the room.
An idol of a horned demon squats in the room.
An idol of a horned demon stands in the room.
An idol of a horned demon occupies the room.
An idol of a horned demon exists in the room.
An idol of a horned demon can be found in the room.

All to avoid the humble verb "to be" with its drabness and its insinuations of the passive voice...

An idol of a horned demon is in the room.

Most of these locutions are called out as cliches in the Fantasy RPG Bingo Card page by Ryan Macklin (refresh several times to get the picture). But is this fair?

Writing RPG scenario text is a unique literary enterprise. It's best compared to writing stage directions in a play, or the art directions in a comic book script. At its best, the genre works this way: a scenario author creates vivid images and interesting contingencies in the mind of the reader, the gamemaster, which she or he then describes to the players, who in turn react, unlocking more images and contingencies from the GM. Let's call this the GM-In-The-Middle Theory.

Trying to cut out the GM-In-The-Middle and communicate directly author-to-player, through boxed read-aloud text, is a widely and justly denounced "cheat" in this procedure. Having ruled that out, how then to write the module text in a way that helps the GM communicate and interact with the players?

Useful principles emerge from the GM-In-The-Middle Theory, if you consider you are writing for the players through their characters. So, don't describe anything the players will never get to know. Write the most apparent things first, then the more subtle things, then things that can only be known by interacting. Don't force the characters' reactions.

A harder question is, how deeply should these descriptions be written? Some have advocated a minimal, list-like format, to try to break the habit of read-aloud; dispensing with the humble "is" in much the same way that the Russian language does. I've never been happy or comfortable with this.

The GM-In-The-Middle approach explains why: to work in this way, the writing must create a fully formed and vivid image in the mind of the GM, an image that he or she envisions and believes in. Reading someone else's list makes me feel like I'm taking inventory in a dollhouse. Reading prose, even prose with archaic or formulaic or dungeon-kitsch elements, can transport the GM so that the job of description becomes natural. Perhaps the prose can furnish a few bright and lapidary phrases that make it through to the players, but the heavy lifting should happen directly through imagery -- just as someone who is fluent in a second language forms their words directly from raw thought rather than passing them through a process of conscious translation.

All this supports the Is-Book against its naysayers. As long as the prose is descriptive and evocative, without compromising either mission with cliched or rote genre-copying (who the hell knows what a gambrel roof is anyway?) it's OK to have pillars march away into darkness, idols loom, portcullises menace, balconies survey, and wardrobes dominate.

Distracted, Nobody Noticed The Consultants Are All Men

I know, right? While arguing over the contagiousness and toxicity of two personalities on the list when it comes to gender-and-sexuality issues, nobody - at least looking at the first 20 google hits for "D&D 5th edition consultants male" - has commented that all eight consultants, plus the seven designers, developers and writers, appear to be male. Female names appear in the credits in editing, art direction, and artist roles - and yes, art is important, but also a different post.

I think this hasn't been commented just because it is so obvious and so usual. After all, a recent study identified 85.5% of published tabletop RPG creators as male by name, while only 6% appear to be female. Still, if you are drawing from that pool at random for 15 people there is a 60.5% chance that you will have at least one woman on the team. (Imagine rolling percentile dice for gender 15 times, calculating the odds you will roll at least one 06 or below.) So it's not unimaginable that there could be at least one solitary woman on the panel just by chance. Also not unimaginable that a woman game author or commentator could have, you know, been included on the panel intentionally to give her perspective.

Because for D&D and old school RPGs in particular, there is a thunderous statistical skew towards male creators. Now, when people celebrate gender equality or bemoan its absence they point to people at the table. Indeed, discussing roleplaying with a curious sci-fi fan at a professional conference last week, I was able to answer her gender question quite creditably: my main campaign has 3 women and 3 men and my side game, 2 and 4.

But left aside in that conversation was the almost unrelieved maleness of the top RPG creatives in my blogroll (as of this writing, only Gaming as Women hanging on with a 1 day old post), the module authors I read and use, the gamemaster role that women are less often seen in, and so on.

Often observed: it is easier and more rewarding for our primate social brainbits to personalize inequality, to make it be about pointing out who is a racist or a sexist and so on, than to take on the evidence of inequality that persists even when nice people are making the decisions, and raise hard questions about what accounts for it.

Perhaps after 20 years where DMs who would inflict rape upon their female players' characters are viewed with the same loathing as DMs who would climb up and take a dump on the table so that their otyugh miniature can have a "realistic" nest ... 20 years where most of the mostly male creators mostly "get it" in their writing ... 20 years of having as many men as women at table, as many all-female as all-male groups ... we can have a clear view of which one of these things is true:

1. Creating material for adventure role-playing is just one of those things that average men statistically tend to get into more so than average women, for whatever reason (nature, nurture, culture...) and that reason is mostly legitimate.

2. Creating for adventure role-playing is one of those things that average men authentically enjoy more than average women, but this is for a reason that should be questioned - such as women being put off by games that involve math or complex procedures, as a result of socialization that also forestalls their interest in prestigious careers and science topics.

3. Women would gladly create adventure role-playing stuff as much as men currently do, but they are kept from doing it by the implicit and explicit sexism of men in the field, as well as the message that the sausage-fest sends - that "people like you are not welcome here."

I'll just note that even if you believe #1 is true, that does not let you off the hook for women's participation and representation in the hobby. That just means you treat the 10% of creators who are women with the same consideration that you would treat the ~10% of people who are non-straight, or the ~10% who represent a local ethnic minority.

D&D Meets the Literary Bigtime

This article in the website of record -- the New York Times -- uses the generic form "D&D" but I have to give special props to Junot Diaz. In his Pulitzer-winning novel The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao*, Diaz gives shout-outs to the obscure 80's majesties of Fantasy Games Unlimited (Villains and Vigilantes, Aftermath!), Rolemaster, and holy shit Tekumel and Skyrealms of Jorune. A fuller set of annotations to all the roleplaying, sci-fi and Latin American references, though not as complete as the author-annotated excerpt on Litgenius, is here.

Junot Diaz (photo: ALA)

And here we don't even touch the "role-playing backwash" into fantasy literature I mentioned before. As more or less realist authors, the literati in the NYT article instead are reminiscing about the effect of the real game on its real players. One way to answer the question I previously posed -- "What would literature that draws on role-playing be, without role-playing that draws on literature?"

I also have to say that in a well-run campaign, the experience is literary in a way that cannot be reproduced in a novel. It is a collaboration-through-roles, lived but not written down. As an example, the current metaplot in my 2 1/2 year Band of Iron campaign comes from a new mid-campaign player's starting magic item improvised from two randomly drawn spells (Strength and Hand of Doom), an iron hand which the player then gave a backstory to (discovered exploring an ancient mound), which then fed into the campaign backstory as its purpose as a larger set of iron bodily parts was revealed, and so forth. All developed in real time into a world-pounding mega-plot that has also grafted in third-party adventure modules like Matt Finch's Tomb of the Iron God and Monte Cook's Ptolus.

And oh yeah, as usual New York Times about 4 years late to the trend.

*cover tragi-cluelessly illustrated in the UK edition with a photo of an East Asian youngster (Oh yeah, Wao, sounds Chinese) even though the protagonist is a Dominican-American of Afro-European extraction, who gets his sobriquet through a slurring of "Oscar Wilde."

Positive Negativity

I agree, ruthless criticism is the way for game writing to move forward. Now let me show you who is the best person doing that now. This dude, Bryce Lynch of the Ten Foot Pole blog.

He is insanely prolific doing reviews. He will read a whole One Page Dungeon Contest and comment on each and every entry. His comments on my entries have not been positive but they have helped me step up my game. He will gladly say something is crap and exactly why he thinks that.

BUT  his "darwinism" only extends to games, not people. He doesn't play in the controversy olympics. He reviews modules as modules. He pans Isle of the Unknown but does not say "Look at this lackluster production from the notorious child-rape advocate." At times he outright separates his opinion of the product from that of the person. "C'mon, you can do better, I know you can."

Of course, most of the people he reviews are obscure Dungeon magazine scribes and one-shot module writers, but the way he also treats the micro-celebrities on his list makes you sure that he really is coming from a place of love for the hobby. It makes his criticism of the games more effective.

There is a third way, between dick-jousting and fluffy hugs. Follow the ten foot pole.

Cultural Literacy, Gamer Literacy

Of all the reactions to 5th D&D Basic I find this one most intriguing - that the cultural reference point in the game has shifted from external history and legend (and to be fair, a lot of 1920-1970 pulp literature) to the adventures and novels produced for the D&D game itself.

It's tempting to tell a narrative of decline. But more realistically, then as now, it's only a minority of participants in roleplaying games - especially the mass-market, first-stop kind of game that D&D has always been - who know who Ogier the Paladin was, either in legend or in Poul Anderson. When these players import cultural content from history, legend and literature, they become superior Dungeon Masters and character-concept roleplayers.

In fact, I would say there are more new players now who would know about the Paladins of Charlemagne than about the Dragonlance Saga. Say what you will about the decline of attention spans, for the young people today who catch the history and legend bug, the Internet offers a far more vast resource than anything possible when I was growing up. What's more, it's far easier to find discussions and examples of gaming design and practice online, and that is the stuff that really matters.

If my high school D&D group is any example, I was the only one who could rattle off the differences between Lin Carter's Ganelon Silvermane and John Jakes' Brak the Barbarian; who was in the library every Saturday absorbing Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings and the Macaulay castle books. We had another guy who was imaginative but more with a horror and violence bent; three guys who would go into engineering and IT, who knew fantasy and SF but not the weirder corners of the genre; and a couple of average dudes who were just there to play. But none of this cultural literacy could help me run a better game, and for all I tried to put things like historical Christianity in my dungeon, it was at the core a monster motel with a lot of pointless dressing.

Say what you will about the literary merits of the D&D canon (and the vaunted Appendix N is no Harold Bloom paradise either) -- because it sticks so closely to actual gaming, a discussion of the approach of the GDQ series, versus Dragonlance, versus Forgotten Realms actually has more direct bearing on how a DM would run a campaign. I know the actual name-drops in the new Basic document don't lead you directly there - but again, we have the Internet to point out those easter eggs for the clueless.

The Liderc

OK, here's a little Hungarian folklore critter all written up, from something I am working on...

Spell, magic item, or creature—what is a Liderc? Foremost, an evil thing born of implausible circumstances; a character of 5th level or above must sleep seven nights hatching the unfertilized egg of a black hen in his or her left armpit. If the egg miraculously survives intact (effectively, 7 successive Wisdom/Luck checks at –2 must be passed), on the seventh morning it will hatch a demonic creature.

A Liderc can take three forms: a black cockerel with red-rimmed eyes; a coal-black wingless imp the size of a cat; or a demon lover of the gender desired, human-like, with an off-key beauty. In all forms it has the stats:

HD: 5+2; AC: 3 [16]; MV: 6 (flying, fowl form) / 9 (imp form)/12 (human form); AT: damage d4 bite (fowl, imp) or as human; DF: only takes weapon damage from +2 or higher; saves vs. spells at +5, even spells without a save; Mind: average; Reaction –3;  Morale +2.

The Liderc can change form and perform blink at will, and can perform invisibility, change self, clairvoyance, and knock up to three times each in any given night. If its form is destroyed in combat, it will dissipate, and reappear by its master’s side the next sundown.  A Liderc may have one or two special powers, such as the ability to change into a will-o-wisp form.

While good relations with its master persist, the Liderc will obey his or her every command by night, even erotically. Left to its own devices, the Liderc will nightly steal treasure from the vicinity, stockpiling it for master.

But the Liderc exacts a price; the master’s sleep becomes fitful and oppressive as the Liderc squats on his or her chest, draining life force at 500 xp a night. At zero xp the master is permanently killed, and the Liderc leaves for good, carrying a fresh soul to hell. If relations turn sour, the Liderc finds excuses to refuse the master’s will, while still draining life force nightly.

Born implausibly, the Liderc can only be killed by impossibility. The trick is to have it agree to do a task that it believes to be possible but is actually impossible. Literal-minded, the Liderc will implode on itself in frustration at being unable to complete the task.

And in this case here's what the Liderc left behind:

If counted, there are 9,403 coins stacked into 97 piles, six of which have 96 coins and the rest, 97. This is the final state of the trick by which Arpad III banished his liderc. A better mathematician than the demon, he ordered it to divide the coins into piles of equal number, after determining that the number of coins was prime. Amid the stacks sits all that’s left of the liderc, the original hen’s egg, now blackened. If broken, foul vapors fill the room, with the effects of the stinking cloud spell. All the coins radiate slight evil magic because they received a dying curse from the Liderc. Anyone who takes possession of any part of the treasure and sleeps within 50 feet of it will be plagued by nightmares, will not recover hit points that night, and will lose 100 xp. Zero-level shopkeepers and the like will be found dead in the morning, and there certainly will be questions asked about their dealings the day before (assume that the treasure coins are the first ones spent by the adventurers unless they say otherwise). A remove curse spell will return the treasure to normality.