Sunday, January 8, 2017

GM Philosophy: Death or Consequences


Historically, D&D has been both too indulgent and too heavy-handed in its approach to being wounded in combat.  On the one hand, magical healing is cheap and easy, and fixes everything.  There is very little that can happen to you in a typical D&D combat that can’t be fixed by the first-level healing abilities of a cleric, druid, or paladin (from 2e onwards), or even a bard (starting in 3e).  Sure, cure light wounds can’t fix being poisoned, or blinded, but, then again, how often do those things come up in combat?  There isn’t much restriction in saying that magical healing can’t regrow a lost limb if there’s no way to actually lose the limb in combat in the first place ... and there isn’t, in most editions of the game.  You can be at zero hit points—which is the fantasy RPG equivalent of flatlining—and receive magical healing, and not only are you magically alive again, but you immediately leap up and start hacking monsters like nothing ever happened.  No recovery period, no lingering weakness, just bam! you’re once again a killing machine at top efficiency.

On the other hand, if by some mischance you do manage to die, then you’re just boned.  Sure, there’s raise dead and similar spells to allow characters to ignore even the worst possible outcome of being wounded, but those are very high-level spells, with the net effect that, by the time you can cast them, you probably don’t need them any more.  Your biggest chance of dying is when you’re low-level, when neither you nor anyone in your party is even close to being able to cast raise dead (or resurrection, or restoration, or regeneration, or even reincarnation, which is about as lame a death-defying “R” spell as there is).  Of course, you could hire some high-level cleric to cast it for you, but that requires a lot of gold ... which, again, at low levels you’re unlikely to possess.  And, even if your party has the cash, they’ve still got to stop what they’re doing, perhaps right in the middle of fighting their way through the dungeon to the ultimate boss fight, battle their way back out to the surface (carrying your lifeless corpse), and then trek back to town, lay out a huge wad of gold pieces, and finally start all over again.  And historically it has been ridiculously easy to die in D&D: Gygaxian lore is full of stories of instant death for characters and potentially apocryphal quotes like “I can’t tell you how you died, because your next character might enter this room too.”

So, overall, traditional D&D has had no consequences for getting hurt, until you’re dead, at which point the consequences are overwhelming.  And recent editions haven’t improved the situation.  Oh, sure: they’ve attempted to address problem #2 by making it harder to die.  Nowadays, instead of being dead as soon as you get to 0 hit points, you’re only dying at that point (to steal a phrase, you’re only mostly dead), and, depending on which edition we’re talking about, it can be anywhere from trivial to convoluted to slip over to the other side.  But this doesn’t really address problem #2: it only postpones it.  It makes death a bit less likely, but it’s still exactly as much of a pain in the ass when it finally does happen.  And their solution to problem #1 is to put their fingers in their ears and repeat “there is no problem!” over and over until we almost believe it.

What it all comes down to is consequences.  If you play a roleplaying game where there is no possibility of dying, there is nothing at stake.  The risks are not real, and you have no motivation to play it smart, to avoid rushing into danger, to occasionally decide to back down and live to fight another day.  Because you know you’ll live today.  I had a game once where I (as the GM) described hordes of goblins guarding an objective, and my players said, “okay, we’ll just go in there and kill them all.”  Because they knew they could, and they knew it might take more rounds than the typical combat, but so what?  Eventually they would prevail, because the goblins couldn’t possibly kill them.  They’re goblins, after all.  What’s the worst they could do?  “They’d have to crit me just to hit me,” one of my mathier players pointed out.  “So one in 20 will do a little damage.  There’s, what? a hundred of them?  So about 5 of ’em will do a little damage.  I’ve got dozens of hit points and the cleric could heal me if I needed it, which I won’t.  In fact, let me save you a bit of trouble and I’ll work out exactly how many of them I can kill every round, so that way you’ll know exactly how many rounds before they’re all dead.”  Back of the envelope calculations does not an epic battle make, and I wasn’t even looking for an epic battle.  I just wanted them to solve a problem without slaughtering all the natives for once.

So there must be consequences.  Sometimes you’ll read articles on the Internet about how D&D was actually better when you could die at the drop of a hat.  These are good articles, by knowledgeable, erudite players.  But I think they miss the point.  What they’re really saying is that the game is no good if there aren’t consequences.  And I don’t disagree with that at all.

But is death the only possible consequence? the only consequence of consequence?  You see, there’s a pretty big problem with death: creating a new character is a huge investment of time and effort.  And I personally, as a GM, have already talked about why I play D&D and my philosophy that an RPG is a shared story, and, as in any story, character is king.  So I not only want my players to put the normal amount of effort into creating their characters—no shortcuts or pregens or any of that nonsense—I actually want them to put in extra effort.  I want rich, detailed characters that have extensive backstories.  If I then make it easy for those characers to get blasted into goo by the whim of the dice, what kind of an asshole does that make me?

So there has to be something better.  There have to be consequences, but death is too much.  So the pledge I make my players is, I will not kill your character, unless you agree to it.  We are after all telling a story, and sometimes the characters in a story die, and that’s right, and proper.  If you think your character should die to advance the story, or you just want to try a new character and want to have your existing character go out in a blaze of glory, I’m all for that.  We’ll give them an absolutely glorious death.  But, barring that, I promise you that I won’t kill your character.

But I also promise you that, if you are reckless, or careless, or sometimes just because the dice gods are cruel, there will be consequences.  Every time you hit 0 hit points, there will be a lasting repercussion, and it will not go away just because the party cleric tossed a few healing spells your way.  Maybe it will go away on its own (eventually), or maybe you can undergo a quest to get it sorted, or maybe you’ll just be stuck with it forever ... disabilities make for fantastic roleplaying opportunities, after all.  What sort of consequences are we talking about?  Oh, the possibilities are inifinite.  You could lose a finger.  Or a hand.  Or an arm.  Or a leg, or an eye, or a spleen.  You could be blinded, deafened, lamed, or paralyzed from the waist down.  You could be scarred or burned horribly and have your charisma impacted.  You could suffer a concussion and have your intelligence lowered.  You could go into a coma and wake up days, weeks, or months later ... possibly with a crippling new phobia.  You could be driven partially or completely insane in very creative ways.  You could stub your toe, or you could have to be carried around on a travois by your companions and fed soft foods through a straw.  Don’t ever imagine that there are not fates worse than death.  (For more great ideas on terrible things a GM can do to players, check out this article from Dice of Doom.)

Which is not to say that I want all my players to be living in constant fear.  But a little bit of fear is healthy.  When I tell you “there’s a hundred goblins surrounding the encampment; how will you get in?”, you do not want to tell me that you’re going to hack your way through.  Trust me: this does not end well for you.  And, hey: if you get your hand lopped off, you can always jam on a stylish hook.  Also, an eyepatch makes a lovely fashion accessory.  Or, hell: jam a magical gem into that empty eye socket and scare the living daylights out of any low-level foes you happen to meet.  The possibilities are endless.  So, to the question at hand, I say forget death: I choose consequences.

Insert evil laugh here.









Sunday, January 1, 2017

A Fresh Start


One year ago I told you to have a wonderful 2016.  However, you did not listen to me.  You had a crappy 2016: you let Prince die, and you let David Bowie die, and you let Leonard Cohen die, and you let George Michael die, and you let Carrie Fisher and her mother die, for crying out loud, and you tried to reroute an oil pipeline through sacred Native American lands, and you broke up a nearly-half-century-old agreement while simultaneously depriving the European Union of half its military, and you completely destroyed the third oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, and you let the police kill somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand people, and, worst of all, you elected a sleazy pussy-grabber with ties to white supremacy and the Russian oligarchy to the post which is still, for just a bit longer, considered to be the most powerful in the world.  So, fuck you guys.

I will not tell you to have a wonderful 2017.  I’m not sure 2017 is capable of being wondeful at this point.  I’ll just advise you to have a better 2017 than you did a 2016, because, if it gets any worse, I may have to just sit on the sofa and consume beer and Cheetos until the end finally comes for me.  Either that or I’m gonna hafta start researching how to create the virus which will start the zombie apocalypse, ’cause the point at which The Walking Dead starts looking better than the real world ... that’s some fucked up shit.

So try to calm down a bit for this year, wouldja?  Let’s all just chill out a bit and see if 2017 can be a bit more relaxing, a bit less fatal, and feature signficantly less misogyny and racism.  I’m setting my expectations fairly low here.  Please don’t disappoint me.

Thanks.

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Blessed Be


Some two thousand and two squared squared years ago today, a bloke was born a bit outside of Jersalem who would go on to say some quite interesting and powerful things.  The general gist of his instruction had to do with peace and love and favoring kindness over power, which was quite radical at the time ... and, in many ways, is no less so now.  Today is, traditionally, the day that we are supposed to celebrate his life, and his death, and what it meant and continues to mean to quite a large portion of the world’s populace.

And, sure, maybe it wasn’t exactly today, and maybe it wasn’t exactly 2,016 years ago, and maybe he didn’t say exactly the words we have written down in our holy books, and maybe he really was a divine figure or maybe he was just a guy, and, hell: maybe he never lived at all and the whole thing is entirely made up—I certainly don’t fully subscribe to the religion carried forth in his name—but the weird thing is, whether you believe that everything in the Bible is exactly verbatim true or whether you believe that it’s all crap that feeds the zeal of religious nutjobs or whether you hold one of the many positions somewhere in between those two extremes, the one thing you can’t really ignore is the message.  Here are a few of the things that this fellow supposedly uttered:

Whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.


For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.


What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?


Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.


Give to everyone who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again.


If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.


Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.


Judge not, that ye be not judged.


You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.


So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.


Even if all this is completely fabricated and there never was a Jesus at all—even if the whole thing is 100% fiction—those are some poweful words right there.  Read through those things again, and really think about them.  Does this sound like the typical philosophy of the times round about two millenia ago? or does it sound revolutionary—practically subversive?  The entire story of Jesus is about a person who threatens those in power by teaching people that riches and authority are meaningless and the only way to get ahead in life is to be nice to each other.  No wonder they nailed him to a piece of wood.  Even today, people who preach messages like that are treated similarly: if they can’t be marginalized or demonized, they can always be persecuted and jailed.  We don’t literally crucify anyone any more, but we have our ways.

So this is still a resounding, powerful message, regardless of its source.  It sort of makes me feel like Jewish detective William Kinderman in William Peter Blatty’s Legion, who addresses a crucifix in a Catholic church thusly:

Who are you? God’s son?  No, you know I don’t believe that. ... I don’t know who you are, but you are Someone. ...  Do you know how I know? From what you said.  When I read, “Love your enemy,” I tingle ...  No one from the earth could ever say what you said.  No one could even make it up.  Who could imagine it?  The words knock you down.


I think we forget just how unlikely those words are.  Perhaps they’ve become dulled through repetition.  But they really are quite remarkable.  This is the main reason I love Legion so much: Kinderman—unassuming, Columbo-like, stereotypically Jewish—is the perfect character to remind us that, no, those words are not ordinary just because you’ve heard them a million times.  Love your enemy?  Think of the over two billion Christians in the world: how many can you name who are practicing that philosophy?  Personally, I got to Mother Teresa and Pope Francis and then I ran out.  (And, honestly, I’m not 100% sure about the latter.)  So, yeah: pretty heady stuff there.

So even if you don’t quite subscribe to all—or any—of the bells and whistles of Christianity, it’s worth taking a few moments today to ponder the words that underlie it all.  It’s worth thinking about the fact that, if you’re supposed to be loving your freaking enemies, you can damn well take some time to love your family, and your friends, and your coworkers, and just random people you see on the street.  Take some time to appreciate what you’ve got, and I’m betting that if you’re reading this blog you’ve got a lot.  Give some thanks for it.  You don’t have to direct those thanks to a divine being if that’s not your thing.  Just direct it to someone in your house, or send it out to the universe at large.  Can’t hurt.

From all of us here that make up this fractured, flawed, fantastic, fortunate family—all five humans, two dogs, three cats, one guinea pig, one bearded dragon, multiple fish, snails, shrimp, and an African dwarf frog named Jeff-O—we wish that everyone reading these words is as blessed as we seem to be, even when we can’t remember that we are.  Even if today is not your flavor of end-of-year celebration, we hope that you’re having (or have had, or will have had) a celebration of some kind, and that it was joyous, and loving, and that it lasted exactly as long as you needed it to.  And that it continues to warm you well into the future.

Sunday, December 18, 2016

Descent into Holiday Madness


The time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s is typically a pretty crappy time for blog posts.  Generally speaking, I’m lucky if I can manage two solid posts in that month-and-a-half, which I have already delivered unto you (last week and the week prior).  Sure, they were both posts in my music mixes series, which I find moderately easy to write, even though I know they appeal to a limited segment of my audience, but, as I continually remind you, you really shouldn’t be reading this stupid blog anyhow.  And also plus anyway, one of those music posts was actually totally holidayily relevant, as it presented my second yuletide mix, which kicks some major butt.  So you gotta be happy with that.

And I’m going to admit right up front that I’m writing the next two posts, which are scheduled to appear right on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day (respectively) right now, because, damn: it’s not like I’m going to take time to throw up even an excuse post on a major holiday.  I mean, I like you guys, but I don’t like like you guys, knowwhatImean?  Give a brother a break.  Take some time off from reading silly crap on the Internet and go spend some time with your family.  Next week (and the week after) I’ll have abbreviated posts for you, but nothing to get too excited about.  Please take the opportunity to continue to spend time with your family.  If you find yourself getting sick of your family, feel free to direct your efforts elsewhere, but hopefully somewhere still relaxifying and spirit-refreshing.  Because you deserve it.  No, I mean it: you really do.  You gotta do you, at least every once in a while.  Relax, refresh, and reset.  Come at the new year with a new vim and vigor and vitality.  It’ll be good.  Trust me.

Till then, clink a glass with me and inhale deeply and picture your happy place.  I’m right there with you.