Articles by Shawn Merwin
Shawn Merwin is a freelance writer/editor and game designer with delusions of adequacy and a penchant for games and stories. He's worked on several organized play campaigns: Living Greyhawk, Xen'drik Expeditions, Living Kalamar, and Living Forgotten Realms to name a few. His design work for Wizards of the Coast includes Dungeon Delve, Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress, and Halls of Undermountain in April 2012. You can follow Shawn on Twitter.
Exploring D&D at DDXP
With the D&D Experience (DDXP) and the first public play of the new D&D rapidly fading away in the rear-view mirror, I have reams of topics I want to discuss. And, of course, 99% of them are in one way or another protected by the NDA that all participants signed. The open playtest announced by Wizards of the Coast is on the horizon though, and then informed discussion is going to pick up dramatically. Until then, there are still aspects of D&D that we can still explore with an eye toward the future.
What I learned—listening to the seminars, playing and DMing, and just sitting and talking with all sorts of people—is that for me the best part of gaming (and the best part of life) is the exploration. During one of the seminars, the D&D Next design team talked about the three pillars of the game: combat, roleplaying, and exploration. I had been thinking about the game in similar terms since the new iteration of D&D was announced, but I never broke it down into that precise configuration. When I started thinking about it in those terms, I realized what I had missed most from my D&D play experience since Second Edition: exploration. But it wasn’t really just about a single form of exploration: the one most commonly associated with the phrase “exploration” is when the players delve into a strange dungeon and draw a map as they go. But there are countless forms of exploration in the game, and the sense of wonder that each form of exploration provides can build a multi-layered experience, taking a roleplaying game from good to great. But I will come back to exploration later.
A Little Bit of DDXP
Some parts of the D&D Experience I can talk about. The most important and exciting of those topics is not necessarily the game itself, but the gamers. I know I’ve probably said this before, but I am nothing if not redundant: I love gamers. Sure, some of us are tools—or can exhibit tool-itude when certain events align, like when we are conscious and in front of a keyboard. But for the most part, everyone I played with was in the “non-tool gamer” category. Everyone was excited to talk about the new rules and the feel of the game during the D&D sessions, but everyone also rolled some dice, acted a little goofy, and contributed to a fun story experience for everyone else at the table. When managed properly by the DM, each player’s exploration of the game and his/her own character’s exploration of the game world adds to the story and the fun.
The convention and the exploration started for me before I even arrived at DDXP, as I shared the six-hour ride from my place to Fort Wayne with fellow Critical-Hitter Phil “ChattyDM” Ménard. I had met him only once, at this past GenCon for a total of 90 seconds. Within an hour we were in tears of laughter, sharing thoughts and ideas about game design, life, and the joys of a single store that can offer the best of America: pepper spray, stun guns, and sugar-free fudge. (The difference among the three? Stun guns don’t leave you retching and gagging while it incapacitates you!) Also, from this moment forward the “orc and pie” trope shall be known in my games as the “orc and wedding cake.”
After a fun first game of 4e D&D in the Ashes of Athas campaign with my fellow members of the Ravenous Halfling Horde (“Halflings always tell the truth because their bodies are too small to contain lies”), it was exploring all of the editions of D&D all the time.
A Great Deal of Exploration
Based on my experiences with previous editions, I wanted to look at how exploration has been a part of the game throughout its history. At DDXP I made a point to ask people about their experiences with the versions of D&D that they have played, and how they interacted with the rules in their games. Talking to people who played before the release of Third Edition (and especially those who played AD&D and those various editions that preceded it or ran parallel to it), a common thread ran throughout their experiences. They admitted happily that they really didn’t know or understand the rules when they first started playing, but that didn’t stop them or their groups from having vast amounts of fun. Even those who did strive for a full understanding of the rules confessed to changing or ignoring large parts of the rules sets. These changes were generally done by consensus between the DM and the players, striving to make the game more appropriate to the wishes of all involved.
This, I realized, is really an exploration. It is an exploration of not just the rules, but more importantly an exploration of the relationship between the DM and players, and a mutual pact to address the goals and desires of each party. At times this exploration leads to the premature end of a game or campaign, and the lack of a well-developed and balanced rules set in those early editions contributed to the problem. But paradoxically, the need to “fix” certain rules encouraged communication, which helped the parties in this game of storytelling form a stronger bond.
Other types of exploration are important to the game. Most campaigns I have run over the years began on a mostly blank map of a home-brewed game world. The characters start in a rather small and isolated part of the world, and the best they have is rumors of other nations, second-hand information on what the capital city is like, a fleeting memory of the one time the princess of their kingdom took a tour of their small town, etc. Their adventures see them exploring not just dark groves and dangerous caves, but the world at large. Like a dungeon map, the world map is expanded only as the PCs move upon it. This is exploration of the game world, and it spurs the characters to succeed in their current location, with the hopes of getting a chance to succeed at the next one. I have never enjoyed much, as a player or a DM, knowing everything about the game world from the start of the campaign. I want the map to expand at the same speed as the story. The exploration of the world becomes part of the game.
I’ve always felt the same way about a different form of exploration: the exploration of the rules. Some knowledge of the rules that are coming is obviously unavoidable and sometimes important. However, even during Third and Fourth Edition, I wanted my character to change and grow with the story. I didn’t want to know the exact path my character would take from level 1 through level 20, pre-selecting each feat or skill or power choice. I understand that some people like this, and I do not begrudge them that desire. In essence, that is their own form of exploration, and while it focuses on a different part of the game, it is still a part of the game for them.
A Game with No Limits
In every edition I have ever played, my favorite phrase as a DM is “don’t look at your sheet, but tell me what you want your character to do.” For players who only took part in later editions, that is sometimes a very difficult concept to wrap one’s mind around. The more detailed and codified the rules become, the greater tunnel-vision one might get on the character sheet or on the battlemat. Clinging to the letter of the rules code is totally understandable, especially if one is punished by a DM (or yelled at by other players) for not doing so. I have had to bite my tongue (not easy for me at times) when a new player wanted to do something cool like have his fighter roll a barrel at oncoming foes, only to be told dismissively by the DM or other players, “Just take a regular attack with your javelin. It’s right there on your sheet.” What a moment of potential exploration lost!
Exploring the interaction with the environment, exploring how the rules cover certain situations, and exploring a fun, imaginative solution to a problem should never be dismissed so easily. Even if the solution is ridiculous or wrong-headed, there is the potential for a good DM and willing players to discuss the situation and form an imaginative and relevant consequence. What separates a good RPG from a board game is the ability to do anything, even things not written in the rules (or on character sheets).
Somewhere between the exploration of rules and the exploration of the game world is a middle ground where, for me, the crux of the game lies. When I play, I try to keep my focus (and my mind’s eye) squarely on the exploration of what my character’s life and experiences are like—put most simply, it is an exploration of an adventurer’s life. This is what each edition seems to have moved further away from, until it is almost hand-waved. I understand that some people do not want to deal with the minutiae of tracking every copper piece and every bolt shot from a crossbow. I respect that. But I also want a game where interaction with the environment is important, whether that environment be a monster-filled dungeon or a town full of merchants. I want to avoid using the term “simulationist,” because I do not want rules that attempt to simulate how every single element of the game world works. But I want the game to simulate how my fantasy character lives her life.
Where From Here?
When asked what my favorite D&D editions were, I answered AD&D (First Edition) and Fourth Edition. I like the way the former encouraged the forms of exploration that entertained and challenged me. And I like the way the latter expanded the utility of the classes, so that none were necessarily pigeon-holed as only effective in combat or only effective in certain situations outside of combat. If the new D&D is going to meet the goals of the designers and the wishes of the players, it is going to have to support both the very freeform game where the game takes place in the players’ minds as much as on the gaming table and the character sheets. It is also going to have to appeal to those who wish only to explore feat trees, power cards, and five-foot squares. I think the design team knows this. I believe they are working in the right direction.
The D&D fans who anxiously wait for the open playtest also have to understand that we are in the first step of a very long and complicated process. To make a judgment on D&D at this point is like saying a cake’s frosting is horrible when there is only eggs and flour in a bowl—and those eggs might not even be eggs. What the design team is currently trying to determine is how to make the flour, the base of the cake. We are all going to get our chance to taste the cake batter, and the flavorings, and the icing, and the toppings. We will get there. Keep it in perspective. Keep talking about what you like in a cake, because in the end we are going to be making the various recipes that the designers must work toward.
Where D&D is Heading; or, How the Internet Changed a Game
Most people with a strong interest in D&D were not surprised by the recent announcement that Wizards of the Coast is in the process of creating and playtesting the next iteration of the game. The signs of its arrival were pretty clear if you knew where to look: the split in the player base, the design tenets of the most recent Wizards’ publications, the staffing changes at Wizards, the contents of various articles on the Wizards’ website, and many other clues hinted at a large-scale project in the offing.
Although the announcement was made just a few short days ago, speculation, discussion, analysis, and predictions are running rampant in every corner of the RPG world in anticipating of the D&D Experience convention, where the first public playtests will be held. As one would expect, the chatter runs the gamut from the typical Wizards-bashing on one end to outright giddiness on the other. As a freelancer who has done a bit of work for Wizards over the past few years, my natural inclination is to the side of giddiness. I have both a sentimental attachment and a professional interest that strongly hopes Wizards succeeds spectacularly. Indeed, I will continue to work to my best ability to make sure that happens in any of my projects.
However, there is the part of me that has been playing and enjoying D&D for three decades. That part of me must also look at the hobby, the business, and the game objectively. This new version of the game will be the one that my daughter will play during the same time of her life when I started playing, when all those amazing hours of fun and shared storytelling helped make me the person I am. I want the game to be fun and challenging and smart and encouraging imagination. I want that for her, and for me, and for players everywhere.
Long Ago and Far Away
The goals of the new design team are simply expressed but will be incredibly difficult to fulfill: bring all of the best parts of previous editions into a new iteration that players with different desires can play together. Cynics scoff at this as an impossible task, and they might right. That’s OK. I think that it is a goal worth pursuing, even if the final results fall short of it. You cannot even approach the goal if you don’t try.
The first step in meeting that goal is recognizing the evolution of the game. I know that many of the members of the design team have been playing older editions of the game to remind themselves, with first-hand experience, what those games were like. I have not had the chance to play the games, but I have gone through my old books (conveniently timed thanks to some house remodeling) to refresh my memory about what the rules of the game once were, and how my groups used those rules.
Rather than a point-by-point, edition-by-edition rundown of where the game has been, I must summarize. I owe my sanity that. The next months and years that the new iteration will be in design will see enough evaluation of older games to keep one busy reading. Some very smart people have already started.
What I will try to look at are what I see as the general trends rather than specific rules. (Some of these trends I have brought up in past articles in different contexts, so if I repeat myself much I apologize. Just consider it practice for when I will start embarrassing my family. More than I already do.) AD&D (sometimes called First Edition) was a mess of a rules set, in terms of mechanics of a game—and yet it was probably the most fun I’ve ever had gaming. I’m sure some of this is nostalgia, but not all of it is. I’m sure some of this is the newness of the game and the genre, but not all of it is. Looking back at that edition from the perspective of a designer and through the lens of countless RPGs, the game just excelled at getting to the stories. It might be because the game “borrowed” from so many great works of fiction that you couldn’t help be in a story as you played. Part of it had to be because there were so few choices that a character could make in terms of game elements that all of the decisions were made in the game.
I do strongly believe that a large part, and perhaps the largest part, of the games draw was that each group that played had to basically design their own game. Like I said, the rules were quite interesting, in that Chinese proverb sort of way. Those who are very generous say that the rules were written as they were because they were guidelines. Well, I can tell you that they became guidelines pretty quickly regardless of the intent, because most of them were house-ruled into something completely different. And I don’t mean “Little House on the Prairie” house-ruled. I mean “200,000-square-foot mansion” house-ruled. The game was great because it was a game that the group created as much as the published rules did.
In this game, the DM was in control. There was no question about it. Sure, different DMs ran things differently and player input was usually welcomed, but the only rule of the game was that the DM made the rules. Players who have grown up with discussion boards and errata and computer games might shudder at this, but not only was it not scary or dictatorial, it was liberating. Yes, the DM was in charge of the story, but, when done right, so were the players. For groups that got along and understood how they wanted the game to play, it was Zen-like: the more you let go of the control, the more control of the story you had.
The Connection Is Made
Another thing to remember, as it will become important later, is that there was no significant inter-connectedness like there is today with our Facebooks and Twitters and infinite niche forums. A few small conventions and periodicals (we had this stuff called paper back then) were the main places for cross-pollination of ideas. For the most part, people were playing and not really worrying about how other people were playing. A “character optimization board” was the piece of wood the DM hit you with when you thought your PC was so cool and invincible. Min-maxing was finding a way to flick your wrist just right so that your wizard PC got 4 hit points when he leveled instead of just 1.
When Second Edition D&D was released, I didn’t notice much of a change in the game. A few more options were offered to the PCs, giving the player a few more decisions to make. It seemed like a little power was taken away from the DMs and given to the players, but all of my groups soldiered on with little thought. We ignored a lot of the extra material that was released at the end of the 1990s, and just continued our happy campaigns with all our favorite house-rules and quirks.
Third Edition turned everything on its ear. This was both good and bad. It became a much better game in terms of rule mechanics. Elements of the game that were convoluted and seemingly mystical became as easy as beginning algebra. We all know that huge weight that was lifted when THAC0 went away. Players now longer had to worry or wonder about what a DM might do to make things rough for them regarding how something worked, because there seemed to be a rule for everything.
And then there were the character rules. All of the character options, the multiclassing freedoms, the customization through feats: it was a player’s dream. And for all that, it was also a DM’s nightmare. Whereas everything in the first two editions seemed to focus on exploration and story, everything in this edition seemed to focus on the rules. Opening a door became a rule. And the rule was written down. The rules became a tool of the player and a burden to the DM. This edition of the game was the first that I voluntarily stopped playing because I was just burned out. And what made it worse for me was the discussion of the rules. It was bad enough that the players were pulling out 4 different books to try to argue a miniscule point. But now they could pull out their laptops and show 45 other people all pulling out their own books and argue the same points.
Fourth Edition came just in time. I was seconds away from taking up a less frustrating pastime like demolitions or shark baiting. This edition began to return some of the power to the DM. Not a lot, but a little. Most of the power was returned by streamlining rules to get them out of the way so the story could come back into focus. And some of the player rules were streamlined as well. Those of us who had DMed and played in the earliest editions could see the old “exploration and story” light at the end of the tunnel. But things were still a little off. That light was blocked a bit by a strong focus on “encounters” which emphasized the same grid-and-movement mindset that 3e introduced. The feeling of “campaign” that the earliest editions encouraged was still a bit hazy, especially for those who only played 3e and 4e.
Old Arguments, New Technologies
And the Internet is still there. It gives us the beauty of communication, but we use it to clamor for errata and clarification and justification and perfection. We have a tool for sharing stories like no other, and we use it to nitpick and gripe and limit our imaginations rather than free them. I am as guilty as anyone in this, perhaps moreso. I have striven to make campaigns that embrace the ugly perfection of rules over the beauty chaos of a story shared. And in my foolishness, I would probably make the same mistakes again.
Having said all this, I need to make it clear that this is just my severely biased opinion, and it is a bunch of opinions that have been simplified and distilled down to an essence that does not capture my whole experience. I have loved D&D since even before they added the “A” at the beginning. Even at its most frustrating, I would still take a game of any edition of D&D over just about any other hobby to share with a group of friends (or in some cases, strangers). There is still more story in even the most tactical game of D&D than there is in all reality TV put together. Unless “Celebrity Housekeepers of Waterdeep” is on some network’s spring schedule.
So, as I sit with everyone else and wait to see the first draft of the rules that we will all get to playtest, I have much hope for what the game can become. I would love to see the streamlined balance of 4e, the players’ ability to create a truly unique character of 3e, but the power for the DM to bring about an inspiring and fun story that was enjoyed most in those earliest versions of the game. It may not happen, but count me as one of those cheering that we are all going to get a chance to make it happen together.
The Smallest Kid in the Sandbox
A writing teacher of mine once said that any writing you do is more than just a story or novel or essay; the act of writing is also entering a conversation with all the other writers who have ever or will ever write something as well. If I took that statement literally, I would be too intimidated to ever put pen to paper, imagining that I was actually shooting the breeze with brilliant minds like Dostoevsky, Faulkner, and Updike. However, this thought does help focus a writer—it instills the awareness that the act of writing is something worthy of taking seriously, even if the work itself is silly or irreverent in tone (or for a fantasy RPG).
The sentiment from that teacher is never far from my mind, but it struck me even more prophetic as I did more and more work in the game-design field—and in particular when that work brought me into designing within a shared-world environment. Even as the forward-thinking R&D folks at Wizards of the Coast do a little bit of public introspection on the past and future of the game of Dungeons & Dragons (and RPGs in general), and as the public interprets that introspection as a referendum on the next iteration of D&D, it strikes me how working on content for a game really is a conversation with past and future designers and developers. And, if game design is such a conversation, then designing content in settings such as the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Greyhawk is an outright public debate, including Springer-esque, chair-throwing, clothes-ripping brawls.
When I was given the chance to work as one of the Global Administrators on the Living Forgotten Realms campaign in 2008, I had the slightest iota of experience working on projects in other shared-world settings, mostly D&D ones like Eberron or Greyhawk, but also Babylon 5. Working on projects in those arenas was a bit unnerving, but the Forgotten Realms is a whole different beast. Not only are there years of gaming material lurking behind it, but whole libraries of novels hang over a designer’s head. And that doesn’t even touch the video games and other ancillary products.
After all, it is one thing to play around with the fundamentals of a shared-world when you are doing so for a group of players in a private (which can be a tough enough job). It is another issue entirely when you are being asked to tread upon fans’ sacred grounds; it is impossible to hide your footprints in a sandbox so public and sometimes overly scrutinized. [Read the rest of this article]
A Joyful Noise
I detest labels. Always have, always will. In high school I played D&D and worked with computers, but I wasn’t a geek or nerd. I excelled at sports, but I wasn’t a jock. I hung out with some people who were on the fringe of “normal society,” but I wasn’t a stoner or slacker. I did well in classes and got decent grades, but I wasn’t a preppy. But then again, neither were the people who were being called any of those names by other people who were themselves being called other names. Labels were just crutches for people who wanted to make themselves feel better about who they were, when they didn’t need to feel bad about anything at all.
So today ends what is being called “Speak Out with Your Geek Out,” and I am neither proud nor ashamed to say that I play roleplaying games, board games, card games, and other activities that some people consider geeky. When I play or run RPGs, I absolutely talk in funny voices and act out what my characters are doing and saying. I do so in public, and I don’t really care if I look like a fool. An NPC in a game I was running recently did the “dance of shame,” and you can damn well bet that I did that dance to—just like there was no one watching, baby! If that makes me a geek, then a geek I am.
Despite the flak I took in the 1980s for playing D&D, along with many others who shared the hobby then, I can honestly say I am a better person for my experiences with the game. Having some “normal” people telling me that I was going to hell or was mentally unstable because I played a game gave me an appreciation for all the people who did play the game. Even though these people might have been different, might have been what is now called a geek, they were certainly no more terrible than those who were judging and condemning without knowledge or experience. [Read the rest of this article]
Preference is Puzzling
After teaching all sorts of writing at levels ranging from kindergarten to Masters-level, one thing I try to get across to my students is the importance of audience—or more specifically, recognizing your audience and working to write toward their expectations while exceeding their expectations. Audience dictates content, tone, diction, length, and countless other considerations for the writer to grapple with.
For many types of writing, the audience is a well-known quantity. In school you write for the teachers. In technical writing your audience is the end user. Novelists of fantasy or horror or police procedurals or mystery have a fairly detailed outline of what the audience wants, and they can keep one foot in the boat while dipping their toes into the lake of experimentation. While a range of preferences exists even with the genres, tropes are there for guidance.
Writing adventures for RPGs is in some ways similar. It is not terribly hard to write a typical dungeon-delve adventure with 3 encounters, a skill challenge, and the PCs rushing in at the last moment to stop the ritual before the evil creature of great power is unleashed. Many DMs and players are happy with that. Thank goodness!
However, not every DM or player is happy with the standard fare. There are many reasons for this, of course. Some are not happy with that because for them the game is about telling a story, and they have already heard that story umpteen dozen times. They want to know more about the background, more about the characters of the story, and mostly importantly, they want to know how their own characters fit into the story. Others are not happy because to them the game is a game, and unless each iteration of the game in some way different or challenging, it turns into a game of tic-tac-toe where every action just demands a rote response, ultimately leading nowhere productive or entertaining. For others still, both aspects have to be unique and engaging. [Read the rest of this article]
A Year at Critical Hits, and GenCon 2011
Roughly one year ago my first Critical Hits column was published. I was coming off Gen Con 2010, recently free of my duties for Living Forgotten Realms and with only a couple of brief freelance obligations ahead of me. When I hit such lulls in my freelance writing and editing work, I like to step back and take stock of where I have been, since there is often precious little time to do so in the maelstrom of juggling freelance projects.
At the same time, I had been reading and appreciating the work being done by Dave “The Game” Chalker, Phil “TheChattyDM” Menard, and all the other talented and funny folks contributing to Critical Hits. (Several months before I had even edited Phil’s short adventure in Goodman Games’ adventure anthology From Here to There.) So rather than starting my own blog, I was hoping that maybe my scribbling could find a home at their website. After talking to Dave the Game for about 22.3 seconds at Gen Con, he agreed to give me a shot and include my blog as a column.
It’s been an incredible year for me, gaming-wise. Counting upcoming projects just being outlined, I’m going to be moving soon into the 200,000 word range on freelance projects and articles since Gen Con 2010. In case you aren’t aware, that’s a butt-ton of words. I even spelled a few of them correctly on the first try. For someone who loves writing as much as I love gaming, it’s a true blessing. I appreciate the opportunities, and I want to thank Dave for giving me a forum to spill my brains into the Inter-ether. [Read the rest of this article]
There’s No Crying in Design
One of my favorite scenes in any movie is the “There’s No Crying in Baseball” scene from A League of Their Own. Former player and current manager Jimmy Dugan (played by Tom Hanks) makes one of his players cry. He tells her that Rogers Hornsby once called him “a talking pile of pig shit” in front of his parents, and he didn’t cry.
This scene has been on my mind due to recent discussions on various Internet sites and forums dealing with criticism—particularly criticism of RPG games and adventures. “A talking pile of pig shit” is somewhat mild when compared to some of the discourse one might see on various forums. Obviously the anonymity of the Internet gives some people the “courage” to behave badly without fearing the same consequences for saying these things to an individual face-to-face.
Creativity Spawns Reaction
Whenever one creates something and releases it for public consumption, a certain amount of feedback, both positive and negative, is going to result. This is true for creative writing, visual art, filmmaking, theater, dance, and—yes—even RPG design. Maybe even more so for RPG design, it seems—although certainly the Internet has made it possible for anyone with a rudimentary grasp of written language and opposable thumbs to become a critic. (Opposable thumbs sometimes optional.)
The truth is that criticism itself used to be as much an art form as the fields that it examined. Although critics were sometimes loathed by the people whose works they were reviewing, there was a tacit understanding that the critics’ opinions carried a certain amount of weight because they understood both the fields they were analyzing and their obligations as a critic. The criticisms, whether positive or negative, were themselves held up to scrutiny by both the publications printing the critics’ works and the informed readers of the criticism. A critic who failed in his or her duties was scathed just as readily as the creator of the critiqued work.
Naturally, those days are pretty much gone. There are certainly still critics whose work is trusted and admired by the public, but it is just as likely that some tool with a web page or Twitter feed can have a louder voice and more influence. In a Tweet-ocracy, he who has the most followers is most right, right? [Read the rest of this article]
4e CAN be Old-School!
A few weeks ago I wrote a column about my ponderings on this topic: can 4e rules be used to run an “old-school” style campaign? That column got (and continues to get) a lot of interesting feedback and many points of view. The two most prevalent opinions are (1) of course you can, because rules are rules and a campaign style is a campaign style, and they are two separate things; and (2) you could try, but why bother fitting 4e’s square peg into an old-school campaign’s round hole.
Now I was very careful to define what I meant by an old-school campaign. I stuck to the fact that a lot of the old adventures gave just a bare skeleton of what the adventure was, and it was up to the DM to create the story, doing a lot of ad-libbing with the help of the players. I talked a lot about adventure layout, where the adventure practically assumed that the DM had the Monster Manual, and that many times only the monster name and hit points were given in the text, and there definitely wasn’t a detailed map given for every encounter.
I began pondering this because I was doing design work on a project that put the question squarely in my lap, and at the same time I was thinking about starting a home campaign that highlighted some of that old-school feel. The experiment has continued for a few weeks now, and I’m going to try to begin putting my thoughts down on the results. [Read the rest of this article]
What Can GenCon Do for You?
In a previous column about working in the RPG industry as a game designer, one of my suggestions was to run as many different kinds of games as you can, as often as you can, for a variety of people and in a variety of settings. In my own freelance career, one of the most valuable experiences I can point to as putting me and keeping me on the right track is running games at large conventions like GenCon, Origins, and DDXP/Winter Fantasy—as well as at countless smaller conventions and game days.
Think Locally, DM Globally
For the first 20 years of my gaming life, across a variety of RPGs and campaigns, I ran games for many people. These were usually heavily house-ruled home campaigns where I knew the players well, or the players were invited by friends who were already playing. Rarely was I running a game for a true stranger. It is a comfortable feeling running a game for friends and acquaintances, whose quirks and biases and preferences you know very well. And more importantly, running a game for familiar people puts you more at ease—because you know they know you well, and they know what to expect from your games. They are accustomed to your strengths and weaknesses, and there is a natural rhythm that gets established. [Read the rest of this article]
Can 4e Be Old-School D&D?
My most recent design project for Wizards of the Coast has left me thinking a lot about old-school D&D. I have been reminiscing about my early days of playing, when my Jr. High school friends and I could play first-edition AD&D for 72 hours straight without having to worry about jobs or families or responsibilities any more onerous than a paper route and little league baseball games.
The adventures and campaigns we played were home-brewed by necessity, because the only published adventures we had access to were very short and very light on details, but they gave us just enough to let our imaginations run wild through horrific tombs, around keeps on borderlands, and into certain lost caverns. What happened between those adventures, and often during those adventures, was always open to interpretation, alteration, and complete reconstitution by whichever one of us was DMing at the time.
But What is Old-School? And What is New-School?
Of course, “old-school” has become one of those ubiquitous terms that loses any semblance of meaning the more it gets used. So let me define a little more clearly what I mean when I use the term “old-school,” especially in relation to the way I see the game being played in more recent years. Since third-edition D&D was introduced, I have not really played in a true long-term, home-brewed campaign. Almost everything I have consumed (and most everything I have created) has been published content in one form or another. And a great deal of that content has been meant to for use in an organized-play setting.
That means DMs using the content are expected to run the games with at least some semblance of continuity, with an established plot and flow detailing where the adventure is supposed to begin and end. In other words, both the players and the DM have to agree to a contract that is unwritten but understood in organized-play campaigns: the party cannot go anywhere and do anything it wants, and the DM must keep the adventure-as-written somewhere in front of the players, even if some detours are taken along the way. Similarly, the adventure designers understand their implicit contract with these people: the writers must make an effort to be as thorough and clear as possible about how to DM the adventure.
While this type of gaming is not for everyone, it has certainly proved to be quite popular since the concept was introduced. And as much as I have given my time and energy to this sort of gaming, and gained much from it, part of me is a little sad to think that many DMs and players might never know the other type of gaming, where the word on the page is just a guide instead of a script—or where there is no page at all!
I think about an adventure like Gygax’s classic The Village of Hommlet. It starts out famously as the characters stroll into the village looking for adventure, probably finding themselves in the Inn of the Welcome Wench. Then there is the trek to the moathouse to battle the now-infamous Lareth the Beautiful and his forces. So much of the game, however, happens outside the pages. How the PCs interact with the NPCs in Hommlet has to be improvised by the DM. How much information about the temple’s past is revealed is up to the DM. How to keep the PCs from stealing that 1300 gp service set from the farmhouse is definitely the job of the DM!
For my money, the most interesting and important part of that adventure was the afterthought: an assassin comes to Hommlet to take out the PCs for messing up the plans of the Temple at the moathouse. This is the awesome stuff that makes a campaign memorable, yet when and how this assassination attempt is made is completely up to the DM. If that slight mention of a plot continuation is made in a published adventure today, how many DMs take the time to add it? There are no stat blocks, maps, or tactics supplied: how many DMs have the skill to make that happen in a cool and intriguing way.
Where There’s a Rule (or Lack Thereof), There’s a Way
I’ve loved every version of D&D I’ve ever played, and I have played ‘em all. Looking at the evolution of the rules over the years, and at the evolution of the way the game is delivered and discussed and consumed by the players, I have to say with all seriousness that the earliest version of D&D rules, game-mechanically speaking, were not good.
Yet, in a strangely paradoxical way, that was the best thing that could have happened to the game at that point in its development. Remember, there was no Internet to discuss or argue over rules. There were no instant errata updates. Unclear, wacky, or incredibly unbalanced rules were resolved in one place: at the individual tables. And even though this meant there were enough house rules to make the game look very different from one group to the next, that was fine.
In fact, it was more than fine. It gave each player and each DM the opportunity—if not the responsibility—to think about the game a little more deeply. Just like adventures had to be created and modified on the fly to make the game fun for everyone, so the rules often had to be adjudicated or created on the fly for that same reason.
As the editions of the game progressed through the years, I daresay that the rules became—game-mechanically speaking—better and better. And also more voluminous. And also more nit-picky and prone to rules-lawyering. Of course, some of that was a result of the advancements in technology and communication. But the more you try to make something as clear and resistant to alternative interpretation as possible, the more interpretation and the less clarity you will have.
With the push to create better mechanics to support the game, there was a similar push to create adventures that were easier to run for DMs who didn’t have the time to prepare their own stuff. That means adventures had to be more balanced, more clear, and more easily run—sometimes without any preparation at all. This is great in the way that microwave meals are good: they can be convenient and tasty and even just as good as some homemade dishes, but the downside is that people can rely on them so much that they forget how to cook, and how much fun cooking can be.
So, I return to my original question: can 4e rules support an old-school D&D campaign? I think the answer is a resounding yes. The rules are more entrenched, and the way the rules are consumed and the way players can communicate globally leads to a more homogeneous experience. And this might be what the market wants. DMs might want to just take the same material in the same format and run it in the same way, and that’s OK. Fun games can be played that way. But I hope there are DMs out there willing and able to create their own stuff, or to take published content and make it their own, and show their players that not every game has to look the same, even when it is the same adventure.
