Killing your darlings

I read a page recently about the "Death of Superman" story (https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/an-oral-history-of-the-original-death-and-return-of-superman-25-years-later ).  It included a quote from someone (who is not important) that "You know what you get from killing a character: You get to show just how much that character means — to his friends, family, enemies, to the whole world!"  As with so many things, it sparked a thought about role-playing games.

Death as a chance to see how much a character mattered is something I've missed in D&D.

Often there doesn't seem to be any real chance of character death.  Between the players being conservative -- especially about few fights per day so they are almost always at full spell capacity -- and the DM taking things a bit easy -- the monsters engage the party mostly one-to-one and generally respect the fighters rather than concentrating fire on the casters first -- it often feels like the question is more of whether the players are forced to spend resources (potions / scrolls / magic charges ) or not rather than one of whether the characters will die.

Even if the characters do die, it seems like there will be resurrection.  Not comic book resurrection which the reader expects while the characters don't, but resurrection as a known and accessible "technology" in the game world.   Partially because the rules have spells and items that will do resurrection so surely the characters should be able to find people to do it.  Also partly because players don't want to stop playing their character, and having access to resurrection magic avoids that.  (As a side note, I think players reacting poorly to character deaths is part of why DM's go easy with monster tactics and spell choice.)

The result has been -- in my experience -- character death is extremely rare, is viewed as being a bit unfair on the player whose character died, and instantly leads to a side adventure to get the character resurrected.   Which means we never get the ability to have a the eulogy or a wake.  We never see the other characters question whether adventuring is worth it or reflect on what started the all on whatever quest they are following.  We never get the small side scenes where a character does something -- maybe just buying ale at a tavern -- and recalls that it would have been different if their friend hadn't died. 

I would like more of that. 

D&D and a problem with expert characters

(Of course, this is based on my experiences with D&D.  YMMV)

Wizards knowing obscure languages or history of long dead ages.  Rogues who know the underworld of a city better than the back of their hands.  Scions of noble houses who have family connections and feuds all through the land.  Bards or priests who know the stories of the people and can pick out the parallels that make those stories so inspiring.  There are lots of fantasy character types who are experts is some field of knowledge.  

But, D&D has a problem with expert characters.  As generally played, the DM "owns" the world and the story.  The player doesn't and can't have as much knowledge of the world -- the people, the history, the institutions, the stories, etc. -- as the expert character should.  The DM probably doesn't even have that knowledge, but will make it up when he thinks it is relevant.  So the supposedly expert character doesn't make the connections and deductions that he should.  At best, sometimes the player thinks there may be something and asks the DM.  The character's expertise becomes just another way to pry clues from the DM, rather than a part of the character.

Of course, a player could make things up.  Have the expert character occasionally proactively use his expertise to work out connections, make observations, etc.  If the player knows enough about the world -- again NPCs, history, institutions, meta-physics, etc.  whatever the relevant field of knowledge is -- she might feel comfortable doing so.   If the DM is willing to back it up and run with the suggestions, it can work.  Most likely though, the player's "expert" idea doesn't match the DM's plans, so in the end the character ends up being wrong a lot.  By trying to show that the character is an expert, he is instead shown to be mostly wrong.  (And, while it might be true that part of being an expert is being wrong a lot and detecting that you are wrong quickly, that's not does not seem to be a good way to get the other players at your table to buy into your character being an expert.)

All that said, in D&D as written, it doesn't matter.  The characters start at 1st level and by definition aren't experts.  After playing the character for a while and earning a few levels, the player will (perhaps) have learned some of the background necessary for that character's expertise.  Especially if played over years with the same group a shared world rich enough to support expertise could build up.  See the D&D Blackmore campaign or Glorantha or Tekumel as examples.  I don't think most of us play it that way anymore (and I think maybe most people never did).

So, what to do about it.

1.  Accept it.  Heros aren't academics, they are beings of action.  They occasionally get clues from fragments of obscure lore, but they aren't concerned with piecing together understanding and making deductions from it.  Get the info dump from the DM as appropriate.

2.   Embrace the out-of-touch expert trope.  If the DM supports it, have the character spout theories and ideas based on their knowledge.  Accept that they will mostly be wrong -- perhaps the character is too obsessed, or so theoretical as to miss the obvious.  At the same time, the DM can glean some ideas from the suggestions and occasionally use them to make the expertise pay off.

3.  Give players creative power through a mechanic for character expertise.  If the character is expert is swinging a sword, they have mechanics that enforce that.  They player says they are causing some mayhem, rolls, and the mayhem happens.  So why not do the same for knowledge-based expertise? They player has the character spot lore, rolls and it may be true.  (You may need to delay the rolls until some character acts on the information to avoid running into problems with players knowing when the info is wrong because they saw a bad roll. )

I like the 3rd option.  That said, it can't work if the DM is still thinking that he needs to set up the whole adventure ahead of time.  

More Love

Still thinking about Love in the Time of Seith.  First a bit of a digression though.

I read a comment recently saying that Shakespeare only gave each actor their own lines and cues, but no-one got to see the whole play.  According to the commenter, the idea was "[t]o keep his actors on their toes" because they didn't know the whole story until it unfolded.  It went on to say that later editors of Shakespeare's works not only collected all the parts together, but added the dramatis personea and in the process spoiled the drama.  According to the commenter, the short descriptive tags next to the character names ('exiled duke' or 'drunken butler', etc.) made "the play [..] pregnant with plot and the story ahead almost self-fulfilling."

While I think the actors did (and do) commonly just get their own lines and cues when learning a part, it is hard to imagine that after rehearsals they won't have picked up the whole plot.  So I don't buy the idea that the practice was something to keep the story fresh.  Other web pages suggest that in Shakespeare's time the practice might have helped ensure that no one actor could take the play to a rival company before it was performed.  Or maybe it is just a way to avoid distractions while learning a part.

What I really objected to was the idea that a list of characters with short descriptions was a bad thing or that it made the story a self-fulfilling prophecy and so boring.  The commedia dell'arte survived for hundreds of years (approx 1550 - 1800) using a list of stock characters is various situations and semi- or fully improvised interactions.  

Which gets us to role playing games.  As we start a role playing game -- whether it is a one-shot or the start of something longer -- we only know a quick description of each character.  To make it work, we have to go beyond those descriptions -- and the associated stereotypes, character tics, and assumptions -- to the actual characters at hand.  Even just expanding the tag just a bit helps.  A "hot shot pilot" might be anything:

• a farm boy who dreams of being a hero and meeting his father
• a smuggler with a heart of/for gold
• a good soldier who bends the rules because she knows she's safe
• a young guy desperate to live up to expectations, his reputation and his father
• an ordinary guy who would be happy in a boring job but loves his wife enough to follow her anywhere

The short tag at the start of the game gets expanded, maybe during character creation, maybe during play, probably during both.  The mixture of the expanded tag, the initial situation and the interactions between the characters gives us the story.  Not self-fulfilling at all. 

Which gets us back to "Love".  It uses generic descriptive names, "themes" for each character and some preset relationships.  Together they a list of characters:

• The aging King.   (Ancestors and Law) 
• The rebellious Princess. In love with the Knight.  (The Gift and Rebellion)
• The Seithkona.   Seductive witch, teaching the Princess magic.  (Sexuality and The Gods)
• The foreign Earl.  Prospective husband for the Princess (Treachery and The Eastern Kingdom)
• The Knight who is not as he seems.  Spy for the Earl and in love with the Witch  (Nature and Lycanthropy)

Ok.  Lots of stuff there, but also some threads that don't lead anywhere. (yet).  Certainly the story to come out of that group of characters is not pre-ordained.  The question is whether 5 players from more traditional (i.e D&D like) role playing games can sit down and build a story from those characters during play without having to have a DM guide them.

A problem with 'Evil' in scenario creation

Five years later and I'm back.   

For various reasons I wanted to get together a one-shot of "Love in the Time of Seith" (aka the crone game).  I was struggling a bit though because of the problem of evil.  Not the big theological problem of why evil exists, but the more practical problem of how to add adversity to a role playing scenario.

Of course, the traditional answer is that the DM's scenario provides the adversity.  There is some monster or evil villain who is the opponent.  The players are the good guys and they resist, explore,  investigate and defeat the enemy and his minions.  

Sometimes that's good enough.  The players buy into the scenario and everyone has a good time beating up on things. The scenario is something like "The mustachio-twirling evil necromancer with his zombie hoards must be stopped!"  Why is raising them from the dead and marching on our town? Maybe there is a McGuffin around that needs to be protected/destroyed or a prophecy that is being fulfilled. Who knows, who cares, grab your axe and have at them! 

Sometimes it feels rehashed and flat.  I don't want undead who hate all life because "undead" or an orc horde who murder, rape and pillage because the rules say they are "evil".   That's too easy.  It encourages the computer game solution of killing every character who is highlighted with the correct -- i.e. enemy -- color.  It is a cooperative game -- can the players use the rules to overcome some predefined obstacles -- but it doesn't give much of a story.  

Which leads back to Love in the Time of Seid (sorry, I'm not going to look up how to do the thorn character correctly).  There is no enemy.  No DM either, but mostly no explicit evil enemy to be killed.  The game is 5 characters with their relationships and is supposed to do from there like a Shakespearean tragedy (or comedy if you want, but the ending condition is two characters are out of play, so likely tragedy).  Unfortunately, one character is:

• a foreigner
• "middle-aged, fat and wily"
• a poisoner
• has Treachery as a main theme as is likely assumed to be treacherous
• controlling a spy in the King's court because he wants to take over
• the husband proposed for the Princess by the King, but whom she hates

Basically, the Earl is set up to be the bad guy.  Of course, all of that can be subverted, but if the other players focus on him as the villain there isn't much that can be done.  At least on the surface one of the players is being asked to play the equivalent of the mustachio-twirling necromancer invading the Kingdom.

Of course, the set-up  is more Shakespeare than CRPG so immediately grabbing a sword and attacking him doesn't seem fitting.  Besides, the resolution system doesn't make that a reliable option.  So that are more possibilities.  Still, I wonder if the player who ends up playing the Earl will feel limited.  (I played the Knight the one time I've played the game, so I don't know personally.)  Beyond that, I wonder if it would be possible to redesign that character so that he was less stereotyped "evil".

6 views of Law

I recently played a one-shot AD&D game.  After the scenario there were some comments about how it might have gone better if we had talked about alignments in the party before we played.  Maybe, I don't know, I don't think any of us would have played our characters differently if we had all talked about what alignment they were going to be ahead of time.

I do know that the comment got me thinking a bit more about the old AD&D alignment square.  In particular the Law vs Chaos axis.  That axis is a lot more interesting than the Good vs Evil axis.   So interesting that ultimately I came up with 6 different oppositions it could be used for.  Any of them could be characterized as 'Law' vs 'Chaos', and which one you think about has the a chance of changing your game.  So, you know, maybe the comment was right.

Trying to keep each definition short:

1. Law == existing social order.  Chaos == threats to that order, revolutionaries & reformers.
2. Law == having a explicit moral code.  Chaos == treating all situations as exceptional cases.
3. Law == predefined places in society.  Chaos == everyone is what they make of themselves
4. Law == culture of shame (public, social).  Chaos == culture of guilt (personal, individual)
5. Law == worldly, concrete concerns.  Chaos == spiritual, mystical, abstract concerns.
6. Law == civilization, progress, order, safety.  Chaos == wilderness, personal prowess, anarchy

I'm sure there are more dichotomies I could use.  

The last as maybe as close as I can come to the Moorcock-style Law vs Chaos of the original D&D where the Hero is the man who uses the tools of Chaos in order to bring a small measure of Law to others.  

New year, new game, insanity?

One pop definition of insanity is doing to same thing repeatedly but expecting different results.  I'm very conscious of that every time I think about starting (GMing) a new game.  After all, every other game I've run -- and I've been playing for over 30 years -- has ended.  Usually not with a bang, but with a whimper and unfortunately not in a poetic way.  The brave heros abandoned mid quest as other interests come up, or time pressures get to the group or engagement just seems to fade away.  So why suggest getting a couple of friends over and playing a one-shot while hoping to get them interested enough to start something longer?

The facetious reason is that it gives justification for having gaming books and buying new ones.   Maybe not the best reason, but the lonely fun of reading game books isn't really that much different than the lonely fun of reading in general, and if you read something good, you often want to talk about it with friends.  An RPG session isn't the same as  a book group, but maybe there are some similarities.

A related, but less facetious reason is that it is an excuse to have people over and sometimes an excuse is good to have.  It seems silly to schedule time with your friends for no purpose, but throw in an RPG and suddenly a bi-weekly date doesn't seem too weird.  Maybe we didn't need that when we were in school, but we aren't and the extra nudge of having something specific and ongoing that we're planning to do helps get us together in the fact of the usual weekday hassles.  Sad to say, I often need that nudge.

A philosophical reason is that we know all things will ultimately fail, but the doing is the important part.  I probably won't ever be part of a 20-year long campaign.  Never mind gaming,  it is pretty unlikely I'll work for one company for 20 years.  (I have managed to stay married that long though, which is sort of like not splitting the party I guess.)  Twenty years isn't the standard though.  If I get a second session, that's a win.  That means we did something in the first session that didn't exist before and was worth coming back to.

Ultimately though, it is because I want -- I crave -- shared creativity.  To be involved in groups where people can put out ideas and have those ideas picked up, modified, pushed-back on and reflected back in changed form with a common, if nebulas, goal.  At its best, role-playing provides that, and not much else does.  So, insanity it may be, but I'll try again.

Game and Shame

I shouldn't care, but I do.  There is still a part of me stuck back in middle schools ashamed of role-playing games.  So, a separate space.