The Challenge of Capturing Flavor in an RPG

I love the game Far Away Land. It's OSR in that it's a rules-light sort of game. I've only played it once or twice myself, although it was the first RPG I suggested my middle school aged son take to his after school game club. Far Away Land just drips with flavor. It's part Adventure Time, part D&D, part...something entirely different. Just look at this picture and you'll see what I mean:

Pictured: WTF?

That's a group of bear-mounted nuns battling hive mind clones of Abraham Lincoln. Those are stock NPCs / Adversaries of the default world in which Faraway Land is set. Reading through the book is an absolute treat. There is a whole lot of zany lore that is helps to give the game a very unique tone and voice. The unique art helps in this regard as well.

I have come here both to bury and to praise, however. You see, as much as I love reading FAL, even trying my hand at doing a little of my own art for FAL, when I've run it the game felt like D&D. None of that awesome unique flavor translated onto the tabletop.

Even if you don't personally care for the stuff I just showed you, bear with me. I'm a pretty experienced GM. I've run a lot of D&D and a smattering of other games over the past 25 years or so. As a GM, I think I do D&D pretty well and I'm a fair hand at horror games. While I can't create the feeling of dread that Call of Cthulhu or Ravenloft are supposed to engender, I at least know what I'm aiming for when I run one of those games.

However, I have no idea how to create the kinds of feelings I get from reading FAL when actually playing it. One of the problems is that FAL gains a lot of its flavor from the art. Roleplaying takes place mostly in the player's imaginations, however, in the theater of the mind. How can I achieve the same effect at the table?

I've never seen you looking so lovely as you did tonight...

I don't have an answer for that. I'm honestly asking because I don't know. This kind of thing isn't limited to Far Away Land, of course. Any game with a signature look could create a similar challenge for the GM. Part of Planescape's appeal in the 90s was certainly the wonderfully stylized Tony DiTerlizzi art.





Would Dark Sun really be Dark Sun if not for the weird stuff that Brom created for that setting's boxed set and various supplements?

I've never played a single game of Dark Sun, but man did I love looking at the books. A lot of people I know did the same. We all talked in hushed tones about how deadly a setting Athas was, or how characters started at level 3(!), but we never actually played it. "Cannibal halflings!" we'd laugh. Then we'd go play in our generic, home-brewed fantasy settings. Or stupid Forgotten Realms.

The creator of Far Away Land seems like he might be aware of this challenge. You can get a deck of cards that depict the game's monsters. There are stats on the back for the GM and pictures for the players to look at on the front. I have to wonder if this doesn't have the same effect that miniatures can create. Meaning, once you have a picture or miniature for a bunch of monsters, the GM feels like he can't use monsters for which he doesn't have a good representation.

Maybe I'm underestimating the effectiveness of props. Maybe, once the players see a bunch of creature pictures done in this style, they'll begin to imagine everything the GM describes in a similar fashion. Maybe...


In the end, I'm left wondering if some games just read a little, not better, but maybe a little more evocative than they actually play. I'm not sure what, if anything, a GM can do to help this problem.

It makes me kind of sad, because there are some cool looking games out there.

D&D 5E Rules: Foresight

Like a lot of D&D fans, I’m digging into the new 5^th Edition to see what makes it tick. There is a lot that’s familiar, and my overall first impression is good, but it will take an actual playtest and a decent chunk of time to really find the new game’s merits and warts. One easy thing I can do is take a look at rules that I don’t care for in 3E and see if and how they’ve changed in the latest version.

To start things off, I’m going to look at a spell that has gotten quite a bit of derision from my
longtime 3E/Pathfinder players. That spell is Foresight, a 9^th level arcane spell that seems rather underpowered. Read on for a brief summary of the spell’s effects in 3.5/Pathfinder and 5^th Edition, followed by a brief discussion of the differences.

3.5 / PATHFINDER VERSION (BOTH IDENTICAL)

Foresight 

Level: 9

Casting Time: 1 standard action

Duration: 10/min per level

This spell grants you a powerful sixth sense in relation to yourself or another. Once foresight is cast, you receive instantaneous warnings of impending danger or harm to the subject of the spell.

For the duration of the spell, you are never surprised or flat-footed. In addition, the spell gives you a general idea of what action you might take to best protect yourself and gives you a +2 insight bonus to AC and Reflex saves. This insight bonus is lost whenever you would lose a Dexterity bonus to AC.

When another creature is the subject of the spell, you receive warnings about that creature. You must communicate what you learn to the other creature for the warning to be useful, and the creature can be caught unprepared in the absence of such a warning. Shouting a warning, yanking a person back, and even telepathically communicating (via an appropriate spell) can all be accomplished before some danger befalls the subject, provided you act on the warning without delay. The subject, however, does not gain the insight bonus to AC and Reflex saves.

What does that second part mean? Is the GM supposed to allow the subject a kind of “do-over” against a triggered trap or other avoidable danger? It seems like that's the intention, and it's certainly more powerful than a mere +2 AC / Save bonus, but it lacks any kind of game mechanic to support it.

Why is the lesser spell effect detailed while the (potentially) greater effect left totally to abstraction? I'd accept such a spell in a less detail-oriented game like Basic D&D, but in Pathfinder, this seems to imply the spell is very underpowered for it's level. It basically boils down to nothing more than a meager bonus to AC and Reflex saves.

D&D 5^th EDITION VERSION

Foresight

Level: 9 Spell

Casting Time: 1 minute

Duration: 8 hours

While under the effect of this spell, the caster can never be surprised. He gains advantage on all attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. In addition, other creatures have disadvantage on attack rolls against the target.

DIFFERENCES

The 5^th Edition version has a longer casting time (1 minute vs 1 standard action), but lasts effectively all day (8 hours vs about 3 hours). As to the effects, the meager bonus of +2 to attacks and reflex saves is replaced by advantage to attacks, ability checks, and saves and disadvantage on attacks against the target.

While the math behind advantage and disadvantage is a bit complicated (see here for more), it basically boils down to a +5 or -5 modifier. Thus, we could say that the spell gives a +5 bonus to attacks, ability checks, and saves and gives all enemies a -5 penalty to all attacks against the target for 8 hours. Perhaps not as obviously powerful as other 9^th level spells (power word kill, for example), it has certainly been beefed up from 3E.

Feats and Skills are a Lie

In 3E, I can take a bunch of feats in order to be really good at tripping people with a spiked chain. Figuring the most optimal combination of feats (and skills) at the very least takes a few hours. I have to make sure I understand what the heck my characters abilities are, how they interact, and when and how to best use them. Once I do all that, is my character unique? Not unless you think that tripping people with a spiked-chain is unique. No, after a couple hours of effort, all you have now is a one-dimensional character defined entirely by some combat stunt he can pull off until it, too, becomes old-hat. Not to mention, the next guy can pick the same feats (and skills) and generate the EXACT SAME CHARACTER. Couldn't we save a bunch of time and effort by simply writing “+2 with spiked chains” or something and move on.

This goes double for skill systems. There are finite skills in D&D. Nine times out of ten, you're only going to find a handful of them useful. So, what you're going to do is maximize as many useful skills as your class allows. The other option is to be really crappy at a whole bunch of skills. Neither approach allows for very fast character creation. You see, the designers are hiding the choices behind a smokescreen of apparent choice. If you ignore the mathematically insignificant +1 here and there to some random skills, what you're giving the player actually amounts to “pick X skills to be good at.”

(More or less what you see in Pathfinder and 4E).

Great on paper, but if every character ends up maximizing the same basic skills plus a few class specific ones, then every character might as well just have a +X bonus to a set list of abilities. Even the rogue, the guy with a million skill points, ends up being REALLY good at a handful thiefy abilities and either gains some surprising cross-class skill (“I know a lot about plants!”) or ends up a jack-of-all-trades. It doesn't seem that way when you're creating your character, though, because in order to achieve this effect you're spending 40+ points, adding up synergy bonuses, and factoring in skill-boosting feats and class traits. It's all a lot of smoke and mirrors and meaningless number crunching to arrive at the same place you'd have gotten with a rule that said “you get a +15 bonus with 8 skills.”

Finally, once you introduce one customizable skill, you limit what a character can do. This isn't the same as class abilities, which are things that your character can do because he's a rogue on TOP of things we assume he can do because he's a person. No, skill systems lump all that class stuff together with mundane things like swimming and playing the piano. Now you're asking a player which is more important to him before he risks life and limb in a dark hole filled with traps and monsters: stealth or knowledge: oral poetry? While I applaud the guy who throws a few skill points toward the latter in the name of character development, I'd rather the game rules stopped punishing him for it. Let the rules cover how good you at doing life or death adventure stuff. Everyone's going to max those skills out anyway, so why try to shoe-horn all that together with interesting but meaningless stuff like cooking?

All I really care about for any given skill is the following: do you suck at it, are you ridiculously good at it, or are you everyone else? My character might be a low wisdom slug who wouldn't see a bandit ambush coming if they wore blaze orange and hung up signs (sucks). Your character is an elf with keen eyes and supernatural awareness of the goings-on in the forest (good). Bob's character is a human rogue with no more or less ambush perception than anyone else (average).

Do the rules really need to spend any more time on things than this?

System Mastery

I’ve come to believe that a roleplaying game that codifies too many of its rules actually limits the creativity of players and GMs. I’m not commenting on the idea of complicated vs simple rules. 3E or Pathfinder aren’t necessarily any simpler than AD&D, which is full of elaborate and sometimes clunky rules systems. What I’m talking about here is the deliberate codifying of game design and character design into the rules in a way that’s meant to reward so-called hardcore players.

In 3E, this kind of rule takes place mostly off-stage (i.e. outside of the actual play experience). You don’t select feats during game play, you take them between sessions. Once the game begins you’re stuck with what you’ve got. It’s during your down time that you plan out your character’s next level, decide the best multiclassing route, figure out how to gain the most synergy bonuses to your skills, etc. The GM, on the other hand, has ready-made rules to help guide his creative process. An experienced GM doesn’t just create an evil order of assassins to hunt the PCs. He designs a specific prestige class to emulate all of the assassins’ abilities. A GM inspired by a cool combat scene from a popular movie must develop new feats if he wants his characters to emulate the actor’s stunts. The problem with the above is that it doesn’t just reward a deep knowledge of the rules, it requires it.

Take monster design for example. In 3E and Pathfinder there are entire subsections on building monsters the “proper way.” Note that this has little to do with helping the GM make sure the creature is fun or easy to use or whatever. No, most of it is there to make sure that all of the world’s plants or goblinoids have the same amount of skill points as other plant or goblinoid monsters. The premise is game balance, but I’ve become increasingly convinced that most of these specific formulas for proper hit dice or number of feats are just arbitrary. 3E includes a number of monsters that have a natural armor bonus that is actually “wrong” according to the monster design guidelines. A quick look at the AD&D Monstrous Manual shows where these numbers came from;  they exist to adjust the given monster’s AC so that it’s the same as it was in 2E. In other words, there are several pages of rules that allow you to achieve similar results to those you could have gotten by looking at an existing monster and then just making stuff up. Similar results, way more time and effort invested.

What did players do before all this “system mastery” stuff was written into the rules? Did they get a less fulfilling play experience? Do older versions of D&D offer less reward for players because they weren’t deliberately designed to account for “mastery”? I believe that the answer is no. The desire to tweak D&D with houserules and homebrewed campaigns has always been a part of D&D. In fact, one could argue that the original version of the game required house rules in order to even be playable. Instead of spending their time out of game trying to build their characters, players were forced to accomplish the same things through play. It is one thing to take a prestige class called “Dread Pirate.” It’s another thing entirely to steal a pirate ship and begin raiding the king’s treasure ships as they head for port. I understand the desire to give a character a bonus to sailing if he does either of the above, but I think that most of these kind of rules could be handled by the GM and some simple roleplay. Isn’t being a feared pirate in the campaign a reward in itself? Do you really need a special class all your own as well?

D&D Race Doesn't Matter (but it should)

I must admit that when I first started looking at the rules for older versions of D&D, I found the idea of race as class strange and laughable. I get this same reaction from a lot of gamers when I broach the subject. One of my friends here gets a bemused look on his face whenever he mentions “that version of D&D where Elf is a class.”

Look, I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid on any one version of D&D being “superior.” One is certainly free to prefer whichever version of D&D one likes best, for whatever reason. Please don't pretend that the things you like about your favorite flavor of the game makes it objectively better than other versions. That's a tired, tired philosophy and I have no interest in discussing it. Your opinion is perfectly valid, but that doesn't mean you should dismiss a game mechanic out of hand. Speaking of opinions, here's why I've come around to liking race-as-class in D&D.

Since the first edition of AD&D and right on up through 3E D&D, I think a character's race has mattered less and less in favor of his character class. When I sit down at the gaming table, it's easy for me to forget that so-and-so's character is an elf or halfling or whatever, all I can remember is whether he's a ranger or a cleric. It's to the point that race almost completely doesn't matter and I think that's a shame. Look at Tolkien's stories, certainly the inspiration for D&D's demihuman races as we know them. If I asked you, “What is Legolas?” your first answer is probably “He's an elf.” Elf, you see, is a viable archetype, despite what more modern RPGs would have you believe.

It's important to remember that D&D is an archetype-driven game. Especially in earlier versions of the rules, but certainly present in all editions to one level or another, a character's class is his most important trait. In the absence of a codified skill system, how do you know whether your character can perform some task that's not defined by the game rules? Character class, that's how! Even with a skill system in place, a lot of what a character can and can't do is hard-coded into his class. Magic-users possess the sorts of abilities that magic-users should have acquired after a youth and early adulthood spent learning to cast spells.

In the first version of D&D there were 3 classes: Fighting-Men, Clerics, and Magic-Users. In addition, a player could choose to be an elf (which could switch between Fighting-Man and Magic-user each adventure), a halfling (which could be fighters), and dwarves (fighters). While at first glance you might think that there is no difference between a Fighting-Man and a dwarf, you'd be mistaken. The dwarf also gets a rather substantial bonus to saving throws against spells; access to a powerful type of magic weapon; the ability to note slanting passages, traps, and new construction underground; and the ability to speak Gnome, Kobold, and Goblin languages.

To the modern gamer, this might not sound like much to give the dwarf. Bear in mind, though, that this original version of the game didn't grant any benefits for high ability scores beyond an XP bonus. That means that your Fighting-Man with the 18 STR didn't hit any better than a similar character with a STR of 11. (Except that the former character got an XP bonus, meaning he'd level faster than the latter character, thus making him a better combatant over time.) Above all, OD&D was very light on rules and open to player improvisation and DM fiat. That means that any bonus ability, no matter how small, could have a big impact on a character's power.

Now take a look at Labyrinth Lord, the retroclone game patterned after 1981's Basic version of D&D. Here we see the races codified almost as classes of their own. At the core, the dwarf is still just a fighter, with the same hit die and combat abilities. However, the dwarf has slightly different XP requirements to gain each level, a different set of saving throws, and some extra abilities. For all intents and purposes, it's a class all to itself. While the game says “dwarf” is your class, you could just as easily say you're a “dwarven fighter” and the only difference would be semantics

The other common argument against race as class is based on roleplaying. Of course not every dwarf in the world is exactly the same "class". NPCs don't need to follow the same rules as Player Characters. Indeed, they probably shouldn't most of the time. Just because all dwarf adventurers fall into the same class, that doesn't mean there aren't dwarf cobblers and cartwrights and candlestick makers. It also doesn't mean that the DM can't, should he so desire, invent more class options for dwarf players to choose from. Think that your world should allow dwarven clerics? Great, make up a class specific to your milieu and write it out.

When AD&D rolled around, Gary Gygax introduced the idea of racial modifier to ability scores. This is the concept that elves are more agile than humans and thus receive a +1 bonus to their Dexterity (and a -1 penalty to their Constitution due to a more fragile build). While this sound okay on paper, in practice it seldom amounted to much. AD&D's ability scores determined a bunch of secondary abilities for a character, such as his Strength affecting his bonus to hit with a melee weapon or his base chance of bending metal bars. However, there were big areas within each ability score where a +1 bonus made little mechanical difference in the character's stats. In most cases, the guy with the 12 STR wasn't mechanically stronger than the guy with the 10 STR. Unless your stats happened to fall at a specific number, a +1 either way didn't make a big difference. In other words, elves didn't seem any more dextrous than humans.

Third Edition remedied this issue somewhat by changing the ability score system so that every 2 points a stat increased, it gave a bigger bonus. Now race mattered a little bit more, but it was easily forgotten once character creation ended. Plus, unless you rolled really well (i.e. a legit 18), only luck kept the humans from being just as dextrous as you.

I'll leave 4E out of this discussion for now, as I think that game's philosophy invented a different set of reasons why race doesn't matter. Instead, I'll close by reiterating my initial point, and that's this: modern gamers shouldn't scoff at race-as-class as being something primitive or “less advanced” than the more recent race/class split. It's simply a different philosophy for approaching character archetypes, and it's one that I think makes for stronger, more memorable characters at the gaming table.

Thoughts on Marvel Super Heroes RPG (Part 2)

I have a long-running joke with a friend of mine. It basically boils down to mocking the way one creates characters in the Marvel Super Hero RPG. The version that I owned really pressured players to assume the role of the established heroes of the Marvel comic books (at least, it seemed to 12 year old me that it did). The trouble is, no one I know wants to do that in a super hero game. They want to make their own guys. It's more than half the fun.

Don't get me wrong. It's neat to bump into established supers from time to time. While powerful NPCs are vexing in D&D, in a comic book game it's a treat to battle Doc Ock or meet the Human Torch at Applebee's. As far as running those characters, though? Heck no! I want to make my own.

In Marvel Supers, at least the version that I owned, character creation was relegated to a back section. It was written as if the authors never expected you to actually use it. It was also completely random. Everything from how fast or smart your character is, to what powers he has, is determined by the roll of the dice.

That's where the joke came in. Whenever I would sit down and roll up a Marvel Supers character, it seemed that every time I'd come up with a guy with the stupidest combination of powers. Underwater Breathing, Electricity Manipulation, and Rotting Touch. It's Zombie Eel! Damn it, I wanted to play a guy with super speed!

I must say, my opinions have changed a little. I've become more a fan of purely random characters. Randomness in an RPG forces one to exercise the imagination, to roll with the punches that fate is throwing and try to bring everything together in a logical (at least comic book logical) fashion. One caveat, though. The random is much more fun as a GM. When you're behind the screen, rolling on charts can make you feel less like a referee and more like a player in the game, getting surprised by what the dice tell you and trying to make things work out.

The version of Marvel Supers that I played today was far more complete. Rather than devote a few pages of an appendix to character generation, the game put custom characters front and center. The GM gave us a set of house rules that let us game the probability a bit, picking powers here and assigning dice rolls there.

You know what? I ignored all that and let the dice decide EVERYTHING about my character. I was really happy with the results. It was a lot of fun taking these results and mixing them together, like a cook trying to make a gourmet meal of the stuff tossed to them by the Iron Chef. Say what you want about Zombie Eel, but I still talk about him 20 years after I randomly rolled him up, and I never even used him in a game.

If only Marvel had a faster, more intuitive system, I would probably rate it as a much better game. Still, I'll probably go back next Sunday. After all, there are bad guys out there that need to be stopped. I leave you with my completely random character. Ignore the stats you don't understand (unless you do) and just read the flavor text.

To start you out, keep in mind that I began by rolling my powers. I got Claws, Shape-shifting (Imitation), and Corrosive Missile. Huh. I wouldn't have chosen a single one of those powers. Here's what I came up with. Forgive the Comic Sans font but, well, I hope you can understand why I used it.

EIDOLON

Into the Caves

It took John Doppler two hours, crawling on his belly through the mud and grime, to reach the end of the tight crawlspace. Spelunking was dangerous enough, but spelunking by yourself was borderline insanity. Still, John had to reach the other side. If his instincts were right, the crawl-way would lead to a vast network of caverns, perhaps the largest in North America. Althea Cobb would have no choice but to let John onto her land then, once he could prove the significance of his find.

When John finally emerged from the tiny space, what he saw went beyond his expectations. A vast domed ceiling, like the roof of a cathedral, stretched past the range of his flashlight. A narrow, slow-moving stream split the entire massive cavern in two. Beyond the water, a dozen side-passages split off in every direction.

John didn't dare go any farther alone. He turned around and began the arduous crawl back through the narrow tunnel. When he emerged, John was shocked to find the same large cavern that he had just left. How could he have gotten turned around in a claustrophobic tunnel barely big enough for a man on his belly? It wasn't possible. Slightly panicked, John again returned to the crawlspace. His heart beat with fear as he made his way, painfully, through the tunnel. Finally, he reached the end. He was still in the same vast cave.

Exhausted and covered in filth, John began to question his sanity. There was no way he could have gotten turned around twice. Something unnatural was happening. Swallowing panic, John walked deeper into the large cave. As he waded across the ankle-deep river that bisected the cave, John suddenly stopped. The cold water began to seep into his boots, soaking his feet. He stood rooted like a statue, the will to move leaving his body like heat draining from a man dying of exposure.

“Wouldn't it be better to just lie down and rest?”

The voice came unbidden into the man's mind. What was his name again? J...something. It didn't matter. All that mattered was the water. And sleep. And oblivion. The man obeyed the voice, dropping slowly to his knees.

Then the ghosts came. Transparent apparitions with hollow eyes and blank, smooth faces. They seemed to grow more solid as they approached, as if they took substance from the man kneeling in the river. Smiling hungrily, the nearest spirit reached out its misty hand.

Something deep inside the man sparked as the spirit touched him. A thought. A memory. A name. John. With all his will, John Doppler stood up. The ghost-thing recoiled in surprise and fear. Then it screamed in unearthly rage as John turned and fled down the river.

* * *

John Doppler emerged from the small cave behind Jakobs Field a changed man. His memory of the past week was hazy and jumbled. John vaguely recalled a pale man, a dark boat, and a pervasive, clinging mist. He couldn't remember how he had escaped the endless cave.

John was certain of one thing, though. He knew where he had been; Hades, the underworld of Greek myth. Somehow, the land of the dead had infected John and taken a piece of his soul with it. It had altered his body, leaving his skin gray and nearly featureless. John's hands were now sharp, boney claws. His eyes were empty black pools. All around him, a thin purple fog hung like an aura.

John Doppler had spent a week in hell. He decided that he was never going to back. Swearing an oath to every Olympian god that he could remember, John Doppler became a hero. He took the name Eidolon, a Greek word for a phantom that can appear as a living person. With hell at his back, Eidolon went looking for trouble.

CHARACTER INFORMATION SHEET

Hero's Name: Eidolon

Origin: Altered Human

Identity (Secret): John Doppler. Eidolon can use his Shapeshifting-Imitation power to disguise his altered appearance. As John Doppler, he is a an average-looking man with dark hair and brown eyes.

PRIMARY ABILITIES Fighting: Incredible (40) Agility: Incredible (40) Strength: Good (10) Endurance: Remarkable (30) Reason: Good (10) Intuition: Excellent (20) Psyche: Incredible (40)

SECONDARY ABILITIES Health (F+A+S+E): 120 Karma (R+I+P): 70 Resources: Popularity: 5 (Secret Identity): 10

POWERS

SHAPESHIFTING (IMITATION): Monstrous (75)

Eidolon can channel a tiny thread of the life-force of any person he touches, mentally projecting it onto the mist that always surrounds him. Doing so creates a powerful illusion that allows Eidolon to duplicate the targeted person exactly.

CLAWS: Remarkable (30)

Eidolon's fingers end in boney claws, a side effect of his time in Hades.

FOG OF LETHE – CORROSIVE MISSILE: Remarkable (30)

Eidolon can project the purple fog of Lethe, the river of oblivion, whose condensation disintegrates matter.

TALENTS

Judo (Martial Arts A): Stun or Slam an opponent regardless of their comparative Strengths and Endurances.

Electronics: +1 CS on matters involving electronic devices, including their creation and repair.

Thoughts on Marvel Super Heroes RPG (Part 1)

As I posted a while ago, I ran into a group of guys playing the old TSR Marvel Super Heroes game down at the food court. They invited me to play, but work commitments kept me from accepting their offer until today.

Let me preface by saying that I had fun. The GM did a great job of making me feel like I was playing in a living, breathing comic book world that was unfolding all around my character. There was a lot of sandbox gaming going on, with a whole bunch of leads popping up all around us. We could have gone and investigated any of them and I'm sure they all would have turned up a bunch of adventures.

I say that because I don't want it to seem like I didn't enjoy gaming with this friendly group of guys. I really did. However, I'm not sure that Marvel Supers is my favorite game. This is likely to be a longer post than it needs to be. I'll try to keep it to two parts.

I used to own the Marvel Super Heroes Basic Boxed set. Man, did I save up and work hard to get that stupid thing. I was a kid and there was no internet, meaning that not only was it hard for me to scrape up the funds, I then had the added challenge of trying to find a copy of the game. I probably spent more time trying to get Marvel Super Heroes than any other game, toy, or “fun” thing I own. You can imagine my disappointment when I didn't like the game.

To be fair, I only actually played it once, running some of the sample characters against a mini-adventure that came in the back of the book. I couldn't have been much older than 12 or 13, no expert on either RPGs or comic books. The rules really encouraged you to play existing characters from the Marvel Universe and came with stats that seemed to cover every comic book super hero I could think of (minus Superman and his DC friends, of course). With that in mind, I let my neighbors and my cousin pick whatever characters they liked and we just went at the scenario as written.

They picked Spider-man, the Incredible Hulk, and Silver Surfer. For those of you not familiar with comics, let me help you out. You know Spider-man, of course. He's sort of a moderately powerful guy in the world of supers. Then, there's the Hulk. You also know him, but it's important to understand that, depending on how angry he is, Hulk is potentially the strongest character in the universe. A universe that includes people who can literally throw the moon at you. Finally, the Silver Surfer. Without getting too deep in needless detail, one can argue that Silver Surfer is more powerful than Superman or Thor. That's the most famous hero EVER and a deity, respectively.

Going against Spidey, an infinitely strong monster, and a guy who can stand in the middle of a supernova and not bat an eye? Two crooks and a guy dressed like a scorpion. 

Hey, it's not my fault! I didn't know that much about the game and didn't give a lot of thought to the relative strengths of these characters. I was used to level-based systems, where every character had a number that showed how powerful he was. This game rated abilities with adjectives, for crying out loud! Spidey's agility was something like “Amazing” or “Incredible.” The Silver Surfer's main ability was rated as “Shift Z” or some other abstract description, proving that even the authors of this game couldn't think of as many adjectives as they had power levels.

There are many people who claim they loved the Marvel attribute system. I'm not one of them. I get the concept here. They're trying to make the system feel less gamey and more like a comic book by removing numbers and replacing them with descriptive words. The trouble is the words themselves. I challenge the casual reader to tell me which is better, “Amazing,” “Monstrous,” or “Incredible.” Yeah, you might guess correctly. The order that the authors placed these stats might make perfect sense to you. But, then again, they might not. Change them into numbers, and there is never a chance you'll get it wrong. 8 will always be more than 5.

Anyway, the fight went something like this. Spider-man drops in on a couple of jewel-thieves mid-crime. After a few seconds of witty banter, Spidey wraps the bad guys up in a web and the battle is over. But wait! There's a surprise! The Scorpion is hiding in the back of the getaway van. Bursting from his hiding place, Scorpion raises his poisonous tail and...notices the Silver Surfer floating above the alley. The Surfer snaps his fingers and the Scorpion is blasted into oblivion. End of adventure.

As stupidly simple as that was, I remember that it took a long time. You could chalk some of that up to inexperience, but I remember the Marvel system being kind of slow. Tonight, I got to experience it again, a much older and more experienced gamer.

You know what? It was still slow.

Everything in Marvel is resolved on a chart. It's not the worst system in the world. You cross reference your stat or power, roll d%, and look on the chart. The results are color-coded with white as a failure, green as a success, yellow as a better success, and red is the best result. That's not hard, I know. I used to play Rolemaster; I don't mind a chart.

You know what's faster than a chart, though? A number. It's the same as the ability score thing. I can learn the difference between Monstrous and Colossal, I can also learn what a yellow means when attacking vs a green. With a number, though, I don't need to learn anything. If my sheet says, say, roll d10 and add 5, I can do so easily. Then, depending on the system, the GM can tell me whether my action worked or not.

It might sound like I'm picking nits here, but I don't think so. Remember that we're talking about a game that is trying to emulate the action of comic books. If any game system should be fast and easy to use, it's a super hero game system. Comic books feature lots of fights. These fights, for the most part, are divided up into large illustrations that tell the story in a kind of snapshot style. Comics don't feature a lot of characters missing, panel after panel, dragging on through seeming stalemates. The Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game does.

I will forgive a supers game for slow, detailed character generation. A truth about almost every supers RPG I've ever played, even if I didn't care for the system, is that character generation is a lot of fun. It's a big part of the game, coming up with your own super hero. Also, in a game that faithfully emulates comics, character death should be rare. That makes me more forgiving of a drawn-out character creation. This isn't OD&D, where you're making new characters all the time.

Combat, though? It should be all WHAM! ZAP! SLICE! Done. Charts slow things down, at least until you learn to use them, and have no place in a super hero game. I have a theory about the chart. It feels like the product of a second or third generation of roleplaying games. It can only exist in a world where roleplaying game concepts are already firmly rooted in the minds of the designers. It feels like being different just for the sake of it. I can imagine designers asking themselves, “What would a game be like if it had a single chart to handle all the mechanics?” and then writing a game around that.

Instead, a better product would have come from looking at the source materials and trying to translate them into a game that remained as faithful to their feel and spirit as possible. Sadly, I don't think this was done here.

Thoughts on Cleric Magic

One of the things I've always tried to do is take a look at the way D&D rules work and tried to adapt my world to fit those assumptions. That doesn't mean that I won't alter or houserule something that doesn't jibe with some setting detail that I'm particularly attached to, but I'm not interested in changing 30 plus years of D&D tropes unless I have a darn good reason. Better to flex my world to fit the rules.

Cleric magic has always struck me as a good example of this kind of strangeness. With a few exemptions, clerics and magic-users (wizards, mages, whatever you want to call them) cast spells pretty much the exact same way. I think we can all agree that the D&D cleric is primarily based on the idea of a medieval Christian crusader, perhaps with some extra powers (i.e. spells) tacked on from various mythological and literary sources. Nowhere that I've read, however, do miracles work like D&D magic. So how do they work, why, and what does that mean for a D&D campaign setting?

Conclusion #1: Despite the difference in source and effect, cleric spells and magic-user spells are just different categories of the same kind of thing.

The magic used by clerics, for almost all purposes, is the same as the magic used by wizards. I know that the spells themselves are different, that's not what I'm saying. Cleric spells are not miracles. They don't reflect the way the biblical prophets performed signs and wonders. The only thing that cleric spells seem to be simulating is magic-user spells, at least in terms of preparation and execution. In fact, in the original D&D rulebooks (1974), there is no clear rule saying that only wizards keep spellbooks. The rules seem to imply that both clerics and magic-users both collect their spells in books (Men and Magic, p.34).

Conclusion #2: The force that powers spells comes from somewhere outside of the caster. Cleric spells come from a deity.

All magic comes from an external source. Magic-users study strange writings in ancient tomes to somehow temporarily “memorize” spells. Clerics pray to a god or goddess, also gaining a set number of one-shot spells. In both cases, the spell comes from somewhere else, gets held within the spell-caster's mind until used, and then it's gone. While it is not clear where magic-user spells actually come from (the cosmos, the energy of all living things, who knows?), such is not the case for clerics; their magic comes from the gods. Some D&D books make reference to clerics who gain their spells from some concept, such as Law or Nature, which for these purposes is the same as a deity.

Conclusion #3: Something intangible separates cleric and magic-user spells.

Despite the similarities between the two types of magic, clerics cannot cast magic-user spells and vice versa. The game rules don't offer any explanation for this, other than the idea that the spells come from different sources. There is something of an idea that perhaps wizard spells are written down differently than cleric spells. While clerics don't use spellbooks in most versions of D&D, they do make and use scrolls. However, clerics lack the spell Read Magic, which magic-users need to decipher spellbooks, scrolls, and the like. That seems to imply that a cleric spell is simpler than a magic-user spell, but requires a deity to function.

Conclusion #4: There are a finite number of cleric spells.

Magic-users must find and “learn” all their spells. If they haven't personally copied it into a spellbook, they can't prepare it. Furthermore, a given magic-user is limited by his intelligence, meaning that he can never learn all the spells in the world. Clerics do not suffer this limitation; they can pray for literally any spell that exists (limited by their experience level). However, they can't just ask their god for whatever they want. A cleric must choose from a set list of established spells.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter what deity a character follows, he has access to the same exact spells as every other cleric (at least, in original D&D). That means that a priest of the thunder god has the same powers as a priest of the goddess of love. Third Edition changed this a little bit with the advent of Cleric Domains, but all clerics still have access to the same core set of spells

Setting Assumptions

From the above conclusions, I came up with the following setting assumptions.

Assumption #1: There is a list of cleric spells

If a cleric must prepare spells from a set list, it is reasonable to assume that this list of available spells is somehow written down. Since all gods grant the same spells, then this list either predates the current religions, is somehow shared by them, or each had developed it independently (perhaps with divine inspiration).

Assumption #2: Cleric spells are simple rituals

All it takes to cast a magic-user spell is intelligence and special training. Cleric spells are presumably easier since they require no spellbook or a very high intelligence. However, only someone with faith in a deity and a certain amount of wisdom can cast them.

Assumption #3: Only the ordained can cast cleric spells

If cleric spells are written down, simple, and only require faith, then any pious, literate person should be able to cast them. This is not the case, however. Only clerics can employ these spells, with a god or goddess providing the final, unknown component that triggers the magic. While it's plausible to say that a deity actively approves the casting of each and every spell, checking whether or not the caster is a cleric of sufficient power and piety, this seems like a weak answer to me.

A better solution is to assume that clerics, by their affiliation with a structured religious order, undergo a ritual that gives them the power to use their magic. Whatever means a specific religion uses to ordain its clergy, the act of ordination lets the priest transform a list of simple prayers into powerful magic spells.

House Rule Tolerance

In conversation with another gamer that I chanced upon here in South Korea, he mentioned that he's not really a D&D fan. Instead, he seems to prefer games with a more storytelling, less random aspect to them. While not exactly my cup of tea, I don't believe in the One True Way or the dreaded Wrongbadfun. Thus, I was interested to hear a bit about his games of choice. He mentioned that, while he likes certain games, he prefers to run a system of his own invention.

This got me thinking about our own tolerance for house rules and experimentation in RPGs run by other people. While I'm as obsessive a tinkerer as they come, I have always found it important to try to adhere to the core of the rules as written for whatever game I'm GMing at the time. When I add houserules (and I do), I try to keep them in the spirit of the original system and only add them for good reasons.

This idea also applies to setting/genre tropes that may or may not be part of the rules. If you're telling people that you want to run D&D, but you're excluding all demi-humans, changing out Vancian Fire-and-Forget-Magic, and making orcs the most dominate race in the world, are you really still playing D&D? At that point, I feel like you've invited me to a movie and instead offered me a circus. I might enjoy the latter, but I came here expecting the former.

There's nothing wrong with throwing all the rules or expectations out the window, of course. I'm certainly not disparaging my new-found gamer buddy's homebrewed system. In fact, I think it's awesome that he's taken the time to write a game that reflects the way he wants to play. I'd love to take a look at it sometime. I love games of all kinds and I can certainly admire his do-it-yourself attitude.

I do wonder, though, how much tolerance each of us has for other people's house rules. I once played in a 2E campaign that started with the GM telling us there are no halflings or gnomes in his world because he thinks that those two races are “stupid.” Maybe it was the crass way he presented the idea, but I was immediately turned off by this. I don't think gnomes or halflings are stupid and I'm playing this game too, man. If you have a neat idea that certain rules don't mesh with, I'm all for it. If you're just kind of winging rules options based on a whim...that sucks.

There are two extreme directions one can take this philosophy. One is the ultimate pioneer-spirit approach where everyone's game is different, subject to myriad houserules and basic setting assumptions getting tossed right out the window. The other side is a blind adherence to the rules, treating RPGs more like traditional games like Poker or Chess where the rules are universal so that everyone involved knows what they're getting into.

The best approach is probably somewhere in the middle. I think I'm more in the second camp. I want to be in the first camp, totally trusting that the GM is tweaking and houseruling the game in order to maximize the awesome and minimize flaws he's found through actual play. In reality, though, I'm far too wary of encountering another “halflings are dumb” guy. Therefore, I err on the side of caution and trust the professional game designers.

I would still love to read through someone's self-written game, though. That sounds awesome.

One Page Design Philosophy

Some time ago, the One Page Dungeon was the rage amongst all the OSR bloggers. I must admit that I find the concept intriguing. As fun as flavor text can be to read in an RPG book, I don’t think that “read aloud” sections of adventures actually work in gaming sessions. If I have to read anything more than a few sentences or a short paragraph to my players, I notice their eyes glass over. Worse still, they often miss key information, simply because reading verbose prose aloud is not a very good way to rely fine detail. Emotion, maybe, but fine detail? No.

What I like about the One Page Dungeon more than the template itself is the idea behind it. Namely, anything you have to use as a referee of a roleplaying game should be presented as clearly, concisely, and quickly as possible. That’s why monsters in older D&D are easier to use than 3.5. No matter how well designed the statblock, it still takes a certain amount of brainpower to parse all those ability scores, attacks, skills, feats, spells, and powers.

I plan to adopt this kind of One Page Philosophy to my own game designs. Whenever I write up new material for use in my home campaign, I will try to keep things as short and clear as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to eliminate all the fluff from my world. In fact, I think the end result will be better because I will have to choose my words carefully.

I wish professional designers would do the same. I read a lot of RPG books for entertainment, a practice in which I suspect I’m not alone. It’s very rare, however, that I sit down and read them as I would a novel, from cover to cover reading each word. Instead, I flip around, reading a portion here and skimming a portion there. Naturally, I miss a lot doing this. If a book is heavy on description and flavor text, giving me minute details about the inner workings of the campaign world, I often get bored and move on to another section. The author would probably have conveyed more information if he had simply written less, since I would have been far more likely to read and retain it.

Perhaps I’m the problem here. Maybe I suffer from some kind of ADD related to AD&D. I don’t think that’s the case, though. RPG books are not novels and they shouldn’t be written like them. Imagine a cook book that begins each recipe with a one paragraph introduction to each recipe, explaining the history of the food. You might be really interested to learn how German Chocolate Cake got its name or who invented the Cobb Salad. If the same cookbook devoted entire pages to food history, however, you’d be far less likely to read it, let alone use the thing in the kitchen. Cook books are for cooking, just like RPG books are for playing roleplaying games.

It would be foolish to slavishly adhere to this idea, never writing more or less than one page about anything. The One Page Philosophy is meant to be abstract and flexible. If you’re writing about something important, say a guild that is central to a setting, then you should probably devote more to a page to its description. However, an author should still try to limit the information to small, easily digestible sections. Maybe the history and motivation of the guild fit on one page. The stats of its leaders and typical members fit on another. Plot hooks and information about the guilds’ dark secrets finish things on another.

I will see what I can do to keep the One Page Philosophy in mind in my own writings. I have a lot of stuff sitting on my harddrive that I eventually want to post up here. Before I do so, I will have to edit out a lot of needless fluff make sure my writing is as interesting and precise as possible. I think the end product will be much better for my efforts.

Wonders of Your World

There is a really cool scene in the Fellowship of the Ring in which the heroes, floating down the river Anduin into Gondor, pass two giant marble statues. These are the Argonath, a pair of statues carved in the likeness of Isildur and Anarion. The statues mark the northern border of ancient Gondor and serve as a visual warning to her enemies as well as a reminder of Gondor's might.

The Argonath aren't essential to the plot; they're little more than scenery, but the statues serve another purpose. Their presence reminds the viewer (or reader) that Middle Earth is an old world with thousands of years of history. The Argonath show us that Gondor was once a much larger and more powerful nation. They also tell a little something about Gondor's culture.

A GM would do well to include such man-made wonders in his campaign, for many of the same reasons that Tolkein included the Argonath in his book. They make the world feel more alive; they're interesting to view, experience, and explore; they give a sense of history to the campaign; and they can teach the players something about a society.

For inspiration, here are the classic “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.” As a bonus, I've included a few wonder entries from the different incarnations of Sid Meiers Civilizations computer games. Some of these are not “wonders of the world” in the traditional sense, but they were important developments nonetheless. Remember that your own ideas don't have to be as large or obvious as the pyramids.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Great Pyramid of Giza: The tomb of the Egyptian Pharoah Khufu. The pyramids themselves are impressive icons, and the Great Pyramid is largest of them. It was one of the largest structures of the ancient world, it has lasted for thousands of years, and it is houses the tomb and treasures of Egyptian kings. There is also the matter of how it was built, a question that still remains unsettled among some modern scholars.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon: King Nebuchadnezzar II constructed this wonder of multi-leveled gardens for his wife. The gardens, complete with a complex irrigation system, was notable for its architecture, design, and the beauty of its lush plants. The fact that they were built in the desert climate of what is now Iraq adds to the Gardens' appeal.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: 120 years in the building, this grand example of Greek temple architecture was destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again. Antipater of Sidon, a poet who helped create the concept of the 7 Wonders of the World, said of the Temple: “...but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, 'Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand.'”A mystery cult, called Amazons by some ancient scholars, may have been associated with the Temple site in its early days.

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia: A 40 foot statue of ivory and gold depicting the king of the gods. The statue was so massive that one scholar proclaimed that it would “unroof the temple” if it were to stand up. Legend says that when workers came to disassemble it and bring it to the Roman Emperor Caligula, the statue let out a peal of laughter so powerful it destroyed their scaffolding and sent them fleeing in terror.

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus: An enclosed tomb nearly 200 feet in height built for Mausolus, a governor of Persia. Four different sculptors created the carvings that decorated the large tomb's corners, and statues and bas-reliefs decorated the whole of the building. Renown for its aesthetics and architecture, the Mausoleum is also a monument to love and grief. It was built by Mausolus' widow (who was also his sister) after his death and meant to serve as a tribute to her late husband. The name Mausolus has carried on into modern times as the world Mausoleum.

The Colossus at Rhodes: A 100 foot statue of the god Helios, built to celebrate the city of Rhodes' victory against an invading army. The statue was the largest of its kind in all of the ancient world. Its imagery captured the imagination of Shakespeare (in Julius Caesar), the designers of D&D (as a monster), and the designers of the Statue of Liberty.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria: The lighthouse, at upwards of 400 feet tall, towered above all other structures on earth. Indeed, it was centuries before man was able to build anything larger. Its light shined out a warning guide to ships for hundreds of years, and the last remnants of the lighthouse stood until the year 1480; nearly 2,000 years after its construction.

A Few “Wonders” from the Civilization Computer Games

Moai Statues: Strange monolithic human statues carved from rock on Easter Island. Thought to represent deified ancestors, the Polynesian people that carved the heavy statues transported them all around the island, sometimes bearing them over several miles. The tallest known Moai is over 30 feet tall and weighs a staggering 82 tons.

The Great Wall of China: Not a single wall, but a series of stone and earthen fortifications built to protect China's northern border against barbarian incursions. The entire wall, taken as a whole and including all its branches, stretches nearly 4,000 miles.

Royal Library of Alexandria: Built in Egypt, the Great Library was the most significant collection of written works in the ancient world. Its goal was to collect all of the world's knowledge. As ships came into the port at Alexandria from both the eastern and western world, scholars at the library would gather any books from their cargo, make copies for their owners, and keep the originals. According to legend, the scribes were so skilled at this, the books' rightful owners often didn't even notice that they were receiving copies. No modern record of the library's contents exists, but it is likely that it contained tens of thousands of individual works collected on hundreds of thousands of scrolls.

It should be easy to take a few of these, add a fantastic twist, and then use them to spice up your own campaign.

In the Year 2000...

I've gotten off the d20 band wagon. It's kind of sad, in a way. As silly as this sounds, I think I was literally one of the earliest adopters of D&D Third Edition. Way back in 2000, I was an active reader on Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D Third Edition News. I can still remember the excitement of those times. If I think hard enough, I'm mentally transported back to the radio station where I worked as an overnight DJ. During down time, I'd surf onto Eric's site and read snippets of the upcoming 3E. I remember how new and different it all felt. Reflex saves, Base Attack Bonuses, Feats...all that stuff that is part of the gaming lexicon now was exotic and new.

It was a new age in gaming, one that we'd never seen before. The grognards will tell you that the golden age of D&D was the late 1970s, and they're right. The early 2000s, though, was the age where the gap between the game designers and the players all but vanished. The internet was still a fairly new thing back then and it seemed that information about the new D&D was appearing at lightning speed. If Monte Cook came up with a new rule on Monday, you'd hear about it on Eric Noah's message boards on Tuesday.

For me, it was the first time I ever felt such a strong connection to D&D. The open communication, the willingness to address the hardcore fans, to give us information about the hows and the whys of the development process, made a lot of us feel like 3E was our game. TSR had been a faceless corporation with a hostile policy against houserules and fan sites. Wizards of the Coast, at least for a few short years in the early 2000s, embraced the fans. They leaked us information about the game. They not only encouraged house rules, they gave us the OGL so we could officially endorse and sell them.

I was so excited about 3E that my friend and I planned a last minute trip to Gen Con just so we could buy the 3E players handbook the moment it was available. I got mine signed by Jonathan Tweet, Skip Williams, and Monte Cook. Then I got both Gygax and Arneson to sign it. We went to an RPGA event and found that the judges were only vaguely familiar with the new rules. Thanks to Eric Noah's website, I knew more than anyone there about the new game. I started helping people make characters. I felt like an expert. I felt like 3E was my game, like I'd had a hand in creating it. I didn't, but I got to watch it develop.

Alas, Wizards of the Coast isn't what it used to be. How could it? None of the people working there are the same. The world is a different place, too. Paizo and Goodman Games released their entire game rules online for free as a public playtest. Almost every game that comes out now is under some kind of open license. Some of the good things that came out of those early 3E years are still around, but the magic has faded. It makes me sad in a way.

Pathfinder seems like a worthy heir to 3E. As I hear about Paizo's continued success, I can't believe that Wizards basically gave them 3E after D&D Fourth Edition came out. If the rumors are true and Pathfinder is outselling Dungeons and Dragons, then it means that Ryan Dancy's plan worked; no single company owns D&D any longer. The name may belong to Wizards, but the game belongs to everyone. Who could have seen any of this coming, eleven or more years ago?

I miss those early days, right before 3E came out. There was a buzz in the gaming world and a sense of community that I wish we could find again. I know that it wasn't the first time this happened. I guess that means that it won't be the last. Here's to the next gaming high period. It can't come too soon!

Super 8 and Storytelling

I watched the movie Super 8 last night. I enjoyed it, although I thought that it had the makings within it of a much better movie. Super 8 felt like the Goonies mixed with a modern, slightly scarier, ET. I don't want to give the wrong impression; the plots weren't the same, just the feelings. A group of ragtag kids run around in an adult world while scary government agents do X-Files stuff in a small town.

Super 8 is trying to be more realistic than the movies that inspired it, the movies that producer Steven Spielberg made back in the 1980s. The result is more realistic but less memorable characters. The Goonies were almost archetypes. They even had evocative nicknames that reminded the viewer of their personalities: Chunk, Mouth, Data, even Sloth. The characters of Super 8 have normal names. They seem (with the exception of the improbably brave and clever protagonist) like kids you might know. More real? Yes, but less memorable. At the same time, the fantastic elements of the story seem kind of tacked on. You remember how in Stephen King's It, Part 1 was really cool and nostalgic, mostly about the kids? Part one made you feel like one of those kids, It played off of the feelings and emotions we can all relate to having as children, the fear of the dark we all have inside. Part 2, with the grownups, had a big stupid giant spider and was far less satisfying. If you mixed the nostalgia of Part 1 with the stupid giant spider of Part 2, you'd have Super 8. It's a good movie, a solid B, but it could have been an A+.

What was awesome about Super 8 was the retro quality of its storytelling. I'm not talking about the 1970s setting or even the throwback to older Spielberg movies. I'm talking about the pacing and storytelling style of the movie. With four young kids in the house, I've seen a lot of kids shows, for better or for worse. Modern childrens' movies are fast paced with a lot of whiz bang effects. The best of the them have dialogue and jokes aimed at the parents, too, delivered quickly and smoothly right over the heads of the kids.

Super 8 is different. It focuses on the emotions of the story and its characters. It spends time establishing the characters, their histories, and their relationships to one another. It's not in a hurry to do so. Once it gets you there, the movie blows up a train in spectacular fashion. Then, with the kids' world turned upside down, the movie slows down again. The pacing is deliberate. This is a summer movie, to be sure, with explosions and monsters, but it's a summer movie from a different time. Well, parts of it are, anyway. It's wonderful to see a movie that treats its audience, children they may be, as if they're intelligent and capable of becoming emotionally attached to a story. Whether they are or not I'm not sure, but it was deeply refreshing to see a movie paced like this. May it spread to other movies and affect them.

I feel obligated to conclude with a gaming connection. Games, like other forms of entertainment, are products of their times. All too often, in the rush to adapt the zeitgeist of the day, I think that we forget the good parts of the things that came before. The music of today is very different from the music of 30 years ago. Does that mean that all of the music back then sucked and that the millions of people producing and enjoying it were wrong? Obviously not.

The same holds true for roleplaying games. The idea that we've somehow evolved or advanced beyond the rules elements of OD&D or 1E or whatever is absurd. Granted, these games were played over a period of several years, and we have the advantage of seeing how they worked on a bigger stage over a longer timeline. So, it's fair to say that you prefer system X or technique Y. But to dismiss old games simply because they're old, as if games could expire like cartons of milk? That's really, really foolish.

The Gamer's Creed

I see little point in "edition war" arguments where one side tries to convince the other that they play a superior form of D&D. That isn't to dismiss debates on the merits and flaws of different games. Nor am I saying that no one should not be able to gripe and complain from time to time. That's pretty much the purpose of most blogs, if I'm not mistaken.

No, I'm against useless debates where one angry fan tries to pass his opinions and preferences off as some kind of fact, as if he's going to convince someone else to change their own feelings via an internet message board. While I've been guilty of contributing to these sorts of ego-driven discussions in the past, I would very much like to avoid doing so in the future.

This got me thinking about other common behaviors that I'd like to avoid, if I can. I thought it might be useful to write these down and that it might be amusing if I did so in a fashion similar to the Soldier's Creed or other such mottos. I already have a manifesto, why not a creed as well?

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A GAMER'S CREED
by Retreat Forward

I am a fan of tabletop roleplaying games, as typified by Dungeons and Dragons and the games it inspired, either directly or indirectly.

I enjoy many roleplaying games. I like to play them, read them, and collect them. I think that all three of these activities are a viable part of a hobby that includes many separate but related pursuits.

I believe that there is a shared culture among gamers created by a variety of common interests. I feel that this culture is important to maintain and I will try to build and preserve it through my behavior and actions. I will also remember that games are meant to be fun and I won’t take them too seriously.

There are games that I don’t enjoy. I will not disparage others who play games that I do not like. Doing so creates unnecessary strife among otherwise like-minded people. I will remember that my opinion is not a litmus test of what is good or bad; it is only my opinion.

I believe that roleplaying game rules were meant to be altered and I enjoy creating rules of my own. The best rules are created through play. Second best are rules developed independently and then rigorously tested. The least useful are those rules that were created in a vacuum.

Most game designers are experienced players and I value their opinions. However, I will not hold the ideas of a designer above those of any other experienced player. No person can be an expert on how to play roleplaying games because there is no single correct way to play roleplaying games.

I believe that roleplaying games are part of a unique hobby that can bring a lifetime of fun. I will strive to teach this hobby to others. I will actively support the games and activities that I enjoy so that they will carry on through subsequent generations.

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D&D Kayfabe

There is an important lesson that RPG players of any stripe can learn from the “sport” of professional wrestling. Before I make my central point, allow me to share some of the similarities that wrestling and tabletop roleplaying share. Wrestling, like roleplaying games, is often very silly. The storylines are over-the-top, the violence is sometimes cartoonish, and the outcomes of the matches don't really matter. At its best, though, wrestling (and gaming) is a lot of fun for both the performers and the audience, who all experience many of the same kinds of emotional highs and lows associated with a legitimate sporting event.

The key to making all of these unbelievable parts come together into a cohesive, entertaining whole in wrestling is a concept called kayfabe. The word itself dates back to the secret trade language of carnival workers; It is basically a pig latin way of saying “fake.” The simplest definition would be to say that kayfabe is about suspending disbelief, but it goes farther than that. Years ago, before wrestlers openly admitted that wrestling was predetermined, they used to protect this secret jealously, and not just with their words. Two wrestlers who hated each other on-screen would be careful never to be seen together in public, lest it spoil the illusion. Many wrestlers tried to live their in-ring gimmicks as much as possible, going as far as faking an accent or speaking in a different voice in front of strangers. Wrestling fans, often the butt of a great many jokes, would rally in defense whenever others called their favorite sport fake.

With the exception of the very young or not very intelligent, no one really thought that wrestling was legit, not if they watched it with any regularity. The wrestlers, I imagine, knew that the fans were on to them as well. How could they not? So, what was the point of closely guarding the secret if everyone knew? Why “keep kayfabe” when no one really believed it? The reason, I believe, was that kayfabe is a huge part of what makes wrestling fun. Even in this modern era, where kayfabe is by and large dead, wrestlers and wrestling fans still play along as though they have no idea that what they're watching is a predetermined spectacle. A wrestling fan will assure you that “of course it's fake, but so are sci-fi TV shows, so what?” Put him in the audience, though, and he'll scream for the good guys and boo all the bad guys. This is where D&D players can learn a lesson for their own favorite pass time.

There has been a lot of talk lately, especially among the “Old School Renaissance”, praising the open-ended, or sandbox campaign. The strength of this style of play is that, by not planning out every little detail in advance, the GM leaves himself room to adapt to what the players want to do. If I'm the GM and I bother to stat out and describe every square inch of the Tower of Ill Repute, I'm going to be up a creek (and annoyed) if the players make a beeline around the place and head straight to some forest I haven't had time to even map.

In order for this kind of campaign to work, the people on both sides of the table have to suspend disbelief that the world is a bigger, more detailed place than it actually is, and the GM has to play along while actually making a bunch of it up on the spot. That's D&D kayfabe. Like wrestling fans, the players know that the GM couldn't possibly have created all of this beforehand. He might have some very detailed notes but at least some of the time he's just pulling things out of thin air. The GM has a similar responsibility to maintain the illusion of a complete and living world. If either side breaks kayfabe, it hurts the fun.

That doesn't mean that the GM should never let his guard down and pause the game to say “Hey, guys, I didn't think of that. Give me a few minutes to figure out what's going on.” That kind of thing is fine when it's appropriate to the pace of the game or when it results in a more fair or entertaining outcome. In my opinion, though, the GM should never admit that he hasn't thought up the big, plot-affecting decisions. To do so cheapens the whole experience for everyone involved. It would be like the Rock getting on camera right before a match and telling the crowd “me and Steve Austin, I mean Steve Williams, are going to go plan out the finish of this match. We'll be back in a few minutes to pretend to fight. Get ready to cheer, because I'm going to be playing the good guy...if you smell what I'm cooking!”

Kayfabe isn't just needed for open-ended adventures, either. The opposite of the sandbox campaign is the railroad campaign. In this style, the players' actions are limited to places and events that the GM has carefully planned in advance. The advantage of the railroad style is that, within the constrains of what the GM has developed, there is usually a lot of detail. If you can guarantee that the players are heading to the Tower of Ill Repute, you can spend all your prep time describing the place in novel-like minutia.

A railroad works best when the players maintain D&D kayfabe and willingly bite onto the GM's adventure hooks, while the GM must give the players at least the illusion of free choice. For example, if the PCs are given a choice between two different paths in the dungeon, it breaks kayfabe and kills the fun if you clue them in to the fact that they'll face an ogre no matter what route they take. It's better to keep the untraveled road a mystery than spoil the illusion.

Here's an example of breaking kayfabe from my own gaming experiences:

Between regular campaigns, a friend of one of my players thought to try his hand at GMing. As one of those guys who is almost always behind the screen, I jumped at the chance to roll up a character and actually play for a change. We sat down, jotted down some stats, and within a few hours were ready to start playing.

The adventure was set in a small town in which several citizens had gone missing. Suspecting foul play, we searched around the town for clues. The disappearances, it turned out, correlated with the nights of the full moon. Further research turned up a witness who saw a large wolf lurking about one of the victim's farms shortly before his disappearance. The answer was obvious: someone in town was a werewolf!

Maybe it was because I hadn't gotten to play very often, but I was really enjoying this adventure. We identified three likely suspects, based on clues we'd gathered at the scenes of the crimes. Before we could make our accusation, however, we had to be sure that we had the right man. The wrong decision would mean personal trouble for us, as each suspect had powerful, vengeful allies. Even if we did manage to find the guilty party on the first try, we knew we'd likely face a fight against a desperate, cornered lycanthrope.

The players decided to take a break and resume the game after dinner. A bunch of us piled into a car and headed to a nearby McDonalds. We were all excited, discussing our next course of action while we gobbled down fries. What if we pinpointed the wrong person and the werewolf escaped? We hastily assembled a plan B in which we would trick all three suspects into gathering together in one location. Perhaps, if we were clever, we could bluff the monster into revealing itself. It was a dangerous plan because we'd be putting two innocents in potential harm's way.

At some point during all this planning the GM, motivated by guilt or a sense of camaraderie with me as a fellow referee, leaned over and quietly told me a secret. “You know what's crazy?” the GM asked, “I haven't even decided myself who the werewolf is. I'm just making it up.” With that one little revelation, that one breaking of D&D kayfabe, the GM killed my emotional investment in his game.

As cliched and hastily created as the whole adventure was, I probably could have figured out that he was making most of this up as he went along. In retrospect, the clues he left for us were mostly based on what we expected to find where we expected to find it. It was all very flimsy and unrealistic. At the time, though, I didn't notice. I didn't notice because I was having fun. I was riding high on the emotions of a good game and playing along with the reality of the story this GM had created. By violating his end of the suspension of disbelief, by breaking kayfabe, the GM took me completely out of the adventure. From that point on, I was just going through the motions.

We didn't even have to implement our plan B. When we visited the very first suspect, we found his front door curiously ajar. Entering his house, we found the bodies of several victims half-eaten in his basement. In other words, we found the werewolf on the very first try. Surprise, surprise.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to suggest that D&D players should go along like sheep with whatever adventure the GM has cooked up, even if they aren't enjoying themselves. Nor am I saying that GMs should pretend as though they have reams and reams of notes, maps, and plans when they clearly don't. What I'm trying to do is define the unspoken contract between players and referees that allows us to turn down the volume on the logical parts of our brains just a bit so that the more emotional parts, the parts that I think carry a lot of the fun, can be heard from. I think it's useful to give this concept a name, and I think that kayfabe is as good a name as any.