I is for Improvement

AD&D is a game that takes work to learn and play. It takes study and practice to become skillful at playing and refereeing. In more than four decades of play I haven't mastered it. I'm probably not even playing it entirely correctly. I am, however, working, practicing, and studying to get better. I don't expect that to ever end. I have found it to be a game worth that effort.

It's also true that one can jump in, knowing nothing of how the game works, and have an interesting and enjoyable few hours of playing it. Some people decide never to go past that point, but I think they're missing out. 

If you will, take it as a given that one's enjoyment of a game is greater when one is more skilled at playing it than if one is unskilled at playing it. Let's assume that this is true to at least some degree along most of the spectrum of skill level in playing a game. The obvious truth then, is that if one is interested in playing a game, one should improve his or her skill at playing that game in order to gain greater enjoyment from playing it. Anyone who has played a sport, or chess, or a video game, or any number of other games more than once, will have experienced this improvement of enjoyment with improvement of skill.

When one plays AD&D, just like any other game, one will enjoy it more as one's skill improves. What constitutes skill at AD&D and how can one improve?

Skill at this game can be developed in two broad ways. First is following the rules of the game at all times. That means knowing the rules and practicing the self-discipline to follow the rules honestly. Second is efficiency of play. Many referees will attempt to improve their efficiency of play by not strictly following the rules of the game. This "bad habit" will destroy their players' and their own enjoyment of the game eventually.

PLAY BY THE RULES  

The most straight-forward opportunity for improvement is to learn the rules of the game. Read the rules. The manner in which the AD&D rules were written, and the complexity of game they describe, make the path toward complete mastery long. Furthermore, because this game supports open-ended play, the need for rules interpretations, rules extensions, and new rules, creates an ever-growing body of "game law" for the participant. Worse, it's a body of law that is unique to each referee or game club. Despite this challenge, reading the rules (carefully and repeatedly) will certainly improve one's play.

Following the rules of the game requires both referee and player to be honestly interested in playing the game according to the rules rather than achieving a particular outcome in the game. The referee can have no interest at all in the specific outcome of the game. The players must recognize that ignoring rules is cheating, and that cheating ruins enjoyment of the game. In fact, when one cheats, even just by ignorance of the rules, one is no longer playing the game. Imagine playing chess and allowing the king to move as if it was the queen. That's not the game of chess. Imagine deciding that black will win this game, and when white has an opportunity to checkmate, does not because the players agreed that black was going to win. That's not the game of chess either. If it's already decided that black will win, why bother pretending to play at all? If it's already decided the player characters will make it out of the dungeon with enough XP to level up, why bother pretending to play? If the point is only to hang out with your friends, just do that and leave the "game" out of it.

PLAY EFFICIENTLY

Efficiency matters for a couple of reasons. First, many of the things which make the game less efficient make the game less fun. Things such as looking up rules, doing character sheet accounting, and so on are largely individual activities, not group activities. Those in the group who are not participating in them are simply waiting for those that are. Secondly, more progress toward the objects of the game, accumulating experience points and wealth and manipulating the circumstances within the setting, can be accomplished the more of the game session's time is spent on those activities. The less that game session time is spent on the administration of the game, the more that can be spent on making progress within the game.

There are many, many ways by which one may improve his or her efficiency of play. In order of perhaps easiest to most difficult to master some of these are: clear and accurate character sheets, clear and complete notes and maps, game play mise en place, having contingency plans, knowing the rules relevant to your character as a player, knowing the rules relevant to in-session play as a referee.

Character sheets can be hand-written on notebook paper, digital or printed forms, or elaborately automated spreadsheets. What is important is that the player knows where all of the information is and can easily access what is needed, account for resource usage, update encumbrance load and movement rate, and so on. Skillful players adjust their sheets to what works best for them. Such players keep finding was to improve clarity and speed up character sheet operations at the table.

Keeping clear notes and maps of dungeons and wilderness explored is essential to finding one's way home at the end of the session, or back in by the most efficient route down to the next level of the dungeon to exploit. Skillful players will keep these well-organized, and improve their completeness or legibility between sessions. Examining these between sessions can sometimes provide ideas for more efficient play in the next session and for productive use of the characters' time between sessions.

Stealing a culinary term for preparation and setup, mise en place is the staging of everything needed in the session ahead of session time. This includes the equipment that a player or referee would use: books, dice, character sheets, reference sheets, notes, and maps. It includes decisions and plans made between the players in advance of the session. Marching order configurations, combat formations, door entry procedure, room search hygiene, watch schedules, and the like can all be decided before the session in order to make the most efficient use of session time. Preparation includes any in-game actions that can be done outside of the session such as shopping, hiring, and travel in civilized areas. Anything that can be done with little or no interaction with the referee should be done before the session convenes. 

There are simple playing techniques that can speed up the motions required of play. Players might designate a roller or specific rotation of rolling duties for surprise and initiative. Rolling "to hit" and damage simultaneously saves seconds dozens of times over. The attention required to know what to roll and when to roll it saves time dozens of times every session, too, while simultaneously ensuring that the player is focusing on details that could be exploited either in the moment or in the next session.

As Graf Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke famously said, "No operational plan extends with high certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy force." Condensed versions of this statement abound and it is as true in AD&D as in warfare. Winston Churchill stated the idea in a way maybe closer to how it applies in our game, "the best generals are those who arrive at the results of planning without being tied to plans." Skillful players make plans before the session, then they modify their plans when things inevitably take a different path from the one foreseen. Making a good plan is not one player saying, "let's do this," and the others agreeing. Even if the plan ultimately decided upon is exactly that, the value is in talking through the plan, why it can and can't work, what may go wrong and in what ways. The skillful players have built a framework for thinking about the problem beyond running the plan, even though that's where they start. Low level dungeon delving requires very little of this, as the choices are few and mostly obvious. Lair smashing, heists, sieges, and other more advanced actions cannot succeed without this kind of planning. The rewards in AD&D reflect this: the dungeon delvers can expect to average 145 gold per level per room cleared. If they're skilled, lucky, and well-prepared, they might get through two dozen rooms in a session, which is about 1,100 gold per PC in a 3-player, first level party. That's worth about half a level. At 5th level, that party would haul perhaps 5,800 each, not much more than a quarter of a level. Lair raiders, on the other hand, successfully taking a bandit lord's hoard are likely to gain 10,000 or more a piece. Incidentally, NPC leaders like those in a bandit camp are the best source of magic items in the game.

Knowing the rules relevant to your character is especially important for spell casters. Fighters have troop command capabilities the others do not. Paladins, rangers, thieves, and assassins have their own special rules to exploit. Every player should know and understand these inside and out for their character. The text is short and there's no reasonable excuse for not knowing how these work if your character has them. Spells, however, offer the greatest opportunity to be gained or lost. Skillful players of course read, understand, and memorize how all of their characters' spells work. These players also look for unconventional applications and to address their requirements. Even the most direct spells can benefit from novel use, but most are next to worthless without such innovation. Some spells like find familiar and animal friendship are only useful when used well before the session. Others such as enlarge and bless work when used shortly before combat begins. Planning these as part of a tactical sequence of operations with the other players before the session allows them to be used without eating so much session time as to diminish their value, or to clumsy effect from poor planning and coordination.

Knowing the rules that the referee follows provides an enormous benefit to players that some players simply don't think of. Others might think it unsporting or even cheating to exploit those rules. Those in the latter camp should consider that we are playing a game, not acting out the referee's story. A player cannot play a game well if he or she doesn't understand the rules. A player who willingly ignores the referee-facing rules self-imposes an unnecessary handicap. Players should pay attention to the odds of random encounters in various types of terrain and the encounters likely to be found there. Whether this knowledge is gained through hard experience or study of the rules is the player's choice. Gygax expected the former and admonishes the referee to follow suit. I'm almost 20 years older now than Gygax was when he wrote that admonishment. I don't want to wait for my players to learn every rule the hard way. I may not have that much time. Please, read the rules for both referee and player.

There are referee-facing rules that the players encounter quite quickly and clearly such as their monthly upkeep costs, and chances for contracting disease or being infested with parasites. Other rules such as the random encounter periods in the outdoors, the die used in densely populated lands, in patrolled lands, in wilderness, requires attention to acquire and players might not even be aware it is there for them to learn. In the game I organize, the referees share their "quick reference sheets" with the players on day one. Reference sheets which include several of those sorts of rules. Although it seems most players are still looking cross-eyed at their own character sheets a couple of sessions in, and completely ignoring those referee rules, they all do come to notice the referee rules and exploit them. Some sooner than others, but I love them all.

CONCLUSION

This is a competition, not an exhibition. Skillful play improves one's enjoyment of the game, and like sports, chess, and other such game-playing endeavors, enjoyment is the goal. Also like those other endeavors, this game is ultimately a competitive one as Gygax's words in the the introduction of the Players Handbook points out, "perhaps a war between players will be going on (with battles actually fought out on the tabletop with minature [sic] figures) one night, while on the next, characters of these two contending players are helping each other to survive somewhere in a wilderness." 

Sportsmanship, Scholarship, Fraternity & Sorority

H is for Hexes

Since I left off my explanation of infrastructure distribution on the geography of my setting, I've been running characters in the setting and continuing to refine and develop it. I've also experienced an increased interest in playing AD&D 1e according to the rules. Toward that end, it has been helpful to overlay a grid of hexes 1 mile across and to each ascribe one of the terrain types referenced by the rules. This allows me to easily track character movement on the map and know the specific terrain type in which they find themselves when a random encounter check is due.

I accomplished the terrain assignment programmatically, in similar fashion to the 6-mile hex types. I also opted to conform the settlements to how the rules would create them, rather than trying to construct more historically accurate demographics. I wanted my setting to align with other games which follow the rules. I also recognize that the forces of nature in a fantasy world as dangerous as the one which the game describes would probably have a dramatic impact on human demographics.

Appendix B of the Dungeon Masters Guide provides table for randomly generating terrain with settlements, castles, and ruins. The guidance For using these tables is for checking hexes which are 1 mile across or larger. How much larger isn’t specified and so one can create a setting compliant with the intentions of the rules of varying population densities by deciding how large each hex to be checked for a settlement should be. Each roll on this table averages 411.195 people. Most of the time, 83%, it’s none, but 1 in 100 is a city of ten to sixty thousand souls.

In my Erin 1478 setting, I’m using the geography of Ireland with a total human population of about 800 thousand. Spread over the island’s 32,595 square miles, that’s a density of about 24 ½ people per square mile. Following the guidance in Appendix B, the inhabitation table should be consulted for hexes each covering an area of about 16 ¾ square miles (that is 411.195 / 24.544). I will not, however, be consulting this table to distribute any settlements larger than a thorp. Since I’m using actual geography, I can use actual settlement locations as well to ensure that the siting of these settlements make some kind of sense. I will use this table to distribute single dwellings, thorps, castles, and ruins later.

For the cities, towns, and villages, what I want to know is how many this table would generate of each. So the first step is to figure out the percentage of the population which would be in each category of settlements. I concluded that the table generates 411.195 people per roll because each roll has a 3% chance of indicating a settlement of 6 ½ people on average, a 2% chance of a thorp averaging 50 people, and so on. The cities, at 1% chance for an average of 35,000 people contributes 350 to the 411.195 for each roll. As such, in the game’s implied setting, about 85% of the human population lives in settlements of this size. Since about 800,000 people live in the setting, some 680,900 of them live in cities. The game’s cities average 35,000, so there will be 20 cities in my setting. Following similar logic, there are also 20 towns, 39 villages, and 39 hamlets.

Taking the names and locations of the 119 most populous settlements in modern Ireland, I then assigned each of the 20 most populous a setting population of 10,000 – 60,000. I did the same for each category of settlement down to hamlet. The thorps and single dwellings will be placed randomly or when impled by events in the game.

Castles ought to show up once per 558 square miles or so, and so about 58 of these are expected across the island. As characters cover previously unexplored hexes, that’s roughly a 1 in 6 chance, 1% of the time for each 1-mile-across hex (0.866 sq mi). Ruins are two-thirds as common, same as villages and hamlets, a 2% chance per 16.7536 square miles, that’s about 39 on the island. The chance for ruins will be 1 in 8, 1% of the time. My procedure  is to roll 1 – 24 on a 1 in 100 in each 1-mile hex, where 1 – 4 indicates a castle and 5 – 7 indicates ruins.

The result is this:

Up close, it looks like this. The small, red 1s and 2s indicated patrolled and civilized hexes, respectively.

 

G is for Game

When I started this alphabetical series of posts, my intent was to parallel (at a slower pace) JB's series of posts describing his campaign. While JB's series has so far stuck pretty tightly to his intent of describing his campaign setting, my own series has veered off into the game itself more than the campaign setting. I'm pleased with that choice, because for me the function of the game is more important than the fiction around it and unlike JB, I haven't already written my thoughts on that.

I'll start with defining a game. I've already ranted about why some expressions of D&D are not a game. Defining "game" has been difficult enough a proposition that philosophers, sociologists, and game designers have attempted to define it often contracting one another. Having read his book The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, I'm in Bernard Suits' camp regarding this definition. Suits goes beyond defining "game," in a serious yet entertaining way, to assert that game-playing is the ultimate human good, since under ideal, Utopian conditions it would be everyone's main pursuit.

Suits' definition in this book is a little more cumbersome, containing his own, invented words, than the definition he wrote in the journal Philosophy of Science, Volume 34, Number 2 June, 1967:

To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity.

The characteristics of a game, according to this definition then are:

1. Actively playing it: To play a game is to engage in activity
   
   
2. Having a goal: directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs
   
   
3. Following the rules even when they oppose the goal: using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules
   
   
4. For its own sake: and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity.

"Actively playing" a game distinguishes playing a game from reading a book, listening to a story, watching a movie, and so on, because in these activities, the participant plays a passive, rather than an active role. When a group "plays D&D" following a packaged module, unless the referee is merely using it as a starting point from which the game could go anywhere, the players' activity is limited to at least the passivity of staying "on the map," and very possibly hitting "plot points" defined in the module which turn the activity away from being a game and into either acting in a play or listening to a story. Even without a full script of dialog and blocking, a "scene" in a module is still just acting, not game-playing. I will concede that the players are doing something, and so arguably are actively playing a game, but in the context of the rest of the definition, the activity needs to be directed at achieving a specific state of affairs, a goal. What that goals is then, matters for understanding what is meant by actively playing.

"Having a goal," bringing about a specific state of affairs, cannot be simply, as so many expressions of the game put it, "to have fun." No, "having fun" is not a state of affairs. Anyway, I have a million ways to have fun, and most of them provide far more efficient means of achieving mere "fun" than this complex set of rules. We may have fun playing the game, and if we didn't, we wouldn't play it, but that's not goal we're specifically trying to achieve. The rules of AD&D are quite clear that the goal for the players is to accumulate XP and advance their characters. All of the game's mechanics, man-to-man combat, spell casting, and so on improve for the character who advances and do not for the character that doesn't advance. In order to be actively playing, players must be working toward acquiring XP for their characters, and the only two ways the rules of first edition AD&D provide for getting XP is by recovering treasure and defeating opponents. Those are the only rules for XP acquisition in any version of this game.

"The rules" part is where for every edition of D&D, first edition included, the ground becomes a little shakier. This is the most common point of failure for an activity to fail being a game in my experience. It's the point on which every edition of the game besides first edition AD&D explicitly fails, in writing, in the core rule books. I'll start with a focus on XP, because that's the only game goal defined by the rules. There are other ways to break the rules in acquiring those XP, but the later editions break the activity as a game right here. Second edition introduced "story goals" as a means for players to acquire XP for their characters, but failed to provide rules for these, instead leaving it entirely to the referee's judgement to decide how many XP the goals are worth and what is required to acquire them. Worse, the guidelines provided for the referee's judgement suggest considering what rate of advancement will satisfy the players without making advancement seem too easy. I hope it's clear that's not a rule. If it's not clear, perhaps I need to dedicate "R" to that topic, but my short answer is a chess analogy. Consider that the goal of chess is to place one's opponent in checkmate. There are rules for how the chess pieces may and may not be moved which both define what checkmate means and restrict the means by which it could be achieved. In analog, the rules of AD&D define both how XP are acquired and what it means when they are. If one of the players, or anyone else for matter, is permitted to arrange the chess pieces on the board by judgement, rather than by the rules, in order to produce the checkmate state of affairs, then the third part of the definition of a game has not been followed. So if the DM / referee is permitted to assign XP to characters, ignoring the "means permitted by the rules" which are necessarily "more limited in scope" than in the absence of those rules, we have violated the third part of the definition of a game. If a participant is permitted to assign a character's level without following the requisite "moves" to gain those XP, we have also violated the third part of the definition, and we are not playing a game. Although 3rd edition made these "story goals" optional, every version of D&D after the first has included such so-called rules for "story goals." Yet they are not rules.

More insidious than arbitrary XP assignment when it comes to failing to have rules, is the concept of "rule zero" in which the rules are really just "rules suggestions." It's possible to interpret this as understanding that when one reads the core rule books what one is getting is a toolkit for making a game rather than an actual game. Certainly that is how many participants, myself included, have understood the rules to have been written. That does not mean that one can play the game without rules, only that one may take the rules provided as suggested rules for a game which is then defined by one's own rules based upon the guidance of those provided. An embarrassment of communication media portrays "rule zero" as no rules, labeled as "rulings over rules," "the rule of cool," and other such dismissals of rules as laws which must be followed in order to still be playing the game. Without rules, there is no game. A competitive game without rules simply devolves to total war, and a cooperative game, as so many people take D&D to be, though it is not, devolves to playing make-believe.

Suits' argument about the game being played for its own sake means to distinguish it from a survival activity, rather than to restrict the possibility of ulterior motives. One can play a game principally because one is interested in the social aspects involved in playing a game with friend, for example, and still be playing a game. In contrast, if one is compelled to participate in an activity that otherwise conforms to the characteristics of a game in order to survive, then he is not playing a game. It's difficult to imagine a plausible situation in which one would be engaged in any expression of D&D for the purpose of survival, so this last part of the definition isn't particularly relevant to the discussion here, except as reinforcement of the rigor of the definition which I am defending.

Much of this I could have said better, and I suspect I'll be revisiting the topic repeatedly in the alphabet. I invite your comments and counter arguments.

F is for Fun

Fun according to the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary: 

1. enjoyment; pleasure; a thing that gives enjoyment or pleasure and makes you feel happy

• We had a lot of fun at Sarah's party.
• Sailing is great fun.
• Have fun (= Enjoy yourself)!
• I decided to learn Spanish, just for fun.
• I didn't do all that work just for the fun of it.
• It's not much fun going to a party by yourself.
• “What fun!” she said with a laugh.
• Walking three miles in the pouring rain is not my idea of fun.
• The whole family can join in the fun at Water World.
• “What do you say to a weekend in New York?” “Sounds like fun.” 

2. behavior or activities that are not serious but come from a sense of enjoyment

• She's very lively and full of fun.
• We didn't mean to hurt him. We were just having a little fun.
• It wasn't serious—it was all done in fun. 

From this definition there are a few clear conclusions:

1. Fun is a noun, not an adjective. 
2. Fun is subjective. That which is fun for one may not be for another.
3. Fun is not always serious, but it is always enjoyable.

What's the connection between "fun" and my game of AD&D, or any game of D&D? Starting with the rule books, as I'm wont to do, the original three volume set, "White Box" Dungeons & Dragons, mentions the word only once, and then when describing a randomly shifting wall in a sample dungeon. Holmes mentions the word once, saying that the game is intended to be fun in his Basic rules. Moldvay mentions it once in his Basic rules as well, saying that the player characters have fun (not the players themselves, apparently) by overcoming obstacles. Moving on to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the word is mentioned once in the Players Handbook, just in Mike Carr's forward, not the rules themselves, but Gygax uses the word 12 times in the Dungeon Masters Guide. I've gathered them below:

• The material is herein, but only you can construct the masterpiece from it, your personal campaign which will bring hundreds of hours of fun and excitement to many eager players. (page 8) 
• The fun of the game is action and drama. The challenge of problem solving is secondary. (page 9)
• ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost a game for the fun and enjoyment of those who seek to use imagination and creativity. This is not to say that where it does not interfere with the flow of the game that the highest degree of realism hasn‘t been attempted, but neither is a serious approach to play discouraged. (page 9)
• This is not to say that a random mixture of monsters cannot be used, simply selecting whatever creatures are at hand from the tables of monsters shown by level of their relative challenge. The latter method does provide a rather fun type of campaign with a ”Disneyland” atmosphere, but long range play becomes difficult, for the whole lacks rhyme and reason, so it becomes difficult for the DM to extrapolate new scenarios from it, let alone build upon it. (page 90)
• Depopulation of one simply means that the player characters must move on to a fresh area - interesting to them because it is different from the last, fun for you as there are new ideas and challenges which you desire your players to deal with. (page 91)
• In many situations it is correct and fun to have the players dice such things as melee hits or saving throws. However, it is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the players. (page 110) 
• Some players will find more enjoyment in spoiling a game than in playing it, and this ruins the fun for the rest of the participants, so it must be prevented. (page 110)
• The inexperienced player should be allowed the joy of going on a dungeon adventure as a neophyte. You will recall how much fun it was when you didn't really know what was going on or which monster was which or how to do anything but laved every second of it! (page 111)
• ...a couple of the experienced players can act the part of some mercenary men-at-arms, as well as the roles of various tradesmen and others the new player meets in the course of play, and have a lot of fun in the bargain; but all actions, reactions, and decision making will be left strictly up to the neophyte (with no hints or other help from the others). (page 111)
• After all, ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost a game, a pastime for fun and enjoyment. At times the fun aspect must be stressed. Thus, in my ”Greyhawk Campaign” I included an “Alice In Wonderland” level, and while it is a deadly place, those who have adventured through it have uniformly proclaimed it as great fun because it is the antithesis of the campaign as a whole. (page 112)

Gygax uses the word fun fairly casually in most of these passages in the first sense of the word, as a synonym for "enjoyment." In two places, however, he uses the phrase "ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost" to suggest that "fun" is a fundamental component of the game. In the first instance he is immediately clear that he does not mean to discourage a "serious approach to play," explicitly point to Oxford's first sense of the word and not the second sense. In the second, he explains his use of fun in his own campaign as a somewhat exceptional. He has included a whimsical location that is opposite in that regard to the serious campaign as a whole, it seems as a 'comic relief" sort of locale. Here too he makes a point of mentioning that even this small, silly exception to an otherwise serious campaign setting, is "deadly," so not entirely not serious.

So far, so good. Fun is being used in a way that I can agree with in the first edition of AD&D. Cook uses the word 34 times in the second edition Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, almost triple the number of times Gygax used it in first edition.

Scanning through the instances of the word in second edition, my progress was arrested the alarming use of "fun" as a heading within the topic of experience points. On page 45 of the second edition DMG, Cook walks on dangerous ground, designating "Fun" as one of the goals for which players should be rewarded with experience points. Like so much of what Cook wrote here, he says net nothing for each of the four guidelines he describes for assessing "fun." In the first he says that a player who actively participates in the game should be rewarded with XP, but that a player who is naturally shy should not be penalized for low participation. OK, positive points for participating, no penalty for being shy. How many points is participation worth? By no penalty, do you mean the shy player gets points as if he had participated, or just that he doesn't lose points that he's earned for other reasons? Second guideline: if the player makes the game fun for others without making it fun at someone's expense he should get XP. Again, no amount of XP, nor any definition of fun. The third guideline is for not giving experience if the player disrupted the flow of the game. The fourth is also a negative guideline for not giving experience to players' characters if the player argues about the rules.

Cook fails to be clear about objective guidelines for "fun" XP, because he means fun in the most subjective sense. He fails to define fun in quantifiable terms, yet directs the DM to assign quantities of XP based on fun. He is advising the DM to arbitrarily award XP based on the social behavior of the players, yet with no guidance on this except that character advancement should be neither to fast nor too slow for the players' enjoyment of the game. And he makes it clear that the game's objectives are meaningless on page 9 of the Player's Handbook when he says, "The point of playing is not to win but to have fun and to socialize." There are easier and more enjoyable ways to simply have fun and socialize. I paid money and spent time buying and reading the rules in order to play a game, not just "have fun and socialize."

By directing the DM to award XP on the basis of how well the DM likes playing with the player, how well he thinks the other players like playing with the player, and what rate of character advancement he thinks the player would find most enjoyable, Cook turns the awarding of XP into a negotiation. He mixes game and non-game elements nonsensically. He is attempting to define the game mechanics on the basis of what the participants agree is fun.

As much as this rant has become an indictment of second edition AD&D, the fundamental point I'm trying to reach is not about the various editions of D&D. I'm simply using them to get to the argument.

Fun is subjective. Fun is different for everyone. Fun cannot be the basis of the structure of a game. One has to derive fun from playing the game as it is defined, rather than using fun to define the game. In the latter case, the task is impossible; the activity is not a game.

I need to explain this better. G seems like a good opportunity to talk about what is and isn't a game.

E is for Elves

Playing by-the-book first edition AD&D, there are 7 races, or species, available for players to choose from when making a character: dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, halfling, half-orc, and human. As referee, I have made it clear that players may choose as they like, even though most of civilization is human. Why then, have the 11 players who have created 23 characters in this game to date, not created even one character of any race besides human?

The Dungeon Masters Guide speaks to that:

ADVANCED D&D is unquestionably "humanocentric", with demi-humans, semi-humans, and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity. Men are the worst monsters, particularly high level characters such as clerics, fighters, and magic-users - whether singly, in small groups, or in large companies. The ultra-powerful beings of other planes are more fearsome - the 3 D's of demi-gods, demons, and devils are enough to strike fear into most characters, let alone when the very gods themselves are brought into consideration. Yet, there is a point where the well-equipped, high-level party of adventurers can challenge a demon prince, an arch-devil, or a demi-god. While there might well be some near or part humans with the group so doing, it is certain that the leaders will be human. In co-operation men bring ruin upon monsterdom, for they have no upper limits as to level or acquired power from spells or items.

The game features humankind for a reason. It is the most logical basis in an illogical game. From a design aspect it provides the sound groundwork. From a standpoint of creating the campaign milieu it provides the most readily usable assumptions. From a participation approach it is the only method, for all players are, after all is said and done, human, and it allows them the role with which most are most desirous and capable of identifying with. From all views then it is enough fantasy to assume a swords & sorcery cosmos, with impossible professions and make-believe magic. To adventure amongst the weird is fantasy enough without becoming that too! 

There are both fiction-oriented and game-oriented reasons. From the fiction perspective, playing a human is easier. Most everyone around is also human, so it is easy to fit in and get along. It's much easier when the characters look, sound, and act like the non-player characters with whom they interact to get to the heart of what they're after, be it trade, hiring help, getting hired, or whatever when they don't have to overcome communication barriers and prejudice. It requires no great leap in thinking for how to run a human either, since all of the players are human themselves. There's no fiction-oriented advantage to playing a non-human, but there are some advantages in game terms.

All of the non-humans can see in the dark (ignoring some exceptions for halflings). Almost all also have various saving throw bonuses, special resistances, bonuses with weapons, exceptional stealth, or/and special abilities for detecting hidden or misleading construction. The big advantage though, is that they can all multi-class.

These advantages are especially attractive at the lower levels of experience, and they are offset by the very serious disadvantage of level limits. Non-humans are all but excluded from the end game of domain management. The only non-humans who can possibly exercise domain are dwarf fighters with an 18 strength and half-orc fighters. Notably, both dwarfs and half-orcs have charisma penalties and lower maximums than humans which limits the number of henchmen they may have and the loyalty of henchmen and troops. This relegates the non-humans to side-kick roles.

The thief class is the most welcoming for the non-humans, with the assassin a fairly close second, and this points to the sort of role for which the non-human character is best suited. A scout or spy. I expect to see this in my game eventually, but at the moment all of the players are focused on developing their primary characters.

No one yet seems to have time for secondary characters.

D is for Dungeon

Surely no one has ever written this, have they? If I was only accidentally derivative in my attack on "Zeb" Cook in my last post (and I was, as it turns out "being Zebbed" is even a term I've found between that post and this in some online places), I have to know that the topic of the dungeon has been done to death. I don't care. I'm writing this anyway because this series is meant to explain my AD&D campaign, and the way that the dungeon functions is key to it. It should be obvious that I'm not even looking to see what's already been said by others before I shoot my mouth off.

I appreciate the suggestion that my writings here might be soulful or imaginative, but my take on the dungeon is neither of these. This is the sausage grinder of the game, the part that makes players and their game pieces (characters) capable of participating in the campaign. The campaign is not the series of "adventures" PCs undertake prior to achieving name level. The campaign is the battles they fight, military, economic, and political, once they get there. The dungeon, conceptually, exists to teach the game, to develop tactical and strategic thinking, as a mine of experience points, and to build the fiction of the game world.

In my campaign world, the dungeon is almost perfectly formulaic. Appendixes A and C of the Dungeon Masters Guide describe exactly how it is expected to work: what's in there for both risks and rewards, how accessible it is, just how trick- and trap-filled it is. And these appendixes are loaded with information about how to fight the dungeon. They describe exactly what an adventuring party should look like: 9 members, 2 to 5 of them PCs, the rest men-at-arms or henchmen, depending on how deep we are. And that men-at-arms won't delve deeper than the 3rd level beneath the surface. We can infer that by 4th level, PCs should be employing only henchmen rather than mercenaries for this kind of hazardous work.

Appendix C also tells us about how the surface of the world is populated with monstrous opponents, and, with the Monster Manual, what those opponents have and how they protect that treasure.

In my campaign world, these random monster encounter tables initially establish what opponents are in an area or dungeon when player characters first enter it. Once the dice have set the precedent of what is in a particular area, that dictates or limits what else may or may not be found. The DMG gives very specific guidance  on pages 90 & 91 for the migration and "re-stocking" of monsters if the PCs annihilate or evict what has been found. My campaign world follows this guidance. Once players have "moved the frontier," as Gygax puts it, the guidelines for territory development on pages 93 & 94 apply for determining whether anything has "wandered in."

Since I'm not trying to write a letter post every day in the usual A to Z challenge sense, there's no "challenge" component to this series of posts for me. Rather, I'm being inspired by following someone else who actually is a writer. As such, I'm going to risk burning some of the later letters' material by expanding this post into the potential "M" topic of meta-gaming.

Knowing that we are playing our game by-the-book, and having unfettered access to the DMG, as I pointed out earlier, players in my game are welcomed and encouraged to use this information to their benefit. Here's an example from a Dungeon in our last session.

In the first level of the dungeon, reputed to be a lost temple, they learned about, and found, under the Stone Fort of Flowers (Cathair Bhláth), the party encountered what they figured must be a vampire and fled. Fleeing and regrouping was a smart choice in the face of the unknown, especially in the last half hour of the game session. It's significantly more dangerous for PCs in a 1:1 time-keeping game like ours to end play outside of civilization than back in it.

Now that the players have had time to reflect (and consult the rules, as they should), I hope they will realize that what they found could not have been a vampire. From the rules-of-the-dungeon point of view, such an opponent will not be encountered closer to the surface than the 8th level in a dungeon. Even if they were tricked by sloping passages, as sometimes happens, they hadn't gone far enough in to get that deep, and they should know this. This is an example of the dungeon teaching the game.

Further, vampires live on the blood of humans, right? Who the hell would this vampire be feeding on while lairing in a remote mountain on the Dingle peninsula with the nearest settlement miles away being tiny and not apparently suffering from disappearing citizens? This reasoning helps players internalize the fiction of the game world and also learn the rules of the game.

If I hid the rules from my players, or violated them myself, how could they get better at the game? They couldn't. I'd have Zebbed the game for them and all they could get out of it is whatever shitty little story I could come up with to tell them through a "game" that was never intended to tell stories.

The game doesn't tell stories, but it does create them as the characters interact with the setting an rules. It creates these stories in the same way that our real life interactions with the world and each other create stories. Or rather, we, like our characters, create stories to make sense of the events that have transpired. No story-teller required.