City-State of the Invincible Overlord Acquired

Gary made me do it.

Okay, not really.  I'd also heard some good press on the the 1987 Mayfair boxed set recently, (Save or Die!?  THACO's Hammer?)  although, with the annoying implication that Ed Greenwood ripped off CS for Waterdeep.  Perhaps the original JG products influenced later city products.  Waterdeep & the North came out the same year as this boxed set, and City System is only a year later and much more ambitious.  Oh well, it was probably just DM Glen mouthing off.  So: today at Ye Olde Halfe Price Bookes on 40% coupon day, I came across a box in good shape, $12-13 seemed like a good risk, and everything was indeed inside it.  I also thought this deal was much more realistic than to think I would ever stumble over the JG pieces at anything resembling a non-crazy collectible price.  The box is in much better shape than the box sets I usually find, and I was intrigued by the four added races.  I'd have to modify centaurs to be like the early Greek originals, however, as the four-legged variety seem just too much for a PC race.  In response, what words of inspiration or experience do my fair ramblers have for me on City-State?

Finding Adventures for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

So, Wizards of the Coast is reprinting the core rule books for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.  If you are a new player to the first edition of the Advanced version of the world's oldest role-playing game, you might be looking to find some adventures published for it that are still in print.  This link will take you to a list of all the adventures compatible with AD&D1e that are available in print or in pdf.  And some of these modules are even free!  Check out who is offering ongoing support for the game that most of us played for all those years, take advantage of the fruits of their years of experience, and reward them for keeping them faith.

If you are not looking for this resource or none of this is news to you, you might be a blogger who could stand to be reminded of the effort to spread the word.  Thanks for stopping by, and happy Mythopoeic Monday.

Gary's Gord the Rogue Books

I recently finished the first six Gord books for the first time.  With a couple of complaints, I have enjoyed them, and they have probably done more to fire my interest in the Greyhawk setting than anything other than Anna B. Meyer's maps.  In the case of the books, it made more interested in the Free City of Greyhawk than any other locale.  It's a shame that only the first two books got Elmore covers (although, that is not how Gord should look next to Deirdre Longhand, the cavalier from Hardby) and that the final five books got stuck with those poor quality illustrations.

The picture above shows the preferred reading order that I have arrived at.  Now, should I acquire and read the seventh and final book?  Or, knowing the destiny or Greyhawk and the reason for that destiny, am I happier leaving well enough alone and stopping with book six?

I know my readers know a LOT more about Greyhawk than I do (going back to an embarrassing episode with my very first AD&D character), so I am curious to hear any specific advice or reactions that you have for me about the books, or about the setting of Greyhawk in general.

Gygax on Game Design, Part II

Part II

For today's Tomeful Tuesday, I'm finishing part II of the post on chapter 8 ( part I from a couple of weeks back) in Gary Gygax's Role-Playing Mastery (1987).  



Chapter 8
DESIGNING YOUR OWN GAME, pp. 146-152.

Non-player character generation
While observing that NPC generation will basically follow PC generation, he notes the need for shortcuts or pre-made parcels of information to keep the GM from being overwhelmed.

[Other] Opponents
In other words, monsters.  Gary proclaims what we already know: one of the charms (his word) of a fantasy RPG like D&D is the plethora of monsters.

Reward system for progression
"[O]ne factor is critical: The size or value of the reward must always be tailored to the scope of the accomplishment for which the reward is given" (147).

Specifics 
"When we move backward in time, forward in to imaginary time, or into a world of fantasy, we have less and less hard information to draw upon... Thus, the further removed from reality the RPG is, the larger must be the information base that provides the GM and players with specifics of unknown or unreal weapons and powers" (148).  "A well-designed RPG will include a lot of specific information, so that various campaigns utilizing the same set of rules will have much in common..., and to avoid the unpleasant situations that occur when a GM is forced to do game-design work in addition to campaign design work" (149).


The Do-It-Yourself Ethos
"Modify the advice given here according to your tastes" (149).

Vancian Advocate
On pages 149-150, there is a passage related to Gary's famous opposition to the use of spell points in AD&D.


Finally, one of the most interesting passages in this section of the chapter to me is this observation on the state of D&D rules in Gary's mind circa 1987 (or, arguably, 1986):

Now [sic: New] ground is no longer being broken in the D&D game rules; they are as complete and as comprehenisve as they need to be (151). 

This brings us to the end of the larger chapters of RPM.  The two final chapters (9 & 10) are short.  Thanks for checking in for this installment of Tomeful Tuesday.

Gygax on Game Design, Part I

Part I

Welcome to this week's installment of Tomeful Tuesday.  Continuing my ramble through Gary Gygax's Role-Playing Mastery (1987), this week brings us to chapter 8, and this week I will cover the chapter through page 146, that is, through PC generation.


Chapter 8
DESIGNING YOUR OWN GAME
pp. 138-146.

"Have you achieved gaming mastery?" asks Uncle Gary (Grandpa Gary, to some of my younger readers). "Are you ready for the challenge of the 'ultimate feat of creativity'?" (138)

"Yes," responds the eager rambler.  "I hunger to prove myself up to the gygaxian standard and become a game designer!"

"Then, for you" Gary replies with a frank and fixed look, "'this chapter should be required reading for the sake of the basic guidance it supplies'" (Ibid.).

Gygax breaks the basic choices in game design down into Initial decisions and Rules.  As has been my general practice, I will outline and sometimes summarize Gygax, focusing on any ideas or quotations that I find exceptional.

Initial Decisions (138-140)
Genre.  The imaginative field in which the game will be set.  Sci-fi?  Fantasy?  Espionage? etc.
Period.  The time period in which the game will be set.  Mythic?  Late Medieval?  Victorian? and so on.
Scope.  Where play will begin and the action from there to the end of play.

Writing the Rules
Once these initial decisions for the game have been made, rules may be written that are appropriate to play in the genre and time period, that allow play to progress from its starting point towards its intended end.  Gary then divides rules into what he sees as the most common elements that they must cover.


Technological base.  Delineating the level of technology available, appropriate to genre and period, and rules governing the use of technological devices.

Game area, or milieu.  Identifying where the action of the game will take place.  It's not enough to say Victorian espionage.  Victorian espionage might be taking place on airships protecting India from invasion by a Sino-Russian Marxist confederation who is attempting to extend its undead Marxist proletariat southward into the British Empire.

Time scale(s).  Of the various sizes needed for play within this game.


Distance scale(s).  To govern the movement of people, vehicles, and other objects.


Movement.  With the above two to allow for the spatial aspects of the game.


Combat at a distance

Hand-to-hand combat

Morale/Reaction.  Rules for determining how all beings in the game other than those personifying the players react to events.


Player character generation.  Gygax identifies this as "one of the most critical portions of any RPG.  At the root of everything, a character is... a set of numbers that quantify just what a character can do...and how difficult it is for him" (143-144).  These numbers, assigned as the scores of particular attributes, also oblige the player "to do his best to portray the character in that vein when that particular attribute comes into play during a scenario" (145).  He concludes, "without a sophisticated and comprehensive system for character generation, we would have role assumption rather than a role-playing game" (146, the emphasis is Gygax's). While he notes that this means that character generation can become an off-putting, "tedious and time-consuming process," yet "clever and careful rule design and some imaginative methods of keeping action and adventure in the process of statistical generation and the recording of character information" can alleviate this (146).


Stopping here allows us to end on a high note of the chapter.  New readers who are interested in catching up on this series are directed to the "Gygax" and "Tomeful Tuesday" tags below.  Until next week, I bid you happy perusal of your tomes.

Summary Statement of RPM CH. 7

Chapter 7
TACTICAL MASTERY
Part III:  Chapter in a Nutshell

You identify your mission, set your goal, determine your objectives, get to know the enemy, and plan with your team.  You use every sense and resource to move swiftly from objective to objective in order to attain your goal.  [You adventure as lightly equipped as possible for the mission...]  You are not sidetracked, but you go out of your way to bypass obstacles and enemy strongpoints whenever possible.  You conserve your resources.  When you strike, you do so hard and fast, but with only the amount of force necessary to accomplish your aim... If need be, your team will retire in order to reequip, but you'll be back again... (126)

 Links: Parts I and II.  An example scenario from the chapter is here.

Gygax on Informing Players

Chapter 7
TACTICAL MASTERY (127-137)
Part II

At the beginning of the campaign, the GM supplies the players with information needed to come to the point of active play, from which point on, the players directly engage the GM rather than passively receive information.  Before embarking on the campaign, all the player needs to know is a title, genre, and a brief statement about what the campaign is about.  More information, but only just enough, is given once they set down at the table, but before play proper has become.  Gary reads the players this information so that they can begin acting and planning their execution of the mission.  He breaks such information down into three categories: Background, Current situation, and General information.

Background: The general framework of the scenario.  Who? What? When? Where? Why?
Current situation: Who the players are, why they have become involved, how they arrived, what they have at their disposal, and so forth.
General information: Here is where the clues lie, and this seems to actually be a mix of material that Gary would assume is common knowledge and would simply be given to the characters, and information that they would have to obtain through role-play.  This seems an unfortunate mix to me, and it would be clearer to identity general information with common knowledge and Clues as a separate category that has to be investigated in active play.


Moving Outside the Scenario and Endgame Ignorance
A couple of characteristics of Gygaxian play emerge through is discussion of the categories in terms of his three genre examples.  (See my earlier post detailing one of these, here.)  One is that Gary is always ready to let the players move outside of the scenario (131-133).  One the one hand, this gives them the freedom to arrive at a conclusion to the mission outside of the avenues that have been preconceived.  On the other, it gives players the freedom to get off track and fail at the mission through their own foolishness.

Another characteristic is keeping players in the dark about having arrived at the "goal point" or "goal area."  Building on the example of the fantasy scenario, the party could:

• have found the mastermind behind the disappearance of the dwarf king and not know they had him/her.
• be in the chamber where the dwarf king is hidden, but not seen him due to magical measures.
• have found the dwarf king, but not recognized him for he has been stripped, shaved, and feeble-minded.

This latter point especially intrigues me.  It seems that oftentimes, it is obvious to the players that they have found The Dragon's Lair or The Villain's Secret Chamber or what have you.  The idea that they could be standing there with everything set for the final scene, and then the final scene not happening (then) because they did not realize everything that it was capable of realizing is appealing.  I would be wary of it descending into games of Guess what the GerkMaster is Thinking, but handled with some wisdom, this could be done well.  (I read with a bit of shock that Gary thought "well-designed scenarios... often conceal the fact" and "a master GM always [!] does so," but I will pay more attention to this in the future to see when I, or the writers of adventures, use this element.)

Gygax and The Disappearing Dwarf

This Tomeful Tuesday, I am finishing up Chapter 7 in a series of short posts.  To illustrate his points regarding tactical mastery in Role-Playing Mastery, Gygax introduces a scenario title, The Disappearing Dwarf  (127).  He then gives a thumbnail sketch of three very different scenarios that could share that same title, one fantasy, one science fiction, and one espionage.  It is instructive to note that this is information that Gygax would give to players before play is commenced.  I also thought it might fuel someone's creative juices to see what Gygax wrote for such a hypothetical fantasy scenario (unrelated to the James Blaylock novel of the same name published a few years before).

Background: Fordor Goldenbeard, king of the Dwarfs of Grimberg, was one of the wisest and best rulers ever known to his folk.  A month ago, in the midst of a festival in his very court, Fordor the king was seated upon his throne before the assemblage one minute, then gone the next!  An immediate search of the palace was fruitless.  No trace of the king could be found.  Now civil war threatens the community of dwarfs as various factions contend for rulership of the kingdom (128).

General Information: Three factions in the dwarven court vie for power.  One group uniequivocally supports the vanished king, so the members of that group might be expected to assist the team.  The second and third are suspects.  The second has as its candidate for interim ruler the wife of Fordor Goldenbeard.  The third faction supports a cousin of the king.  All three factions proclaim a deep desire to find Fordor and return him to the throne if at all possible, but it seems likely that at least one faction is lying.  The following physical evidence is known: First, a thin circle of black dust appeared and fell to the ground, surrounding the throne.  Then the flames of all lights within the cavern chamber flared and instantly burned out just as Fordor vanished.  The king's gold cup, which he had been holding when he disappeared, was later found in the king's own bedchamber (129).

Current Situation: This is not given, but it would tell how the players got to the dwarven court and how they are situated.

Gygax on Strategic & Tactical Mastery

CHAPTER 7: TACTICAL MASTERY (120-126)
Part I

I'm no expert on strategy versus tactics, and it seems to me that they probably operate on a continuum from what/why to how, from the general to the specific.  In this chapter, Gygax himself notes the virtual impossibility of talking about RPG tactics in the abstract, apart from specific game systems, players, characters, and scenarios.  Gygax sometimes recognizes that he is coming up to the strategic level, but overall he prefers to speak of tactics, so I have helped out a bit in the terminology department in today's title.  While Gary's tips are quite broad, they identify important skills.  Players who improve these skills will see increased successes for their characters and their parties in their role-playing games.

Gary's Tips

• Know the mission.
• Know the goal.
• Define the objectives.
• Make and follow a plan.
• Maintain the tempo.
• Operate as a unit.
• Use your common sense.
• Use your character's senses.
• Keep track of your resources.
• Scout the enemy.
• Be consistent.
• Evade and avoid.
• Don't be afraid to improvise a new set of short-term plans.

  This is my first treatment of the material in RPM's chapter 7.  There will be at least one more part, as I decide what I want to do with the rest of the material in the chapter, which at this point at least, suggests to me a different kind of treatment.

Gary's Rules III: Remodeling the Rules

Last Tuesday, we took a look at an excerpt from chapter 5 that I thought might prove interesting for its own sake.  In context, however, Gary is using it as an example of major rules revision in the midst of a campaign.  The final section of the chapter is concerned with those times when groups entertain a need to revise the rules, either because they have discovered frustrations in the rules themselves, or because their style of play or the demands of their campaign are not sufficiently provided for by the rules, or because they tire of their campaign's genre and want to change, say, from a sci-fi setting to a horror setting.

In the midst of the pages (90-103), the concerns that keeps resurfacing for Gygax are isolation and disintegration of a campaign due to adoption of an incoherent new set of game rules.   To the latter, Gygax understandably can only speak in generalities.  However, even generalities are greatly helped by concrete examples.  Gygax eschews these because he says that with "so many game systems, detailed discussions of the process is not possible.  The quantity of unknowns is so great that even examples would be applicable to too small of a segment to be particularly useful" (98).  I am tempted to call this a lazy excuse.  Useful for guidance in particular situations?  I don't think that is how examples are necessarily helpful.  Examples would have been helpful for keeping the discussion from being so vague and abstract, and might have turned up types or similarities for others.  Even if not, it would have helped the reader to follow what Gygax had in mind.

On the whole, the section is willing to assume that mature game masters (and players) are the audience here, and that for them the real danger is one of isolation:  if you produce a hybrid or a unique new game that pulls your gaming group out of the mainstream of the already small segment of the population that plays RPGs, then you are endangering the social nature of gaming and putting your players at risk of not being able to meet, communicate and share, and game with others.  This lack of support puts the campaign and the players' future gaming at risk and could not only shorten the life of the campaign, but lead to drop-out from the larger gaming community.  Here Gary speak from his experience as designer of the most popular RPG of all time and the father of conventions.  This raises to view the very divided RPG market of today and the question of how and to what extents division has been bad and good for gamers -- a question I will lead you to ponder, gentle readers.

When the milieu of the campaign is highly developed and players love it but are frustrated with certain rules situations, or when the campaign seems to have reached a stage of fullness and there is a restlessness for something new and different, then the GM is faced with the decision about developing or changing the rules.  Gary breaks these down as follows:
Is the change to be radical, gradual, or moderate?
Do the changes that need to be made result in

1.  [the] existing game modified by no more than 50% new rules material

2.  more than 50% new systems utilizing an existing game as base

3. two or more existing games bridged by special rules

4. unique systems

 I will simply observe that you can take the broad ideas that Gary is advancing here to make general judgments, without feeling the need to actually quantify the amount of changes which I would find dubious.

While I found this one of the least helpful sections so far, what do I find to be the takeaway from it?

1. As always, the desire and interest of the players are the GM's ruling consideration (91).
2. Changes in the basic structure of the game demand not only intimate knowledge of the players' desires and interests, and the needs of the campaign that fits them, but mastery of the basic structure of the game that is remodeled.  "Which parts of the construction cry out for reinforcement?  Which ones are fine just as they are?  Which ones can be replaced without destroying the whole?"  (103)  Knowledge of a system's underpinnings are necessary to plan and carry out successful remodeling.  (Despite Gary's admission that the creation of new rules systems may be called for, his concern regarding isolation means that it gets the least consideration in the chapter, which essentially ends up being about remodeling more than replacement.)

Next Tuesday, Gary promises to answer our lingering questions about the place of research in role-playing mastery in chapter 6.  Until then, happy gaming...and perhaps, rules tinkering.

The History of Gary's Greyhawk: 1973-1987

I'm digesting the final section of chapter 5, which covers remodeling the rules.  Before I finish my treatment of the chapter, I feel there is a paragraph of historical interest that deserves preservation and dissemination, so I am going to reproduce that paragraph in whole below.  Since Role-Playing Mastery was published sometime in 1987, the paragraph might not reflect events as late as 1987, but certainly it gives us an outline of the Greyhawk campaign from 1973-1986, so after the final stages of AD&D and Gary's departure from TSR.  Gary breaks that history up into three significant periods by changes in the rules or the campaign.

My own fantasy campaign has been changed three times.  Once the Greyhawk campaign went from D&D to AD&D game rules.  Then it was altered from a single-GM campaign to a dual-GM setup, in which another person assumed GM duties when I was unable to participate.  Finally, it was redeveloped to enable the management of diverse player groups over a long period of time and at erratic intervals while still allowing those members of the core player group to continue their various PCs within the whole.  My reduced time for game mastering forced some of these changes, but time and change were also factors, for the campaign was initiated in 1973 and is still reasonably active to date.  The last alteration, that of no longer aiming the campaign at a single player group, was forced by a set of altered personal circumstances that included relocation of some participants, resultant radical changes in the core group, and severe time restrictions.  While some of the original group members moved to other campaigns and one or two have developed their own campaigns, most have not been actively involved in RPG activity since the last alteration of my campaign because there is no home for them, no campaign to operate in (94-95).

Next Tuesday I will wrap up chapter 5.  As always, I wish you happy imagining, whether reading, gaming, or creating.

The Domain of Greyhawk from Anna Meyer's beautiful Atlas of the Flanaess project

Gary's Rules II: Savor the Flavor

CHAPTER 5
RULES: CONSTRUCTION & RECONSTRUCTION
ADDING FLAVOR (83-87)

"In addition to providing the structure that enables the participants to operate their characters within the game milieu, the rules of a role-playing game also describe the elements that give a certain game its particular flavor" (Gygax 83).

What is derisively referred to as "fluff" in some RPG discussions (in contrast with the "crunch" of the mechanics) is intimately related to the game rules for Gygax. Note that before Gygax even moves on to flavor, the rules enable PCs to operate not just in some mathematical vacuum, but "within the game milieu" (Ibid).  Further, within a shared milieu, a particular game gets its own special flavor from the rules, not from some other, less-than-crunch element.  Gygax divides the flavors up into seven major families:

1. Wonder and fear - that which makes a game world different, mysterious, and frightening.
2. Adventure and heroism - difficult conditions for performing great deeds.
3. Problem solving - achieving goals by wits.
4. Role-playing - creating, personalizing, and playing a character.
5. Combat, conflict, and battle - I'll come back to this.
6. Group cooperation - this goes back to Gygax's spirit of the game and morality of play, already covered.
7. Enlightenment and education - I'll leave this aside, as I find Gygax at his most opaque here, beyond: "being a gamer makes you research stuff you otherwise likely would never research."*

The first two of these have more to do with the flavor of the game world, three through six have more to do with the flavor of the style of play, though I believe there are some intersections between play flavor and world flavor, I will focus on 1 & 2.  I will come back to touch on 4 & 5, however, as these let me finish of some points from last Tuesday as well tie into today's subject.

Gygax's first two categories provide the flavor of the game by the ways in which rules mold (and meld with) world-building.  They also seem to recognize matters of emphasis: a game of space exploration or of wizardry would tend to emphasize wonder more, a game of elder horrors from space or undead wizardry would tend to be heavier on the fear ingredients.  Similarly, a high fantasy game would tend to have more heroic elements, while  a game of rascally rogues on the make would have less heroic and more adventure elements.  Random tables in the rules would provoke wonder, insanity mechanics would support the element of fear.  Experience points granted for gold pieces would support adventure playing, while experience points for monsters killed would shift more support to heroism.  The principle is clear: the flavor of the milieu and setting are not simply sprinkles on top of the RPG sundae.  They are major ingredients that must be provided for in the rules of the game.  In my book, this puts Gygax where he should be on the question of crunch versus flavor: in my camp!  The rules structure is made to hold the flavor, and thought should be given to that end.  If flavor doesn't matter to a rules set, then it would seem that Gygax would question whether you have an RPG (yet, or at all).  I'm happy to find that Gygax's terminology in '85 was superior to a lot of what I run into on the internet.  Now to 4 & 5.

Gary's assertion that role-playing is not the purpose of an RPG, but the vehicle; not the end but the means can be taken to mean something Gary clearly, in context, does not mean.  Again, he notes that the mix of the ingredients, or what elements get the emphasis, vary according to the game.  Let's take his terms to heart: it is a game of role-playing, not a game for role-playing.  The game is for the genre, the milieu, the setting.  You create this unique character and inhabit it for the purpose of pursuing that character's goals as they are appropriate to the milieu and the setting -- maybe it is to steal the wizard gem of Grognardac the Mirthless, maybe it is to save the princess by slaying the evil dragon Stasistix the Cruncher -- and as they are supported by the rules (disarming Grognardac's traps and preceding undetected or making a save versus Dragon Breath and then dealing enough damage to kill the dragon).  To the extent that acting is done (and now Gygax explicitly recognizes this possibility without his earlier distaste: "this in and of itself neither adds to nor detracts from the work."  It would probably be more accurate if he had added, however, "in and of itself." 84), it is done for carrying out the action by the character in attempts to achieve milieu-appropriate goals through teamwork.  I believe the very next paragraph strengthens my take on this: Gary distinguishes between role assumption and role-playing.  If you simply take up someone else's character creation, as in a choose-your-own-adventure book, you are assuming a role.  Playing a role for Gary meant creating a persona for yourself through play, and playing him or her towards the ends of the game in question.

This brings us finally to combat, conflict, and battle.  "Conflict is more important that combat" (85)!  Now Gary sounds closer to what I said he should have said than what he actually said before.  That is, some games will be more acting, some games will be more tactics, but there should be a range in role-playing games for differences in the mix of elements, as long as they contain enough of whatever is requisite for being an RPG.  If there is too much emphasis on combat and battle, Gary advises that stock be taken of whether role-playing is actually happening at all, or whether one has slipped over into role assumption (You be Caesar and I'll be Vercingetorix) or "worse still, the system might be a military simulation or war game masquerading as a role-playing game" (85)!  This saves Gary from falling into role-combating games from an allergic reaction to some over-the-top ham or method-reject that must have been haunting him.  There must be conflict in a role-playing game because the play of characters in a setting towards a denouement will call forth conflict: it is the one element of story that is missing, and the most crucial element.  I hasten to add that Gary does not make the connection to story elements, that is mine, but I am confident the conclusion is inescapable.


DEFINING PARAMETERS OF PLAY (88-90) & REMODELING THE RULES (88-103)

Everything "that is set forth to bring the game into being as a shadow of actual life" operates within the parameters set by the rules (and spirit) of the game (88).  Thus the creation of "cultures, political systems, societies, secret groups, strange inventions or whatever else [that] gives greater depth and breadth to the campaign" operate within the parameters and spirit of the game to make the shadow of real life more substantial and the roles of the game more inhabitable (89).  Adventure, conflict, fear, and awe will be felt more deeply and the achieving of the goals more rewarding.  How deeply should we go into any of these  and how do we chose?  Gygaxian morality means we know the answer even before we read it: "those areas in which the players evince the most interest" (91).

Again, for whatever weaknesses you may find in Gary's presentation, I hope I have pointed out the conceptual riches to be mined herein.  It would be foolish to hope that no one would ever divide the game up into "fluff and crunch" again, but I can always dream.  Best wishes as we come to the end of another Tomeful Tuesday, especially to the families of SR and BP.



* Plus this subject gets its own chapter later, so I am sure that this Gygaxian element will become more transparent there.

Gary's Rules I: Basic Structure & Combat

Chapter 5 - RULES: CONSTRUCTION & RECONSTRUCTION

The rules provide the structure of role-playing games, in Gary's words they are "the general framework within which participants operate" (77).  As we saw before, they provide (implicitly or explicitly) the objective of the game (see the idea of the spirit of the game from chapter 2).  There is enough meat in this chapter for me to reflect on it in at least two blog posts, so this first one will confine itself to the how Gary sees the fundamental elements of rules in RPM, and further to focus on the two key areas of insight that the first part of the chapter offers.

COMMON RULES AREAS FOR RPGS
Gygax breaks the rules down into seven categories.  Those categories are

• Objective
• Time and Distance Scales
• Movement Rates
• Combat
• Character Types
• Technical Data
• Rewards

He acknowledges a difference in emphasis between play and realism, and tends to note how in each area the rules indicate whether a particular RPG comes down on the side of playability or accuracy.  While his brief reflections on these are of some interest, and indicate a breadth on his part recognizing the validity of different approaches within RPGs, there is a clear standout as far as which is the greatest, and it is carries forward from what Gary sees as the objective of RPGs.

As a reminder, objective for Gygax means more than the obvious purpose for playing a game: fun.  A game's objective is how fun is had: what is a game's specific way of having fun?  Games have different ways of having fun, and though he recognizes that RPGs have some range in different kinds of fun, there is distinctive which makes RPGs an identifiable game genre, defining the range of what is an RPG.  The above bulleted outline gives a clue to Gary's answer: for him, the purpose of role-playing games (or at least, and especially, D&D) is "make-believe combat" (79). 

It is common knowledge that the first RPG came out of military miniatures or war games.  But it would be a fallacy to assume that the origin of a thing dictates its identity and purpose.  We can easily imagine, for example, that Tarot has its origin in other kinds of card games.  But for Gary, war gaming is more than an origin for RPGs: "the core of the game is the combat between the players' characters and the nonplayer opponents controlled by the game master" (79).  We can know see how the outline provides a sandwich structure: Combat is the central rules feature, and the other features are understood as support.  The objective is victory in imaginary combat and the rewards will be appropriate to victory in imaginary combat.  While he acknowledges other kinds of imaginary action, such as problem-solving, "the heart of the action" is "combat of a personal sort" (79).  This takes us right back to the invention of the idea that the player takes on the role of a single combatant, which Gary owed to Dave Arneson, in war gaming.  Acknowledging that "rules systems that are virtually nothing but combat are, without question, not role-playing game systems" he still insists that relagating combat "to an adjunctive [sic] position [is] best understood as overemphasizing role-playing to the exclusion of gaming" (Ibid).  This offers a fascinating insight into Gygax's thinking at this point.  RPGs are seen here as not merely born from war-gaming, but a kind of war-gaming.  In fact, Gary's playing "role-playing" and "gaming" against each other above indicate that he is equating gaming in this context with war-gaming.  It would be more accurate then from this POV to use the phrase "role-playing war-game" rather than role-playing game.  Proponents of other points-of-view might well ask why it wasn't called combat-role gaming.  For "some RPGs will stand as virtual battle games, some as abortive attempts as theatrical training, but most will lie somewhere in between" (emphasis mine, 80).  This shows Gygax at a moment when he is better at issuing norms than describing the way things are.  I propose the logic of the sentence demands that it be re-written as "some RPGs will stand as virtual battle games, some as virtual theatrical games, but most will like somewhere in between" if it is to hope to stand as a description of the field of play.  This is of course an area where gamers' feelings run high, but whatever my own preferences, I have no need to tell others' what they should be doing here, only how I want to play: "somewhere in between," but perhaps more theatrical than General Gygax.  I'm glad to have authorial evidence of his preference, but it is mainly of historical interest to me.  Gygax has arguably slipped from describing the spirit of the game to prescribing the spirit of his subset of the game: a trap that I argued he earlier avoided.  So I turn to the other area of insight.

Where I find Gygax most suggestive is in the first part of chapter 5 as he turns to a more general description of gaming.  "The game is the culture" and "the rules are the standards" that "attempt to describe a culture based upon an adventures life of make believe" (82).  There is a broad enough umbrella to take in combat, problem-solving, and the more personal extroversions that Gygax seems uncomfortable with.  Of course I don't want to sit through theatrical training when I sit down with my friends and my funny-shaped dice and who wants theatrical abortions at the game table?  But I do want to imaginatively embark on an adventurous life in a fantasy setting that will overcome problems, force villains to yield, slay monsters, and express and develop character, however rules-intensive I may or may not want any of those areas to be at any given seating.  The idea of game as culture and rules as cultural standards that allow the culture to function are interesting.  Further, Gary will take these ideas in a direction that I will cover in my next Tomeful Tuesday, and a direction that I am quite excited about: the rejection of the dichotomy between "crunch" and "fluff."  A popular way of terming the pairing that I utterly despise!

Gygax on Groups

My last gaming session with my OK pals: a small but good group.  Bonus points for assigning it the correct Gygaxian type.

Today I pick up again with another installment of Tomeful Tuesday!  I'm continuing my read-through of Role-Playing Mastery by Gary Gygax.  I'm laying it out in outline form today with a little summary, some key terms, and what I identified as the quotes with the greatest Gygaxian gaming goodness.  My other take-aways here were the dredging of memories of problem players from my youth (the player of the supposed paladin that motivated a friend of mine and me to secretly become assassins with the help of one of our group's DMs just so we could assassinate his character in revenge for his unchecked abuse of his fellow players that one DM encouraged and the other didn't know how to handle but was willing to be our accomplices to address) and yet another moment of recognition that I am not getting to play often enough.

Chapter 4

The Group: More Than its Parts

To Gygax, it is inherent to RPGs like AD&D that they are focused on the group and dependent on the group.  By group, he predominantly means the player group or the playing group (players + GM), which are the main subjects of the chapter.  The PC group is considered predominantly as an expression of the former.  Gygax considers the danger signs of players and playing groups that are not working well and hence not producing ongoing, successful play.

Group Interaction

“The game master is dedicated to providing fresh and challenging problems in an imaginative setting to a group of players who appreciate his effort.  The players are uniformly interested in the genre, have a sound grasp of the game rules, understand roles and role-playing, and function as a cooperative entity” (58).

Types of Groups:  1) regular veteran playing group, 2) fragmented veteran playing group, 3) enthusiasm-driven playing group, 4) peer-group, 5) club gatherings

Danger Signs: Group Insularity, Infrequent and Irregular Meetings, Frequent Absenteeism, Gamer Dropout, Non-Integration of Casual Gamers, Overdependence on GM, Overdependence on Gaming Location, Overly Frequent Changes in Group Membership, Elitism, Poor Choice of PC for PC group balance or for player ability

Problem Players

Bully, Know-it-all, Adviser, Cheater, Pouter, Talker

Outside of these types of players, the other player danger is incompatible players.

The Problem GM

“The Game master should derive his satisfaction from entertaining the associated group, from testing them and seeing them succeed, and from the approbation they give him in return” (70).  Not by:

•  Viewing the players as enemies
• Viewing the player group as a means to self-importance through denigration (would seem to be a form of the preceding.)
• Viewing the players as mere puppets
• Inappropriate referring such as the killer campaign and the easy rewards campaign 

mastery is group success

“Your entire investment in the game genre, your survey of the field, selection of a topic, study of the rules, and application of what you have learned should be used to the benefit of the group” (74).



Thanks for reading and may all your games be mythic!

Advanced Gygaxian Morality

Some recent finds at Half-Price Books, including the above gem, has inspired this new blog feature. 
I am happy to report that, unbeknownest to me, Gygax dedicated this book to me.  (Oh, okay, to you, too.)

1987.  The co-creator of D&D had left TSR at the end of '85.  What had he been doing since losing his company and his game?  One thing he had been doing was writing Role-Playing Mastery: Tips, Tactics and Strategies for Improving Your Participation in any Role-Playing Game, which came out in the year under consideration.  It makes sense to me that Gary would have been looking for a chance to continue to profit from his creation in a legal way, pass on the mature accumulation of his gaming experience to his considerable audience, and -- to really go out on a limb and speculate -- perhaps seek a closure that eluded him ever after, if not the same level of success that he had achieved before he lost it all.  Reading through the first 40 pages (through Chapter 2), it struck me that Gary continues to qualify play with variations of the predicate "the right way."  "What authorial One-True-Wayism is about to be foisted on us?" I inwardly cringed.

The more I read and pondered these opening chapters, the more I suspected that there was not a lot to fear in Gygax's statements, after all.  What seems to come to the fore is, above all, a moral vision of play.  Consider Gygax's attempt to summarize the spirit of AD&D:

This is a fantasy RPG predicated on the assumption that the human race, by and large, is made up of good people.  Humans, with the help of their demi-human allies (dwarves, elves, gnomes, etc.), are and should remain the predominate force in the world.  They have and continue to hold on to this status, despite the ever-present threat of evil, mainly because of the dedication, honor, and unselfishness of the most heroic humans and demi-humans -- the characters whose roles are taken by the players of the game.  ... evil exists in the game primarily as an obstacle for player characters to over come (26-27).

He then goes on to make a connection that makes a straight line from the character in the game to the player at the table: success is achieved in the game by cooperation.  Victory, the good goals of the characters, is the result of the effort of the players coming together as a group.  It should not surprise us that a game played by a group would promulgate an ethic that surely must be labeled communitarian.  Gygax explicitly identifies power-hungry individuals (designers as well as players) who attempt to dominate the PC's milieu by the accumulation of their character's power out of balance with the group, rather than through the accumulation of skill as a player, as cheaters and perverters of the game.  Such "players who confuse the general welfare of the game with their self interest... seek to participate as elephants in a game of ants" (30).

Maybe all of this seems so self-evident as to be unworthy of special attention to some of my readers.  If so, I ask you to cast your mind back over the social issues that have disturbed games in your experience.  Were these not in fact symptoms that Gygax identified of someone playing "the wrong way?" 

The other issue that my mind immediately connects with these meditations is one of the great troll baits of the RPGosphere: alignment.  How would alignment look now, tied back to the real-world necessity he has identified?  Would it not address "the need to make stark the villains and highlight the heroes" (34)?  Apart from this and the reference alignment provides for getting in the mindset of character and milieu, "there is little or no need to deal with such concepts in the game framework" (Ibid). If so, this is difficult for those of us who have pursued some serious study of ethics, moral philosophy, or moral theology to accept.  But maybe it shouldn't be.  Most role-players (I am reflecting on my own experience) know just enough about one or two points of ethics as to be able to put their own eye out with their moral rhetoric, if not the eyes of their interlocutors as well.  In other words, they know just as much about that as they do about the finer points of medieval arms and armor or the ins and outs of a silver-based economy before the rise of capitalism.  And in this case, where the fact that perhaps most people are moral midgets in at least some area of ethical consideration anyway combines with this kind of intellectual dilettantism in a particularly volatile way, leading to the kind of alignment slugfests that we have all seen on various messageboards and that are undoubtedly finding some expression in some people's games somewhere.  Still, greater needs may be accommodated in the area of morality without transgressing Gygax's general observations.  Just as some groups will need more complexity and different milieus than other groups in the area of economics or physics, some may have different needs in the area of morality.  Know your group and work with your group towards the group's good, says the guiding Gygaxian spirit.  This is what judges player's actions as good or bad.  A good player may role-play acts in the game that are judged evil by some standards in the real world, however they may be judged in the game's milieu.  Gygax insists on the parallel of the stage:  we hate Claudius, not Sir Derek Jacobi.  We don't blame Imelda Staunton for the things Dolores Umbridge does.  (Tracing the characters back to Shakespeare or Rowling simply confirm these judgments.)  As he bluntly puts it, mastering play means mastering the difference between pretend and reality.

Does this shine any light on your gaming and thinking?  Or does it stir up a mighty Post of Correction, +3?  I look forward to seeing what sharing this may shake out.  I hope that you look forward to further rambles through Gygax's Role-Playing Mastery in future installments of Tomeful Tuesday, as I do!

Let the master tell you how it's done.  Gygax in 2007.  Photo by Alan De Smet.  CC.