What Must They Think of Us When They Read Such Things?

Oppenheimer (Now I Have Become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds) by Yuri Leonov

This morning I was looking into an issue that had gotten my attention. Nothing very contentious; but it was, nevertheless, interesting when I noticed the conversation following a familiar route. Two individuals were discussing a rather innocuous rule variant that one of them had come up with when some self-important bastard came blundering along and began castigating them for not running the game as it was written. They were perverting the game and undermining the foundations of trust developed between the players and Game Master. What's worse, they were cheating.

Cheating? 

Over and over again he kept coming back to that word; almost as though he were chanting it before them and in doing so it would drive them back from the heresies of modifying the sacrosanct text of Tweet, Cook, and Williams. He was apocalyptic in his writing and soon his friends joined in the conversation. "Have you considered how this undermines the game," one demanded. "If we go down this route what's next? Guns? Would you bring guns in a fantasy game?"

I sat there reading it with a slacken jaw, openly gaping at my screen as I read this mind-numbing assault on two people who had dared to consider a change to the grappling rules of Third Edition. I was shocked by the fanatical devotion to . . . a game. A game that had a major revision in less than five years and that had errata published for it with such regularity that I have a whole notebook filled with the stuff. This game was perfect as it had been written? This game?

The two kids who had started the whole thing were taken aback - how could they not be? They had done nothing more than attempt to provide an alternative solution to a rule that has been the consternation of every Third Edition player I've ever met and yet here were these assholes frothing at the mouth over the idea that something might change in the game by the hands of a pair of Dungeon Masters. 

I swear to it was as though they used that word like an insult when they wrote it. It positively dripped with venom. "This," one of them railed, "is why I hate that D&D still uses a Dungeon Master. Any time that you have a game left up to Dungeon Master fiat it's just a matter of time before it goes down this route!" Now they positively chanted, "Down with the Dungeon Masters! What did they ever do for the game other than corrupt it's purity with their house rules, home spun adventures, and god forsaken settings?"

Someone spoke up, a beloved elder from the early days of the forum it seemed to me, "Well as you know such systems are fraught with these sort of opportunities for corruption and the malign influence of an individual's whim."

"You see," the positively jumped on top of each other to shout it at the two heretics, "not only are you going against the rules as written but you've proven the inferiority of Dungeons & Dragons as a role-playing system! It's not even role-play! It's roll play!" The laughed out loud and then filled the page with LOLs as they made jokes and questioned the faithfulness of mothers who couldn't remember to let God immaculately conceive their children for them as their own had. 

Then a new voice chimed in. It castigated them for making sexist jokes and rebuked them before new gods and codewords that sent them mewling off in the distance. The two kids thanked this new comer only to find themselves receiving the full brunt his wrath. "Don't you know that D&D is nothing more than a shadow play of colonial oppression where race wars are played out and misogyny is at the heart of every adventure? Haven't you ever thought deeply about anything in your god-damned lives?" The kids stopped responding as her friends joined in and began crowing about the superiority of playing games of self-discovery where everyone pretends that their parents touched them and that football was a sport but far behind more invigorating physical contests: like chess.  

I would have linked directly to one of these conversations so that I could say, "Look at the thrice damned, fedora-wearing, neck-beards," but it happens so often that to do so would be like pointing at the sky and telling you that round thing up there sure is bright. I am truly flabbergasted at the sheer volume of encounters that I have read like this over the past few days as I attempted to explore what's so exciting about the fabulous world of forums. Christ almighty why would anyone want that level of mind-numbing frustration? 

"Well I think you're just not understanding the issues that surround the integrity of the game if you modify it . . ."

"Clearly your male privilege is blinding you to the problems inherent in the game . . ."

God help me but if I had run into people like that when I first started playing I would never have picked up dice again. Instead I would have gone back to drinking heavily and playing poker for money like I had for the past fifteen years! What must people think of this hobby when they run across that? What must they think of those people who write such insipid ramblings? 

What must they think of us?

Hold Up, Someone Is Playing the Game Wrong and They Must Be Stopped!

Before the reformatting of my computer happened I disappeared down a rabbit hole of pseudo-intellectualism that wrapped itself up in a self-righteous cloak of quoted text to protect each of the combatants within a cocoon of ignorance masquerading as brilliance. There were two sides of this debate. On this side you found a loud and protracted mewling chorus of voices screaming out, "GYGAX SAID THIS AND THUS IT WAS WRITTEN IN STONE AND SHALL NEVER BE CHANGED!" Arrayed against them were a slew of flagellating warriors mindlessly repeating the chants of their forefathers, "YOU KILL THE ORC AS A STAND IN FOR THE BLACK! YOU SLIGHT THE WOMAN IN YOUR STATISTICAL ABILITIES TO PROTECT YOUR BOYS CLUB FROM THEIR COOTIES! THE OLD WAYS MUST BE COMPLETELY ABANDONED AND CAST INTO THE DUST OF TIME TO BE FORGOTTEN!"

There was no progress made by either side and reading through the morass of mindless grandstanding and infantile attempts to score points with cutting words across the infinite void of the internet it became clear to me that no one had any real interest in finding a middle ground between the two sides.  In spite of more than a dozen calls for changes in tone and for a real exchange of ideas neither of those things was actually the goal of the people foaming at the mouth in that kerfuffle. They were there to be seen and heard not to change hearts and minds.

By the time I had finished reading through the thread I was out of wine and disgusted with the whole affair. Oh, don't get me wrong, there were some real moments of hilarity in there like when one of the Gygaxian faithful started flailing about telling everyone who would listen that the only way they were getting his D&D books was by prying them from his cold, dead hands. Then there was the lady with an ambiguous user name like 247Jonesn4Scotch who started screaming that they were all "mansplaining" to her because of their sexism!

Good stuff, good stuff. 

Anyway this evening I was reading through James P. Carse's Finite and Infinite Games when I saw a line that reminded me of this little rabbit hole I had been down. The ". . . [r]ules are not valid because . . . God pronounced them through Moses . . . They are valid only if and when players freely play by them . . ." (Carse 10). In other words just because you find a rule written down it doesn't mean that you have to use it. You don't like that women have lower stats than men in the early versions of Dungeons & Dragons; and if you don't then you don't have to use the rule. Role-playing games aren't holy scriptures written in stone with Enforcers standing at the door of every Hobby Shop watching to ensure that each nerd picks up their books with trembling hands and a whispered prayer to the designer that they might play the game correctly. 

Hell, Gary himself once wrote these rules ". . . are guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign. They provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity — your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors . . ." (Gygax  4). He was telling you all the way back in 1974 that you could absolutely modify the hell out of this shit because role-playing games are like a living language that morphs to fit the needs of those involved. That's the whole reason why there are people actively involved in DIY projects on the web and in your local gaming communities right now. They looked at their favorite games - RIFTS, Dungeons & Dragons, Savage Lands, GURPS, FATE, Star Wars d6 - and decided that it wasn't meeting their needs. Then they went out and made something that did. They made Carcosa, Iron Kingdoms, Red & Pleasant Land, Microlite 74, and a million other games that have helped change what we think of when we say we're playing a role-playing game. So to argue that we have to play the game as it was written always mystifies me.

Don't get me wrong, the other side of this debate was completely full of shit too. 

Look if in your games you want to explore what it's like to sexually molested or to deal with racism because you've never experienced either of them than more power to you. It's not my idea of a good time, but to each his own; because there's plenty of room for all of us to have fun in our own ways. BUT that isn't what happens. Instead I get some half crazed jack waggon coming along every so often who wants to tell me that the reason I like killing orcs is because they're a stand-in for my repressed bigotry. Never mind that I have close friends across all racial, and most of the sexual, lines and involved them heavily in my games when they showed an interest OR that I've got family who fit into those categories. No, I kill orcs so I must be a bigot.

I get it, I really do. You've got issues with people of color, women, transgendered folk, and queers so it's impossible for you to imagine that anyone else could not work out their issues in the game because that's what you do. The thing is that not everyone is like you. I can like killing imaginary creatures simply because it's fun and not because I'm a closeted bigot. So seriously, stop projecting your own issues on everyone else and enjoy the game.

Works Cited 

Carse, James P. Finite and Infinite Games. New York: Ballantine Books, 1986. 10

Gygax, Gary and Dave Arneson. Dungeons & Dragons Vol 1: Men and Magic.  Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1974.  4