Balance of Power Part I: This Game is Two Games

Wherever you game, and whoever you game with, there is a social contract at the table. In many cases, this social contract is unstated. In some cases, it may be formal. Every gaming group has its own social contract, which meets the needs of its participants. 

In this blog post, I am going to talk a little bit about the social contract that I use. I am also going to talk a little bit about some poisonous ideas floating around some parts of the InterWebs. Please note that I am not demanding that you agree with me, or adopt my ideas. Nor am I demanding that you do not accept the ideas that I am going to describe as poisonous. What I do hope for is a dialogue, and I hope that when you consider the social contract of your own games, that you are empowered to examine it with a slightly wider viewpoint. Most of what I am going to say is probably obvious to most of my readers, so if your eyes start to glaze over, I won't be offended if you stop reading.

Anyway....

In a traditional role-playing game, you have a Dungeon Master, Referee, Judge, Game Master, Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Master, or whatever. I am just going to say GM, and you can fill in the appropriate title for your game of choice. You also have one or more players. Now, some people will tell you that the GM is also a player, but in this case we are using gaming terminology: a player is a person who controls one or more protagonist "Player Characters" (or PCs). The GM does not control PCs. Anyone controlled by the GM is a "Non-Player Character" (or NPC) because the GM is not a player.

So, two senses of the word "player":  (1) someone sitting at the table and engaged in the game, and (2) someone who controls one or more PCs.  Do not conflate them. Henceforward, in all that follows, the world "player" is only used in the second sense, and if I need to I will use "participant" for the first.

This split between players and GM is no accident. In a traditional rpg, the players are granted the opportunity to experience and take action within an imaginary milieu as though they were making decisions for an inhabitant of that milieu. The PC(s) operated by the player allow this access. Some game mechanics support the ability of players to make choices from the point-of-view of his PC (in which case they are called associated mechanics because there is a direct association between the game decision and the PC's decision in the milieu, or the result of the mechanic is mirrored in the changed conditions of the PC and/or milieu). Other mechanics are dissociated, because there is no clear link between the player's choice in utilizing the mechanic and the PC's fictional "choice" of action. 

A dissociated mechanic damages the association between the player and the PC; an associated mechanic strengthens it. There are many fun games that are fully dissociated (chess, for example, or Sorry), and some people will claim that chess is a role-playing game if you whinny when you move the knight. However, I would argue strenuously that it is the associated mechanics in a game which actually allow the game mechanics to encourage and reinforce role-playing. The degree to which any game is a role-playing game is, I would argue, based upon the relative strength of its associated vs. its dissociated mechanics. First edition Gamma World is a role-playing game. Uno is not.

Now, it should be relatively obvious that if the players are going to engage in this fictional milieu through the agency of their PCs, the fictional milieu must exist. Moreover, unless it is an unpopulated featureless plain, someone or something must devise and control all of the objects, creatures, and peoples which may be encountered therein. For the fictional milieu to seem real enough to allow for suspension of disbelief, the person doing all of this must know more than is being presented in the immediate area, and at the immediate time. As a fictional world needs rules to run believably, even off-the-cuff play requires that the person creating material in situ do so within an overarching framework which remains more or less consistent.

This is the job of the GM. The GM will present the roles of various creatures and peoples, but he will nearly always be in a position where his knowledge of the situation exceeds that of the NPCs portrayed. He must dissociate his knowledge from that of the creature being played in order to play it fairly. Similarly, the creation of the campaign milieu is primarily a dissociated process. The GM must be able to view the milieu from the outside, dispassionately, in order to construct or present something worth playing in.

If you stop and consider this fairly, it should be clear that the GM will be engaged in a predominantly dissociative game which enables the players to play an associative game.

There is also a disparity in the amount of work and responsibility that go into being a player or a GM, and they will be touched upon anon, but right now the above is all I really want to get across. The players are playing a game that is predominantly associative; the GM a game that is predominantly dissociative, and much revolves around that single point.

A Response to Matt @ The Tao of D&D

Matt,

I was born in 1966.  When I started the game, using the Holmes Basic rules, there was no one else I knew who had ever picked up the game.  

Later, I spent four years in the US Army.  I have lived in Missouri, Louisiana, Virginia, California, Wisconsin, and Ontario, both in major cities (Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Toronto) and in rural communities (I spent half my childhood in Pembine, Wisconsin, near the border to Upper Peninsula Michigan, with my nearest neighbour being a 5 mile walk away).  

I have moved a lot.  I have had to seek out new groups a lot as a result.  Usually, I have had to form groups.

So, yes, I understand having to find a group.  I do not equate that with begging around, cap in hand, asking players Oliver Twist style, “Please, Sirs, can I run some more?” 

Players are not a captive audience.  They may choose to play or choose not to play.  I have never had a problem finding players, or getting players to choose to play.  That may be because of simple luck, or it may be because of the way that I approach the game itself, but I have run games for a lot of different people in a lot of different places. 

Toronto is a Pathfinder town.  Running a game in a store, which I have done several times last year as part of the DCC World Tour 2013, is a challenge because you are directly competing with what is the most popular game in town, and in some cases competing with the hype surrounding D&D Next.

When I switched to DCC from the homebrewed game I was working on, RCFG, I lost three good players because they preferred the other game.  They were more interested in games with strong character generation sub-games.  That is completely okay.  Players are not a captive audience.  In my philosophy, every player should seek the game he or she most desires to play in, and every GM should run the game they wish to run.  Now, of course, there is a lot of interplay between these two positions, and the GM hopefully wishes to run the game the players wish to play in, just as the players hopefully wish to play in the game they are presented with.

In your response on Tao, you said

It doesn't even take the entire table to undermine me as a DM. I tried to run a game where plague and disease would play a major part in the campaign. I was trying to build an atmosphere with some gloom and some despair. The characters were going to be fighting vampires and necromancers and cultists and such. Some of my players bought in. Two didn't. They decided they would be at the table, but they weren't playing my game. "Oh, sickness is the problem? Lets start a Laundromat! I'll play an Asian stereotype sorcerer and I'll start a magic dry cleaning business. Want to help?" "Sure! I'll help out your business. Lets go about town washing clothes and fixing disease."

and I have to wonder how that is not playing your game.  It is my core belief that the GM devises setting, including the opportunity to interact with things like vampires, necromancers, and disease, and the players determine how they will approach that setting and those opportunities.  Likewise, it seems obvious to me that some players are going to resist an atmosphere of gloom and despair.  But I do not see this as a failure to buy in; I see this as an acceptable decision within the scope of the milieu.

In other words, there is a difference between “Here is an opportunity to fight necromancers” and “You will be fighting necromancers”.  If the “disease” is the result of necromancy and the undead, how effective is a Laundromat going to be, really?  Discovering that the problem is not so easily solved might well have provided you with a gloomier atmosphere than if they had immediately sought out Count Orlock.

And sure, I could have kicked them out, but they were half my group. They were friends. They were some of the only players I had. Were my other players pissed? Sure. They thought they'd get to play a gloomy dark vampire hunting game, and instead two players were pissing all over it with a joke.

I wasn’t there, but I don’t think that any form of player resistance to the opening status quo of a campaign milieu is “pissing all over it” – it is, rather, an attempt to control the direction of the game.  Players should be doing that.  And no matter how much they attempt to make light, the GM should continue to offer context, allow choices, and enforce consequences. 

What would have happened if you had allowed the players to resolve their own internal conflicts?  When two players want to do one thing in a game I run, and two players want to do another, who gets to decide – or even if the group splits up – is a player decision to make.  It is not my job to force a consensus, and it is not my right to tell them that they must decide this or that.

What if you had let them joke, but didn’t change the context in which their choices were being made?  I mean, literally, what if you didn’t let the jokes rattle you, and you continued to play it seriously?  What if, rather than simply allowing that reaction to ruin the game, you used it to highlight the darkness?  Eventually, the number of un-dead would grow, the disease would become worse, and the PCs would be forced to do something, even if “doing something” means flee to another town or continue obliviously until they drowned in a sea of walking corpses. 

See, I don’t see “kick them out” or “trash the game” as the only solutions here.  I see the best solution as “accept their decisions, but that doesn’t change the milieu until they do something to change it.”  I also think that the players should be trying to change the milieu to their benefit.  But the milieu, not their desire, determines how difficult that is.

While your game milieu will include many potential adventure sites, I think it is important to envision a setting in which adventure occurs, rather than specific actions/adventures which will occur.  The PCs should always have the ability to opt out, but putting that option to the test should always include whatever consequences are appropriate to the milieu.  If you choose not to go to White Plume Mountain, nothing happens to you.  If you choose not to pay attention to the growing legion of un-dead where you live, there are likely to be harsher consequences.

That lasted for an hour or two before I quit. I sent everyone home. I trashed the campaign. I forget what we ended up playing after that but I had been running 4th edition D&D during that period of my gaming so it was probably some high powered fantasy loot-explosion bullshit. I hate that kind of game but I ran it because that's what kept my players coming back to the table and quite frankly I needed the creative outlet more than they needed the dice rolling so I ran their game and tried to build a world around it until despite my efforts I lost friends and players anyway.

I got older

You should never run a game that you do not enjoy.  Life is too short for that.  The world is filled with creative outlets.  Some of them even offer remuneration.

But, look at it this way:  If the players have all of the power in the equation, and the bullshit game is what keeps them coming back to the table, it follows that you have to run the bullshit game or have no players. 

But that is not what happened.  Instead, attempting to cater to the tastes of others while ignoring what you wanted caused you to lose friends and players anyway.  And what actually happened?  

You had a milieu in which you had considered what choices the players had, what the context was, and what the potential consequences would be.  Even if two of the players made choices you had not considered, they were engaging with that milieu in so doing.  Had you stayed the course – allowing them to operate their side of the screen (choices) while you operated yours (context and consequence), the natural consequences of ignoring the context of the milieu would have affected player choices over the course of time. 

You might not have gotten exactly what you were expecting – nothing ever is once a human element is added – but you would have gotten much better than what you settled for.  And, honestly, so would your players.  No one is at their best running a game they dislike. 

So I begged the remains of the players to play a game that I would enjoy running and I tried my damnedest to keep it interesting because I was out of options. If I couldn't get them to buy in I had no players.

Listen.  I’m not going to proclaim my insights to be brilliant.  I am not going to claim that I express myself with the EXACT words needed in all cases.  I am not going to claim that my way is the right way, or the only way, or that your experience cannot differ from mine.  I am not even going to claim that if you disagree you must not be listening.  I leave those kinds of claims to others.  I am interested in a dialogue, not a monologue with a chorus.

Perhaps I come from a privileged position, because I have never had to beg players to play in the games that I ran, and I never expected anyone to beg me to play.  Nor have I ever had anyone come to me, cap in hand, begging to run a game.  Why would they?  If the game is worth playing, you don’t have to beg.

You had a game that you believed was worth playing.  And you trashed it because of an hour or two of frustration.  Players always need to find their feet, to learn the rules of a campaign milieu, when they jump into a new game.  Some players will always want to test the GM, to ensure that they are actually able to make unexpected choices in the game milieu.  Some players will always attempt something suicidal with a new GM, just to gauge whether or not the dice will fall where they may.  These things are normal.

And the result of believing that the players should decide what you run was not very happy, was it?  The high powered fantasy loot-explosion was not what you wanted?  Didn’t you have to run what you wanted to be happy?

Again, I’m not Einstein.  I don’t have some pretensions to being an intellectual übermensch, so take this with a grain of salt:  You decided that you didn’t want to play that way, and then offered the players something you wanted to do, and they agreed to do it.  You might have felt like you were begging when you brought it up, but would you have continued running bang-pow-loot if they had said No to your ideas?

If you would have, then, Yup.  They have all the power.  If you would not have, then congratulations! because you both have power in that relationship.  The players can force the GM's game to end, but the GM cannot force the players to play.  Likewise, the GM can force the players' game to end, but the players cannot force the GM to run.  A relationship – any relationship – where one side has all the power is dysfunctional. 

It is my unsolicited advice to you to avoid dysfunctional relationships, and to be very cautious about accepting the conclusion – from anyone, no matter how well-meaning they might be – that the only way to be in any particular type of relationship is to accept that it is going be dysfunctional.  This applies, of course, not only to gaming, but to all of life.

PS:  If you read Alexis' response, you will note that he said that GMs who view players as disposable are not trying to build a team, but trying to gather worshippers.  Or words to that effect.

Imagine that you wanted to play a game of Risk.  You invite some friends.  Some are into it, and some are not, but the invitation is definitely to play Risk.  Are you building worshippers, or are you getting together a group who has an interest in a particular sort of game?  Is your friend who wants to go out with his significant other that night no longer your friend?  Do you stop going out to see movies with your other friend who isn't into boardgames because he won't let you dictate that he plays Risk on Tuesday?  Are you even trying to dictate what he does on Tuesday?  Or are you offering an option?

In other words, is it the people who are replaceable, or their role as players?  Because the first is a problem, and the second, IMHO, is not.  In the second case, you can go fishing with them on Sunday after the game.

Personally, I don't like to demand that people agree with me.  But I do like to take on memes that seem likely to increase dysfunction.  This is one of them.  And I do suggest that you take a look at the research link that Alexis provided.  When you read about how the research describes destructive leadership, do you think that he has nailed it, or do you think that he has extended the definition rather far from what the authors indicated?

All of these questions, by the way, are real questions.  I am curious about what you think.

Cap in Hand

I read The Tao of D&D because I enjoy it.  There have been times when it has produced such excellent posts that I had to point others there, and there have been times when I felt compelled to write about something I read there that I disagreed with.  However, there has never been a time when I stopped reading the blog.  I intend to buy and read Alexis’ book on DMing when it comes out, too, because even where I disagree with him, I respect that he is worth reading.

Yesterday, I read Alexis’ post on “The Sides of Power”, and I disagreed.  As a GM, I have never had to ask permission to run a game.  There have been points where I was willing to run, but there were other things happening, or people wanted to play a different game.  Frankly, if Bob is running his Pathfinder game when I want to run my DCC game, and Bob’s game is the preferred choice, I can change my time slot and play in Bob’s game too.

In my world, there are always more people wanting to play than there are wanting to run the game.  People who want to run the game need encouragement so that they don’t simply give up when faced by the work required to present a game milieu – even a single adventure!  I have known people who have found even the idea of running a published scenario daunting.  The idea that a would-be GM would be forced to go begging for players, cap in hand, does seem ludicrous to me.  I am not saying it doesn’t happen; I am saying that it is so far outside my experience – direct experience or through direct observation of others – that I have to imagine that this is an uncommon thing.  I could be wrong.

In my experience, if you build it they will come.

This morning, I read Alexis’ post on anger being his default position.  In it, he describes one of my comments to his post, intended to convey that even though I don’t always agree with him, I find he has insights I had not considered and that are worth considering.  That is not the way Alexis took it.  I have no control over that, but it makes me sad.

I try to take people as they are.  We all have flaws, but our flaws are not the only thing that defines us.  It is important, in my mind, to be able to call out flaws in an argument, but that is not the same thing as being cruel to the man making the argument.

In the immortal words of Bill & Ted, Be excellent to each other.

Silent Nightfall....Epic? Second Session

I just got home from running the second session of Silent Nightfall using 8th level characters.  Well, three 8th level characters, and a cleric and dwarf of a bit lower level.

Last week, two of my regular players were unavailable due to work commitments, so I ran Well of the Worm as a 0-level funnel instead.  Creepy fun, and as soon as there was 10 XP to be had, the survivors fled, leaving the nearby dales to deal with the menace themselves.

Tonight's session was a lot more cautious creeping around the 2nd and 3rd levels.  The PCs discovered the bedroom, entered it, and dealt with what was there.  They pulled the red lever.  The party's wizard has been hearing whispering and the psychic voice of Silent Nightfall, buzzing and crackling with barely constrained power.  It requested that the party go away (the wizard could read Mortmallion's recovered journals) and return in a day, but they decided to press on instead.  

Mike, who is playing the wizard, remembered that his bonded invisible companion might have some information, and began plying his unseen servant, Alfred, with questions.  This gave me a chance to give the party some idea of the background of the Silent Nightfall complex, as well as some insight into what they were encountering there.  Alfred was able to say for certain that the voice would ask them to push the green button, and, having located it, they are determined to do so....just to see what it does.

In the meanwhile, they are getting ready to fight another battle on the 3rd level....if you own the adventure, you can probably guess which one.

It is really fun for me to watch people running extremely powerful characters acting with such a level of caution in a level 2+ module.  In fact, in the post-game wrap-up, Mike admitted that he had forgotten the level of the module.  Just as well; taken without caution, Silent Nightfall can be deadly.

It also shows the versatility of the Dungeon Crawl Classics game, and just how much difference it makes that monsters are mysterious, and that the rules should not be taken for granted.  In the first session, for instance, the shaft crawler really gave them pause when they eventually realized that their chosen course of action was making the thing stronger instead of killing it.

I am very much looking forward to next week!

Everyone Else: The Trolls of Mistwood

A serious problem with the “Everyone Else” series that I had been working on is that I am so far behind that, when I get to a product, it is too little, too late.  So, I am going to try something different, and start with recent products, working my way back.

Caveat:  I am pretty deeply enmeshed with the DCC community now, and I have relationships of some sort or another with most of the good folks publishing DCC materials.  

In the case of The Trolls of Mistwood, by David Fisher (Shinobi 27 Games), I am listed as an editor.  I was lucky enough to have seen this adventure at several stages of its development, and had some very modest input into the direction of the final version.  So, you can take all of my comments with a grain of salt if you like.

The Trolls of Mistwood is a higher-level adventure (4-6), and is intended as the first of several adventures centring around the same region.  It makes use of patron information from Angels, Daemons, & Beings Between, and provides most of the information needed to run the scenario.  You may want to have a copy of the Invoke Patron table for Hecate, Goddess of Witches handy, and that is not included.  You can find it here if you don’t have the AD&BB tome.

Without giving too much away, the adventure revolves around trolls.  Author David Fisher cleaves pretty close to the standard fantasy types for monsters, but this actually makes the adventure work better, as those places where expectations are confounded become more unexpected.  There are some cool magic items, including a very detailed magic sword. 

The inclusion of Mistwood, a settlement that is fully described for Dungeon Crawl Classics, is a very definite bonus – DCC could use a similar product targeted at low-level play, ala Keep on the Borderlands or The Village of Hommlet.  Of course, the clever judge who started early could use Mistwood as a campaign location from the funnel onward, bringing the successful PCs back home to deal with the village’s problems when they have gained a few levels and toughened up some.  Doom of the Savage Kings (by Harley Stroh; Goodman Games) comes closest to date, and has supplied many a campaign with a potential starting point.

I like the art of David Fisher, and it should be no surprise that, when the author is the artist, there are some nice pieces of art in the final product.  There are some of David’s “clip art” pieces, and his images including trolls are among his best.  I would have preferred that the NPC pictures were less “pose-y”, but you can’t have everything, and for many a judge the images are usable as a visual aid. The cartography is excellent.  It is not surprising that two of the maps have been made available separately as colour art pieces. 

Overall, I am pleased with how The Trolls of Mistwood turned out.  Flavour-wise, the adventure seems to very much influenced by Poul Anderson – which is a good thing, as Poul Anderson gave us the modern rpg troll.  Gary Gygax’s trolls are very much those seen in Three Hearts and Three Lions, with a long-nosed nod to the trolls in L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s The Roaring Trumpet.  I think there is a bit of Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance in there as well, although that may just be me looking for influences that may or may not exist.

You can pick it up here.  

Empty Spaces

"The room appears to be empty."

As a player, do those words drive fear into your heart?  As a GM, do you find yourself gritting your teeth and wondering why the author of a module would have included another empty room?

Well, take heart.  There are good reasons to include empty spaces in an adventure design.  A few of those reasons are listed below.

1.  The Dread Verisimilitude:  Yes, an adventure location seems far more "real" when every space is not packed to the gills with monsters and treasure.  One of the main criticisms of the dungeon crawl is that so many creatures live in such close proximity without murdering each other.  A really simple solution to this problem, and one that existed when the hobby began, is to include empty spaces. 

2.  Player and Monster Tactics:  Knowledge of the layout of empty spaces allows players to lure monsters into an ambush, and vice versa.  Being able to pass through empty spaces may also mean an ability to bypass certain encounters, which may mean the difference between success and a TPK.

3.  Somewhere to Rest:  Those unfrequented areas of the dungeon make ideal spots for battered PCs to retreat to.  Which leads to....

4.  Change My Dear, and Not a Moment Too Soon:  If areas are empty as the PCs pass through them repeatedly, they can be caught off-guard by unexpected inhabitants.  These might be wandering encounters, they might be ambushes (see #2, above), and they might be battered monsters looking for somewhere to rest (ala #3).  In this last case, the monsters may not be so eager to leap into battle, and the PCs may have the rare chance to exchange words with a manticore (or whathaveyou).

5.  Disguise:  Rooms that are actually empty disguise rooms that appear to be empty, but which actually contain hidden traps, treasures, or monsters.  If there is something in every room, then the supposedly "empty" room in which something is hidden sticks out like a sore thumb.  This encourages "pixel bashing", where having many "empty" rooms actually be empty discourages the same because it is not rewarded.

It should be remembered that "empty" in this case need not mean boring.  The "empty" room can have interesting features (aka "dungeon dressing") that point toward a larger backstory for the adventure location. Such areas can contain clues to the nature of the dungeon as a whole - an ancient kitchen indicates that there should be store rooms nearby, and a dining area.  Perhaps there is also a way to the surface close at hand, with which the pantries were stocked!  

It is not only deadly monsters and traps that deserve a "footprint". The good judge considers how to pass context on to his players at every opportunity.

A Tale of Two Zines

We all know and love Crawl! – or, at least, I do – but there are two new zines for DCC in town.  Allow me to introduce you to Crawljammer and Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad.

Crawljammer is basically Dungeon Crawl Classics in fantasy space – think more Edgar Rice Burroughs and C.L. Moore, and less Poul Anderson and you have the idea.  The zine is the brainchild of Tim Callahan, and his son!, who wrote most of the first issue’s content.  The first issue is pretty much a primer on the setting, information (including a playable class) on lizardmen in space, and a 1^st level adventure set on Venus.

I have not yet played the adventure, Cry Freedom and Let Slip the Bat-Men of Venus, but the Burroughs vibe definitely comes through when reading it, and I suspect that it will play well. 

Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad, by contrast, takes place in a sprawling metropolis where the “Metal Gods” refer both to human mastery of iron and steel…and of Metal music.  “These heroes became the first Metal Gods, as did all true masters of Metal who came after them, destined make war and debauch throughout the Celestial Realms until needed by Man once again.”  Metal Gods is largely the product of three people:  Wayne Snyder, Edgar Johnson, and Adam Muszkiewicz.

Like Crawljammer, the first issue sets the scene and then offers an adventure.  It also then offers what it refers to as a “Dungeon Insert” – a short encounter/adventure by another name.  The main adventure is Street Kids of Ur-Hadad, which is described as “A Zero Level Funnel Adventure Toolkit”, and that is a fair description.  You could play it many times, and it would be different each time.  This one’s by Edgar Johnson.

The “Dungeon Insert” is called Cave of the Maggot Witch, and is by Wayne Snyder.  It’s interesting, but suffers a bit from being hand-written.  My print copy has not yet arrived; I am reading the PDF copy, so it may appear easier to read with hardcopy.  As with Crawljammer, I have read the adventures, but not yet played them through, but they seem fun.

In a side-by-side comparison, Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad has more material packed into it.  Crawljammer offers a wider setting, and has rules for ship engagements in space.  Metal Gods focuses on a very specific urban setting; Crawljammer paints its fantasy solar system in broad strokes – the setting is as wide and diverse as you choose to make it.  Both are obviously labours of love, and worth the price of admission.  If you were choosing between them, go with what interests you more:  an urban setting or planetary/space romance.  And then, when you have a bit more coin, also pick up the zine you skipped.  You’ll thank me.

Postscript the First:  I love zines, and I want to support these two additions to the DCC family by contributing some writing to them.  I am thinking a zero-level funnel for Crawljammer, but I haven’t the foggiest what to submit to Metal Gods.  If you have some ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Postscript the Second:  Crawl! #9 – The Arwich Grinder – and D.A.M.N.! #1 …. Where are the reviews?  All I can hear are the bloody crickets, I tell you.  Bloody crickets.

So what to do about that?

Well, imagine that I do have something printed in both Crawljammer and Metal Gods at some future point.  When that Crawljammer issue comes out, I am going to see if anyone linked their Crawl! #9 review in the responses to this blog post, and then random-roll a winner, who I am going to send a free copy of the first issue of Crawljammer I have something published in.

Guess what's going to happen with Metal Gods?  That's right, I'm going to do the same with reviews of D.A.M.N.! #1.  Someone who posted a review of D.A.M.N. #1 and linked it to this blog post's responses will get that issue of Metal Gods on my dime.

Not sure how long you have for that; I haven't started working on either, and there are a number of other things on my plate.  But I am nothing if not prolific.....

How Much Is Too Much

When designing a game area, how much is too much?  There is a real difference between early adventures, wherein PCs could die – or there could even be a TPK – without any obvious clues that the hammer was about to fall, and Dungeons & Dragons under Wizards of the Coast's 3rd and 4th Editions, where balance was expected and the PCs should be able to take most encounters they met with.

I will assume that readers of this blog understand that encounters do not need to be “balanced” against some idealized party, and that sometimes it is okay for the players to choose to run away.  Still, the question remains:  How deadly is too deadly?

I have three rules of thumb that help me gauge appropriate threat levels:

(1)  Before I put anything truly deadly in, did I include a “footprint” from which the players might be able to deduce that Bad Things Might Happen?

If Smaug lives in the Lonely Mountain, and the PCs head there at 1st level, that's too bad for them.  There was certainly enough "footprint" leading up to the Desolation of the Dragon.  On the other hand, the footprint need not be so clear.

Adventuring – going into dangerous areas to strive with dangerous things, and hopefully to reap the rewards of the same – is intrinsically perilous.  There is a reason why villagers stay home and bake bread, reap the crops, and repair your horseshoes rather than face what lies out in the dark.  Sooner or later, what lurks in the darkness will kill you.  Expecting that everything you meet will be a “balanced encounter” is not only foolish, but it defeats the experience of challenging the unknown.

Trying to figure out the clues is one of the places where player agency shines.  In WotC-D&D, it has been said that the GM has been given better tools to judge the balance of encounters.  In a game focusing on exploring the unknown, it is the players, not the judge, whose job it is to determine whether or not an encounter will be potentially profitable, or even survivable.

This is not a subtle distinction.  In one sort of game, the GM is primarily responsible for ensuring that his encounters are survivable by the PCs, and often the GM is responsible for gauging the average resources to be expended and ensuring that replacements are at hand.  In the other sort of game, the judge is primarily responsible for creating an interesting environment to explore, and part of that is ensuring that the players can obtain enough information to make reasonable choices.  Note, I did not say that the players will obtain enough information – merely with good play, and a little luck, they have the potential to do so.

There is another real benefit to a good “footprint”:  When the Bad Things are finally revealed, the players get either a moment of “Aha!  So that is what those clues meant!” or a smug sense of “Aha!  I told you so!”  Both of these feelings are among those that gamers talk about long after the dice have cooled and the foes are dead.

(2)  Is it possible to handle the encounter?  Even if handling it means “running away”, is it possible to run?

Imagine an “encounter” where you walk into the dungeon, and, regardless of what you do, the first corridor collapses on the party, killing them instantly.  That would suck.  Imagine, instead, that at the end of the first corridor was a lever that did the same thing.  Now the players have a way to handle the encounter – they have agency.  A spell (second sight, for example, in DCC) might give a clue, or the players may discover a way to pull the lever from a distance.  A thief might be able to determine that the lever is a trigger for a trap.  The PCs might just leave it alone.

For those of you who have played James Raggi’s excellent Death Frost Doom, you will know that there is an encounter which, depending upon how it is handled, affects the way the rest of the adventure plays out.  That is a good example of an encounter that can be handled in many ways, but which is likely to be handled in a particularly disastrous way.

Playing Death Frost Doom, my older daughter swore at me for the first time.  Not unfairly; the game was tense, and I was enjoying their reactions to it.  Nonetheless, the players remember that game, and that is an important thing.  They did not simply waste their time; they were challenged in a way that was both entertaining and memorable.  When they finally managed to undo the consequences of that first disastrous attempt, the triumph was all the sweeter.

(3)  Am I willing to live with the consequences of the PCs’ failure?

Perhaps the simplest rule of thumb to adhere to.  If the PCs failing means the End of the World, and you are unwilling to let the World End, you are doing something wrong.  Suddenly, you need to fudge the dice, or the encounters, to ensure that the PCs win.  This is not the players being challenged by the game; this is the players being spectators while you play with yourself.

Really, if there is a TPK, so what?  As Joseph Goodman points out in the Dungeon Crawl Classics core rulebook, you can always play through the party’s desperate attempt the escape Hell.  And I would not make that attempt easy, either.  A “second death” would render future attempts impossible…

In terms of acceptable consequences for failure, all that I can say is look at the material I have written and had published.  Even the characters who survive may find that they have been altered for the worse (or sometimes for the better), if they are foolish, or unlucky, or both.  And I play a game that supports me in that – an unlucky corruption roll, misfired magic, or a critical hit against you can change your life forever in Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Player agency is not only “how do I get what I want?”, but also “How do I deal with what I get?”  Both parts are important.  The judge should never be “out to get the players” – that is an uneven contest, and is frankly not much fun on either side.  What the judge should be out to do is to present a world where there are many things which may be out to get the players, and in which it is possible for the players – through greed, impatience, lack of caution, or even sheer bad luck – to discover that they have bitten off far more than they can chew.

A note on horror:  Horror in an RPG works best when the players begin with a lot of agency, but as a consequence of their choices see that agency dwindling while they are being herded towards an unknown, but clearly evil, end.  The struggle to restore agency before it is too late – often by dealing with choices that you would never otherwise consider – is horror’s bleeding heart.

Avoiding those choices and still succeeding offers a eucatastrophe that only works if the choices were real, and the need to consider them equally so.  You will never find players so eager to think outside the box as when they are faced with three bad options and they are desperate to invent a fourth.

Another Note on Deadly Games:  When I mentioned that I was writing this blog post, my son’s initial reaction was a blank stare that spoke volumes.  Really, what is the point of overcoming a “challenge” that is designed to allow you to defeat it?  That’s like eating chili without any spices.  In many ways, the potential to fail defines the potential to succeed.

In Conclusion

How far is too far? 

I don’t know.  My players surprise me.  Every time I think I have gone too far, it turns out that I have not gone far enough.  Greater challenges seem to just create greater players.

Last night I played the first session of Silent Nightfall with a party consisting of two 8^th level warriors, an 8^th level wizard, a 5^th level cleric, and a 2^nd level dwarf.  One of the warriors was knocked to 0 hp (in his defense, he started with a 4 Stamina).  Thus far, they have explored only one room and part of the central shaft. 

They did really well against some foes that came into a nearby village when they ignored the village’s “silent nightfall”, but half the party is already ready to run away from the adventure site.

CE 5: Silent Nightfall is rated for characters of level 2+.

Ask me again how far is too far, and I will tell you again that I don’t know.

I try to figure out where the edge is, and then inhabit the zone just beyond it, but my players are always pushing the frontier back.  These days, even 0-level funnels often have more survivors than slain, as the players figure out how to deal with what they have available.

Silent Nightfall.....Epic?

Tomorrow night, I will start running CE 5: Silent Nightfall for 8th level DCC characters.  Basically, this is to allow my players to re-use the characters they created for Harley Stroh's Colossus, Arise!  I would like to see if "level 2+" really works, and I believe that a number of challenges in CE 5 will prove to be "level proof" in that they require the players, not their characters, to think things through.  Also, the design of the map is such that I don't think the major strengths of high-level characters - such as the ability to affect many visible targets with a single spell - can easily be brought to bear.

I can't say too much, because my players also read this blog, but I will be happy to report on their experiences as they work their way through the complex.