Meditating on Jack Chick

The news that Jack Chick has passed away has been making its rounds around the blogosphere. Reactions range from the vindictive to the conciliatory. Personally, I wasn’t aware of Chick’s work or his influence on the Satanist Scare and D&D until much later in life when (ironically) the Christian faith I had rejected in my youth drew me back to actually playing the very game Chick warned would destroy my soul.

Believe it or not, I have no animosity towards Chick. In another odd twist, I am actually grateful to him. Despite the fact that I disagree with him on many issues, without Chick and his ilk openly challenging D&D, we would not have the OGL, the OSR or Hasbro putting D&D on the shelves in bookstores so that another generation can fire up the imagination in a way that only pen and paper RPGs can.

In the small picture, the Satanist Scare but TSR on the ropes. In the bigger picture, it led to a series of events that culminated in the OGL so that the game can never be taken away from us ever again.

This leads me to the main point of this post: freedom of speech. Jack exercised his right to publish his nonsense and try to convince a bunch of people that D&D was bad. In turn, others (including myself) have used our free speech to defend the game and to promote it in its various forms. To this day, people are free to decide who is more persuasive and which set of ideas is going to make their life better. I call that a win for everybody.

Unfortunately, there are a growing number of people out there that think limiting speech is a good idea. More and more people believe that they shouldn’t have to listen to ideas that challenge their own world-view. Frighteningly, there are also more people willing to use their influence and power to make that happen and to coerce, bully and forcibly shut people up.

We live in a Golden Age of RPGs specifically because of the freedom of speech that allowed Chick to voice his beliefs. Those beliefs force those of us who play this game to answer his challenges, to know this game better and to make this game better. As a consequence, we are all better for it.

For all those who think that it is okay to bully, coerce and forcibly shut people up because you disagree with them, this is a world-view that would have robbed us all of the game we know and love today. It may very well have also forced D&D into the dustbin of history.

I pray that the lesson we learn from Chick, his life and his death is not that his version of Christianity was bad, but rather that freedom of speech and the ability to be challenged by ideas that disagree with our own has made the world a better place.

Meditating on 5e (Basic Rules) Part 2

PLEASE NOTE:Currently, all of my meditations on 5e are going be about the Basic Rules as a stand-alone product outside the context of the rest of 5e. I am doing this for a couple reasons:

1. My only access to 5e is the Basic Rules, because I cannot afford to invest anything other than free in my gaming for the foreseeable future.
2. As this community has demonstrated from its outset, there is value in examining a rule-set on its own. We have examined 0e, Holmes, B/X, 1e etc. and found a number of wonderful, unexpected treasures buried inside those rule sets. We’ve also found a number of things we’d rather not use.

Yesterday, I got several comments that deserve a response. Due to the wide breadth of these comments, I am going to do an entire blog post.

Firstly, my biggest beef with 5eBR is that as a stand-alone product, it is unusable. There is no treasure table. There is no advice in the DMs section on awarding XP, except a table in the Building Combat Encounters section. That means, as is, combat is the only way to earn XP. Certainly, I can hack away and use treasure and XP tables from another edition, but I really didn’t want to have to do that in order to play. Even though limited to 1st-3rd levels, both Holmes’ and Moldvay’s Basic Editions are playable without using any other outside material.

Secondly, there is enough in 5eBR that I do want to play it in some incarnation. There are two things, specifically, I will definitely be trying out regardless of edition I play in the future:

• Advantage/Disadvantage — this is such an elegant mechanic that so simply deals with a huge swath of situations where a ±1 to ±4 just never felt right.
• Backgrounds — anything that can enrich the story of a 1st level character with randomized goodness, a couple of non-combat areas of expertise, NPC contacts and some equipment that one might not otherwise bother buying is right up my alley.

Thirdly, while I do understand and accept that there are other useful models for granting XP, reading 5eBR reminded me how awesome Arneson’s 1 XP = 1 gp spent really is. As anyone who has read this blog long enough knows, one of the things I value most in my RPGs is freedom. While combat-only is a legitimate choice for awarding XP, it does so at the cost of player freedom and, at least in context of how much a goblin is worth and how fast the XP progression is in 5eBR, my own ability to suspend my disbelief.

Player freedom goes out the window, because the only way a mage can become second level is to go out and fight things. IF Arneson’s XP model is used, that very same mage has a huge variety of choices as to how to get to second level. The mage could go and find a goblin army to kill, but a more interesting choice is to make off with the army’s supply caravan or to run off with the treasure hoard of the evil mage paying the goblin army.

To boot, the 1 XP = 1 gp formula puts the development of the character directly in the hands of players. How a player spends that money in order to become second level defines who that character is even more than class mechanics. That same mage could spend money by bar hopping across your favorite FRPG city or by buying access to a private collection of scrolls. Each choice says far more about the character than his/her spell book does.

I have also found that when players are having to find ways to dump thousands of gold pieces, the easiest way to do so is to invest in and build stuff. Players suddenly have far more of a vested interest in the health and safety of a community/locale when this kind of spending happens. Thus, external threats become much more personal and adventures have higher stakes.

Fourthly, while professional armies were a new thing during the Hundred Years War, the largest expense of the Crown was equipment not wages. And if, as is the tradition in FRPGs like D&D, one relies on literary source material, according to Shakespeare, Henry V had a close personal friend hung for stealing from the conquered French. Thus, the actual amount of cash an average commoner would get from a 6-month contract wouldn’t likely be enough to be able to advance to second level. Which goes to show that this scenario is a lot easier to justify using older editions than trying to justify how anyone, let alone an officer, in an army could only be 1st level using 5eBR.

Finally, when it comes to game mechanics, I don’t buy into systems that treat PCs differently than the rest of the world. Suspension of disbelief plays a large part in this, because such a mechanic is antithetical to the world view of my faith. Christ gave eternal life to all of humanity when He went to the cross and rose from the dead. The crux of our life is what we do with that gift. Practically, it means that anyone can do great things. If a game does not allow Joe Nobody to defeat Mr. Big Bad Guy with a good plan and good luck, then my suspension of disbelief is out the window, because I know the stories of thousands of Joe Nobodies who did do great and wondrous things.

A Map of Averoigne

Here is the map I've been fiddling around with. Those of you who are acquainted with the works of Clark Ashton Smith will note that I have changed most of the place names. This, of course, is done on purpose. While I am quite inspired by Smith's work (obviously), I have little desire to traipse about the original version of Averoigne. Whether or not I like it, whether or not it is existentially true, I feel restricted by trying to stay true to someone else's creation. As I have noted before, running any RPG requires letting go of creative control. The truly rewarding part of play is the surprise of letting players do their thing. 

In order to permit myself the freedom to let go and just allow play to naturally develop as the creativity of various people affect the campaign world, I mentally need to divorce a world from its source material. Changing the name of Ximes to Ximera is a small and easy way to do this. This version of Averoigne stops being Smith's and becomes mine. In doing an homage, rather than a simulation, I have complete creative control and therefore the freedom to completely let go of that control. With a simulation, I never can get over the fact that though I play at having complete control, this world doesn't entirely belong to me.

Intriguingly, James over at Grognardia today tries to make the case that it is possible to play around in another's creation. The example he gives is a Judge's Guild module (The Nightmare Maze of Jigrésh) created for EPT. He argues that its relative banality proves that it is possible to run a campaign in Tékumel without getting bogged down in the minutia of Barker's creation.

I don't doubt that this is true. The number of successful Greyhawk campaigns through the years demonstrate its inherent truth. Despite the relative ease we all have with understanding the assumed culture of Greyhawk vs. the complexity of Tékumel they are both someone else's creation. 

I, for one, however, prefer the freedom of doing an homage rather than a simulation.

On Dice and Freedom

This week, I have been meditating on freedom. It started Monday, when Beedo recounted how his players managed to turn Strahd into dust. He then followed that with a meditation on The Will of the Dice. For myself, I equated the plethora of choices we have today as RPG players with a golden age of our hobby.

Let me begin by stating this basic assumption:

If we deny that God is creator and deny that He creates us with His image and likeness (described in part by the concept of inalienable rights), tyranny must necessarily follow.

I say this because if there is no higher power — no unchanging divine creator — who endows us with rights, it falls to humanity and governments to bestow rights. Inevitably, this means the person or group with the biggest gun and the will to use it will determine who has the right to do what and who doesn't. Throughout history, mankind has demonstrated this reality. It is also no surprise that those countries and peoples that most aggressively turned their back on God ended up being some of the bloodiest and most tyrannous in human history.

I would like to apply this basic assumption to our hobby, and, specifically, to the act of rolling the dice. This is counterintuitive, but "slavery to the dice" is actually freedom, not slavery.

In the same way that denying God results in rights being bestowed and taken away by man and therefore tyranny, denying the ability of the dice to determine events in an RPG session results in the GM determining results in a game session. This, while not being anywhere near the deprivation of evil regimes of the present and past, is still a form of tyranny.

Let me explain. When we allow the dice to fall where they may, we actually are validating the choices made by the players. If one or more characters die or a boss villain dies before his time, these are the direct consequences of their choices. By allowing these choices to come to their full fruition by trusting the dice, we enshrine and ensure player freedom. To do otherwise is to not only deny that freedom, but to render player choice meaningless.

I can already hear many of you asking the question, but isn't it an old-school axiom that the DM's word is law? Yes, it is. Referees/DMs/Labyrinth Lords (or whatever you wish to call them) are indeed the final arbiter of the rules and have the final word on what happens inside their world; however, each and every one of us who run an RPG have made the choice to cede that control to our players by the very nature of playing the game. If we wanted total control, we would write short stories, novellas and novels, not play RPGs. The dice are the mechanism by which we cede that control — they are the means by which player choices are validated every time they choose to do something dangerous.

We further choose to cede control of our world to the dice every time we make a roll. When we roll a random encounter or roll a reaction roll we have already made a choice — that we would rather be surprised by the dice rather than making that call ourselves. If you do not want to be surprised, or if there is a result on a table you are unwilling to deal with you do not have to make that roll. You have the power to choose not to roll and just arbitrarily choose the result you want.

By allowing the dice to fall where they may, you are validating your own choice to cede control of your creation to a random table. The reward of this choice is not just surprise, but a chance to be creative enough to make such a random event fit seamlessly into the given situation. If these things weren't so rewarding, why would we do it in the first place?

And now, my tax:

The Tabard of St. Gavril

This unkempt and worn jerkin bears the Cross of St. Gavril and has a short prayer embroidered along the inside seem. Though it appears to be worthless, it radiates of magic. When donned by a Lawful character and the short prayer is recited, the wearer is bestowed with a Bless spell. This effect may be used once per day.

Just Say No to Skill Checks

I have stated before that I don't really care for systems that use skills. It wasn't until recently, however, that I came to understand, in a succinct way, why I despise them so much. It comes down to this:

Skills and skill-like mechanisms primarily do not describe what a character can do, rather they describe what a player, especially a Referee, cannot do.

The Thief of D&D is an excellent example of this axiom. I have never been fond of thieves. Apart from my discomfort at their explicit association with illegal activities, I have played in too many campaigns where players with thief characters felt that they needed to break the law. Too many times has party cohesion been damaged by players who try to use their thief skills on other party members. Too many times have I been forced to kill entire parties because a thief dragged everyone into a fight with the city guard over a failed pick pocket attempt. But I digress.

The thief class is defined by their ability to use skills — Open Locks, Remove Traps, Climb Walls, Pick Pockets Hear Noise, Move Silently and Hide in Shadows. As a result these skills tended to become explicitly Thief skills — everyone else at the table was no longer able to use those skills. In other words, the thief class defines what every other player cannot do. It doesn't matter how well anyone describes how their magic user is going to disarm a trap, with the thief and his skills in the game, magic users aren't allowed to disarm the trap — they don't have the skill, so they can't roll for it. Ultimately, this kills creativity. Why bother to describe a creative way for anybody to disarm a trap when the rules will determine that you fail anyway? It doesn't matter if I have a degree in mechanical engineering and can describe exactly the way a trap might function, and exactly how to destroy or stop that mechanism. If my character doesn't have the skill, I am not allowed to disarm that trap. Mechanics start to define the character instead of the player.

There is a way to beat the system, however. Let me begin by giving an example of a great rule:

Love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength . . . and love your neighbor as yourself. — Mark 12:30-31

When Christ gives us these two commandments, He sets up boundaries beyond which we should not pass; however, within those boundaries we are allowed complete freedom. In other words, good rules don't limit freedom.

Skills can be used in a way that they don't limit what players, especially referees, can do. The key is to understand that you have the power to say no to the skill check. If a player successfully describes how to accomplish something they should be rewarded with success no matter what skills their character has. Don't force them to roll the die — don't kill the creativity.

To give a concrete example, let us look at the D&D thief again. One way to describe this mindset is to understand the thief skills as abilities, not skills. In other words, they are things every one can do, the thief is just able to do them above and beyond the normal adventurer. Thus, every other class can hide, move silently, etc. The thief is just better at it — if he fails to successfully describe how to accomplish a task — using the same criteria as everyone else — he gets a "save," as it were, by rolling the die to use his Thief skills. As abilities, as opposed to skills, they no longer determine what players cannot do.

Don't kill the creativity at your table. Just say no to the skill check.

Freedom

Norbert of Rettungswurf gegen Komplexität recently said of my post on AAC vs DAC:

Being an ordained minister, I'm really curious on why and how you equate any Christian faith with freedom... doesn't it say "Thy [God's] will be done"?


Human freedom, as a foundation upon which the Christian world-view is built, comes out of the image and likness with which God created us (Gen 1:26). Thus, we are in His image and are capable of being like Him. God is ultimately free — He freely created the world, He freely gave us His image and likeness, He freely gave us His Covenants and freely gave us His Only-Begotten Son who freely went to the Cross. There is nothing that compelled Him against His will to do any of these things. As such, we must be free because we are in His image and likeness. This is why He allows us the freedom to accept or reject Him. Any kind of coercion on His part, whether by arbitrarily destroying evil in the world or through any kind of predestination, would destroy His image and likeness in His creation. Without freedom, we cease to be human — we cease to be the image and likeness of God.

When we say "Thy will be done" we are freely choosing to make the Lord's Prayer our own and to orient our lives toward God. We are freely choosing to be the unique and unrepeatable person we are supposed to be — a friend of God. We freely choose the ultimate, unending, inexhaustible and ineffable wisdom and love of God over and above the fallen world.

In terms of RPGs, I choose to allow Christ into my gaming and try to game in a way that expresses my faith in Him. I find doing so much easier when the system I play allows for the freedom to play the game in any number of ways. There is no single true way to play our hobby, nor is there ever going to be the perfect system. One of the main reasons for this is because of us. As human beings we all bring something unique to the table. As such, every gaming table is unique. This is not something that is detrimental, it is something to be celebrated.

As a result, I find any mechanic that removes this humanity — this uniqueness — takes something away from my game. This is why I choose to play the way I do — using systems that not only allow, but encourage players to go their own unique way.

Planar Cosmology of D&D Part II

In my last mediation I left with the disturbing notion that God created the Devil and allows him to work evil in the world. The reason for this is human freedom which comes out of the image and likeness. I have meditated on the image and likeness of God before, however, it is worth doing again. In part, because it is difficult to let go of our scientific and genetic world-view, but also because it liberates us from the limitations of the scientific and genetic world view.

Made in the Image and Likeness

Genesis 1: 26 states, “Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.'” Since God is ultimately free, humanity must also have freedom. God placed the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil within the garden in order that He protect humanity's freedom — to choose to follow God or to turn away from God. Even in humanity's fallen state, God provides for our freedom. The Devil is allowed to work in the world so that humanity may continue to have the freedom to accept or reject God. For God to abolish evil in the fallen world would be to destroy our freedom to choose evil, and thus God would destroy the image and likeness of God within humanity — something He declared very good (Gen 1:31). To destroy the image and likeness in humanity would make God a coercive and evil being. He has revealed to us His goodness and His longsuffering love by sending His Only-Begotten Son to take on our humanity, so that by willingly going to the cross and to the tomb, Christ might raise us up with Him in resurrection and to ascend to sit at the right hand of the Father. Our very nature, in the person of Jesus Christ, can now participate in the very being of God. Our choice to follow God allows us to tap into the power of the Holy Spirit, which allows us to overcome anything the Devil might throw at us.

To insist upon a scientific and genetic understanding of humanity severely limits what it means to be human. Historically these limitations have been used as excuses for racism, slavery, murder and genocide. The human person is not determined by DNA. We know this, because identical twins with identical DNA are unique and unrepeatable human persons. They may look alike, they may share many of the same interests, but each one is their own person. If DNA were determinative of the human person, then a twin could murder their identical sibling with no consequences, because they would be the same person.

In terms of the Planar Cosmology of D&D, the term “humanity” must be understood in context of the image and likeness, and not race (another word for DNA and genes). Even if we don't fully embrace the concept of the image and likeness, in a multiverse where magic exists, our scientific understanding of evolution becomes irrelevant. Any sentient being with the freedom to choose should be considered “human” in terms of their relationship with God. Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Orcs, Goblins, Celestials, Abyssals, etc. are all created in the image and likeness of God.

In my own world-building, the origin of all these various races is in the Fall. Influenced by magic and the various conditions found in the environments of all the various planes, each race came into being from their human progenitors. Regardless of origin, however, no one race is inherently better than any other in the eyes of God, because they are all made in His image and likeness. When Christ came, He did so in order to save all of humanity and all of creation. That means every sentient race in the multiverse, and the entire multiverse itself.

Being There

Over on Grognardia, James Maliszewski wrote:

I don't think pre-fab campaign settings need to be impediments to creation through play. Indeed, in some cases, they can be great spurs to creativity. I do think, though, that there's a danger inherent in such settings and that's the false perception that there's a "right" way to play in Tékumel or Greyhawk or Glorantha. Once this pernicious idea takes hold, you close yourself off to many terrific possibilities and contribute to the reduction of roleplaying games to an activity of passive consumption rather than active engagement no different than watching movies or television. This is the reason why analogies with those media tend to raise my hackles. It's not that I think there's anything wrong with wanting one's campaign to be as exciting and "alive" as the best movies or TV shows; it's that I don't think that worthy goal can be achieved by looking to those media as models rather than inspirations for good gaming.

This reminded me of an incident that happened back when I went to a tiny little college that was settled in the middle of a tiny little town of about five thousand people. While I was there, the local community tried to remove the book Being There by Jerzy Kosinski from the shelves of the school library. Amazingly, Kosinski came to town to defend himself, his book, and his understanding of freedom. I was privileged enough to be present when Kosinski made his defense, and his argument not only deeply moved me, but actually affected the way I understand the world.

He made the observation that fiction is the most democratic form of media. I can pick up any work of fiction anytime and anywhere I wish. I can read it at any pace I choose. I am the one who controls how I envision the world described in those pages. In contrast, newspapers determine what content I am to read. Non-fiction limits the pallet by which I can imagine what I am reading, because these are real people, in real places. Photography and painting determine exactly what it is that I am to see. Television and movies are the most autocratic of all. They determine virtually every aspect of the experience — when and where, what I see, what I hear, how I see and how I hear. Once I turn on the TV, push play, or sit down in the movie theater, I have given up control to the media. I attribute my utter refusal to see any movie on opening day weekend and a preference for watching movies and TV shows on the web or on DVD to this argument. By doing so, in some small way, I am taking back some of the control over the experience.

This argument is quite relevant to the world of RPGs and adds a layer of nuance to what James is trying to say. As James has so eloquently pointed out on his blog, RPGs used to list books to read in order to find inspiration. Now they list TV shows and movies. There is a direct correlation to the amount of freedom players have in the way these games are presented and played to these influences. Campaign settings are a unique form of media. They can act as literature or television in terms of their democracy vs. autocracy that Kosinski was speaking about. This relationship is determined entirely by how it is used. We, as gamers, can choose to use it as inspiration in order for us to freely create our own worlds, taking what we like and discarding what we don't. Or we can use them as canons to restrict not only what we ourselves do, but what anyone else can do with the material.

I am not at all surprised that old-school gaming, with its emphasis on creativity, house-rules, player freedom and sandbox campaigns is solidly rooted in literature. I am also not surprised that as TV and movies became increasingly influential on RPGs that campaign worlds became instruments of autocracy and that modern RPGs emphasize plot, story and adventure paths over creativity and player freedom.

I would be remiss if I did not reflect on how this reminds me of our own relationship with the world and sin. As beings made in the image and likeness of God, we are free beings. However, we exist in a fallen world overwhelmed by sin and death. When we ignore God and freely choose a world of sin, we concede control of ourselves to sin, in much the same way we do when we turn on a TV. It has the illusion of true freedom, but in reality we are slaves. However, when we take creation, and use it to bring it and us closer to God, we are taking control of both creation and ourselves. Our creative spirit is set free and we get to taste true freedom. Indeed, this is one the very reasons I write this blog and it is the model by which I play my games.