RPG Musings

By Peter|alternate realities, games, narratives

“As I learned more about how these early role-playing games [RPGs] worked, I realized that a D&D module was the primitive equivalent of a quest in the OASIS [a multi-user VR environment of the near future]. And D&D characters were just like avatars. In a way, these old role-playing games had been the first virtual-reality simulations, created long before computers were powerful enough to do the job. In those days, if you wanted to escape to another world, you had to create it yourself, using your brain, some paper, pencils, dice, and a few rule books. This realization blew my mind.”

So muses Wade Watts, a.k.a. Parzival, in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. A contemporary reminder that even in the day of the Rift, Vive, Gear VR and modern videogames there’s still plenty of reason to indulge in a good old-school analog RPG session.

We’ve been running a Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) campaign here at the Brewery for a while now, and as pretty much all the members of the crew are involved professionally with game design in some way we can’t help but think about ways to optimize the experience. Here are a few ideas that have come up as we’ve tried to make our sessions more fun and satisfying.

Simplicity

The narrative that emerges in a D&D game may very well become quite complex, but the necessary equipment for running a session should be simple.

The most powerful tool by far in an analog RPG is one’s imagination; we want to keep it as unfettered as possible by eliminating any unnecessary distractions. For this reason, we introduce into our sessions the most minimal level of accessories necessary to enable play.

Of course some aspects of the game – especially combat – requires some aids for keeping track of things like the features of the environment (e.g., dungeon walls) and the relative locations of the player characters, non-player characters (NPCs), and monsters. There are many “realistic” options available for doing this: elaborate play surfaces with dungeon-like textures, and of course the miniature figurines typically associated with D&D (representing warriors, wizards, and creatures in full color 3D detail) – but in our campaign we keep it simple: a basic, monochrome grid, with features drawn in black marker. Instead of figurines, we use standard (small scale “analysis-sized”) chess pieces: white for the player characters, black for NPCs and monsters.

As the game of D&D has developed over the decades, there has been a tendency towards higher production values in the books and gaming accessories. Compare the minimal illustrations (and in some cases to describe them as “minimal” is being generous) of the original rulebooks with the latest Pathfinder and D&D fifth edition tomes with their epic full color spreads.

The new books really are quite nice, and of course it’s fun to geek-out perusing the fantastic images therein … but does this level of production value really make for a better game?

If what we really want to do is (in the words of  Wade Watts) “create it yourself, using your brain” – do we really need a full color illustration to tell us, for instance, what a dragon “should” look like?

One final note on the topic of simplicity: for the Dungeon Master (DM), there are a lot of things to keep track of, especially when refereeing a battle between maybe ten or more combatants. There exist a number of software tools to make this easier. But, for myself, I prefer to use pencil and paper (or, in the case of tracking initiative and the sequence of combat rounds, index cards). My philosophy is that if I can’t run the game with analog tools, the game mechanics have become too complicated … and this brings us to the topic of the rules …

The Rulebooks

This idea of “less is more” applies to the rule system as well.

It’s really easy to become distracted by the rule system; there are a wealth of resources that may be employed for creating systems that can describe a world in considerable detail with a great deal of realism – and there’s just something kinda compelling about the way all the books … feel (I still treasure my original AD&D editions).

But in my opinion it’s desirable to keep the rules simple: the minimum necessary to conduct a session, because after all D&D is not a simulation, it’s a game – and it’s also an exercise in interactive storytelling, in the oral tradition. Keeping explicitly defined rules to a minimum means less time consulting books and more time for adventure!

This philosophy goes back to the early days of D&D:

“A few brief words are necessary to insure that the reader has actually obtained a game form which he or she desires. Of the two approaches to hobby games today, one is best defined as the realism-simulation school and the other as the game school.  AD&D is assuredly an adherent of the latter school. It does not stress realism … it does little to attempt to simulate anything either …”
“… more ‘realistic’ combat systems could certainly have been included … but they have no real part in a game for a group of players having an exciting adventure.” – Gary Gygax, AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, 1979

Another important idea behind old-school D&D is that the rules are not meant to be all-encompassing, and those rules that are explicitly defined are still intended to be flexible.

“This game is unlike chess in that the rules are not cut and dried. In many places they are guidelines and suggested methods only.” – Gary Gygax, AD&D Players Handbook 1978

Our “rulebook” is based on the original AD&D rulebooks from the late ’70s (for simplicity, and a bit of nostalgia) combined with some SRD 3.5 refinements (e.g., Skills) and certain elements from Pathfinder (“3.75”) and fifth edition D&D (5e). The players are also involved in creating new rules, in the form of bespoke spells and abilities.

Of course one can never depend on the rulebook for everything. In a D&D campaign, nothing can be fully predicted; anything might happen. Possibilities are infinite; the rulebooks can’t cover every eventuality. The Dungeon Master must therefore always be ready to improvise – like a musician, in a way – inventing rules and processes on the fly that seamlessly integrate with the existing system (this, indeed, is one of the most compelling aspects of an analog RPG, in my opinion, as compared to a computer game).

The Maps

I’ll confess that there is one aspect of our campaign in which I am unable to follow the aforementioned guideline that simplicity is always better: the maps.

I willingly plead guilty, not just because I love maps, but also because I think they really add a lot to a D&D game.

Ask yourself this: “would the experience of reading The Lord of the Rings be the same, if you didn’t encounter Tolkien’s detailed map of Middle Earth, as soon as you opened the book?”

It certainly wouldn’t have been the same for me. For me, maps suggest a limitless world full of wonder, while providing context, a sense of place to the immediate goings-on.  Reading Tolkien, I would often refer to the map for a greater understanding of the unfolding events in the current chapter … but then I’d muse, “this is just one small corner of the world … what could be happening over … there?”

This idea doesn’t just apply to the world of physical, geographical possibility. It can also apply to the temporal (“we’re journeying to the Distant Mountain, but what happens if we don’t get there before Winter?”); for this reason, I believe a proper calendar (including the seasons, and the local holidays) is also important when building a world.

Imagining an Infinite World

As DM, one might occasionally be asked by a player, “is there a certain way we should be going?” (which translates to something like, “hey – which way is the dungeon that you’ve prepared and filled with monsters and loot?”). The answer always is, “No, there is no particular way. You can go wherever you want and do whatever you want.”

D&D requires a kind of suspension of disbelief with respect to the extent to which the universe has been defined. Of course all players know on an intellectual level that the DM can only prepare a very limited amount of content for a given session, and can only define in detail a very limited fraction of the universe the characters inhabit. But once the magic circle has been entered, one shouldn’t think about this. One should imagine the universe to be infinite; one should imagine that the DM actually has the entire world worked out in minute detail in a library full of notebooks, and that the characters can go and do wherever they want and there will always be something interesting for them to discover …

That said, players can and should limit their options by thinking about what course will make for the most interesting adventure, the best story (and the DM will at least provide some clues as to what this would be). Consider the idea that halfway through the Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo could have said, “oh, this is such a bother,” and decided to go back to the Shire, or he could have said, “maybe instead of this wacky trip to Mordor I’ll just wander off and take a leisurely trip down the Brandywine and visit Eryn Vorn and see what’s there …” – but that wouldn’t have made for nearly as good a story. He also wouldn’t have leveled-up very fast.

… and in March, 2023: The campaign conclusion!