In 2010, I agreed to review a module, Death Frost Doom. And as someone who has reviewed newspapers and novels for publication, and been paid for it, I followed the orthodox tradition of running the module exactly as written. As a reviewer, it was not my role to change the content, or adjust is as I might, since that would muddy the actual value of the content. When another DM ran the game, that other DM wouldn't have the benefit of my experience, or imagination ~ so what good would it do anyone to detail the advanture as I modified it?
No one, absolutely no one, would expect me to change the words of a bad novel, to make it a good novel, in the process of reviewing that novel! The very idea is obviously ludicrous. But even now, 8 years after, I still occasionally run across some commenter on Reddit or elsewhere talking about how I "fucked up" Death Frost Doom. By playing it exactly.
To be sure, were I to run DFD in tandem with my own judgement, yes, it would have definitely been a better module. In fact, I do this every session of D&D I play: by throwing the module into the garbage and then replacing everything with my own creaivity and ideas.
This leads to a point I made with my last post, Humanities vs. Social Science. Specifically, what part of the game works, regardless of the quality ~ or the experience and expertise ~ of the Dungeon Master?
What do I mean by "works"? Well, technically, the module DFD, or any module, "works" as a process for the game. Not necessarily a good process, not reliably a joyous one, not even an interesting one ... but as a process, or series of events and descriptions that are given to the players for what happens, a module "works" whether or not the DM has experience and expertise. The players will, for ill or not, either die along the way according to the rules or succeed, participating in the game.
Now, people will rush forward and chatter about how a good DM does so much, much more, but this would be missing the point. As a game, baseball works even if the players are very, very bad at the game. It works even if the pitcher has to be moved ten feet from the batter. It works even if the pitcher is replaced by a tee. The runners still have to run the bases, the fielders still have to put the runners out, and the most runs still wins. It can be very funny to watch a bunch of five year olds play baseball, and obviously an adult or a professional baseball player can do much, much more than a bunch of tiny kids, but to the game, that doesn't matter.
This is a nearly impossible thing to get across to most RPGers. You DON'T have to be skilled to play. The existence of the module enables someone else, with a reasonable amount of experience, to jury-rig the game (just like replacing the pitcher with a tee) so that the least capable participants can still participate.
In fact, the module isn't even needed. So long as we wash out the expectation of a "story," which isn't strictly necessary to any part of the game, we can still play with virtually no ability. The rules provide for setting up groups of people on opposite sides of a map, then having a fight, then awarding the winning side with experience that will enhance their powers. In the strictest sense, this is still role-playing. It just isn't very good role-playing. That is immaterial. The quality of something does not determine its nature.
The decrepit rose on the left is no less a rose than the vibrant rose on the right. And this is the point that is so hard to grasp. We have a tendency in our culture to rate the definition of things according to the value placed on that thing, whatever that value might be. Yet a sample of DNA from either rose above could be used to make a completely healthy and beautiful rose ... so what does the appearance at a given moment in time have to do with the definition of a rose?
I hope that point is across. Because we can get nowhere in any study if we cannot accurately describe things. But let me drive it home with just one more example: a group of five-year old children playing baseball very, very badly, are having no less fun, and in many ways more fun, than a group of professionals playing baseball very, very well.
Bringing us back around to, what parts of the game do not require experience or expertise?
Surely, character creation. If we get rid of the premise that a background must be written for characters, which in fact has no specific application to game play, the character creation process is an established series of IF-THEN processes that any DM can adjudicate, even if it is the first day they've DMed. This fits into virtually all our experiences with our first games. When we chose to DM, we were grateful that the rules for this part were at least laid out for us. Even if you were the particular kind of DM that rolled all the player characters in advance, then handed them out at the start of the game, that was still according to rules that you did not need expertise to follow. You could roll the dice, see the result, be affected by the result, free-associate on the result and then watch the effect on the players as the result was made known to them. It is a simple part of the game. Which might be why we were willing to play it so often.
Perhaps the reason why so many homebrew games don't get past the third running is because the first running is taken up with character creation, which goes so well, only to be followed by one or two runnings that fall flat, because the principals of the game are not nearly as clear.
What else?
I admit, it becomes harder to see another possibility. But then I think of a little child running after a ball, falling down, getting the ball, dropping it, picking it up again, throwing it to first base and the ball not making it. And meanwhile the runner is between home and first, standing there confused, while parents scream, "RUN!" having no immediate effect on the child's behaviour. Seriously. If you want to study game participants, throw away your clipboard and go watch children play anything. Hockey is pretty funny, too ... especially for me, as I remember playing hockey at five.
So if we presume play without expertise, but still following the rules, combat is definitely a thing. Expertise will bring a lot of nuance to combat, but again, value is immaterial. The point is that it is possible to run combat, if you allow for everyone taking their time to look up rules as necessary and they're prepared to invest themselves.
This is one of the points where early versions of the game excelled. There was no need to have "experts" on hand. Any group of kids could buy books and if they had the patience, they could suss out a personal version of the game. Some readers I have right now did it that way.
The way the books are written now, however ... well, it is back to Brian Griffin's book. There are fifty pages in the back that you're expected to fill out on your own.
That's the primary reason for reviewing a module exactly as written ... I had to assume that some people wouldn't be able to enhance the module, as everyone said I ought to have done. Some participants ~ a lot ~ simply can't. They don't know how. And the assumption that they ought to know how, or that knowing how is an obvious fact of any product that is provided by any manufacturer, is an erroneous approach. I wrote my book as an "advanced guide" to role-playing ... to differentiate it from Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies, a book that had to be written because the rules were so flat out badly written that outsiders had to make sense of it. I've read that book. They still choked, largely because they did not stick to first principles and they allowed themselves to devolve into a lengthy attempt to comprehend the values of the participants.
To manage that problem, I'll have to step to the left for a bit and talk about ethics, as Matt suggested Friday.
Value is the degree of importance that is assigned to something, assigned by individuals either presently, or as the result of successful arguments that people have made in the past that creates a sense of tradition or belief connected with an assignment that happened a long time ago. For example, someone, at some point in the past, conceived of the idea of a "god." This happened so long ago, we can't even be sure the conception was voiced as words, since it is possible the invention of "gods" is older than the invention of even speech ... though it is a gray area. Either way, the invention gained traction, and pervaded through all human cultures as a "good idea" for enough people, for certain reasons (which we can skip), to the point where we continue to have arguments on the existence of gods even though there is absolutely no real evidence of any kind for this belief.
Nonetheless, people value their belief in gods, and will embrace earlier silly nonsense, or make up their own, rather than sacrifice this value they have. And in our society, we recognize the right of people to possess values, regardless of their scientific or rational formulation, because we believe that values, on the whole, so long as they don't hurt people, are a good thing. And I will not argue against that.
HOWEVER, it is crucial that we don't get values confused with facts, or mechanics, because that's where things tend to go wonky. When we start building bridges based upon the values of the designer, and not the designer's ability to understand how engineering works, things go bad in a very, very big way. This is why one of the values we've put in place in our society is that people who design very large things with parts ought to be accredited by other people, before we trust them. It's just a good value, all around.
That is why I have to beat the drum so hard ... because most people talking about role-playing just now are hopelessly caught up in defending values as examples of game play. This is like a professional ball player explaining to a little boy that he needs to take 2nd base so that he'll improve his chances of being picked higher in the draft when he's six. Arguing that all players of all games need to create backstories for their characters is like that. Or arguing that all DMs of all games need to make great stories for their campaigns. These things are values. They are dearly embraced by many people, but they are not, in fact, relevant in any way to the actual game, or the thousands of ways in which the game can be played.
And before these values should be embraced by the whole community, they ought to be defended. Not in the way we're seeing, where someone says, "It makes a better game," as if that is an argument. No. I want to see them defended in the manner that Immanuel Kant defended Reason.
I'm not seeing anything like that.
We might imagine that I have spent the first class hammering home the point that values are not part of a thing's definition, and that a lack of expertise is not a detriment to the functionality of game play. You or I may think it is a detriment, because it is not our game, but that is a value judgment, arising from our expertise.
As the students file in for the second class, we can move on. In my proposition for a course regarding role-playing, I named point [b]: what preparation best feeds the participation of the fundamental game? Here we're bound again by the limitations established in the first class. We want to know, if you knew nothing about the game, what preparations could you make? Before we can answer that, we must understand what preparations are and why they work.
Preparation is committed action in the present that services a situation that is expected to occur in the future. It exists to enable the best possible results in any situation while reducing negative happenstance. For example, in emergency services, we make sure the equipment on a fire truck is in excellent working order, every day, so that when we have to use the equipment on a moment's notice it accomplishes the goal of putting out the fire without letting us down and causing injury or death.
Obviously, preparedness figures into every human activity ... for most of us as that thing our boss keeps talking about that we have to be ready for. Of late, I've taken a job in a costume shop. Everything right now, absolutely everything, is about preparing for Halloween. And rightly so.
Although many DMs make an argument that they don't "need" to prepare, it should be obvious that any thing that can be done on the fly and on a moment's notice can be done better with preparation. I can run a game on the fly; but that is mostly because I've spent nearly 40 years preparing games and because of that I can shrink my preparation time down to a few minutes. But that is NOT what we're talking about here. We have to assume there are thousands of players who don't know how to prepare a game. They don't know what they need to do, they don't know what's involved and they haven't had practice at doing it. It follows, as well, that whatever will work best for them, will also work best for anyone, if we acknowledge that preparation is not a willy-nilly thing based on personal values, but something that is an established practice, honed by millenia of other people readying themselves for everything that has any human has done, ever.
What, then, is that established practice? Specifically, seven ideals: research, estimation, planning, resourcing, education, practice and rehearsing. None of these can be dismissed and all of them ought to be embraced and examined closely. Mastering these to one's best potential is the best route towards vastly increasing your Dungeon Mastering experience.
Most of all, anyone, of any level of expertise, can advantage their play by understanding what these are and how they work with relation to game play. In today's course, we're going to address the first three.
Research
The accumulation of knowledge regarding the game, which encompasses an enormous number of elements that are part of the meta-game, in which the only participant is usually the Dungeon Master. The highlights of research includes: (a) the applications of worldbuilding on both a macro and micro scale, using investigation into research, fiction, architectural design and the preponderance of works created by other people on which we can draw; (b) understanding and comprehending the rules fully, while affirming for one's self what rule systems and precendents, as well as what derivations and alternate rules, best services one's personal view of what the rules should be, so that when a rule is challenged the DM has at least a grounding in the existence of that rule and why it was made; (c) understanding player motivations and desires, so that it is clear to the DM why the player wants, or resists change, or questions rules, or otherwise feels motivated towards a particular action; (d) solving problems related to group dynamics, by asking questions of the players to determine how best to get a disparate and unique group to work together; (e) examining the results of groups that fail to work together; (f) developing new rules for parts of the game experience that have none, or where the DM views those rules as inadequate; (g) understanding the components of describing or explaining things; (h) understanding how narrative works; (i) understanding the elements of story telling that evoke emotion; (j) exploring the DM's inner capacity for creativity, in creating things that are new as opposed to rehashing old ideas; (k) testing the validity of dice, as well as the math behind randomness, so as to understand how bell curves and other perturbations and combinations affect game play; (l) understanding risk; (m) understanding a correct amount of payoff to be given in exchange for risk; (n) organizing rules and created work so that it can be employed when needed; (o) documenting the research that has been done so in can be found and understood when needed; (p) questioning and evaluating one's personal experiences so they can be learned from; and (q) experimentation of new ideas and evaluating those results.
This is a lot, this is daunting, and many simply avoid all of it. They blindly accept the rules as written, make no investigation into design or human behaviour, do not care about the effects of dice on game play and are in no way introspective about their behavior in the past or how it might adjust. This is the key to the above: none of this list is necessary to game play. It is all dismissible, evidenced by those who dismiss it. But look again at the definition of preparedness: the actions above are preparatory measures taken to increase the likelihood of things going right and decrease the likelihood of things going wrong. They are not guarantors of a great game, any more than the most efficient and high tech fire truck is a guarantor of no one losing their life in a fire. Life is just too complicated for certainties.
Those who invest themselves in research do it primarily because they like research. Like this recent PhD comic, people who end up in academic fields tend to dream of working at academic projects ... sort of like the way I spend my day off writing a long outline of how to prepare for a D&D campaign. We research, investigate, come up with new ideas and use up our time to advantage ourselves and our games because we are built this way.
Yet any examination into any of the points above will greatly increase one's ability to run or play the game. Knowing the rules by heart, so that we can hear someone make a comment about some rarified idea, we can recall, "Right! There was a comment about that in the 3rd paragraph of page 45 of the DM's Guide." Then go directly to that page in seconds and read the note word for word, then debate it among players. Once, when I practically slept with the old DMG, there were parts I could definitely recite word for word. It takes no experience, however, to read any rule book cover to cover ... then do it again a month later, and a month after that. Regularly, I used to reread parts of it just to kill time.
Reading enough starts to connect dissimilar concepts in one's head, so that with research connections tend to arise through sheer repetition and combination. This connectivity inspires creativity, which is in turn fed by extemporaneous passages that express particular viewpoints, strategies or successes, all of which steadily serves to prepare one for the unexpected ... so that when a player does something truly off the wall, it is (a) not that off the wall, because of the reading you've done; (b) just another new thing, because in your reading you've encountered many new things; and (c) completely manageable because you've already trained yourself to manage new things when you've encountered them.
Estimation
The method by which we measure the effect or importance of things, or the needfulness of things, in order to satisfy demand when it occurs. The highlights of estimation include: (a) how much preparation an idea needs, prior to the implementation of an idea or process; (b) how much time it takes to express a given number of details to a party, and the speed at which that detail can be relaid, as well as how much can be understood by players who have never heard it before; (c) what images or other resources will be needed to cover a presentation when that occurs; (d) one's own mental and physical limitations, based on time of day, personal health, mental acuity, ability to concentrate for a set number of hours and evaluating how one feels in the present moment; (e) understanding what it the best tactic, or model, to use in presenting a particular element of the game (should this be a physical representation of the battle or can we play this with descriptions only); and (f) what matters and what does not matter where gameplay is concerned.
Estimation is primarily a mental preparation, though it often adjusts real time processes and pacing. To estimate accurately usually requires experience ... but even without any experience or proficiency, the very fact that estimation will be required to produce a better game is an enormous step forward for any would-be Dungeon Master.
Many DMs, inexperienced and experienced alike, enter into a game session presuming that the players and the DM will do their thing and it will all somehow work out in the end. This is confidence, but it is not rational. A DM has the choice to reflect upon the various elements of play and question, "If I were being told something without having previously understood the research, or heard the idea, how long would I need, and how much description would I need, to grasp the idea enough to play with it?" The choice to step outside of ourselves in order to estimate how our words and actions, as DM, affects other people, matters.
Realistically estimating how much work needs to be done to present a particular adventure or session to the best degree can both increase the resultant success and save time, as we can evaluate what over-preparing is. And as a neophyte invests into these various aspects of estimation (empathy of the players, amount of preparation needed, a clear idea of their own limitations), the practice of estimating becomes second nature to the DM and it is then done later on with more and more alacrity.
Naturally, there are some without skill who will make an estimate and find the estimate was way off, then come to the conclusion that estimation is pointless. Nothing is ever accomplished with that thinking. The assumption that others estimate, but I don't have to, would be a clear effort towards justifying laziness, a habit for which no limit of invented nonsense will ever be reached. The laziest people will always find a good and rational reason to be lazy; this does not make it a good route for preparing for future games.
Planning
The formation of a plan is a series of steps designed to produce a specific result that will give us what we want. For example, if we are homesteading previously unoccupied land, and we want water, we must dig a well. To dig the well, we must plan to have tools, we must have materials, we must have time to do the labor, we must have the capacity and the will to work as long as necessary and we must have a place to dig. Understanding that we need these things, before actually putting any of these things into use or effect, is planning.
The highlights of planning are: (a) having players to participate who are eager and ready to do so; (b) planning a world that will satisfy the players who will play; (c) having a space to play; (d) knowing that an understanding of what a DM does will matter; (e) knowing that estimates will have to be made; (f) having the various tools and researched material, along with game books, designs, rules, written adventure points and so on available for use; (g) understanding of the basic premise of the rules and game play; and (h) planning to make further plans for what needs to be addressed when the present incarnation of the game grows tired and ineffective.
Most of these things are fed by research, which in turn lends itself to estimation and understanding. Even so, the first things on this list don't require actual experience in game play in order to assemble. Communication with persons establishes them as players. A few questions identifies their expectations. The space needs to be large enough and convenient for the participants, but is no worse than planning a small party. Knowing that there will be estimates is not being accurate with them, it is merely being aware that some sort of stab in the dark is necessary. Tools, books, designs, rules, what have you, can be purchased and need to be carted to the game space. Reading the books to understand the bare minimum of rules is expected for any game.
Planning for future plans, however, is another deal ... but it is assumed that these plans will be fed by what has already been experienced. If you've run an adventure through to the end, you know you will need another adventure. If the adventure before wasn't very good, you need to plan for a better one, and not just follow the same pattern again. If you bought your first adventure, buying your second one isn't a new plan, it's the same plan you already carried out; don't be surprised if this plan, carried out ad nauseum, begins to fail. If you don't seem to know the rules very well, read them again. If your players seem unreliable, plan to sit down with them and get a stronger commitment, by addressing existing problems and negotiating. Plan to replace players who won't commit, or who commit to a narcissistic idea of their own that is not your game.
Carrying out your plan is NOT planning. If you conceive of a plan in one instant and move to carry it out the next, you're not planning, you're acting on impulse. Planning is the process of concieving a solution to a problem (we need water) or the pathway to that solution (let's build a well). It is not grabbing the nearest stick of wood and digging in a random spot until you get tired. That is not planning. That is the absence of planning.
Before carrying out a plan, we need to examine the problem and the proposed solution from all sides. Once we conceive of an idea, say for a game world or for an adventure, we must take time to consider what others will think of what we would propose. This has to be done realistically ... not merely from the notion that, because I thought of it and I think it is cool, others will automatically fall in line once they see the thing's magnificence. Again, that isn't a plan. That's narcissism.
Most people do not like to plan. They like to jump in and do, and they will tell you so, often. But like the fellow with the stick digging a well, they soon get tired, they stop digging with the stick and despite a lot of effort, nothing actually gets done. The key separation between "doing" and "accomplishing" is in how much planning was given to the original concept. A plan has to include estimations of how much is needed and why, the employing of a trusted friend who can act as a sounding board, a willingness to admit that perhaps the idea is a bridge too far given one's actual abilities and exactly what is to be accomplished ... and to work, this has to be decided before any work is done.
As with Research and Estimation, Planning is not actually necessary for game play. It can be discarded, and is discarded, without changing the definition of an RPG in the least. But choosing to plan enables long term solutions to problems that will one day arise; choosing to plan enables a steady increase in one's abilities; choosing to plan saves time and effort; and choosing to plan makes one aware of more than what has been made. It creates much of the structure in one's own mind in a clear, fixed sense, so that even if it hasn't actually been put on paper, the very planning of the idea has made that part of the plan real.
Before we start digging the well, we can see it in our minds; seeing it, knowing how it will happen, relieves the stress of doubt that comes from just winging something. If you already know as an engineer that your plans are sound, that the equipment and materials are available, that the water is accessible and that labor is plentiful, there is no doubt in your mind that the well will be finished and ready to provide water, when you're ready to make it happen.
Without a plan, you're never sure of anything.
That's enough for today. With our next two classes we'll be talking about resourcing, education, practice and rehearsing.
In our last class, we spoke about three forms of preparation that focus one's thoughts upon self-improvement, judgement and achieving goals. For this class, we'll step outside of ourselves and talk about how we can prepare through the use of resources and by means of education.
As before, actual game play of RPGs does not require preparation. The rules are all there to allow people to sit down, roll up characters, posit the existence of monsters, dungeons or wilderness places and just start creating a joint-narrative in an utterly improvisational manner. The single drawback to this approach is not that the game does not work, or that it isn't fun, but rather that repeated efforts to be improvisational without preparation soon become repetitive. My creativity is limited to what I can think up in the immediate moment. I haven't the time to build complex ideas, or research an idea in a manner that might lead to a discovery, or make a detailed plan of my intentions. Others are waiting. And when they speak, when they improvise, I am waiting. So after a time of playing, we're limited in our "fun" to those moments where some spark of genius has momentarily touched a given player ... and because these moments are transitory and rare, we grant them far, far more importance that we would otherwise if we were to compare them with a methodical effort at creativity.
We've all heard stories from players who talk about how something happened and it was SO funny, or SO clever. Because we are not limited in our time to reflect upon these stories when we hear them, the stories are rarely as funny to us, or as clever to us, as they seem to be to the teller. This is how improvisation of the immediate lowers the bar for what is considered to be "good" play.
We can create better play if we can take advantage of preparedness ~ the time spent in preparing for an adventure can vastly improve the quality and intricacy of that adventure. One of the best ways of creating time is to take advantage of resources.
Resources
A resource is any source or supply of work that has been compiled by ourselves or by others over time, which we are not required to "know" ourselves so long as we can access the material quickly, similar to the way we access our memories. Instead of simply remembering, our senses locate a sought for passage and the resource gives us the information for our use.
The most commonly used form of resource for an RPG is an adventure module, purchased so that we may have the hours of work that someone has invested so that we can reproduce that investment in the time it takes to read the material, either to ourselves or out loud to others. It is presumed that such modules produce better material than we would ourselves, because they are created by talented persons with lots of experience, and most participants in RPGs would agree very strongly with that presumption. It is possible, of course, for a DM to invest their own time to create their own module, but failed attempts and lack of experience soon convinces most DMs that it isn't worth the effort to learn how to do this, since so many modules already exist on the market and it is easier to exchange money for expertise than one's own time.
Another major resource is the collection of rule books. These often form the basis for some inspiration, but are more important for keeping track of rules that we couldn't possibly remember, except for the moment in the game when they become important. This does require a motivation to look up the rule ... and many participants don't bother, because even that would be time spent that they feel would undermine the pacing of their game.
Even the least creative DM will have notes that can be checked, if the time has been taken to make them. Simple to complex maps can be drawn to keep track of the party's location. A diagram or a symbol can be produced upon demand, not only by the DM but also by the players, who may wish to elaborate their characters with backstories, icons, crests or other details. Many players will draw out castles or other buildings they would like to bring to life. In a strong sense, all of these things are resources.
These resources pale to the immense resource that is the Internet, with all human knowledge available with the touch of a few keys and the wherewithal to read what's written. Need to calculate an area, or identify the pieces of a suit of armor, or determine the effects of electricity in water, or find the name of a character from a given fable, or measure the force of wind, or even look up any detail connected with actual RPGs of every stripe? It is all there on the internet, whether in open source documents or pirated material if the user so wishes. None of this content is necessary to game play. None of it was there when I began playing in 1979. At best, we might turn to the library, or our own books on shelves, but of course we did not play next to a library that contained every piece of knowledge. And yet because none of it is necessary, most participants of RPGs do not even play with a computer on their game table, sometimes as a political proof that play is better without this inexhaustible resource. We need to question the veracity of such claims, and wonder exactly what is gained by having less material with which to play, or less knowledge, or less hands-on help in the form of scientific, practical or imaginative literature. We are often asked, if on a desert island, what book would you take with you? Here we are asking, if you had all the books in the world with you, would you read them?
Turning to a resource has the side effect of educating ourselves, which is the point of research that we spoke of in the last class. However, education differs from research in one key way.
Education
This is the process of facilitating learning in others, or in having others facilitate learning in ourselves. We speak often of "educating ourselves," but this is nothing more than allowing the creators of texts to teach us ... and so the key mental condition that applies with education is the willingness to humble oneself with the acknowledgement that another person, whether in person or through some form of media, knows more about a thing than we do. Education is a means by which we allow others to change our minds ... and in turn, we set out to change the minds of others who humble themselves to our expertise.
Put that way, it is easy to see how easily education can be misused to put inaccurate positions and ideas into the heads of those who have humbled themselves to the educator. If a person approaches you, and asks you to explain how something works, it is a tremendous responsibility to give them accurate information. The reverse might serve you as educator just as well, but it will cripple your student. Not only does it fail to provide the student with the necessary knowledge to succeed at whatever he or she might desire, it also requires that they pass through a disruptive and unpleasant period of unlearning the lies they've been taught, before they can set about learning things that will help them in life. That is why an abusive educator, one who will tell lies and do so for their own pleasure (for they know the truth and are not harmed by the lies), is perhaps the greatest force for evil in our society.
So it has ever been the case ... which is why there has always been an effort to give validation to places and persons of education, to ensure that wrong education is not received in place of right education.
As a DM, I want to receive education from others to be a better DM. But I also want to take it upon myself to teach others around me to be better participants in the game, just as I have learned to be. It is enough, for game purposes, to merely dungeon master players. But a better game environment, a better experience all around, can be obtained through the process of educating the players to more effectively run in the DM's world. It is beholden upon the DM to recognize that the world is a product of an individual and the resources that individual chooses, and is therefore alien in large degree to the players of that world, even if they have known the DM for a long time. There is nothing wrong with making suggestions to the players, or explaining one's motivations, if that effort is put towards increasing the player's effectiveness at navigating the game world at hand. To do otherwise, either through inaction or by deliberately undermining the player's potential to succeed, through false information, is a malicious act. The players deserve to have all the tools that are available at their disposal. Education by the DM can provide that.
We will discuss this further in a later class, once some of these base tenets become more familiar. With our next class we will be talking about practice and rehearsing.
I'd like to start by saying that while I may sound like I have all the answers, much of this content is as new to me as the reader. It has come about because of certain things that were said by readers two weeks ago, which produced the breakthrough that I wrote about in my 1st Class introduction. That in turn encouraged me to follow up on content described on this wiki page, which led me to examine more closely the methods of prepation, that led me to reading materials on these things and then reinterpreting them for role-playing games. I'm not inventing new information, but rather translating academic research that already exists; nor have I been holding back this knowledge for the day when I could release it to the world. Rather, I'm describing the material as I have understood it, sometimes having made the realization an hour or so before.
I would have included this material when I wrote my book, How to Run, but I didn't know it then. Unlike many people on the internet who pretend to have all the answers, I will state coldly that I absolutely do not have all the answers and do not know everything there is to know about managing or preparing for role-playing games. However, I am researching the concept and learning new things, which is a damn sight better than every other person I have ever read on this subject. I feel I'm eminntly qualified to write posts like this not because I'm a know-it-all; but because I desire to know it all. In the pursuit of that goal, I learn things.
What we tend to think when we hear "practice."
And so, if we can begin today's class, our subjects today are practice and rehearsal. These are often confused and often understood to be the same, so we should take a moment and define the differencebetween the two. Practice is a free expression of the individual's desire to explore and examine their own ability; it is largely done alone and is not subject to the will or actions of other persons. Practice can be done any time, and for as long as one wishes. On the whole, practice does not have a time element. Rehearsal, however, is a group activity. It is typically scheduled. It is not an exploration of a personal expression, but rather a designed activity to achieve consensus, or a gestalt, among individuals working together. There is a strong motivation not to make errors in a rehearsal, but to produce the desired result as perfectly as possible. Practice is a method by which perfection in rehearsal is obtained.
And because practice leads to the success of a rehearsal, let's begin there.
Practice
The concept of practice does not normally exist in the role-player's lexicon, so it is upon us to demonstrate that it happens all the time and that it is something we do whether or not we are aware of it. I'll take a moment and say one last time in this course that the game as written does not actually require anyone to give any time towards practice - but it is, in fact, very hard not to practise a role-playing game, once we have a clear idea what we mean by practice.
Practice is the act of repeating a physical or mental action over and over, and in the process improving the efficiency, or mastery, of that action. For example, if I give myself to thinking about the various ways in which my player character might buy equipment, or choose spells, or express himself, or otherwise participate in the fictional world, and I continue to do so each day for many months, I will slowly master an elaborate set of resources and choices for the character, effectively improving my game play. I will remember, by practicing to remember, to buy specific things when they are needed, to combine bought items in a myriad of ways, to draw attention to my dress or my appearance when I speak, to speak more clearly, to use my words better, to adapt those words to a character ideal in my mind, which I shall know much better through continued contemplation and so on. If I try to live in my character's head as I do my own, I will remember more clearly what my character's abilities are, and how they will best be employed. And I can do all these things whether or not I am actually playing in the campaign.
Moreover, this is what most players who are enamoured with the game do, whether or not they are told to do it, and whether or not they believe it will improve their play. They do it because it feeds their compulsion to do it; but this is no less a form of practice for that reason. To understand this better, follow the work of K. Anders Ericsson.
Allow me the benefit of an analogy, which may better express what I mean, since using a player character as a template is unfamiliar territory. Let's presuppose a musician who chooses to practise. Naturally, our thoughts reach for the musician's desire to play a musical instrument more effectively; say, in this instance, a guitar. But there is more "at play" than the guitar. The guitarist must obtain and slowly grow comfortable in the right posture. Calluses must build up on various parts of the hands. The fingers must grow more nimble, and stronger, to press down on the frets or hold the pick. The guitarist grows more comfortable with not looking at the guitar so that music can be read; and one gets better at reading music more easily so that the notes can be heard on the paper as well as understood. The guitarist grows more adept at tuning and maintaining the guitar, and at the way the guitar is put into a case, and the manner in which the case is carried, and the habit of remembering that the case must be managed as the guitar is carried from place to place. The guitarist steadily learns more about other guitars and what are the best guitars, and why, and how the materials of a particular guitar will change the way that something practised will sound. And the guitarist gets more comfortable with being identified as a guitarist, and being asked to play, and what songs to play for which audiences, and what things people will dislike, and getting used to some people being haters, and recognizing that not all people who like the guitarist do so for good reasons. And so on and so forth. There is a lot more to being a guitarist, and practicing at being a guitarist, than merely learning how the strings are played.
And a role-player is no different. There is lots to remember and lots to learn and many ideas to consider and a lot of details to manage and attitudes of players and a desire to play vs. a willingness to DM and so on and so forth ... and all these things require practicing a way of thinking about role-playing games and how we identify ourselves with them. We don't think of it as "practice" but it is, nonetheless. We are increasing our cognitive skills and our ability to use our senses in game play; we are assessing the skills of others and our own skill; we are giving ourselves feedback and comparing our efforts with past efforts, and with the efforts that we've seen others display; and we have the option of pushing for better skills in creating maps, designing characters and backgrounds, narratives and hundreds of details we seek to add to the game.
We don't "need" to practise, but we do. We do through repetition and constant thought as we dedicate ourselves to something that interests us.
This is, incidentally, an argument against artificial intelligence. When we, as humans, perform repetitive tasks, we are affected by a large number of hormonal impulses that produces a level of boredom that becomes a compulsion to stop doing a particular task. We then intellectually argue why we should continue to perform the task anyway, because we can see an end result; but to counteract the boredom we start looking for ways to make the task more efficient (to reduce the time to reach the goal), or more interesting (by paying attention to details we did not formerly recognize or by making a game of it) or by thinking of other ways to achieve the goal without having to do the task at all.
Computers can't do any of these things. They don't get bored. They don't perceive goals. They can't identify an alternate route to a goal once a route has been established. They haven't any hormonal impulses that compel them to seek any other action but to continue the repetitive task.
Because we will get bored with creating parts of worlds or adventures, if we push through that boredom or try to mitigate it, whatever we seek to practise will eventually become the part of the game that we are best at. If we emphasize our willingness to be role-players, then we will view role-playing as the end-all and be-all of the game because that will be the part of the game that we are best at, and with which we are most comfortable. If we spend all our time designing for places in our games where rolls will need to be made, then "roll-playing" will be seen as the most important element. We build our own prejudices by whatever part of the game we practise at thinking about or designing, just as a country singer will have a prejudice for country music, or a jazz guitarist will have a prejudice for jazz.
But Music, and Role-playing, exists with or without prejudices.
Rehearsal
While my definition for rehearsal (as linked above) states that, "... rehearsal is not the final outcome of practice," and goes on to make a distinction between a rehearsal and an original performance, we can bend those restrictions a little by recognizing that each session of role-playing between players and DM is, in a strong sense, both an original performance AND a rehearsal for the next original performance. The DM ensures that the various elements of the game are ready to be played, whatever the level of preparedness, and that they are coordinated to make the best possible impression on the Players. The Players, too, come to each session with ideas in hand and proposals to be made, and expect to impress or surprise the DM after their own manner. Everyone is expected to give their whole attention to the performance of the game. Even if errors, lapses in attention or interruptions are common place, it is understood that the game is more important than who did what at what place, or who said what the other day, or what might be happening outside while the Game is progressing.
We tolerate distractions and interruptions to be friendly and convivial. But when someone says, "Let's get back to the game," no one groans as they might if someone said in a workplace, "Let's get back to our jobs." We want to play or we wouldn't be there.
The purpose of the rehearsal is to coordinate the various dynamics of play and the participant's interaction with play. The recently coined "Session Zero" is an effort to do this on first meeting without the attention issue of having to actually express what the players are doing in a setting ~ but the reality is that we should expect a group of players to take multiple sessions before expecting them to adjust to matters of the rules, the personalities of other players, personal take on the game, a group consensus towards purpose and many other factors that arise from people acting as a single entity.
If we were to join together to put on a performance of Othello, no one would be surprised to find that there were going to be 13 weeks of rehearsals with 30 to 40 specific nights where we would come together to prepare for the end performance. Which doesn't include the private arrangements between Othello and Desdemona, or Iago and Brabantio, to run through the lines and blocking of a particular scene without the director or crew present. Everyone is typically good with this investment, because it is understood that in three months plus a week, we're going to do this in front of a live audience and we don't want to look like fools. Some of us want a good review, because we think of having a career as an actor. And so, there's very little sympathy for anyone who doesn't put the play first ~ since a single bad effort by a supporting character, say the Duke of Venice, can wreck the performance for everyone.
So to settle things, we in role-playing take the time to get everyone to agree to the same rules, and the same methodoly of interpreting those rules (as written, by DM fiat or by group consensus). We discourage a single player from hogging the DM's attention. We put a ban on player-vs-player ... or we encourage it, because that's the sort of game we've all agreed to play. We get everyone on board, a little bit more with every game session, because it makes the game session in the future better and better.
If we don't rehearse this way, however; if we don't arrive at a consensus; if the players won't surrender certain behaviors or attitudes; then each game session gets worse and worse, because there seems to be no purpose to going on if it's just going to be another boring fight every night. Once again, as the goal with these players and this DM seems less likely to be the game we want to play, we quit and go find another game. That is how we biologically function. It's what makes us "intelligent."
The purpose for a consensus, or in choosing to see the game session as a proper rehearsal for future sessions, is not to play the game "right" or "well," but to play it more effectively as a group. Which is why it can be difficult to let in a new player, who will fail to see the importance of this consensus (which is rarely explained, if even understood by the original group members) and will act as a discordant note for weeks and weeks, until they're pushed out or they conform to the standard the others have agreed to play.
As a DM, the more clearly we see that standard, the more clearly we can explain it to players, both old and new, and the more quickly we can jump from a bunch of people with separate agendas to a single working whole. It takes time to do this without becoming an autocrat (which many DMs descend to becoming, because it is direct and easy), because it takes empathy, a fair ethical framework to look from and an awareness of both self and others that most DMs do not even care to possess, as they see no reason for it. And thus we get the games we get, as we have all seen with our own experience.
This completes our introduction to preparedness. With our next class, we will examine expertise, the process of gaining experience through practice, education and the various other elements of preparedness.
With my last class, I say that we'd examine expertise in terms of gaining experience through preparedness. I think that it would be best for this class that we don't try to define what "expertise" is, since that's bound to get us in a number of semantic arguments that will create little context for understanding and learning. Instead, let's begin with defining an absence of expertise, taking as our subject an individual who has no knowledge whatsoever of a given activity.
For this class and the next one, I'll be drawing on the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition, advanced by Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus. I do have several issues with the model, most of which stem from the choice of words used by Stuart E. Dreyfus, the author, and there are arguments that stand in psychology against this model ~ but I think it should serve adequately for our generalized purposes. Dreyfus uses examples from driving a car and from playing chess; I shall endeavor to keep away from all metaphors for today's class, relying instead solely on examples from role-playing, specifically from Dungeons and Dragons (in a manner that should escape any issues arising from editions of the game).
Let's begin, using Dreyfus' terminology.
Stage 1: Novice
Using Dreyfus' terminology, we'll call our candidate for non-expert a "novice." This novice has never played the game, has never run the game, has no understanding of any of the rules of the game and may not have even heard of the game ... however, our novice is willing to learn. And for the purpose of our class, let's say our novice is ready to learn how to be a DM.
To begin with, we must explain the basic tenets of the game. Because role-playing games are very complicated, we shouldn't confuse the issue by presuming that we're going to teach our novice "the rules." Most participants don't play by all the rules of any system, mostly because they don't know all the rules or because many of the rules are so obscure that no one at a game table might remember the existence of a given rule. Therefore, we shouldn't expect our novice to learn "all" the rules ~ learning enough rules is what we all did when we started and our novice is no different.
If we stick to the most straightforward tenets of the game, we should include only those that enable play without preparation. Rolling the character would be such a tenet, as would placing the character in a simple environment, like a dungeon room or hallway. The presence of other players suggests interaction between player characters, and in that a certain "make-believe" as characters explain themselves, and even their backstories, to others. Finally, we can posit enemies of the characters, which they can find by moving through the simple environment, and having encountered them, find themselves with the choice to parley or fight, with success or consequences arising out of the emergent behaviour of communication or out of that same behaviour arising out of the randomness of die rolls.
These simple tenets are enough to keep the game fresh for a time; but our question is, how does our novice DM handle the processes behind these tenets? That is simple too. In order for a new, inexperienced DM to manage even this much, as educators of the novice we provide advice that follow an if-then structure. Dreyfus calls these rules ~ but since we are speaking about a game, this causes confusion in communication between "rules" of the game and "rules" describing conventions and procedures (the word rule has multiple meanings). Therefore, let's avoid Dreyfus' language here and refer to our if-then instructions as "conventions."
We tell our novice that if the players kill a certain number of enemies, they should get such and such an amount of treasure. We explain that the simple environment should be a dungeon and that dungeons should be reasonable in size with monsters or enemies that the players can handle. We explain that there should be a nearby village which the players can visit to rest up, heal and resupply. We suggest that parleys between the players and their enemies can be resolved with a mixture of reserved gut instinct supported by die rolls. Effectively, we provide the conventions that were asserted with the very early period of the game's creation. And with these conventions, just as you and I did once upon a time, they muddle through, make their mistakes, but manage more or less to run the game well enough for their players to return for another session.
"Adventurers' League" games are merely a different list of conventions, designed to encourage our novice to keep pace with an established module-based procedure, to bring the players along to such and such a point by such and such a night.
As far as play goes, our novice is not a good DM. Some natural talent might exist for employing the conventions quickly or smoothly, but the conventions themselves are a limitation and so long as our novice relies upon them, much will be lacking from the experience. We might be able to remember when we ran our games in this fashion; but unless we are a novice, we shouldn't imagine we'd enjoy playing this way now. It wouldn't be enough. This begs the question, what happens to our novice that cause an advancement in game play, and how does that advancement manifest. If we were the Jane Goodall of role-playing games, and we were watching new DMs over a period of months, by what behaviour would we recognize a DM that was advancing from one that was not?
Stage 2: Advanced Beginner
As game sessions are played, our novice becomes increasingly aware that the conventions being followed have issues. Some seem to actively stifle play, or encourage resistance from the players, or lack sufficient reward for the players efforts. As our DM becomes familiar with game play, various "aspects" ~ defined by Dreyfus as examples meaningful to the context ~ will make themselves evident. Recognizing these, our DM is encouraged to question the conventions and explore these aspects, and so becomes an Advanced Beginner.
Some elementary aspects that we tend to notice early on in our play includes: (a) the awarding of treasure and experience; (b) the interplay between player characters and NPCs in what we think of as "role-play"; and (c) a fascination with the "metagame" of organizing play outside of the game session. There are other aspects, many others, but for the sake of example let's use these three.
While awarding success in game play, our advanced beginner wonders why more treasure or experience can't be given more quickly, jumping low level characters to higher levels, where the monsters are more interesting and the players seem more heroic. There seems little point in forcing the players to struggle for a few magical items, when lots of magic can always be countered by lots of enemies. With experimentation, our Advanced Beginner discovers this logic is sound and feels assured by the change.
It's noticed that the players seem to enjoy role-playing, while it relieves pressure on the DM to constantly maintain the world for the players. More role-playing out of difficult situations means less combats that need to be run. More time spent role-playing means less demand on setting descriptions. Twenty minutes of a session can be given over to a detailed conversation with a shop merchant, during which time the DM has to role-play, but little else. Role-playing can be enhanced with choosing alignments, backstories and inter-party discussions "in character," all of which reduces demands on the DM to produce and run as much setting as would be necessary if role-playing were minimized. The popularity of role-playing becomes clear very quickly, so it is embraced by our Advanced Beginner as a way of maintaining interest without increasing the DM's effort.
Finally, our Advanced Beginner might become obsessed with the metagame ... the creation of more elaborate settings, mega-dungeons, story-game mechanics in adventure building, a back history of the game setting and so on. All these are usually done in solitary and many aspects of this metagame will never see use during the actual game; yet our Advanced Beginner feels a strong desire to explored these concepts for their own sake.
It's important to understand that these reworkings of the game, whatever they are (and including a long list that I have not touched on), and whether they are "good" or "bad," is a natural progression of game experience. No one is exempt. We learn from experimentation, and it is through experimentation that we move from being an advanced beginner to a competent participant.
Stage 3: Competence
The acquisition of competence is far from having confidence or mastery of the game. Rather, it is a stage that puts enormous strain on DMs, testing them, as it indicates that while there is a greater awareness of the game's structure and potential, this awareness can also overwhelm the DM's conviction that they have the ability to master this potential.
The reader will remember that we were just saying that Advanced Beginners become aware of a few aspects of the game and begin to toy with them. With increasing competence, our Advanced Beginner becomes aware of so many aspects that the bare number of them, and running them all, seems to be an insurmountable objective. Because our Competent Player is aware of these aspects, and because game play inspired by increased preparedness keeps pushing the DM up against these aspects, it isn't enough to simply say, "I'll ignore them." With competence, it becomes increasingly clear that for the game to advance, and for the DM to advance, these aspects must be addressed.
Dreyfus describes the situation as nerve-wracking and exhausting; as an overload; as a wonder how anyone ever masters the skill. It is a point that many DMs will simply quit. Unable to reconcile their innate knowledge gained through experience with the memory of the simple games they once enjoyed running (but are enjoying less and less now), the simplest argument is often that, having come to fully understand the aspects of the game to an adequate degree, it is time to move onto something new.
This might be a different role-playing game, or wargame, or video game ... but of course, with the experience gained at the first RPG of the participant's experience, the passage of time between Novice and Competent Player grows shorter and shorter. And that passage is less and less satisfying.
With our next class, we'll discuss how the Competent player finds tools that enable advancement from this stage, to where the game can be managed with proficiency and expertise.
From Give up, Catch up or Keep up with Innovation
In our last class, we spoke about how competency can cause a DM to become overwhelmed by the number of aspects associated with the game. For example, there are elements to be addressed regarding character creation, creating the session, fleshing out characters, managing player interactions and blow ups, how to present the game, how much the dice should matter, whether fudging is okay, character death, amount of experience to be given, use of traps, use of tension, how much agency should the players have, cheating, what's a good tone for a game, how much squickiness is acceptable, where do we draw the line on player girlfriends and boyfriends, how do we find players, booting players, keeping within the genre of the game, using optional rules, using house rules, using rules from other editions or role-playing games, allowing players to use characters from other settings, policing alignment, policing class restrictions, handing out treasure and magic, transparency on the use of magic, gods, balancing player characters, balancing combats, keeping notes during the game, maintaining momentum, fairness as a DM, trade, cosplaying at the table, rolling for reactions among NPCs, NPCs joining a party, the DM's privilege to give advice, controlling gamesmanship, managing aerial, waterborne or extra-terrestrial game settings, use of monsters to subvert or fuck with the party, mind games ... the list is extensive and every aspect of the list includes quite a few sub-texts and functional effects. Keeping it all straight in one's head in the moment of running the game seems, as Stuart E. Dreyfus suggests, impossible.
So how do we do it?
An ordinary, competent gamer attempts to seek knowledge
Dreyfus argues,
"Naturally, to avoid mistakes, the competent performer seeks rules and reasoning procedures to decide which plan or perspective to adopt. But such rules are not easy to come by as are the rules and maxims given beginners in manuals and lectures. Indeed, in any skill domain, the performer encounters a vast number of situations differing from each other in subtle ways. There are, in fact, more situations than can be named or precisely defined, so no one can prepare for the learner a list of types of possible situations and what to do or look for in each."
Here again, as before, Dreyfus insists on the word, "rules." This is a problem where we are discussing a game, where there ARE rules that do need to be kept. The problem is that people tend to rush straight to the definition for rules that states, "A set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere." This is not what Dreyfus means at all, which is clear by the context of the whole document. He's describing another definition for rule: "a principle that operates within a particular sphere of knowledge, describing or prescribing what is possible or allowable." A more precise word for this second definition would be axiom, which we can define as "a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted or self-evidently true."
The game rules ~ such as, when a character's hit points run out, the character dies ~ are regulations and should be observed as such. The DM's acquisition of knowledge, however, is not dictated by any set of rules. We are simply muddling through the hundreds of situations that might come up as our games increase in complexity, making judgments, or rulings, as best we can where rules are inadequate or do not exist at all. Over time, these judgments cease to be individual calls on the game and become standardized axioms, as defined above. We make up our minds on how to manage new players, or deal with arguments, or present magic items or employ traps, in terms of when and where and how much.
It is not the acquisition of axioms that is a difficult obstacle for our competent DM, but the willingness to make decisions, stick by them and then uphold or take note of that same decision when the same issue arises again. If a DM will insist upon vacillating between two different positions when the same situation arises, then no such axiom will result and the players will perceive that favoritism is in play (as the decision was different for the fighter as opposed to the mage), or that the DM is an whimsical boob who cannot be trusted and may say anything when the time comes. Without a clear and serious sense of responsibility when making a given decision upon a game aspect, our DM, however competent, is likely to forget their previous ruling and the game itself will soon become an unholy mess.
Dreyfus is very weak on this point. He commits much of his argument to the importance of being emotionally invested, but he does not state which emotion is critical here. He attests that we learn from our mistakes, but he fails to note that many people who make decisions, even when emotionally invested, are not aware when they have made a mistake. Many persons must have the mistake pointed out to them, and even then many persons will seek to avoid admitting the mistake, seeking to "put the blame" on some other person, and thereby learning nothing from their error. This is grossly common in role-playing games, as players blame each other or the DM, while the DM blames the players. It is not enough just to be emotionally involved; we must be serious. This is suggested, but not plainly stated, by Dreyfuss' argument that we must "replay one's performance in one's mind step by step ... to let them sink in." Of course this is true ... but Dreyfus' language path to get to that point is clumsy, cluttered and frustratingly prosaic. People all too often refuse to place any importance on their mistakes, and therefore learn nothing from them.
As the decision is usually made under a time constraint, we learn from the decision by reflecting upon it after the game, when time has ceased to matter ~ and mull over the original question without assuming that our judgment was correct. If the judgment seemed lacking, or wrong, then we consider what decision we would make now, after the fact, acknowledging that this might mean beginning the next game with the words, "I changed my mind and I was wrong ..." The process of decision-error-reconsideration-confession strengthens our thinking process and increases the seriousness with which we view decision-making at the start. IF we know we ARE going to confess once we have reconsidered, and not bow out even when it hurts to admit we're wrong, we'll seek choices that don't produce error and eventual confession.
But refuse to admit to error; refuse to re-evaluate the original problem with an mind to ensuring a legitimate decision; refuse to look the original subject of our decision in the eye and admit our mistake - and we learn nothing. We will never be anything but a competent DM.
For some, that's enough. They equate competency with expertise and fail to recognize that competence means little more than "adequate." You have the bare necessity of skill, but that is all. You should not imagine that you're an expert and you should not imagine that you're in a place to give others an education in your subject. That should be left for those who are proficient.
Stage 4: Proficiency
As we become more serious in our tasks, the axioms we create to manage the complexity of the game are strengthened. This enables us to spend less and less time mulling over decisions that we're making, as we become more confident that we're making the right ones for ourselves and for other people. Note: it is the latter that is most important, as it is the latter that are most affected by what we decide.
We should not imagine that the process of building axioms and adapting ourselves to responsibility for our decisions is an easy one. Our Proficient DM is an unusual entity, with the ability to discriminate among hundreds of slivers within the game aspects we've described (and many others besides). When a decision needs to be made, a wide range of choices is available to our Proficient DM, with increasingly less doubt regarding which decision ought to be made.
On the whole, this choice of decision will exist for virtually any part of the game that the participant has chosen to explore. Given the game's versatility, the number of editions, the number of other like games with their own sets of rules ~ and given that some games will focus heavily on role-playing while others focus on roll-playing ~ we shouldn't suppose that because a given DM is proficient in these aspects, that they are not merely competent in others. A DM may be a highly proficient gamemaster at the table; but a woeful competent where it comes to designing a setting. We may shine where it comes to creating tension or producing successful, believable characters; but hopeless where it comes to sorting out arguments between players or discouraging players from outright cheating. As individuals in any field of knowledge increase in proficiency, the slice of the knowledge field in which they're in gets narrower and narrower. Doctors become specialists. Lawyers choose between business and criminal law. Engineers move into the fields of chemical, mechanical or electronic technologies. It takes a lot to become proficient at anything; it is a little easier when we narrow how much we choose to be proficient at.
But this does create prejudices. Once we become proficient at something, we tend to think that our proficiency is the answer to every problem. It is the old adage, once you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Those who are proficient in role-play want to argue that the game is all about role-play and story. Others proficient at technical details want to argue that the game must be simulationist and accurate. We should beware these statements; the game is whatever we choose to make it, according to whatever effort we give to our particular campaign.
The process of decision making is a matter of heuristics, which I have covered in the link. Our Proficient DM has accumulated axioms which have evolved into available and representative templates, which are accessed from memory and then employed. There is a period of deliberation, though often brief; and where a lack of certainty exists, there's a strong potential to accurate guess, judge or propose a solution which will, after examination, prove to be accurate and effective.
This does enable our Proficient DM to manage many, many more situations than might normally seem possible, as the DM has learned to "roll with it" when something vastly different and unexpected arises. It is difficult to stump a proficient DM; there has just been too much experience with odd and unusual things, and with solving such problems, to produce a complete failure to respond.
Stage 5: Expertise
When it happens that the need to calculate and compare alternatives falls by the wayside, our proficient DM has probably become an expert. Whereas before there was some room for doubt, our Expert will see immediately that there can only be one solution. This is the result of a number of factors, which are not fully understood by the phenomenalogical/psychological community (though it makes for good, heavy reading). Fundamentally, our Expert encounters the material, comprehends the material and reacts to the material as a single mental process.
Many might think they do this, but without examination and hard evidence there's little credence to this claim. As far as we can tell, the expert accurately "feels" the answer rather than "knowing" it ~ while evidence demonstrates that it was the right answer. It is easy to produce this evidence in a game like chess, where those who possess this expertise consistently win against most everyone but a handful of others in the world, even when distracted or forced to play against a severe time restriction. In a game like D&D, it is virtually impossible to tell if a DM is an "expert," since we have no way of knowing for certain what a "right" answer would be or how this right answer might manifest during game-play.
We may, however, posit such a person. Our expert is highly absorbed in the material. They recognize the existence of axioms and conventions, but equally recognize that these will need to be suspended in peculiar circumstances, that are themselves not necessarily prescriptive of future events. For example, a given bizarre and highly unlikely sequence of events in a game might create a certainty that the dice should be skewed, or fudged, in this instance, with the recognition that since the unlikely sequence is not likely to happen again in the lifetime of the DM, the incident does not validate any argument that fudging the dice is acceptable. Put another way, the appearance of a sliver of a particular aspect of the game, due to its infrequency, has no merit where considering the game as a whole.
Conversely, our Expert may perceive that wildly diverse parts of the game also share wholistic characteristics that would not be noticed by a proficient DM. There may be conditions, for example, that demonstrate that "role-playing" and "roll-playing" are, in fact, the same thing, viewed from an intuitive perspective that is not limited by the need to create an axiom to explain how things work, or ought to work, based on their immediately apparent characteristics.
Very often, because experts don't know themselves how they come to a given conclusion, they cannot unpack their own knowledge and as such, make very bad professors. I've had quite a few of them.
With our next class, we'll want to review how some of this material on the acquisition of skill level applies to the content in our earlier preparedness classes. Thank you, this completes our second week of class.
Following up on our last class discussing the five steps of learning, we looked at Hubert and Stuart Dreyfuss' discussion of mistakes and learning from them. As a part of that, I spoke on the need to reflect upon the decisions we make as DMs, evaluating the effectiveness and the rightness of those decisions, "without assuming our [original] judgment was correct."
Before continuing, we will need to look at what it means to reflect upon actions that we've taken, or upon anything else that we may not fully understand. This process is called "critical thinking" and is a fundamental principle of all scholarship and knowledge. But while it has been seen as a primary skill in learning anything, there is much doubt at present that critical thinking is something that can taught. In Daniel T. Willingham's seminal work on Critical thinking, he asks and answers the question,
"Can critical thinking acually be taught? Decades of cognitive research point to a disappointing answer: not really. People who have sought to teach critical thinking have assumed that it is a skill, like riding a bicycle, and that, like other skills, once you learn it, you can apply it to any situation. Research from cognitive science shows that thinking it not that sort of skill."
We should find this interesting. Suppose we want to progress an individual ~ we'll call him Jim ~ from competency to proficiency as a DM. We cannot, as demonstated, teach Jim how to think critically, and then apply that critical thinking skill to role-playing games so that he becomes a more adept role-player. Thus we are left to ask, what can we do?
We can explain to Jim that, from the time that he was a novice, that most of his "knowledge" came from things that he perceived as he experienced the game being played, as well as his emotional responses to that play, and finally to his imagination ~ the set of things that were not concretely real, but that he added personally to the game's play as an augmentation to his direct experiences. We all do this. It is our biological nature to take information gained from our senses and our responses, and transform that information into "common sense" axioms, even before we've ceased being a novice.
Let's take an example. In our second class, I listed a series of things that a DM or Player might research as a means of preparing to play the game better. One of the things on that list was (d) solving problems related to group dynamics, by asking questions of the players to determine how best to get a disparate and unique group to work together.
Suppose Jim, as a Novice, begins asking such questions. When Jim receives answers, he naturally hears the words and reads the faces of the players, then "feels" something about what was said, and finally creates an answer from his imagination. Because he is a Novice at the game, these are the only skills he brings himself ... and it can be seen fairly quickly how Jim is going to get himself into trouble.
Jim has little to no experience at all with the game, so when he is surrounded by Players and a DM, he is out of his element. He will tend to make the same personal judgments about a Player's motivation in the game as he would about any person acting in any other circumstance. Likewise, his feelings about what is said will be the same feelings that he might apply to a person's behaviour in the workplace, or at a bar, or while walking down the street. Seeing someone get overly excited about, say, a pile of imaginary gold pieces, might cause him to have very different feelings about the experience than a long-time player would. And when applying his imagination to what his feelings mean, or what his senses tell him, he would likely jump to conclusions that an experienced player would never entertain.
Jim might be the sort of person, with the sort of background, that enables him to "get it" instantly. I did. But he might just as easily not be ~ and thus we can understand why many people who first encounter a description of the game are ready to turn up their nose and move off.
Let's say, however, that whether through instinct, or through a willingness to experience more play, Jim acquires that set of conventions that lets him expand his outlook. Yet as he progresses from Novice to Advanced Beginniner, we should understand that most decisions he will make about which conventions can be ignored, and what parts of the game need to be changed, will be based on his perceptions, his feelings and his imagination.
While very important to our make-up as human beings, we have to understand that these things are not knowledge. They are beliefs. They are a subjective judgment about things ~ and while these judgments have value to the individual, we further recognize that all persons have these judgments based on their own personal beliefs, which are therefore different from one another.
Reaching a consensus about subjective beliefs is far, far different from reaching a consensus about knowledge. When Jim says, "My pencil is broken," this is a demonstrable fact that witnesses can examine and identify for themselves. Unless the pencil is sharpened, it has no value as a pencil. But when Jim says, "I don't like the way this pencil feels in my hand," there is no consensus on the pencil's value. Jim is still able to write with is, as is everyone else; and each person will have their own personal take on the value of the pencil, none of which can be identified as a factual value.
When Advanced Beginners set out to alter and adjust an existing set of conventions, they appear to be doing so based on what they would describe as their experiential knowledge ... but it is, in fact, a personal set of values based on what parts of the game matter specifically to those persons. Jim decides to change the rules surrounding, say, Alignment, because he doesn't like Alignment, not because the conventions around Alignment are necessarily ineffective. Jim is not learning more about Alignment and how it works in the game; Jim is learning that he can change parts of the game in order to suit his whims.
This is not how Jim would describe it, however. From Jim's perspective, these changes are "necessary." It is "clear" that without the changes, an "improved" game wouldn't be possible. Jim is still describing a pencil that doesn't feel right in his hand. His explanations for the change are not grounded in demonstrable facts; others must take his word, relying solely on his subjective opinion (or coincidentally, on their own), if they are to agree with Jim. Neither Jim nor those who agree with him can point to a set of facts that would convince everyone to plainly see that Alignment is ineffective as a game mechanic.
The alternative position to judging something subjectively is to judge it objectively. Objective reasoning argues that something is true only if it is universally true ~ that is, everyone is subject to that truth even if they can't perceive it, or feel it, or imagine it. Objective truths, or facts, arise from investigation that can then be proven by methods that are indisputable. If there were something evident about Alignment that caused every person experimenting with it to observe the same reactions, experience the same responses from players, and note the same patterns of behaviour in accordance with Alignment, we would soon develop a convention that would be imposed on nearly every game: don't play with alignment. I say "nearly every game" because even when confronted with facts, some people stubbornly persist at things.
Suppose Jim continues to play his games in a subjective manner, becoming a DM with the certain feeling that every value he has in playing the game is the "right" value. As he becomes competent, he will rigidly close down every option of play that he finds personally in conflict with his sense of right and wrong. This rigidity will steadily, with experience, remove all options from the manner in which he plays ... in which case, whenever he plays, there will always seem to be one clear and perfect option, no matter what has to be decided.
Because this bears a similarity to the Expert described in our last class, who does not make a decision among multiple options, as a Proficient Player would, it is probable that Jim will begin to self-describe himself as an expert. Like an expert, he sees a problem, he understands immediately what he must do to address the problem, and he solves it. Except that he does not solve the problem for anyone else. He only solves the problem for Jim.
Dreyfus is quite clear on this point. Expertise is gained first by fully understanding the whole panoply of options that potentially exist: playing the game with or without alignment, and a myriad of splintering degrees to which alignment in all its possible forms might be structured in order to give the best possible repeatable result for the greatest number of persons. That is the fundamental of social science, where absolute facts are difficult because of the complexity of human beings (as opposed to pencils). It is only with great awareness of the various possibilities that the Expert emerges from Proficiency.
Rather than attempting to reason our way through our games with "critical thinking," we need to understand constantly that whatever we believe, whatever methods we use right now to run our games, whatever effectiveness we may have had in the past with our foregoing strategies, we are still in the wrong about something. The fact that we can perceive it, or feel it, or imagine it, is immaterial. We know we are in the wrong because we haven't yet shown everyone else in the world how we are right enough to be followed exactly in our behaviour.
Being in the wrong is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It means constantly and vigilantly looking for the value we hold, that we are wrong about. We don't tire of looking because, first, we know it exists, and second, because diligent searching has found wrong things about our values in the past.
We're just not always willing to accept being wrong, even when we change to account for it.
With our next class, we'll try to evaluate some of the ways that Novices can employ to adjust their games in an objective manner.
With our last class, we made reference to the inability of educators to create any legitimacy for the teaching of critical thinking. We discussed subjectivity, making the point that while it was an important part of a human being's nature, subjective awareness of things is not knowledge. Knowledge, we said, is objective.
From the above, however, we should conclude that no one has the ability to tell another person, "think objectivity," which is substantially no different from asking someone to think critically. How, then, do we follow through on my promise with our last class to discuss ways in which Novices can adjust their games in an objective manner?
To understand this, let's look more closely at the conventions we discussed in our 5th class. A convention is a set of agreed upon standards that have developed over time as a shared value upon which a large number of persons agree. Shared values occur because a particular viewpoint, the origin of which may be obscure, tends to make sense to a large enough group of persons that it becomes strongly suggested as a guideline that most, or all other people should follow. Depending on the context, we might refer to such conventions as "common sense" or "tradition."
Conventions come in many forms
Notions gain the support of a large number of persons also share a relative objective status. A convention comes about from no single person's subjectivity. Repeated observation and acceptance of the convention by multiple persons suggests that it has a validity that goes beyond what can be perceived, felt or imagined by any one person. Therefore, we might argue that following conventions is good practice ~ and many people argue exactly that.
However, while we might argue that convention bears consideration and may be a pathway to facts and truths, the mere fact that many people believe a thing does not make it so. Human beings are of a kind in many aspects; and being like creatures, with like hormonal natures and like experiences as they age from children to become adults, can easily come to the same consistently wrong conclusions about a thing than arriving at the right ones. Conventions about most things are almost always exploded in any subject material where experimentation and scientific method can be applied. The history of human progress has left thousands of previously held conventions in ditches on the side of the road as knowledge has been expanded. Of course, as human groups, we're always ready to make new ones.
That said, where conventions exist, it is good that any novice be aware of them. The conventions in RPGs persist because new DMs who are picking up the mantle of the game are pleased to adopt standards that will, initially, simplify their games. Our role-playing Novice will do better to follow in that practice in order to swim and not sink when beginning to run. So our Novice rolls characters as expected, encourages story-making, buys modules, watches Critical-Role on the internet for ideas and functions as we would expect most DMs to function. This is perfectly normal behaviour.
Just as conventions are created from many sources, we prepare
ourselves by investigating a wide range of conventions
Because we cannot trust conventions, however, our Novice will do well to seek another objective means of determining truths from falsehoods. We discussed one alternative in our first week of classes. Through various forms of preparation, particularly research and resources, our Novice can personally investigate each convention through the eyes of multiple persons and sources, both inside and outside the RPG community. For example, ideas like "alignment" or "combat" can be explored at length in psychology or military history textbooks, and through personal interactions and experimentation well out of the RPG arena, in a vast number of ways. By physically and personally exploring the use of weapons, say through the Society for Creative Anachronism, our Novice can gain insight into different points of views and conventions, which can then be compared with those conventions that exist in role-playing games. Gaining a choice of which set of precepts to believe, coupled with subjective experience, our Novice can decide which ideas and philosophies seem most effective where applied to game-play.
This still does not amount to an objective experience, however. The decision is still largely a subjective one. Our novice can easily be enamoured by what's new, rather than what's best. We will often sacrifice old ideas because something fresh is exciting and compelling. We can't be completely certain that any decision being made is, in fact, objective.
As well, our Novice has a limited amount of time and capacity to personally investigate every convention that exists, in order for such a choice to be made. Very much time can be spent trying to research or examine things, only to come up empty, which can be particularly frustrating for our Novice, who has little background in what to search for or where. So while preparation is potentially a great addition to the process of objective thinking, it brings its own problems. The writer of a book can easily be subjectively or conventionally wrong about whatever is being written. It is hard for a novice to tell.
With so many conventions and possibilities, we need people
who have been there to help us find the right path.
To empower our Novice, we need a 3rd entity: a mentor of some kind. A mentor has already been where the Novice is. A mentor has navigated the various conventions and attempts at alternative points of view that our Novice wishes to have ~ and so a mentor can point our Novice in the right directions, to read the right books, to understand where conventions fail to hold up in the long run and to see which conventions will likely maintain their validity over time.
Like conventions and forms of preparation, however, mentors also have their drawbacks. A mentor may very well be prejudiced against certain ideas, or resistant against some facts, or simply motivated by some human quality to spread misinformation or ignorance. Not every self-proclaimed mentor deserves recognition as such, but for our Novice, again, it can be hard to tell one mentor from another. Where it comes to knowing what to believe, or how to play, or how to prepare for that play, our Novice can easily reach out to any voice willing to hold our Novice's attention long enough to inculcate a misguided or self-serving agenda.
Therefore, while a mentor might offer an objective viewpoint, we can never be sure which mentor is true and which is false.
How, then, are we to pursue an objective viewpoint? There seems no way to remove ourselves from the pitfalls of someone's subjectivity, no matter what we do. Take heart, however, in the knowledge that this is how it has always been ... and that the solution is simple.
Diligently check each source of potential discovery against every other source, and see if it measures up. We have four subjective sources: personal experience, convention, mentorship and preparedness (through research, resources and other means). Whatever any of these sources might suggest ~ including, most of all, personal experience! ~ do not trust it until you have confirmation from all three of the other sources. And even then, hold that knowledge in reserve. It might still be wrong, as you haven't yet found the proof that explodes it.
What this means for our Novice is this: the pursuit of knowledge requires that we presume, all the time, that we are probably wrong about everything we believe. We must not believe things because we are certain these things are right ~ but rather, because these things we believe are the best we have, right now. Give us evidence, provide the right proof, demonstrate in defacto manner that we have reason to believe that we've been wrong, and we'll admit it.
Until then, whatever you tell us, we're going to turn it sideways and look at it from every angle, comparing it to everything we've learned thus far, then decide for ourselves what is the best thing to believe.
This does not come easily. Most persons cannot bear a condition that acknowledges the possibility of error in perpetuity. There is great comfort in being right; even when rightness is impossible, and must be steadfastly taken on faith and faith alone in order to make it so. It is a peculiar person who can resist the appeal of certainty, even if all certainty is a lie.
Yet, for our Novice, it is best to gain good habits early. The best habit for our Novice is to question everything. Why is this a convention? Why do these things I've discovered not agree with things others say? Why is this mentor telling me something different?
Our Novice has to keep asking until the answers become consistent, whatever the source.
With this class, I feel it is time to discuss some of the theory that has grown around role-playing games, as we hear expressed whenever we seek out information about playing. One such theory is the identification with the DM as a storyteller ... and consequently, with campaigns being founded upon great stories that the DM creates, which are then expanded by collaborative storytelling carried forward by the players, which is supported in part by the creation of backstories, the history and motivation of the character prior to the start of the campaign.
Let us consider for a moment the Novice participant moving towards a greater understanding of the game, graduating to Advanced Beginner. As more games are played, the DM acquiring experience will find that much of the game running process includes giving information to the players so that they will: (a) understand what is going on; (b) envision a place as described; (c) create an intended emotional response; and (d) provide ground work for the players to make decisions which move events forward.
In storytelling, this information is called "exposition." Exposition can be provided in a number of ways: through direct description of things; through direct dialogue given by non-player characters; with images; and with body language to convey importance. Most importantly, we must all note that the very best exposition is that which is told in the form of a story, rather than just a list of facts. We are more likely to be invested in a story, we are more likely to remember the parts of a story (because they fit together), and we are more likely to gain pleasure from retelling a story that we like.
And so, from personal experience, a DM who is practicing the game as an advanced beginner will naturally seek out ways to transform the exposition that must be given to the party into patterns which we would all recognize as stories. Quickly, a positive feedback loop results. DMs try harder to tell better stories, or find better stories, and players in turn respond to these better stories positively.
Before continuing, let's take a moment to understand what the better story accomplishes. The DM has a set adventure in mind, which has come about through preparations the DM has made. The adventure is itself a story: a group of creatures has taken an action that threatens some element of the setting, and the expectation is that the players will be commissioned to put an end to the threat.
However, prior to the players accepting the commission, they must be coaxed out of inactivity, so that they will take action. They must be inspired. They must feel that this commission is of some importance to them. It is clear the commission is important to the DM; the DM has created the adventure. But having not yet seen the adventure, or knowing fully what value the adventure holds, the players are naturally filled with resistance.
This resistance must be overcome. The DM can plead with the players, asking that they simply accept the commission because the game requires it. The DM can demand and threaten the players with in-game punishments, holding their feet to the fire by creating villains who will kill the players if they don't act. The DM can threaten not to DM. Each of these tactics, however, will tend to create negative feedback, in that they will be seen as manipulative and ethically irresponsible ~ and they will encourage like behaviour from players who concede to DMs who employ these tactics. If the DM can threaten not to DM, that we as players can threaten not to play. If the DM can plead with us to take part in his adventure, then we can plead with the DM to feed our own demands. If the DM holds our feet to the fire with threats against our characters, we can kill the DMs treasured NPCs whenever it is plain the DM has pride in them. And so on.
A proper story, however, has the power to inspire a player to take part because they want to. An inspiring story appeals to emotions, which the players want to express and be a part of, feeding their curiousity, their sense of self-expression, their empowerment and their quest for an interpersonal connection. As a story relayed by the DM touches on some personal story that a player possesses from their own life, a positive connection is made which then becomes a catalyst for agency and a desire for achievement. Stories compel these responses ethically, because the participants respond pro-actively. They don't need to be pushed. They will rush forward.
By the time a DM becomes competent, they have already told hundreds of stories of their own making, and repeated thousands more that they have repeated from another source. What's more, the best stories remain in the DM's mind, influencing other stories the DM will tell and bearing with them a strong sense of nostalgia that will serve as a beacon for what kind of stories ought to be told.
The appearance that stories create better games seems so obvious to a competent DM as to seem self-evident and absolutely beyond doubt. It is obvious. And yet, at the start of this class, I described storytelling as a theory. What makes it a theory?
To begin with, storytelling has nothing specifically to do with role-playing games, except that we as humans play role-playing games. Human beings are natural storytellers, and we do it constantly and all the time, in every encounter we have with others and in every instance where we think things to ourselves and try to give those things a structure and a meaning. It is impossible to think rationally as a human without telling a story of some kind.
The argument that telling a story creates positive feedback from players is only true because telling a story always creates positive feedback ~ once we learn to tell stories well. We learn as young children to create stories to make friends, to get out of trouble, to get the things we want, to settle differences and to express both our true and our false feelings. We transform living in time into episodes that we integrate with meaning, and then we combine those meanings into our own life story, which in large part we only tell ourselves. With stories, we construct periods of regret, shame, doubt, resistance to new ideas; and we construct moments when we redeemed ourselves, where we acted bravely or empathically ... and in every case, some of these constructions are true in the minds of others, and some of them are not true.
But the best stories win us partners in life, friends, loving children, trusting employers, community awards and self-respect. Whereas the worst stories ~ and we all have them ~ propel us into depression, despair, self-destruction, abuse of others and potentially suicide.
If storytelling in every day life is the difference between how we behave as people, and how others behave towards us, why should we presume that a role-playing game would not function according to those same principles of psychology and biology?
Storytelling as the be-all and end-all of great role-play gaming is a theory because it is arrived at entirely through subjective analysis. We cannot get there objectively ... and as we've already discussed, if we do not arrive at a position objectively, it is not knowledge. Storytelling can appear to be a path to great role-playing, but we need to ask ourselves: does it appear that way because of the game, or because of who we are as human beings? Does it necessarily follow that because we are treating our fellow human beings better, that we are playing a better game?
There is no answer to that. Which is why I don't say that storytelling isn't very important to the way that a role-playing game is played. We don't know, because given the lack of hard evidence, we can't know.
This is not a bad thing. It is a weakness to take things utterly on faith ~ and there are very many who, having experienced the positive feedback of storytelling, are very much prepared to take it on faith alone. But faith is not knowledge. We need to look closely at storytelling, deconstructing it and examining all its elements, if we wish to advance our understanding of that facet of gaming from competency to proficiency.
Until the next class, then.
With our last class, we discussed how participants of role-playing games pursue storytelling in terms of the value it holds for them, which is something learned from experience while playing. An individual's value judgment is a personally assessment of something that is good or bad in terms of that person's standards and priorities. Value judgements and experience matter, but are not necessarily correct where knowledge is concerned. This is a point we will examine more closely later in the semester.
Today, let's examine another widely held value judgment, also arrived at through extensive experience from playing: that the player characters of role-playing games are extraordinary people, whose bravery and resolve encourages them to be heroes against forces that would terrify most. To understand why, we need to examine the motivations of players who choose to perceive their characters as heroes.
What is heroism? This is not a simple question. Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist best known for the Stanford Prison Experiment, has spent more than a decade studying heroism and has established four recognizeable signs of performed heroism:
"First, it’s performed in service to others in need ~ whether that’s a person, group, or community ~ or in defense of certain ideals. Second, it’s engaged in voluntarily, even in military contexts, as heroism remains an act that goes beyond something required by military duty. Third, a heroic act is one performed with recognition of possible risks and costs, be they to one’s physical health or personal reputation, in which the actor is willing to accept anticipated sacrifice. Finally, it is performed without external gain anticipated at the time of the act."
Suppose we take a moment and consider how an Advanced Beginner's DMing efforts might act contrary to the above ... explaining, in the process, many game worlds with some of us will have personally experienced, particularly in our early years of playing.
Our Advanced Beginner might tolerate players who do not act in the service of others, but only for themselves ~ whether against the other players, or the non-player characters under the DM, or even against the DM personally ~ in pursuit of their selfish desires. Our Advanced Beginner might feel pushed to participate as a DM involuntarily, because no one else will play; while some players might feel they're coerced to play a particular kind of game or rule-set, because no other option for play is available. Our Advanced Beginner may steadfastly refuse to make any concessions, or changes to their campaign, or put any personal sacrifice or preparedness into the game session ~ even a few hours time, to make the game better, may be considered a sacrifice too far. Players, likewise, may resent having to sacrifice their personal time to redraw their characters, or properly keep notes as to their advancement, or arrive on time, or any of a hundred other personal sacrifices that make group activities more pleasant. And finally, all the players may constantly gripe and insist on more and more gain for their characters, a constant flow of greater rewards, to make playing the game for them tolerable. Such players may even threaten to quit if the rewards of the game do not meet their standards.
All together, this behaviour becomes unsupportable, destructive, even vindictive over time. Some groups nonetheless stagger on under this burden, supported by the unhealthy combination of a self-aggrandizing DM and selfishly motivated socio-challenged players. Most Advanced Beginniners, however, get a taste of a different game identity embraced by a competent DM, and cease to reproduce the style of play in their own campaigns.
Consider: if the game story and adventure is geared towards the service of NPCs in need, this provides the players with a set of ideals that are clearly recognized as heroic. Non-heroic principles are easy to recognize ~ players who fail to answer the call to advanture, players who fail to recognize the wisdom of a mentor, players who play for selfish pursuits ~ these are clearly not the sort who are going to heroically help a village throw off its oppressors.
Heroes will view the opportunity to help the village voluntarily, as Zimbardo stipulates. They will even go beyond what they are asked to do, willingly doing more than preserving the village, they will lay down their own lives if that's what it takes to make the village a thriving and happy place. No heroic player would refuse to do so ... and so that helps bind the party together towards a single goal, a single purpose, which eliminates much of the selfish infighting that would go on at the sort of table that an Advanced Beginner might tolerate.
Nor would lives alone be the only sacrifice the players might be willing to make. As heroes, they would impoverish themselves rather than hold back wealth from the needy. They would soil their reputations rather than let one person suffer in their stead. And they would do all this, just as Zimbardo points out, with no personal expectation of gain.
This last greatly eases the pressure put on a DM to constantly award more and more treasure. As treasure and advancement become less and less a part of role-playing, the selfish motives to gain either are stripped out of the game and what is left are players acting together to achieve personal redemption rather than personal gain.
If we compare this to the stories we tell, as noted in the source material for the last class, Dan McAdams and Kate McLean argue that redemptive stories lead "to a demonstrably 'good' or emotionally positive outcome" for the participant of the game ~ providing us with legitimate evidence, through research, that acting the part of a hero, and believing that it is motivated by an emotionally healthy impulse, provides greater mental health for the participants of game play.
The Party as One Mind
All these things together provide a strong argument for the characters rightly being heroes in a role-playing game. Heroes work together and make good parties. Heroes contribute to the preparedness of the DM in that they willingly participate in the adventure the DM presents. Heroes ask less for themselves, reducing the need to build campaigns around the glorification of wealth and power. This makes more stable games, where the players adapt to playing at a certain power level for long periods. Finally, the absence of heroism produces patterns of behaviour that are unhealthy, divisive and campaign wrecking.
It is natural, therefore, that as games advance towards competent play, DMs would encourage players to act in an heroic fashion. And players, having experienced non-heroic games, would be appreciative of the dynamic of heroic games and therefore embrace them.
However ... the positivity of a redemptive story as described by McAdams and McLean is not limited strictly to moments of heroism. Any person may feel reinvigorated and redeemed by any positive choice they've made regarding any moment or event they encounter. Heroism is, yes, redemptive; but redemption need not necessarily be heroic.
Heroism is, like storytelling, a matter of personal experience with a method of role-play that works better than non-heroic play. This does not follow, however, that heroic play is necessarily the only possible model that challenges non-heroic play. There is no reason to assume that heroism and the lack of it is a black-and-white model. After all, we do not live in a world of only heroes and villains. We all have the capacity to be heroes, and villains, from moment to moment, without being defined as either emotionally.
Which is why we say that Heroism is a theory of role-play. The argument that the players ARE heroes is subjective and without basis of fact. What evidence can we show that absolutely supports the claim? None. So once again, as with story-telling, we must acknowledge the practicality of supporting the players' choice to be heroes, but we must not conclude that heroism is necessarily a fundamental part of gameplay's structure.
Thank you, that's all for today. Please read McAdams and McLean's essay all the way through if you have not done so already.
With our last two classes, Storytelling and Heroism, we discussed theories that contributed to player well-being and motivation. Today I'd like to talk about a theory of game-play, suspending for the moment a schematic discussion of how moment-to-moment game play might be resolved, and instead discuss a theory that arises among role-players as they progress from Novice to Competent player. That theory would be that the best campaigns or adventures are fundamentally goal-oriented.
Let's examine what I mean by "goal-oriented." The imagination might leap to the most immediate example, the expectation of a party bound on an adventure that produces at the moment of success the substance of Joseph Campbell's elixir, enabling greater knowledge, insight, reconciliation with a lover or some equally necessary treasure to the so-called Heroes' Journey. But here we limit ourselves if we consider merely stories that begin with a hero setting off on a quest, achieving that quest and arriving back home. We have many stories in our lexicons that resolve themselves as simply, such as romances, court intrigue, mystery stories, comedies and tragedies, all of which are compelling and none of which depend on a concrete resolution.
We might base a role-playing campaign on any of these, though admittedly some would find fault with some of these examples ~ and we should understand that this fault finding is subjective, and not indicative of impracticality where role-playing games are concerned. Many role-playing games explicitly examine alternative stories as a basis for game-play.
However, we must take note that all of these games are necessarily goal-driven, because they are fundamentally episodic. They have a recognizable beginning and an end ~ and as such, "adventures" and "alternative" role-playing campaigns are largely bound by the broad strokes of Campbell's thesis: we begin with a call to adventure, we motivate the players towards a goal, the players set off, they are tested, they are rewarded, they return to the ordinary world and await for the next episode to begin.
Or to rephrase it in game mechanic terms, the players sense what is happening, view the model, evaluate the situation, make plans, act ... and then begin the process again with the next episode.
The example on the right is a further example of the same principle. Though we examine the various subjective aspects of what makes "good" or "awful" game-play, we recognize instinctively that the play itself is episodic. The reason is plain to see.
To begin with, our game experiences were initiated with games far simpler than role-playing, almost always with characteristics that included "winning" and "losing." And all of those games were distinctly episodic in format, and almost always in a format that enabled play from the beginning to the end in one sitting. It is natural that we would see RPGs as an extension of that episodic format, even if a given scenario stretches out over several game sessions.
Additionally, when considering what a game scenario ought to be, we return to storytelling ... and again, virtually every example we have of a story is episodic. A book may take many sittings to read, but it, like a movie, a play or the recounting of personal events by a friend, has a recognizable beginning and an end. Long before becoming involved in RPGs, we have already heard many thousands of stories and are thus primed to think naturally in parcels of time when attempting to express ourselves.
When discussing stories, we talked about how good stories obtain the attention of our listeners and make a collection of facts easier to hear and remember. We have all experienced situations where a speaker seems to ramble at length about a group of disconnected ideas and events, the recounting of which seems random and without purpose. We can barely keep our minds from wandering, while wishing to press the speaker to "get to the point" ~ which can be difficult if the speaker is an employer or a lecturer, where self-interest or social propriety disallows such an approach. When thinking of an RPG without a strong, worthy story at its core, our minds travel directly to some situation where we imagine a DM reading off lists of disconnected values, like an accountant droning upon our tax receipts, or the pursuit of a mundane collection of activities, such as an RPG called, "House and Handicrafts."
The necessity of an episodic, story-driven campaign scenario is so powerful that we're bound to think that it's presence cannot possibly be a theory. Yet, again I will remind the class, what have we objectively proven?
Granted, we are raised on an episodic portrayal of events. We have adapted to it, we have embraced it ... and through personal experience we have witnessed examples of the contrary that confirmed that we have taken the right path. Subjectively. We have not, ourselves, examined at length and over an extensive period of time any personal alternative, nor have we demonstrated with anything except our value judgements that RPG campaigns can only be effectively run in the manner of adventures and other episodic formats.
Remember that when we discussed the path from competency to proficiency, Dreyfus wrote about how proficiency meant being able to discriminate between a wide range of choices regarding what might be true and what might not, in order to explore a situation in depth and arrive at a decision that took all the facets of the study into consideration. That is why we make the distinction between a "fact" and a "theory." Not because the theory can't be held to a practical standard, or employed with day to day use, but because it can't be measured directly against other possible theories that might also be employed, if we were to open our mind wide enough to consider that there isn't just one subjective viewpoint ~ our present one ~ in the offing.
For our next class, we'll be talking about the origin of these theories and why they seem to make so much sense that we're loathe to consider any alternative, as we discuss meaning-making.
In each of the three theories discussed so far in this class, including other theories we might have mentioned, the interpretation in each case relates to the way participants learn to manage role-playing games. RPGs are interpreted as story-driven because they draw on the story telling process that has always been there in our communications with each other ~ but role-playing seems to enhance that importance. RPG players are interpreted as heroes because positive games result when we act morally and with respect towards others ~ which has always been true, but role-playing seems to make this more evident than usual. And RPGs are interpreted as goal-driven because we have always strived towards goals, largely by describing our personal narratives in purposeful ways rather than as unpleasant random statements.
Role-playing games simply reflects normal human behaviours. We are story-tellers, whenever we communicate or express what matters to us. We may not always pursue an heroic course but we know perfectly well what's expected; and when in the company of others we present ourselves as the sort of people who would do what's expected. And we are goal-oriented; in many ways, our biology makes us so. We are not interpreting the game with these ideas. We are interpreting the way we play the game. We are holding up a mirror and thinking it is something else.
We should not interpret this as a negative approach. It is, essentially, what psychologists call "meaning-making," a process that we develop at the youngest age, which we carry with us continuously, as we seek to make sense of situations, relationships or ideas we don't fully grasp. We look for frameworks that will help us understand these things; and like our Novice learning an RPG, we start with conventions as children, then move onto axioms we create ourselves and finally, if we are so motivated, we begin to see how other people view the world and establish precepts that enable us to make decisions from multiple possible options. This is how we as humans become proficient as humans.
Let us step back and consider an early issue that arises as we first become acquainted with role-playing: our relationship to the rules of the game. Initially, due to the number of rules involved and our lack of experience, we will view the rules with a "surface" interpretation, much like studying for exams that demand quick answers.
We focus on the words, accept each rule as written, with some assumption that it will become clear later. We view the individual rules as separate bits of data, having little to do with one another. We give considerable credence to the rule source; we interpret the rules as the meaning, bestowing innate, inviolable knowledge to the writer of the rules, presuming that the writer cannot possibly have failed to make the meaning clear when wrestling with the language.
This surface learning begins to break down when others in our association begin to interpret the rules differently than ourselves; and at once we set up standards by which the rules ought to be interpreted, which in turn become conventions for new players. We are making meaning out of the rules in a way that satisfies the immediate needs of the game, but fails to engage with deeper issues and concepts that underlie the rules ~ the very purposes that the rules were originally written to serve. We need to ask ourselves, were the rules written to establish the rules themselves, or were the rules written to enable the full dimensions of the game to be played?
With experience and awareness of how the game's rules apply in a wide variety of situations, we begin to understand that the meaning of the text is deeper than the words used to describe it. We recognize that learning the game is a conscious agent of understanding the rules in an holistic sense ~ how the object of the game depends on a wide view, where the individual rules are not isolated but in fact relate to each other in multitudinous ways. We seek to compare our interpretations with the semantic message-making of the rules as written and integrate both into our game play (possibly making new interpretations or rewriting the rules), creating axioms. And finally, we test our interpretations on players during games and either reinforce our axioms or revise them.
For most people, this is done entirely without conscious awareness of the process. We only discuss the process here in order to understand it, and through understanding make ourselves more aware of what we ourselves are doing, and what others are doing when they communicate with us.
The rules of the game are merely one small facet of the meanings we create for ourselves while comparing what we're told, or what we read, with our own deep investigation into the fundamental material used to communicate RPGs. Deep learning leads to meaning-making that produces stronger practices and more relevant advances in game play (it does with all other human activity as well). Deep learning encourages closer examination of the sources, which leads to strategies for an even deeper and more holistic approach to meaning that we make out of the game.
With the last three classes, I have been emphasizing that what we believe about the game, as expressed in various theories, is subjective and is therefore not knowledge, which requires objective proof. At this point we need to ask the question, is meaning-making knowledge?
No. It is not. Meaning-making is also subjective and we should not mistake our interpretations of the materials as knowledge-making. It would be fully possible to concoct meanings from a given source material with a highly obscure or highly prejudiced sensibility, ending with a viewpoint or values that were extreme or even perverse. In our experiences with the internet, we have all seen many such examples ... we need not list them.
What makes meaning meaningful is that it has the potential to be shared. Our perceived reality must be communicable to others, to give it any legitimacy. The reason why we draw on studies and resources for this class comes from our recognition that others have produced ideas and theories that sought to be recognizable to others in the same field, who were examining the same materials and arriving at approximately the same axioms to explain the various facets behind human behaviour or comprehension. When we make meanings that approach a positive self-concept, others respond to the values of that concept and re-evaluate their own approaches along a continuum between interpersonal behaviour and intergroup behaviour. This concept defines what we think of as social identity theory.
Without the possibility of knowledge making, given that objective proof of our interpretations has escapes human abilities for the present, meaning-making along that continuum is the best we have. It is not enough for us to make meanings for ourselves. We are prescribed to create meanings that others will find valuable; and to express those meanings in a manner that will enable others to build on our interpretations in a positive manner that can then be carried forward by other persons and later generations. In this sense we move the process towards knowledge, even if knowledge itself is outside our abilities.
With our next classes, we'll be investigating meaning-making strategies for game play that semantic, interpretive and holistic in nature, before moving onto lectures where we'll be discussing a base understanding of key structures and functional design of role-playing games.
I'll just remind the class that the mid-term exam in coming up with our 16th class ... and that studying early should be something you'll consider doing. We'll talk about the particulars of the exam soon.
A little early for Christmas, but the right sentiment nonetheless
Today we want to look at how some of the material we've been discussing has a practical application. To begin a brief overview, we began with the question, what parts of the game are absolutely fundamental, regardless of the participants and their impact on the material? We then discussed the methods by which we prepare ourselves for playing the game, employing research, estimation and planning, resources and education, then practice and rehearsal.
Afterwards, we examined the process by which an uninformed player of the game becomes competent, then how a competent player becomes an expert ~ and linked to that, an examination between subjective and objective evidence and its influence on our thinking processes. We then discussed methods of determining the values of subjective evidence, as a means of pursuing objectivity where none exists, through conventions, preparations and mentorship. Our next three classes dealt with popular theories of RPGs: storytelling, heroism and episodic game-play. Then with our last class, we pursued the fundamentals of meaning-making, in which we spoke about the meanings we make for ourselves, that serve as a stand-in for knowledge, when making decisions about presenting role-playing games.
Our intention today is to show how preparedness readies us to be mentors, through our understanding of the principles, language and distinctions of RPGs, that in turn places novices on a strong footing to apprehend the game and make themselves capable of the social interactions that take place at the game table. This is not only a matter of creating new gamemasters, but also through improving the comprehension of the game players themselves, enabling them to know more thoroughly the game they are playing, through the eyes of the person running the game.
This is all important. All the participants, and not just the Dungeon Master, need to understand every facet of what is happening, all the time ~ just as the participants of any recreational joint activity are given full and complete information about all the facets of any particular game, sport or recreation. We inform others interested in fishing where the fish are, what the rules surrounding fishing are, what lures and available means of fishing exist and we do so cheerfully and without reservation. Likewise with participation in a team sport, or when we sit to play a board game. Socially we consider the social process of meaning-making includes full disclosure where the rules and opportunties are concerned ~ we only conceal our individual strategies and tactics.
As individuals, it falls upon us to explain concepts and limits to other players freely. We do so because the activity is communal and friendly. We do so because fellow informed players who learn the game we play waste less of our time asking questions, making confused and erroneous choices, failing to take part in discussions because they don't really understand what's going on and ultimately choosing not to take part again, either because they don't "get it," or because they are ashamed to admit they need help.
It does nothing for us not to explain how specific tools, weapons or spells work. We have nothing to gain by insisting that players teach themselves, to "prove" themselves worthy of our games, as though the goal is to demonstrate commitment to an ideology rather than active participation. It does nothing for the DM to reserve knowledge about rules from the players, as an "edge" that gives the DM more power to pervert the game in the DM's favor, as though knowing what the rules are exists as a challenge to the DM's power, rather than a means of facilitating easier and better game-play. A lack of clarity among players and DM is tiresome and destructive to game play. A social agreement upon the rules ~ all the rules, all the time ~ creates momentum, trust, unified goals and streamlined play.
Where possible, we should take the time explain the terminology used throughout the game, suspending the game as necessary. If need be, we can invest some time explaining the relationship between the terminology and how the players view the matter being represented - for example, what a "hit point" is in the game we're running, and what it represents. We need to obtain a consensus on the use of each skill used by the players, what it does, how it works in this campaign, what limits it has ... and then expand that practice to all the aspects of the game.
In some sense, this is like the "session zero" that is postulated by some participants ~ but we really need to go further. Role-playing games change progressively as more skills, powers and levels of status become available to the players, so orientation needs to be a constant part of the game process.
Where a consensus cannot be reached; where discord repeatedly disrupts the game over a point of the rules or a point of character building, or with role-play, then discard that rule ... disallow that means of character building ... and reduce the use of role-play. We cannot stress this enough. Meaning-making demands social connectivity and relative thought processes, in order to produce a symbiotic thinking apparatus that enables all the participants to share the experience. If discord keeps popping up, it is a system error. The system is driving the participants apart. The answer is to change the system ~ either replacing it with something better or removing it's necessity. Organizing thinking among the participants improves the subjective experience for all, because it is the same subjective experience.
By investing comparatively little time in making all the participants aware of the game's precepts, we reduce opportunities for gamesmanship. Gamesmen take advantage of conflict, distraction and antagonism to "break the flow" of the activity. "Flow" is the mental state of operation in which a single person, or group of people, are fully immersed in an activity to the point where they are fully absorbed. A common experience where flow occurs is when one's sense of space and time is lost. Hours go by without consciously experienced as one does when participating in activities that are dull, repetitive or taxing.
Breaking flow is the act of disrupting immersion by tactics such as asking questions that have already been answered, demanding approval or attention, making comments or refences to material that are out of context, dragging out a decision that needs making, adding unnecessary noise, giving purposeless or directly destructive advice, speaking out of turn and so on ... all elements which are advantaged by unclear semantics in the rules, practices that spark conflicts and multiple interpretations of the same game element.
When explaining the rules and precepts of a role-playing game to the participants, the least likely person to appreciate the effort will most likely be the player who feels they "already know the answer" ~ which precludes the certainty of consensus ~ or who feels that the practice is a "waste of time." This last clearly indicates that one participant at least is not seeking the social aspect of game play, but is instead already angling for advantage against the others. The most troublesome players will most likely resent any methodology, most of all one that brings the less prepared players up to speed on aspects such as character abilities, options and ways to strengthen their character's effectiveness in play.
In particular, many DMs will resist enhancement of their own players on these lines, being themselves anxious to advantage their own understanding of the rules while undermining the understanding of their players. Such DMs will resist any attempt to gain knowledge from the player's perspective. DMs of this type should be recognized early and avoided.
Very well. With our next class, we'll be discussing the group dynamics of play, covering group strategies, learning through game play and the manner in which brighter more experienced players can be encouraged to "apprentice" players of lesser calibre.
Consensus isn't easy.
With our last class, we discussed the orientation of each player to game fundamentals of role-playing, arguing that better comprehension for all concerned would heighten the players' enjoyment and make for a more engaging experience. When all the players are able to communicate clearly, nearly or all of the time, play is streamlined and the participants are able to invest themselves at a faster pace, on a higher game level. This happens because conflict is reduced.
Let's move on to a discussion of the players' effects on each other during play, as the DM introduces situations that the players must resolve. To do this, we need to consider some of the dynamics at play between the individual players - and to visualize those players, we can take advantage of the six-personality types developed by the American psychologist John L. Holland. Obviously, this is greatly simplified and no one should imagine that players can be slotted into types so that there are only six types of players. This is an exercise, to highlight the manner in which disparate people might communicate with each other during game play.
As indicated by the image, the six types each express a peculiar outlook or preference towards particular kinds of jobs ... and the development of a personal skill set that contributes to the performance of those jobs. The conventional tends to like structure and to keep records; the realistic is hands on and practical, with a penchant for independent action; the thinker observes, evaluates, solves problems and is reserved; the artistic puts much of their energy into expression, creativity and a desire to act in unstructured situations; the social feels a strong need to help others, to inform or enlighten if the situation allows; and the enterprising likes to direct, influence, persuade or manage others. For anyone who has participated in a role-playing game, it is easy to see how each character type manifests itself.
The conventional player is keeping track of everyone the party meets and keeping the dungeon map straight, while maintaining that rules are rules. She takes notice when the DM says anything unclear, and asks questions because she dislikes anything that's ambiguous. The realistic player is min/maxing his character, taking advantage of every flaw in the rules and pushing for more power because for him, more power means a better chance at survival. The investigative player is puzzling and overthinking every aspect of the game so far, proposing theories, analyzing every detail and bearing down on any mystery that might be present, certain that they will figure it out before the DM makes the reveal. He is also holding back, listening, whenever the party is taking action or discussing things with themselves and others. The artistic player is designing the appearance of his character, and the castle he'll build one day, and the elaborate backstory of his character, while showing little interest in the campaign's mundane details, such as how much food there is or even what day it is. The social player is anxious that everyone gets a chance to speak, she is carrying extra supplies in case someone runs out, she is willing to go along with the majority and rarely speaks up against the majority - and, in fact, only joins the majority once it has formed without her. Finally, the enterprising character is organizing the party, directing who goes with who when the party has to separate, is the first to speak up when speaking with non-player characters and is often the first to sacrifice themselves if a sacrifice is necessary. The enterprising player will often ensure that everyone speaks in order so that everyone gets a chance to speak (which often pleases each other personality type differently but positively).
We could continue to discuss their individual approaches to the game, deconstructing their motivations and aspirations, but none of these players exist in the game alone and none of them are immune to the influences that other players have. Towards that end, we would do better to discuss how they interact together and learn from one another.
Towards that end, I've reworked the earlier image to give each of the personality types a name. Since we have the images to remind us, we can quickly identify these six players and remember what they are individually. We can imagine Ian sitting between Richard and Armand, with Connie, Ernest and Sophie on the opposite side of the table and the DM posed between Sophie and Armand. Both these last two are more likely to sit nearest the DM, as they are gregarious and attentive. Armand wants to show his latest creations and Sophie likes the position of being seated at the DM's left hand.
Richard and Ian are both remote; Richard because he sees his role as opposing the DM while Ian simply wants to watch everyone. Ernest wants to watch everyone also, but positions himself so that everyone at the table ~ except the DM ~ is immediately close to hand. Connie, too, is remote; but only because she views herself as the keeper of notes and is comfortable where she is furthest from direct inspection by the DM.
It might seem purposeful to discuss how these personalities conflict with each other ~ yet conflict is more rightly seen as a means to an end, rather than as an isolated event. If Ernest and Richard conflict over an issue, the conflict itself is not the goal, but rather the resolution of that conflict. Remember when we discussed earlier that shared meaning making came about through interpersonal and intergroup behaviour. To achieve a consensus, each participant will want to give their perception of the issue ~ over time, a positive group will find a way to achieve consensus and that particular conflict will be brought to a close. Conflicts are time-limited, whereas a consensus can potentially reach into future generations. There are many aspects of human culture that began as bloody conflicts, but eventually resolved themselves into mutual agreements that have lasted centuries as legacies shared down through generations.
However different Richard and Ernest might be, over time Richard will see things in Ernest's management of the table that will seem appropriate and successful ~ and Richard will adopt those strategies. Ernest will watch how Richard has chosen his weapons and skill sets and will likewise choose to incorporate the same tactics. Sophie, who might be intimidated by Richard, will feel comfortable enough with Ernest to let the latter show her how to incorporate Richard's ideas. Ian will puzzle it out as the tactic is discussed around the table, then suggest a point where Richard's ideas could be improved ~ and Richard will immediately incorporate Ian's suggestion. Armand will find reasons not to incorporate the change, such as the lack of personality in everyone approaching the game the same way; and both Ernest and Connie will see merit in that argument and reduce some of Richard's harsher choices. Armand might then try a watered down version of what Sophie has adopted. And so it goes, round and round the table.
Armand says something clever to a non-player character and Ian is impressed. The next time, Ian tries a similar reply, which gets a slightly different response from the DM than Armand got (partly because the DM has also been thinking about Armand's earlier riposte). Connie has been thinking about the earlier exchange also and quickly comes up with something that supports Ian this time. Her phrase gets a big laugh from Richard, Sophie and Ernest, which increases Connie's comfort playing with this group. Richard encourages everyone at the table to speak their minds to NPCs and gets an approval from Sophie ... so Richard tries to say something in the parley that is still ongoing; unfortunately, this falls flat. Ian tells Richard why, Richard takes it a little hard, Sophie says something encouraging and Armand changes the subject by saving Richard's comment with a quick explanatory lie. Ernest, ever the persuader, sees how to expand the lie and in moments, Richard's failed effort is forgotten. If Richard feels encouraged by his peers, he'll try again ... and eventually will learn something about role-playing by watching Ernest and Armand go at it. And so it goes around the table.
This process is called Situated Learning. So long as the participants of any activity are busy taking part in that activity, they will habitually learn from one another and ultimately incorporate pieces of what they observe into their own behaviour, no matter who they are or whether they are conscious of doing so. In neither example given above is any player aware that they are watching, incorporating, self-selecting material or actively teaching the others in their group. Yet it is happening ~ and over long periods, as a result of hundreds of hours of parties acting together, players will learn immensely just from watching each other play.
Note that I have been careful not to dictate that the manner of play of any of these participants is "better" or "inferior" to another. Whatever the personality make-up of a game's participants, the players cannot help being what they are or finding importance in the things that matter to them. Our goal should not be to dictate which player behaviour is appropriate ... or even to dictate what all the players must do with their characters or their approach to the game. A positively managed group of players ~ those who are encouraged to resolve conflicts, respect each other's differences and focus on the game and not their immediate emotional needs ~ will eventually create a symbiosis that will cause all the players to behave in a single, unified manner, respecting each others abilities and peculiar gifts for solving specific problems.
There are problems in game play that only Ian can solve; or that only Connie or Sophie can solve. There are situations that call for Ernest's management of the whole party. Sometimes, Richard will save the day with his mechanical perspective; and sometimes Armand will save the day with his creative perspective. And each player at the table will take a little bit of the others so that they will have some of Richard's power, Connie's methodology, Ian's insight or Sophie's patience. This is how our education happens, everyday, regardless of what we are doing that day or where we are going. We learn by watching, agreeing, adopting, seeing it done better, refining, innovating and then adapting that innovation ... while everyone in our company is doing the same, using our processes just as we are using theirs.
This is how we reach a consensus as a whole culture, by making meaning as we go and encouraging others to do the same. This is how millions of people steadily shift towards believing the same things. The practice is pragmatic, complex and incomprehensibly effective.
Very well, that's enough for today. Just a reminder, we will have one more class and the one after will be the mid-term exam. The mid-term will count for 40% of your grade.
After the previous two classes covering game consensus and situated learning, we come now to the existential development of the role-playing character. This is the process by which the character consciously or unconsciously shifts it’s original purpose and conception through hundreds of hours of game play. Essentially, dealing with the world, managing the struggles and difficulties associated with adventuring, the precepts upon which the character was founded grow less and less important, while the existential needs and wants of the character take precedence. The player will, without awareness, reshape his or her perspective, so that past expectations will be achieved or discarded in favor of a new perspective. Just as we do with our daily lives.
This. too, is connected with meaning making. The meanings we created once no longer apply; we have new knowledge now … and with it, new meanings.
From the perspective of playing and managing a role-playing game, we need to ask ourselves, how can we advance this change in knowledge, and thereby advance the habit of characters constantly making new meanings for themselves? How can we encourage player and character growth, together? Because obviously it is not really the character that grows, but the player’s conception of the character.
Before we can answer that question, we must first understand the principles underlying rupture and reconstruction. This is a universal phenomenon which we all know from personal experience.
The normal pattern of an individual's life follows a pattern of stability interrupted by rupture, followed by restructuring and then new stability. Ruptures can be radical, causing PTSD, defying restructuring and lasting in years of oscillation between temporary comfort and difficulty. Ruptures can also be highly transitory, so that something upsetting that happened a particular morning can be acknowledged, managed and ultimately restructured within hours. Psychology tends to look at the larger moments of rupture because these are much more difficult to manage and often require outside assistance.
Ruptures are highly variable in type. Ruptures can result from cultural changes and conflicts, such as war or the appearance of some new ideology or social-changing technology. Ruptures can result as a change in a person's environment, such as moving to a new city or country, a change in management at work or a recession. Relationship changes, such as divorce, a death in the family, a child leaving home, new love or a change of interests can be a rupture. Merely growing older, an increase in health issues or changes in one's belief system should also be included. Ruptures may happen in an instant, or they may accumulate over a period of years. We need to recognize here, however, that the origin of the rupture is much less important than the effect the rupture has upon the way the person views their immediate world.
We each move from home to office, from office to entertainment venue, from venue to home, from home to parents home ... and each of these spheres possesses a recognizeable identity for us. We go where we are comfortable; and the less we recognize the sphere, the more hesitant we are to go there, or let ourselves interact with it. Going on vacation is stress-inducing because we don't know that sphere and we have reason to question that choice. A bad vacation can very much be a rupture, one that we will have to deal with while losing that opportunity to relax from our day jobs. This is one reason why some people never go on vacation.
Ruptures, when they occur, cause uncertainty. Uncertainty is generally seen to be full of tension and anxiety, but it can also be felt as excitement (again, the thrill of going on vacation, to see something we've never seen, is both exciting and stressful). Uncertainty can be paralyzing. It can bring on the oscillation between our coming to terms with what's happened, while feeling despair or depression as we fail to overcome the rupture. We feel a compulsion to explore, to experience newness, but we are also well aware from our own experience that newness can often have a high price.
Our takeaway here should be that we often deliberately court rupture. We change jobs for the sake of opportunity, we seek out relationships or to end relationships, we adventure into dangerous places for the sake of newness, we play dangerous sports and other games ... and we do these things because, following the oscillation of the reconstruction process, we grow as people. We see, we experience, we learn, we advance, we develop new ideas and we come away with new tools and methods of managing ruptures that might occur in our future. If a rupture occurs, we feel certain that we will handle it and that ultimately that management, that reconstruction, will make us stronger.
Most meaningful activities, the ones we most remember, the ones that bring us the greatest amount of satisfaction, deliberately risk some form of rupture. The very concept of game-playing is rupture on a micro-level. Let's take a moment and view a typical role-playing campaign in terms of micro-ruptures.
The players create their characters in an atmosphere of certainty, with free time to conjure up backgrounds, purchase equipment, chat with each other about plans and build up their confidence. Soon, however, after venturing out, they encounter a difficulty. They have to reassess; change some of their expectations. But then they advance, restore their characters, head out again ... and get into some really serious trouble.
Soon, it looks like it could end in a total-party-kill. Several members of the party begin to identify their situation with inevitable doom. Another disaster befalls the party and yet they fight it out. Things swing wildly back and forth. For a moment, the party is safe; then all hell breaks loose. Someone's character dies. Another falls unconscious. Then something is found - treasure, or equipment - and the dead character is restored and the party advances in ability ... one more difficulty and the party retreats back to town and catches their breath. There is a moment of comfort again.
But because of their actions, a new rupture is forming. The enemy has followed the party back to town and now there is a momentous battle. Magic items are used, some are destroyed; the enemy seems impossible to kill; there's no telling who will win; the party's tension rises, the moment is very exciting ...
We deliberately pursue this format of game play because it reflects our characteristics as biological, thinking entities. We equate rupture with growth; we equate the threat of rupture with purpose. And then, following the rupture, we narrate the process of stability-rupture-reconstruction and new stability as a story ... because that is how we are constructed to think.
For those who may be familiar with the term, "the Hero's Journey" described by Joseph Campbell is nothing more than the fundamental structure of human being's adapting and reconstructing themselves psychologically following any rupture that might have occurred in their lives. Campbell's "universality of theme" exists because every person writing a story is a biological human being.
Our goal is to see clearly how creating rupture is the heart of the campaign structure - much more so than story or heroism. Story is only the recording of the process; heroism is only the self-perception of how we rose to the challenge. Both are second-hand descriptors of what is really happening. We need to lay aside non-specific language and address the functional process directly. We will continue with this subject, applying the cyclical process of experiential rupture and growth after the Mid-Term exam.
I'll take this moment and say a few words about the Mid-Term, which will be the next class. There will be four essay questions on the exam - the student should choose only two of the essay questions, then write a 500-word essay on each of those two questions. For those students who cannot follow instructions, you will be graded on the first two exam questions that I see pass my desk. Each exam question will be worth 50% of the total mark on the mid-term, which as I said before will be worth 40% of your final grade.
You will be given one week from the time when the exam is posted to submit your answers. Your answers should be submitted to my email, alexiss1@telus.net. You will not receive a grade if you do not submit your answers to my email. You may, if you wish, submit your answers directly to the blog (splitting your answers up as needed to make it fit), but answers submitted to the blog will not be published until after the exam deadline has passed. Answers submitted to the blog but NOT to my email address will not be graded and will not be published.
I will be grading each essay according to the following method:
You will not be graded on your spelling or your grammar. Remember that a D is a Pass. I wish the best of luck to all concerned.
Below are four essay questions. Choose two and write a 500-word essay on each. Be concise and do not exceed the proscribed length; it is enough to give a clear indication that you understand the material.
1. Dreyfuss describes five stages of skill acquisition. Explain the progression from competency to proficiency from the perspective of preparedness (research, estimation, planning, resources, education, practice or rehearsal) using whichever form of preparedness seems most applicable to you.
2. Describe ways in which mentorship can advance the creation of game consensus and effectively situated learning; then describe ways in which mentorship can obstruct game consensus and undermine situated learning. Relate positive and negative mentorship to meaning-making.
3. Explain how unrestrained subjective thinking in managing role-playing games leads to the calcification of ideas and creative ability, particularly in the progression of novice to competent player. Relate your answer to the course definition of conventions and axioms.
4. Give reasons for why we prefer to use the enigmatic term "story" to describe the process of stability-rupture-reconstruction-stability rather than a more anatomical approach when describing to others, "how to play?" Given that "create a story" is a more popular form of advice than, "create a set of obstacles that will force your players to reimagine their characters," how do we expect the first advice to serve as a template for the creation of game worlds?
You will be given until 12:01 AM Saturday, Nov 17, to submit your answers. Your answers should be submitted to my email, alexiss1@telus.net. You will not receive a grade if you do not submit your answers to my email. You may, if you wish, submit your answers directly to the blog (splitting your answers up as needed to make it fit), but answers submitted to the blog will not be published until after the exam deadline has passed. Answers submitted to the blog but NOT to my email address will not be graded and will not be published.
Grades will be posted Nov 17-18th as I am able.
Thank you and welcome back. Before the break we were speaking about three levels of meaning-making: reaching consensus, situational learning and experiential. Psychologists call these semantic meaning, pragmatic meaning and existential meaning. With the second half of this course, we'll try to give these meaning-making ideals structure and application, as a means of developing game worlds that are vital, creative and effective in game play.
When we approach a role-playing game, whether as first-time players of the game or in that specific campaign, we begin by requiring a clear and complete understanding of the rules. Earlier, we discussed this as reaching a game consensus, but there is much more to it. The game setting and the approach of the DM and all the other players creates a certain characteristic in that social group – and we must acclimate ourselves to that characteristic in order to be accepted. We can call this phase of play, Orientation.
Once the player adapts and sees how the game world and its inhabitants function in the DM’s eyes, the player will advance their styles of game play to match. These styles will be augmented and copied by the other players, just as we spoke about when we addressed situational learning. As the players improve their ability to play, the DM will be pushed to provide a higher standard to that play. We can call this phase of play, Innovation.
As the players continue to advance in their game play, they will begin to challenge the limitation of the DM’s version of the world. This is a relative comparison; players that are much more advanced than the DM will challenge the DM’s version more quickly; while other players who are not as advanced as the DM will come to challenge the DM’s version more slowly. Much has been written and said about the DM’s prerogative to maintain the DM’s version against Players who seek to change that version, the mainstream arguing from the position that the DM “owns” the version in question. This is non-sensical, in light of what we understand from situational learning and what we understand from the process of stability-rupture-reconstruction-stability. Changing is a rupture for the DM, but the lack of change can be just as much a rupture for the players. The healthy approach is to recognize that change is inevitable, positive and ultimately leads to a better version for ALL the participants, DM and Player alike. We can call this phase of play, Renovation.
These three phases, orientation, innovation and renovation, institute a culture that is measured by what is true about the game, what is efficient about the game, what is good about the game and what is beautiful about the game.
Truth measures the veracity of game elements: in orientation, the necessity of certain rules, whether or not we enjoy them; in innovation, the devotion and effort that is required to succeed; and in renovation, the legitimacy of wanting the game to be better, not just for one’s needs but for the sake of the game’s potential.
Efficiency measures our will and ability to put all these things into some kind of order: in orientation, to master the art of combing through a character sheet and investing oneself with the knowledge of what’s possible; in innovation, grasping all the elements of possibility at one’s disposal with enough sense to combine ideas to invoke new ideas; and in renovation, the preparedness to take a scalpel or a hammer to a problem and either cut it out or advance it towards the most healthy end product.
Good measures the robust satisfaction in playing: in orientation, the thrill of at last conceiving the game’s structure and function; in innovation, the triumph of creating means to vanquish enemies and safeguard treasures and self; and in renovation, the epiphany of seeing just how far the vistas of game play can reach, apart from the simple mechanics limited by human mastery.
Beautiful measures the awe we feel as we comprehend our roles: in orientation, seeing a player character come to life from a collection of numbers and words; in innovation, reflecting upon the challenges that have been overcome and one’s personal will in taking on things that are greater still; and in renovation, the comprehension that humans, unleashed, can be as effective as gods in realms of the imagination.
These are highly generalized ideals and some of you will find it difficult just now to see the direct material application of each. Yet these concepts form the basis of a culturally inherited structure that has been in place since the 1970s ~ though largely distorted and misunderstood through the lack of research. The goal of this course is to find meaning in these ideals, so that the construction of the game world and the specific manner in which players interact can be more thoroughly understood without sentiment, guesswork or the expectation of quick answers. We're not seeking an objective cause-and-effect model that will predict and control game behaviour, but rather a steadily increasing understanding of a complex, shared experience that will influence the manner in which we practice the game.
That is why we have painstakingly spent 16 classes establishing that the principles underlying role-playing games are not based on "opinion" or "taste," but are in fact grounded in psychology and empirical research pursued by tens of thousands of thinkers and researchers seeking answers for all human experience. Role-playing is a human experience and is not divorced from the fundamentals of social meaning-making ... but role-playing as a specific aspect of that meaning-making has been ignored, in part because outside observers may see it as "just a game" whereas inside observers are resistant against any deconstruction that might established fixed principles that could be used to dictate "good play" from "poor play."
Our goal here is not to distinguish either, but to view any participant as one whose comprehension, expertise or satisfaction from game play can be increased if said participant is willing to learn.
We can say, for example, that the specific form of any set of rules associated with role-playing is immaterial when compared with the fundamental principle that it is the duty and goal of the participants to know the rules, examine the rules closely, test the rules, establish precedents to bind parts of the game that were not formerly granted rules and ultimately to adjust, rewrite or discard rules which ~ by the consensus of the participants ~ failed to remain purposeful in providing a peak game experience.
This would mean that those RPG players who have opted to adjust the rules so that player death almost certainly never occurs are not operating outside the principles of maintaining a proper sensibility about rules. Some ~ including this instructor ~ see that alteration as unpalatable and even destructive to the game experience, but it is not a wrong way to play. It is up to each group of participants, working within their social group, to decide for themselves what rules should be upheld and to what degree they should be detailed.
Naturally, we should expect to see conflicts arise between groups playing wildly different adaptations of a single RPGs, or between RPG variants of the same genre ~ but conflict is positive and even informative, so long as it is understood that political or ethical ideas of "wrong" or "right" don't attach themselves to the way a single player begins orientation into a single gamespace. No two game spaces anywhere are alike; nor is any game space today alike to the game space it will transform into at a future date. Role-playing is not an end result. Role-playing is a process.
That's enough said on the matter, which we need not bring up again in class. With our next class we'll begin our discussion of orientation to the game setting.
a
Anything can be a game setting.
18th Class: Orientation
Having established in the lab what orientation serves in promoting better game play, let's take some time today to discuss issues associated with orientation and why it remains an obscure idea in role-playing. It is true that some have moved forward and advanced the idea of "session zero." I recommend that you do some reading on the subject, though as far as I know there is no "official" version. Most view it as negotiation between the players and the DM, or as a sort of "job interview" to learn of the players and DM are compatible. There's no real indication that the idea is being treated as an opportunity for orientation as described in the lab.
So why has orientation not become a common part of role-playing. There are a number of reasons, most of which brings us back to the subject of preparedness. If we research into the original writings and descriptions of game play going back the last four decades, we can see quite clearly that explaining to people "how to play the game" has lacked a distinct methodology. It was seen early on that most were learning the game through mentorship, in that participants would come to the game as players, watch the DM for a time, then feel confident enough to try their hand at DMing. All the early books of D&D, prior to the advanced set, gave less than 500 words to any sort of orientation, and usually much less. Gary Gygax's DMs Guide gave just two and a quarter pages, most of which is flavor text and distinctly lacking in concrete ideals that DMs might share with their players. No singular book of significant importance attempting to explain how to play any role-playing game appears until the 2000s, with no book of that type offering any fundamental principles on exactly how to introduce new players to the game in a manner that brings them significantly up to speed with regards to their knowledge and ability to play. Most texts effect a reassurance or promote confidence, without stipulating specific step-by-step instructions. This remains true to this day.
The matter is left entirely up to individual DMs, who remain mixed on just what should be covered, or ought to be discussed, before actual game play begins. Many DMs feel it is a waste of time, that everything can be learned in progress, with a fixed belief that good players pick it up quickly whereas bad players are not especially wanted and that it is better if they find some other thing to do. As with any comparable activity, the result is that many join the game but depart soon after, or cease playing once their experience with role-playing peaks, so that they willingly abandon the activity for something else, usually after the convenience of the activity (with school or a joined community) falls off. Most participants usually play, at most, two or three years, never fully comprehending role-playing's potential and viewing the activity as a casual something they did in their youth. There's no fault in this, as people always find something to do, but we should wonder how temporary participants might have continued to play if they'd had a better understanding of the game's potential.
With a lack of clear guidelines on how to provide a useful orientation, it is very difficult to estimate how much orientation is necessary. Given the immense amount of detail available, plus inconsistent and hard to define playing styles, the idea of a structured orientation seems beyond the ordinary DM, who must effectively design their own orientation scheme entirely from scratch. This further promotes the "in progress" ideal, as it seems the only alternative is to spend several sessions doing nothing but talking about how the game would work in theory before actually playing. Most, therefore, compensate by treating early runnings as a primer, subsidizing play by ensuring no one dies, that mistakes don't count or that do overs are fair, all recognizing that holding players to strict account to a game they don't ~ and can't ~ fully understand as yet isn't actually fair.
Planning an orientation, then, without premises or foundations, is an insurmountable obstacle. The number of details quickly addressed in the lab gives just a taste of what's actually involved ~ or could be involved ~ if we were to make a plan in any definitive or conclusive way. In many ways, our own full understanding of what a DM does, or ought to do, along with a full comprehension of rules and game play, simply isn't there. We feel distinctly at a loss, and overwhelmed, at the idea of trying to address a complete orientation on a subject when we ourselves never received such an orientation. And we worry that things we would say in such an orientation would be later held against us, because we're not fully sure of these things from the start.
What we need is a set of resources telling us how to go about the process point-by-point, and a strong educational format that we can follow, so that we feel assured that the orientation we give is something that works in our favor as DMs and not something we'll regret later. Institutionally, however, this would require that these resources had our best interests in mind and that they were designed specifically to increase our understanding of the role-playing game we had chosen. Unfortunately, no such institutional framework exists. The need for an orientation is barely, at this time, even acknowledged (with clumsy steps being made by the "session zero" concept). Much of the role-playing community and "official" structure is compromised by a spectacular fragmentation of RPGs in general, with most major genres and forms all experiencing several iterations that further serve to muddy what standards might have been imposed forty years ago. As a result, we have no material resources for readying players for our campaigns, nor any expectation of a systemic educational formula to come from any reputable source. On this count we are in the dark and we expect to remain in the dark.
Therefore, DMs do what they can. To some extent we practice at introducing the players to the game by considering for ourselves what we want to say with the start of each game session. We usually have a few things we want to specifically identify, such as adjustments in the rules or our expressed desire that the players follow a certain decorum when playing (less jokes, paying more attention, maintaining their character sheets more readably, etcetera). Without the motivation for the creation of a more involved orientation, we specifically practice how to get along without one ~ thereby establishing a mental framework that one isn't needed, because it has never been applied. This tautology, however reasonable it sounds, conveniently dispenses with any notion of improving on an awkward scattering of asked for behaviours and expectations without ever making it clear to the players which ones really matter or which need addressing more than once. As a result, many games are endlessly bogged down with disagreement, discontent, players who don't show up, DMs who display frustration and apparently unreasonable demands or campaigns that cannot sustain themselves for more than a session or two. Without communication, the motivation to dig in and commit cannot be expected from people who don't know what's expected or what they're doing.
This means that the opportunity to rehearse the process of game play never materializes. Examples of smooth coordination between the players don't occur in the short time they have together before the campaign fizzles out, or they occur spontaneously but cannot be recreated at will. This in turn has created a belief in many RPG participants that campaigns "don't work," usually ascribing lack of time or personalities as the culprits, pushing for game adventures that can be played in a single night, obfuscating any need for commitment or, indeed, for meaningful orientation. And because this works in practice, it sustains itself as an ideal among many participants, who then never see the potential of RPGs in their full flower.
So what can we do? To begin with, acknowledge the importance of orientations in every human activity, including RPGs. We train people to do jobs, to learn how to ski or kayak, to save themselves or victims in times of a medical crisis, to ready themselves for vacations, weddings or funerals, including how to write a will, how to renovate your house, how to life hack your day-to-day, etcetera, because education bestows knowledge and knowledge is power over the complex things of life that we want to do or overcome. We might ultimately learn to ski on our own, but a morning of orientation saves us a great deal of time and unpleasantness by pointing out the few simple things that everyone learns early on when they first encounter skiing. That is all that orientation is: an outline of the things of any activity that are easiest to learn and can be explained in just a few sentences, to get us on our way to more complex experiences.
We can research orientations in other activities and transcribe some of the points to our own endeavors. We can use our experience at an orientation for a job or some other activity as a guideline to estimate how much effort we want to put towards that process. We can write a list of specific things we wish every player understood clearly about our game worlds.
Having that, we can then search for consistencies across thousands of game worlds to build a guidebook that would enable other DMs to create working orientations that would suit their games specifically. Perhaps the focus of the "session zero" concept can be oriented away from character building and towards character play and participation ... but I'm not seeing that focus changing at this time.
Finally, we can practice in our minds a better ideal of what it means to introduce players to our game, as discussed in the lab. And we can rehearse the process of giving orientations over and over, until they become easy to implement and even enjoyable for the player, as they learn precisely what to expect from the campaign and their place in it.
I've played in this game