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D&D: The GameMaster Theory

I rarely write either RPG articles or theory articles, but I think I should given that this blog was always intended to handle all forms of table top gaming and role-playing definitely falls into that category.  In particular however that I actually do love RPG’s and play them as often as I can.

I actually kicked off this blog with articles about D&D several years back,  so I thought why not get back into the spirit of things by continuing kind of where I left off.

One aspect I love to explore about D&D is its rich history as a game, fandom that is associated with it and the many different versions and variations of D&D that have been released since Gygax’s original work.   This goes far beyond simply editions of the game as we have seen offshoots, based on re-imaginings and even spoofs.  More than that though I love to muse about the theories and ideas behind being a great GM and this will be the topic of today.

Hackmaster is one of the more curious games to come out with the D&D premise, in this case it was originally a spoof of the game.

First I would like to say that I think Gygax, no matter what he ever said or thought about how his game was treated after he himself stopped working on it, he certainly should be proud of the legacy and fans he created.  His passing was a great loss to the RPG community, but really his creativity lives on and among gamers, having a story about how you played D&D in the past, is perhaps one of the most common things most table top gamers share.  Few of us will ever see the day where we create something that wonderful, it really is a lifetime achievement.

With Gygax’s passing, the RPG community lost one of the greats but it should never be forgotten how controversial many of his ideas about RPG’s are today.

Despite this however Gygax’s work is often seen in the light of what he started, rather then a body of work that is relevant in today’s gaming communities.  This irks me personally because I actually believe his original writing still trumps everything that has come out since.  He isn’t a classic original to me, he is a master who’s work is as relevant today as it was the day it was created.

For me personally their is a lot of nostalgia built into the 1st Advanced Dungeons & Dragons edition as its the first version of D&D and RPG I ever played.  That said, I do continue to use it, in particular my Gamemasters guide which I see as a platform for inspiration and as a backdrop for the creation of adventures in fantasy worlds even when using other rule systems.  I believe it to be as valid today as it was back then and in a lot of ways, it is behind almost all of the success I have ever had as a GM.  No other GM guide ever written since has provided me with the same level of input and conceptual ideas as this book.

While 1st edition Advanced D&D was not the first version of the game, to me, in these original works they were still trying to find the game. 1st edition AD&D really was the first complete vision for the game.

People (friends) often ask myself why I value this ancient and outdated tomb to modern books, a question I hate answering in person as it usually leads to conceptual arguments but… in my blog, I don’t have to entertain arguments so I will explain it.  I believe the answer is that Gygax spoke of the GM in a unique way, a way that modern RPG’s no longer do, perhaps my biggest beef with modern RPG’s in general.

In Gygax’s writings the GM is the creator of all things, the master of the game and perhaps most importantly the master of the rules.  This concept is often frowned upon in modern RPG gaming environments as it has a totalitarian, almost tyrannical feel to it.  It suggests that the GM is more important then the rules, the other players and their characters.  Its with this interpretation of Gygax’s original GM bible that I have issue with because I believe it to be both a very narrow interpretation and not at all in the spirit of the writing, yet it is a quite common interpretation and outlook on the book in modern RPG communities.  In fact its often reflected onto the man himself.

I believe Gygax’s GM guide, the bible as I like to call it, made clear that the GM was the author of the world, the story and the adventure.  He is the creator and that does have certain privileges in the participation of mutually experienced, interactive storytelling game that is role-playing. But, and this is the most important message of the book, everything, the writing, the creativity, the adventure, the game session, all of it is created solely for the benefit of his audience, the players.  Unlike is often suggested about Gygax and his writings, he valued players most of all.  With the caveat of course that the players represent characters in a story that may not necessarily, in fact should not according to the bible, turn out how the players expect or even hoped it does.  In fact, like all good story’s it should be filled with trials and tribulations and often end in sadness and tragedy as so often the best story’s do.

I always liked this second cover for Dungeon Masters Guide much more then the original.

In essence Gygax’s was a purist and something of a historian, clearly well read,  he understood that happy endings generally don’t make for a good story, an aspect of the art of creative writing and storytelling that has been lost in the 21st century.  I think the reason people believe that Gygax and his 1st edition were tyrannical and negative is because people have grown accustomed to a guaranteed happy ending, one that is expected, one that is in line with their hopes and most important one they feel control over.

A good example is the story of Romeo and Juliet.  Today, such a story would be rejected, seen as a poor ending, but Shakespeare, quite possibly one of the greatest masters of storytelling understood how powerful a tragic and unexpected ending could be and his writings are full of them.  Imagine if that story ended with Romeo and Juliet living happily ever after, would it have been as powerful, as popular and as memorable?  I’m certain that it would not.

This is what Gygax was driving at with the GM Guides approach to adventure writing and author control.  He understood that it was more important to tell a powerful story, one which surprised, or even better shocked their audience, rather then one that was predictable and concluded in an expected way.  The only way to ensure that is to allow the GM license to author, to create adventures that were quite obviously rigged to favor the direction the GM wants the story to go as opposed to where the players are trying to will it to go, which in modern games is done through the manipulation of the mechanics.

In modern RPG’s what we have is two key presumptions that always ring true.  The players are the heroes of the story and they will always succeed in the end.  A tragedy or surprise in a modern RPG session is that a character dies, a concept in itself often considered controversial, one that should be left to the rules to resolve as opposed to a GM’s interventions and in fact, its expected that the intervention of a GM will come in a form of saving a character, not ending one.  Its considered wrong for a GM to rig the death of a character, often its considered wrong to let the rules of the game end a character,  all signs of a bad GM in the eyes of modern gaming “think”.

While I actually thought the 4th edition DM guide was well written and spoke to the modern RPG gamer, 4th edition itself was almost completely empty of Gygax’s magic touch.

Now what is the cause of this turn from darkness and tragedy to light hearted happy endings?  The game.  Yes, RPG’s have become more game and less story.  We now want the rules of the game to govern when, where and how a character meets his end and when an adventure succeeds or fails with a clear expectation that the GM will drive them to success and prevent tragedy.  In my eyes, this is terrible.  One of the most powerful pieces of storytelling has been lost, the ability for the author of the story to steer it into the surprises and tragedies for the benefit of creativity and memorable moments.

Now I will argue as devils advocate and say that sometimes the rules do come through and create wonderful moments as well, but we are literally rolling the dice to see if that happens and in my experience these memorable moments are few and far in-between by comparison to the old days of a well scripted and planned tragedy or an unexpected twists.   More importantly, they feel more forced then the manipulations of a GM as the mechanics of the game and of the characters can be designed for success.  Often it’s something simple like “the door is locked and no you can’t pick it and you don’t know why”.  Oh you have lock picking at +1000 and can pick all locks with 100% efficiency so you want a roll to see if your successful?  Sure as a GM I can let you roll the dice and lie to you about how you failed anyway, but what is the point of that?  In my eyes, obvious manipulation of the rules as defined by modern games, puts to question the reason to have them.  Is it not the same thing that Gygax is saying anyway, that, the GM is the master of the game and embodies the powers that govern the laws of the universe?  Its called The GameMaster for a reason, these words were not chosen frivolously, there is power in them with a purpose.

Rules heavy games like GURPS are also fun, there is a lot to be said about a rules driven RPG, but the experience is very different.

I digress, my point here is that Gygax understood how to create a great story and he understood that the GM would need to take a lot of liberties to ensure those powerful moments, those twists, all those surprises materialize.  His Gamemasters guide defines these aspects in great detail, even going so far as Gygax arguing with his own words to make the point, a style of writing I often use myself.

The point is that the GM effectively has to cheat and Gygax was ok with it and so am I, but I think its important to note that it was underlined that its not really cheating because the rules are not that well defined very intentionally, hence left for interpretation.  Its why I call it a bible as it means something different to each person that reads it, much of what is in the GM guide is, is up for interpretation but its made clear that the authority on how it should be interpreted is the GM.  Unfortunately because of this interpretive aspect of the book, people often missed his point of why its setup this way.

The question we must then ask is,  is if this is fair?  Is it fair that one player in the game gets to decide what happens, rigs the mechanical portions of the game to create the experience he wants everyone else to have and to ensure events transpire as written and planned?  No of course its not fair, but the GM is not a player, he is your narrator, the person bringing you the adventure, he is not governed by mechanical rules and its this key aspect of the original GM guide for 1st edition D&D that is at the center of the theory behind how the GM should conduct himself.  It a responsibility to create an experience that feels fair, but clearly behind the screen is not.

His story is there for you to experience and since you have no idea how it will turn out, whether its the dice that lead you to that end, or the manipulation of events by the GM is completely irrelevant and would be indistinguishable to you if you were not aware of the rules of the game.  The dice are a meaningless component in the story and play a small role at best.  You don’t know what will happen either way and it will be surprise dice or no dice, the difference is that the dice will make it random, often anti-climatic, while a storyteller, a good GM that is, will always make it an amazing one or at least that is the aspiration.

Modules are a big part of D&D and may seem contrary to Gygax’s theories since they are usually very mechanical, but if you really read some of the original works you’ll find that the spirit of creating atmosphere is always at the center of every module written for D&D in the early days.

This is not to say that players should not have any influence over the story, again the GM guide speaks to this as well.  The players should most definitely contribute to the moments in the story in their control.  Its their dialogue, their choices, their responses to what is happening that are most important.  This however is always an illusion of control, one players insists on having rules dictated in some vein effort to grasp the reigns of control, but the dice are as much an illusion of control as the players involvement in shaping the story.  They certainly will experience the story from their own perspective, its why dialogue and the common question from the GM is “what do you want to do”, but at the highest level of storytelling is this simple fact.  You will experience the GM’s creation as he has written it, attempting to manipulate it with dice will not change this aspect, or perhaps better to say it should not.  Its more likely that using dice to determine the story will derail the planned twists and create a lesser experience, but its not going to give you any additional control.

And so this is the point.  The GM is the master of the game, let him do his thing, this is what the 1st edition GM Guide, Gygax’s greatest contribution to role-playing tells us.  Its the GM’s job to create the illusion, its the players place to sit back and enjoy it from the perspective of an interactive character.  This is what role-playing is to me and while I know countless players would argue the opposite, to me, much of the art and creativity of the game has been lost as a result of this awkward shift to letting rules govern the game.  Its also why I consider Gygax’s Dungeon Masters Guide for 1st Edition D&D the single and quite possibly only worthy source for becoming a great GM.

One final aspect of GMing I think the Gygax touched on is the concept of adaptive play, something I think a lot of GM miss the point of.  The idea is simple, you create story’s for your players, hence you must know what kind of story’s your players love and give those story’s to them with a twist.  Another words, this idea that the GM is a Tyrant and runs the story he wants to run, is wrong and not supported by Gygax’s writing though for some reason its an idea always attributed to him.  This is not at all what he is talking about when he talks about the GM’s powers and how to apply them.  In his and my eyes, its vital that you create story’s that are built around the characters, around the players preferences and always for their benefit.  Hence in a lot of ways, the act of a GM is creating a story that the players requested and often this meta conversation is what doesn’t take place between GM and players.  It must.

Gygax’s modules were always rich with story but some were very fighty. This is because he understood the concept of adaptive play, that, sometimes players just want to fight their way out of problems and that’s fine too.

If your players want a political thriller and you give them a dungeon crawl, you are not going to be successful no matter how well written, planned and executed the story is.  More importantly, you will still be a shit GM, because the core, fundamental rule for a GM is that you are a host, the entertainment and your audience is the single most important and only reason you are creating and telling a story.  If you miss that, everything else you do right will be in vein.

So that is my interpretation and theory on being a good GM.  In short, listen to Gygax, but really listen to him, not to the presumptions and discussions about his work, read the book, absorb the book and understand what ideas about the GM he is presenting.  If you can manage to do that and take his advice, you will be a great GM.

 

 

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The Mystery Of A Classic

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1st edition AD&D, love it or hate it, is the definitive root from which the entire D&D franchise and quite possibly role-playing itself has sprouted. It sits on a pedestal of nostalgia, immortalized for all time more often by those who have barely played it or opened the dusty tome of secrets that is the core system than those that actually did.

Today we are going to explore the myth that is AD&D, in particular where this myth comes from and how it has affected our nostalgic sense of Gygax’s original work.

Before we get started however let’s speak frankly for a second first. For all its nostalgic qualities and happy memories it has provided over the years, when you actually read the rules of the game and hold them up against the 40 years of design experience AD&D is a really shitty game. Release AD&D today under a different name and it would be unlikely that anyone would ever publish it, let alone buy it or play it. Even for a nostalgic throwback game, there are better options available today. Even Gygax himself played Castles and Crusades over his own invention. AD&D’s claim to fame is based more on the timing of its release rather than the quality of its design. Gygax was a genius, but it wasn’t because he was a great designer or even a particularly good writer, he is a genius because he had a brilliant, original idea and the understanding that D&D’s appeal is its mystery, the great vale of fantasy. In another words he was a visionary and like all visionaries, it wasn’t that they were experts in their particular field but they created or discovered something original.

For years designers have been working on a way to live up to the nostalgic sense that AD&D induces in people but have been met with picket signs at every step by holistic purists who hold their 1st edition AD&D DMG up like the word of god. An odd sentiment given that from a design perspective the game is inferior to modern versions of the game. It’s been a difficult journey and it’s doubtful there is any circle among the D&D hobby where purists aren’t constantly holding back the franchises efforts for modern design, hell I count myself among them. Even in my previous article I set the standard of what to me qualifies as a great version of D&D and holding up tradition was among the short list of requirements. Every edition and sub edition over the years has tried to rise out of AD&D’s shadow in some way, but the truth is that we have made the shadow so big that the franchise is doomed to spend eternity in a time loop. No greater evidence can be presented than the rejection of 4th edition, a modern design and the creation of 5th edition, the latest edition, a clear throwback to old school thinking.

4th edition represents in every way that matters a rebellion against Gygaxian philosophy and design, a look into what the future of D&D could have been while 5th edition represents the apology and admission of a humble defeat postmortem, forever bowing to its master. In the end the purists won, 5th edition is nothing short of a throwback, an attempt to appease its fan base and bring the game back to familiar traditions. It’s an apology for 4th edition and in many ways an apology for not listening to its disgruntled fan base. The question is why? What is this holy fanaticism that is permanently etched into D&D player’s minds that has us constantly looking back? Is it really the design? Am I wrong here, was 1st edition AD&D really an ingenious game not just because it was an original but because THAC0 was in fact a better design?

Understanding why is the key to understanding both the present and the future of D&D and naturally, since it’s my blog, I have a theory.

I believe the secret sauce is that AD&D always has and continues to have a lot of mystery surrounding it. A sort of shadow that looms over the books, the rules themselves and the themes it presents and how it presents them. There is an intangible quality to its imperfections and indeed it’s the imperfections, the messiness of it that make it work. There is a sort of naïveté to the writing and to the design and a handing of the torch of creativity to the DM by an inexperienced creator and predecessor. It’s a game that’s up for interpretation, but that interpretation is assumed to be in the hands of the games Dungeon Master, god for all intense and purposes, which in turn creates mystery for both the narrative of the game, as well as what the rules of the game really are for the players. From a player’s perspective, role-playing under 1st edition AD&D was not just a discovery of the game world and the DM’s imaginative creations, but of the very boundaries and physical nature of how the game works. There is a built in social order to the work too, its presumptuous in its tone, written less as an instruction manual on how the mechanics of the game work and more a philosophy, a bible if you will, about how the mysterious art of role-playing works, which itself is filled with grey areas and omissions to be filled in by its god. Only the most basic outline of the game is provided to the players in the Players Handbook, the Dungeon Master Guide however is where the heart of the system exists, the bible of the game and one intended for DM eyes only.

This looming mystery creates mental pictures for the participants because there is little physical material to look at or hang your hat on. There are grey areas everywhere and without clarity we evolved a sense of imagination, the driving force of mystery and fantasy.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but for me, in a nutshell, 1st edition AD&D’s greatest asset as a game is that the rules of the game were largely unknown to the players. There is flexibility in this approach, in that, as players you aren’t expected to know how things work but rather expected to try things to see how they work. A process of discovery to which there was no conclusion thanks to the nearly infinite possibilities of a fantastically magical setting and the fact that the DMG was frankly very unclear about what the rules actually are.

Mysteries however are only mysteries until they are unveiled and in that is the hidden differentiation between 1st edition AD&D and everything that came afterwards. 1st edition AD&D was empowering because it did not define the rules clearly, it presumed the dungeon master would invent a great deal of it himself, forcing players to discover what those rules are during play. That’s the secret sauce of the mystery.

Once the mystery of D&D was solved, once the rules are known, made clear and once we understand what the rules are, the game is unmasked, its weaknesses exposed. This is the case in modern versions of the game where there are no mysteries to begin with, the rules are hard coded there is nothing left for interpretation, they are very clear. This is what modernization has done to D&D. It has unmasked the game, exposed it to scrutiny, we have handed over the DMG, the bible of the god who runs the game and asked for the player participant’s opinion, than outlined the process in a step by step instructional manual. It’s akin to revealing the odds of a slot machine, you might be better informed by knowing them, but the wonder of pulling the lever and hoping to win millions is broken by the reality of knowing you stand virtually no chance to do so.

You might argue (and you would be right) that AD&D’s mask was a thin veil at best to begin with. Clearly plenty of people read the DMG cover to cover even back then, but the reality was that the book was about empowerment of the DM because it understood that the DM is the storyteller, it understood that D&D wasn’t a game, but an experience. It understood that the game wasn’t about rules.

It must have been a disappointing experience to read the 1st edition AD&D DMG for players only to find out that the book really was nothing more than vague suggestions for the DM on how to run his games. What was really revealed is the fact that the Dungeon Master himself is the Wizard of Oz and his only power was the very thin veil he kept over your eyes, the one you just tore off by reading the book. There really where no secret rules, or unsolved mysteries revealed. The exploration of the rules through play was a fictitious game made up just like the story’s of the alter ego’s the players would go on in the game. The revelation was meaningless except for one thing, there was nothing left to reveal to you about the game afterwards. Simply reading and understanding how the magic trick was done, broke the spell.

Gygax persuaded players to avoid revealing the secrets of the DMG to themselves and those that adhered where treated to the wonders of it. Reading the DMG back than was the equivalent of reading the adventure before you joined it as a player.

This is at the heart of the problem of trying to re-invent the nostalgia of AD&D in modern versions of D&D and why the nostalgia exists in the first place. As a player who experienced that mystery and then became a god and watched others experience it, I know the desire of wishing there was a way to go back. There simply isn’t. For one modern gamers expect the rules to be clear, the game has evolved and a lack of clarity is seen as an obstacle rather than a mystery to be unveiled during play by the DM. Secondly, modern DMG’s have important rules that are clearly for the players, for example in 3rd edition you had prestige classes which clearly are player material infused into the DMG. In a sense, players had to read them.

I believe that modern role-playing hobbyist who did not experience the wonder and mystery of playing a game whose rules they did not know missed the golden age of the hobby. Their understanding of what D&D could be, or perhaps dare I say should be, can never be properly conveyed. I know that Gygax for years tried to break through to modern gamers and designers by example and I often wonder how many people got the message.

There is still mystery to be had in D&D, naturally the story the DM has prepared for you can have plenty of unexpected twists and turns which can result in plenty of fuel for the imagination, but there is a big distinction between the mystery of a story and the mystery of the game. 1st edition AD&D had both and it was thanks to the fact that the game was less defined, less refined and empowering. It gave the powers of creativity to the DM not just over the story, but the rules that governed it. The DMG was truly a guide, it lived up to its name, a place where modern versions of the same book do little more than provide clear and coherent rules with the expectation that both the DM and the players will read them.

I mourn the loss of this mystery, I think a piece of the game was lost when we set our focus on concepts like streamlining, clarity and transparency. The position of the DM in modern versions of D&D is more as an arbitrator of the rules and every DM today knows the feeling of having the rules quoted to them from a book that once was intended for his eyes only. In the end, this was the genius behind Gygax’s work, he understood that the draw, the thing that made his work special was that he empowered DM’s to keep that thin veil over the eyes of his audience and like a good magician, he expected a good DM would never reveal the secrets.

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D&D 5e: The Advantage System

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When I first read 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons I didn’t pay much attention to new Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic, I thought it was interesting but really didn’t consider its implications to the game. After having played about 100 hours of 5th edition D&D I have discovered that not only is this a foundation mechanic for the system, but when used to its full effect creates one of the best role-playing experiences I have ever had D&D or otherwise. How does such a small, seemingly simple mechanic make such a huge difference? Well, its all about application and understanding its purpose as a narrative tool.

To really understand why the advantage system is such a piece of genius in D&D you have to understand the core problem with all editions of Dungeons and Dragons, one that each edition has tried and failed to fix. That problem is that as long as D&D has been around, the line between the story of the game (the narrative) and combat has always been very thick. It’s a massive gap really. The moment combat starts there is a subtle but noticeable shift from seeing the game as a role-playing game and seeing it as a tactical combat game.

Each edition has handled this differently. In AD&D, combat was very fast and swingy. One way or the other it would end in a short few rounds so in essence AD&D didn’t do anything about it other than just keep combat fast so the temporary lull in the narrative is, well very temporary. It worked well enough but combat wasn’t particularly narrative, in particular if you brought out miniatures.

3rd edition tried to make combat more simulationist and as such, the mechanic defined a lot of the narrative for us as players were able to perform a large amount of actions during their turn covered by a very detailed rule system. Combat was extended a great deal in 3rd edition, but it depicted the action in greater detail. Still it wasn’t narrative, it was mechanical and it was easy to lose yourself in the nuances of the rules rather than maintain the nuances of the story.

4e very aware of this effect if you consider how it was designed, tried to simplify the rules, but elaborate a great deal on depicting the action. It worked wonders, the tactical game really told us a story. The drawback of this system though was that your actions where narrow, defined by what was on your character sheet and combat was extended even more, taking so long in fact that it could swallow up entire sessions. One of the longest standing criticisms of 4e is “not enough role-playing”, but that isn’t a stab at the combat systems depiction of the action, but rather the fact that it took so long you never got to the role-playing part of the game.

It’s clear that since Gygax’s original vision, the designers of the game have been aware of this problem on some level. How do you maintain the narrative element of the game and still have an interesting, tactical combat system that D&D deserves? Their answer is the Advantage and Disadvantage system. In an amazingly simple way they have not only merged mechanics and narrative flawlessly, but created the motivation for players and DM’s alike to be more descriptive and involve themselves deeper in the narration of the story.

Now I can’t be certain if it was the designer’s intention to make the advantage system the solution to this issue, but whether intentional or not they have done it. The thing is that when we are not in combat, we are doing collaborative storytelling, acting and speaking on the behalf of our characters, describing their actions and rolling the dice to see how our intended actions fared. So why is this approach not used in combat? In a sense that’s what 5e asked and the 5e combat system in particular the advantage system answered with.

See D&D has a tactical element, it always had, but no edition in the past has ever really tried to infuse the same narrative approach we have to the rest of the game into combat, into this tactical element. Another words, combat was always about working out the math, rather than working out what happens narratively (as is the case at every other moment when playing the game.).

The advantage system represents a non-mathematical way to maintain a tactical element in the game and encourage players to think about combat in a narrative way. Players describe their actions and can gain advantages and disadvantages based on what it is they actually attempt in combat. Do you rush a guy and grab for his weapon? Do you try to use your sword to reflect the sun into the eyes of the archer in the tree? Do you slide under the Ogres feet and attempt to cut him where the sun don’t shine? It’s difficult to come up with mathematical formula for those things. You can guess or you could create a complex series of rules that attempt to account for every conceivable situation but really, for a DM the “pick a value that represents this action” game is a burden. The advantage and disadvantage system however makes this easy by allowing you to simply respond with a positive or negative effect on any given action when considering its impact and like a roll at any time, create a narrative resolution which notably is backed by a rather traditional D&D combat mechanic (HP, AC, To Hit etc..).

EXAMPLE: Player: “Ok I position my sword to reflect the sun, shining the sun into the eyes of the archer in the tree”. DM: Make an deception roll, if you succeed the archer gets a disadvantage on his next attack roll, if you fail, you are unfocused and the next attack against you gains an advantage”. Done. No math, no fuss, great narrative, the players are imbued with endless possibilities for tactical action limited only by their imagination and the game doesn’t skip a beat.. next player!

What’s great is that you can utilize other parts of the system to help ensure the actions are driven by character abilities. Skill check, attribute checks, saving throws etc. In this case I chose a deception check but it could have as well been a dexterity check, an intelligence check. The idea being, that you and the player can work together to come to a conclusion about what makes the most sense.

The advantage system is so much more than just a narrative level to pull on however. Its built into the system, so gaining advantages and disadvantages creates opportunities to use different abilities and make decisions about your actions. For example in the above example if the character failed, he might decide that he is going to use the dodge action this turn since he is at a disadvantage, or if he succeeds in gaining the advantage he might decide to climb the tree and assault the archer knowing he has a good chance of being missed as he makes his ascend and a better chance of hitting him.

These opportunities for interesting narratives unfold very naturally, once players get into the mind set of using them, the game becomes about them and in turn becomes about narrative play. Yet the tactical element, the core rules of combat are maintained.

It’s a wonderful system but it does take practice and naturally like any mechanic it can be abused, maturity and understanding of its purpose and the larger purpose of the game as a whole as always is required for it to work well. None the less, it’s a wonderful system when you get it working and it really breathes new life into dungeons and dragons.

Yet another wonderful element of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition!

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From Mediocrity to Perfection: The Trials of D&D

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When it comes to D&D, truly I am a fan of the concept, I hold Gygax and his original vision in high regard, yet for the past 30 years I have considered D&D to be kind of a second class citizen of role-playing games. I always enjoyed playing it don’t get me wrong but I have always found a lot to dislike about it, mainly in its handling of mechanics.

To me the true D&D is 1st edition AD&D, it defined the original game and conceptually it is a masterpiece. The problem with 1st edition was mostly in practice. Mechanically speaking the narrative high’s where often contrasted by the mechanical lows. If I where to put it to words I would say the system got in the way of the game.

Since first edition, each new edition of the game had its own take on “the next step” and how to solve some of its problem and dare I say each failure has been worst then the next. 2e clearly felt the game required more rules and they added mountains of them, yet did little to streamline or make them manageable or balanced. 3rd edition seemed to steer the game towards an odd form of simulationist realism with a moderate focus on tactical gaming and while the rules where more coherent, the game itself pulled away from the narrative focus of its predecessors to the battle mat in what amounted to a terribly unbalanced mini game. 4e streamlined the rules even more, giving way for simplicity and a return to free form role-playing, yet countered this success by creating so much focus on combat and making combat so slow with such stringent rules it felt like playing a computer game.

In the end all of the editions addressed various aspects of the game, each edition seemed to focus on repairing the previous edition which in turn addressed the edition before that. The problem was that since 2e came out and addressed none of the real issues of 1st edition, the successors where fixing things that really weren’t broken in the original vision.

For example each new edition tried to address how tactical combat should work, when the reality was that the original vision of the game wasn’t for it to be a tactical combat game, quite the opposite, D&D was created with the very intent to not be another war game. Combat was also supposed to be quick, the game meant for us to have violent encounters often, being able to play out several in succession. Instead each new edition slowed it down even further, ending with 4e’s dreadfully slow and repetitive miniatures tactical game. 1st edition had quite a few issues that could have been solved with the experienced we got even back then, but no one ever really tried.

Now 5e has come out of a long, heatedly discussed and very public beta. When I first held the shiny new players handbook in my hand I have to admit I was bracing myself for disappointment. I honestly expected the new edition to be just another fix for the previous edition, without much attention given to the original vision of the game. I really only had one question for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. Are you really D&D or are you one of the others?

It was with great pleasure and excitement that I read page after page of the Players Handbook and it wasn’t because I was blown away by the games “new” design, quite to the contrary what caught my attention first and foremost is the familiarity of the game, that in every way that mattered, 5e had within it the spirit of the original vision. Page after page it was clear that the game had come home.

5e isn’t a perfect mechanic by any stretch of the imagination but for the first time since the first remake that was 2e was released someone actually made a true successor to 1st edition AD&D.

I’ve always been amazed about how much misinformation and silly misconception there are about people who speak highly of 1st edition AD&D and play the original vision of the game. The reality is that very few D&D players I have ever met in over 30 years of gaming have claimed 1st edition AD&D rules to be any good. It wasn’t the rules that defined the game, it really was the principles on which the rules where founded. There are many of them, but as I read the 5e book it was evident the designers clearly knew more about the true foundation of D&D then I ever knew or thought I knew.

I was struck by a number of things so blatantly pulled from the original Gygax works, even though in many ways they were in contrast to everything that has been done design wise with D&D since the original.

For example the zero to hero effect so eloquently designed in 5e, I think if Gygax were alive he would say “yeah, I should have done it like that”. D&D was originally a game about ordinary would be heroes in extraordinary worlds and situations. It was a game that told the tale of their rise, the story of how they became heroes. This was the adventure. 5e took that concept but made it fluid, fun and with a assertive progression to stability so that once you took those first steps you wouldn’t be sitting around for many sessions before you could tell the next chapter of your heroic deeds. 5e created a progression that makes, one looking back at 1e would be easy to implement in that game and would make a world of difference in its design.

Another great example of 5e looking back and fixing It design is combat speed, which has such a huge impact of every other faucet of the game. By taking all that we have learned about D&D combat over the years, stripping away the unnecessary gibberish and zeroing in on the most fun aspects of it 5e has created the most effective and coherent combat system I have seen in years. A combat system that is not only fast, but manages to infuse itself with plenty of wiggle room for narrative play with simple systems like the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. Now DM’s can freely reward and punish players for their narrative risks in combat, fluidly mixing in with the mechanical aspects of combat without losing a step. Always pushing the adventure forward, always bringing us the narrative. Combat is so vivid in 5e, its everything I had always hoped 2e, then 3e and ultimately 4e would be prior to hearing the bad news and realizing that they have all missed the point.

Finally I think 5e pays proper tribute to other editions of the game. While I certainly find plenty of fault with every edition, there were many concepts and mechanics in all editions of the game that where going in the right direction, they just needed minor adjustments to make them practical and in so many places this is exactly what 5e did.

The Wizard for example with its handling of the familiar handling of the magic system. One of the biggest problems of 1e (and subsequent editions as well) was that mages had too few spells and even when they had a lot in their spell book in practical terms they only had access to very specific spells they prepared. Need a Detect Magic spell? Sorry you didn’t prepare it, see you in 8 hours. Now with the prepared spells and spell slots being separated without having to choose in advance you can cast the spells you want. In 3e from where this concept is clearly pulled, they did this with the sorcerer and they were so close to getting it right. Only problem was that they separated the Wizard and Sorcerer into separate classes and for balance reasons the Sorcerer had reduced selection, a decision clearly made to ensure the Wizards toes weren’t being stepped on. The merging of the two classes in 5e gives us really what the Wizard should always have been. The addition of at will cantrips a concept borrowed from 4e is another example of great design borrowed and implemented with balance in mind.

I could probably write a book about all the ways 5e got it right, but really what’s important here is that we finally got a worthy successor to 5e and I couldn’t be happier with it. For the first time in years me and my gaming group are excited about D&D again.

Thank you Wizards of the Coast, you got it right!