Probably not that far off the mark

Weird gaming dream from last night - a friend had just been to the FLGS and had picked up not only a 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide, but the most recent edition of D&D (not the Fourth). I picked up the new DMG, which had a dark purple cover with maybe ogres or something on it, and flipped through it - it was nice, glossy, heavy paper, but it was the same illustration as the cover... OVER AND OVER. Nothing else! The friggin' CREDITS and title page didn't even show up until something like page 53. I do believe I made some snarky comment about how much the 1st Ed DMG had covered by page 53, which is about all I remember of that scene.

Still, from the overproduced monstrosities WotC has published... I could see it happening.

My CAS Thing

Since I seem to be not working on it at the moment, and have no idea when I'll get back to it, this is what I've gotten so far for my Clark Ashton Smith/Dying Earth mashup I mentioned previously:

(The "world" is many millennia old; this is a riff off the old idea of "dying civilizations" - the entire race of humanity suffers a sense of mass ennui; everything worthy has already been done, every possible form and statement of art has been explored and abandoned, every frontier has been conquered long ago, and all that remains is a slow collapse into apathy and death - the Dying Earth without the dying Sun, Hyperborea and Zothique crossed with more than a dash of Tekumel-eqsue conservatism and cynicism.)

Mordiggian, The Charnel God, is the deity of the city of Zul-Ba-Sair, a ancient and dark conurbation of black granite and obsidian in the center of The Continent. Mordiggian's temple squats in a square at the city center, a massive truncated pyramid of grey stone, where all the dead of Zul-Ba-Sair are delivered by Mordiggian's silver-masked priests. This temple is the only religious site in the entire city; Mordiggian tolerates no other gods within his domain. Mordiggian's priests regularly travel throughout The Continent, seeking to expand The Charnel God's influence.

To the east of Zul-Ba-Sair is the red marble necropolis of Pavan-Dhul, the domain of the Kingdom of Ghouls, from which the Ghoul King Zhandeb sends his people out to plunder the tombs and crypts of The Continent, especially the ancient city of Yill further to the west of Pavan-Duhl. Unfortunately, Yill is a legendary repository of powerful artifacts, attracting many adventurers, most often to their dismay as they discover the Ghoul Kingdom lays claim to the flesh of all intruding on their domain - which they extend as far as Yill itself.

Yill was once a thriving city hundreds of years ago, but is now desolate, the tall towers empty, the population apparently having committed mass suicide for unknown reasons. The bodies lie, well-preserved, in great mausoleums, on sandstone biers carved with mysterious glyphs which apparently are an appeal against re-animation.

To the South lies the large human city of Eldarvoron, a decadent sandstone mess of sybarites worth little more than a convenient place to sell loot - or to relieve someone of an overabundance of wealth. Trade there is brisk in luxury foods, fine fabrics, gems, slaves and recreational pharmaceuticals. An unusual law requires the wearing of masks during trade - the particulars being very formal and regulated.

The Return of Shelly-Welly

You know, back last time critiqued Shelly Mazzanoble and her columns on Why Johnny Shelly Can't Play 1st Edition, I made a comment about how I hadn't had any exposure to her previous writing so I couldn't really say if her account of the birth of Majeka Magicsmacker was representative of her writing or not.

Mirable dictu, I'm poking around the Internets this afternoon when what should I happen on, but another blog post looking at Shelly's work from a feminist perspective - and, OMG I had no idea of the trail of dead neurons her writing has left.

For one, the "gosh I can do this didn't we all learn something" air of those columns was, apparently, Shelly's standard writing style:

The thing that really bothers me about this is that almost every one of Shelly’s columns seems to follow the same formula, and that always starts with Shelly being adorably and/or humorously insecure about some facet of playing D&D. This then leads into neurotic and sometimes irrational attempts to wrestle with the insecurity in which a humorous result is achieved and a lesson of some sort is said to have been learned. Only it’s not learned, because the same insecurities pop up again and again and again.

Another seems to be that the "clueless ditz Shelly" appears to be her standard personality in her writing, even from over a year ago.

To wit:

Hmm. When did I get wizard’s escape? Oh yeah, I have a shield. I double-checked to make sure this character sheet said “Tabitha Sparkles”. (April 2010, Confessions of an Overwhelmed Duckling)

“When Herteus gets to here,” Chris said, pointing to the square I just passed through, “a large green blob falls from the ceiling and tries to attack”. Hmm. Didn’t I just approve some banner ads that mentioned something about wearing protective headgear? (May 2010, An Overwhelmed Duckling Part 2)

Ten minutes later, I hadn’t finished my cup of peas, but my unaligned female elf thief was in my arsenal. Holy moley, I did it! I made a character using a book and a pencil. (December 2010, Arcana Lang Syne)

With my two gargoyles, remaining minions, and one dragon waiting in the wings, I realized the importance of placement. I was kind of throwing minions out there willy nilly and kept forgetting the gargoyles could make better distance by air than ground. Aeon had a minion and a gargoyle marked. Anwar was bloodied, and I was overlooking opportunity attacks at every corner. Dungeon Masters have a lot to keep track of! (July 2010, Canine Encounters Part 2)

“What if the dragon is susceptible to tickling, and if the adventurers tickle him he laughs so hard he spits out puppies? Unharmed, of course.”

New DM shook his head, then started mumbling things like help me, please make it stop, I don’t think we’re in D&D anymore. (June 2010, Canine Encounters)

Then it hit me. The talking. And not just the “What are you having for dinner tonight” or “Would you rather have eyes in the back of your head or a giant lizard tail” table talking I’m used to. This was relevant talking. Like important to the game talking. This was – gasp! – roleplaying!

I know what you’re thinking: “This is D&D, you big dummy!” But maybe you don’t remember my irrational fear of roleplaying and playing D&D with people who are: 1. Too serious. 2. Jerks. 3. Really good at roleplaying.

This is why I usually create characters that are too sullen or naive or too apathetic to talk to strangers. (October 2010, Last of the Mojitas)

New DM has exacted the ultimate revenge! “He’s on vacation?” I whined. “He’s supposed to be helping me with my encounter!” Technically he did help, as you might remember from last month’s column. But that was a month ago. You can’t expect me to remember everything he said about traps and tactics. I can’t even find my notes. (July 2010, Canine Encounters Part 2)

Um. How... not overwhelming. And not surprising, either. (And, yes, her 4e character is indeed named "Tabitha Sparkles". *gag*)

So what's the conclusion on Shelly from the feminist perspective?

Now do I think that Shelly Mazzanoble is all of these stereotypes? No. I think that Shelly is being used by Wizards to try to broaden their appeal to women. Only their marketing department doesn’t really understand how to speak to women without being off-putting, insulting, and patronizing. So as a result, you get Shelly-the-character’s Fluffy Adventures in D&D is Also For Girls Land.

This pisses me off. It pisses me off because I don’t want the neurotic, fashion-obsessed, passive, please-decide-things-for-me, d&d-has-numbers-and-is-haaaaaard character she portrays herself as to represent me as a female player. In her columns, Shelly frequently refers to herself as Player In Chief. This implies that she is somehow representing players of D&D, which is what I am violently against. I desperately, vehemently, passionately want to be disassociated from pretty much everything Shelly’s columns say about women. Shelly-the-character doesn’t represent me or any of the women I know who play D&D, or even any of the women I know who play roleplaying games that aren’t D&D. Not at all.

For that matter, if Shellykins is actually viewed over there as "Player In Chief", it doesn't at all reflect well on WotC or RenFest D&D, regardless of gender. Not at all well.

Games I just don't get

Ever have this problem? I've got a handful of RPGs that I really, really WANT to like - and yet I can't get my head around them.

Encounter Critical: I grew up in the Seventies. Sid and Marty Krofft shows, Marvel comics, Thundarr The Barbarian. Yet I can't seem to get into the headspace of EC. I can't seem to "get" the fine line where stupid shades over into awesome. Is it thinking like a sugar-hyped 12-year-old? Is it just running with whatever you come up with and not caring if it makes sense? Maybe I'm having trouble being Not Serious enough.

Unknown Armies: A big one with this is what I need to be reading/watching/listening to to get thinking along UA lines. It looks rather like The Dresden Files by way of Reservoir Dogs, but is that where it's coming from? A Laurel K. Hamilton book re-written by Philip K. Dick?

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Now, I'm not stupid. I can figure out attacks or opportunity, I can do my own taxes, I've created more than one character for Rolemaster, I can remember a lot of background stuff for Tekumel. So why the hell do I have so much trouble keeping the various categories straight? Crinos? Lupus? Full moon, partial moon? I look at this stuff and my brain shuts right down and says "Non serviam!". Why?

Glorantha: The rules aspect of Runequest I have no problem with, apart from the unnecessary complexity of hit locations. But the world - where the hell do you begin? Where do I start learning about Glorantha and the Lunars and Pavis? Multiple game systems don't exactly help, either. Where's the Gloranthan equivalent of The World of Greyhawk Folio? I have the same problem with Tribe 8 - where the hell do you start?

GURPS anything: This is a special one, as, being a long-time fan of both The Fantasy Trip and its descendant GURPS, I get the rules and the mechanics. More complicated than I'd like, too many damn nit-picky skills, but on the whole I could cope with it. If it weren't for the books. Something about the art in the books, or the Steve Jackson writing style, the encyclopedic approach to subjects, or the typeface - whatever it is, I just find myself not giving a damn after about five minutes. Spaceship Zero and Stars Without Number get me all antsy to roll up characters and invent situations - GURPS Space just makes me go "Meh." and go looking for my copy of Human Occupied Landfill.

Traveller: Oh, god, Classic Traveller. Oh I love this game. I had/have scads of stuff, from the entire Book collection to classic Adventures like The Kinunir and Leviathan and Expedition To Zhodane. I used to sit up late nights during the summer, watching MTV (back when they actually played music videos) and rolling up Traveller sectors. And then I start thinking about the scale involved and how accurate the worlds are and details about flora & fauna and world histories and it just frigging overwhelms me. I'm trying to relax and think more of worlds in terms of Cliches, like in RISUS, but it's hard to turn around years of attitude.

Damn straight, I'm jumping off that bridge

Oh, the siren call of the jump-on-the-bandwagon-'cause-you're-too-tired-to-post... umm... bandwagon. Or something.

Anyway, here's to having more than one post this month.

I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Druid/Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-9

Dexterity-10

Constitution-11

Intelligence-14

Wisdom-13

Charisma-9


Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.


Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.


Primary Class:
Druids gain power not by ruling nature but by being at one with it. They hate the unnatural, including aberrations or undead, and destroy them where possible. Druids receive divine spells from nature, not the gods, and can gain an array of powers as they gain experience, including the ability to take the shapes of animals. The weapons and armor of a druid are restricted by their traditional oaths, not simply training. A druid's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast.


Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)



Wow. I'm not really surprised at my classes - my longest-running PC was a druid, and I've always been partial to spell-slingers - but an Elf? I've had people assert that I'm much more Dwarf than Elf. Or Hobbit, maybe - I've had more than a few times where I'd have rather been at home with a cat on my lap and a good book than doing whatever I was doing at the time. Elf? Huh. What the hell, I get to multi-class.

Let's see - I get 4 Druid orisions and 2 1st Level spells, and 6 0th and 4 1st Level arcane spells. (EDIT: Cripes, what a haul! 3rd edition PCs are so frickin' spoiled!)

Druid: 0:Create Water, Cure Minorx2, Guidance, Light
1:Produce Flame, Charm Animal
Sorcerer: 0:Prestidigitation, Light, Ray of Frost, Resistance x2, Read Magic
1:Magic Missile x2 (AUTO-HIT, baybee!), Disguise Self, Comprehend Languages

Screw Skills & Feats. I ain't bothering.

And I get 120gp to purchase starting equipment. Whee!

Taking the silly seriously

I've been working on a OD&D campaign environment for a few months (a very classic D&D kind of world named Hopsill, with a few unique tweaks) and quite frankly I'm getting burned out on it.

So for some inexplicable reason I get it into my head to fashion a Clark Ashton Smith - meets Dying Earth kind of world; millenia old, decadent as all hell, lots of ancient relics with portentous names, everyone cynical & rogueish, lots of weird cultures, picaresque up the wahzoo. Yoink stuff directly from CAS and play with it, such as Mordiggian the Charnel God and his dog-men priest things fighting a war against the Kingdom of Ghouls over rights to the recently dead. No elves, dwarves, or hobbits; throw out the majority of typical modern fantasy monsters in favor of a more sword & sorcery assortment like semi-sentient ape-things, giant spiders/snakes/scorpions, oozing tentacled elder horrors and like that there. Maybe describe it as Geoff McKinney's Carcosa without the overtly sci-fi aspects and less potential squick, maybe.

But what system can I run this creation with? OD&D? Naw, not the right feel, I think, even though Carcosa is written for it. But it has to be rules-light; I don't want game mechanics overriding setting material, so not Rolemonster or AD&D or Runequest or such. The idea is to make the game part as transparent as possible so I'm required to spend time on inventing cool situations and NPCs.

I've taken a look at Dead Simple Fantasy; not quite sure about it for some reason. Maybe because it has skills, which I dislike. Microlite74 and Microlite20 are out for the same reason as OD&D. I love Tunnels & Trolls, but that seems too lighthearted for this.

So I decided, Gobbs help me, to use Dinky Dungeons.

Oh, I can just hear the invective now. "What? Dinky freakin' Dungeons? When you said T&T was too lighthearted? What the flipping farquar are you thinking, Pere?"

Well, I mean - follow my logic here: it's 90% a serious, complete FRPG system. Drop Fuzzy Winkers (and Dwarves and Elves), and you have an ultra-ultra light set of rules for which it's a mere bag of shells to write stuff for. The full rules are only 22-some-odd teeny-tiny pages total - probably would fit on one side of a 3x5 index card, with the other side for a bestiary and maybe a list of magic treasures. Or maybe a PocketMod, even. No major reworking of the spell system is necessary, as you only have a handful of spells and those are so generic they'd fit in in almost any fantasy universe: Charm, Harm (Fire), Illusion, Light. Rename Bards as "Holy Men" or some such, make their spells Prayers, and drop Shadowwalk in favor of "Healing Prayer" (heals 1d6 damage, costs 2 SP). You could keep track of an entire adventuring party if need be on one sheet of paper. And 3d6 is the absolute most you ever need to roll. How could I not use it? How could I not take this game with a silly name seriously?

I mean, it's not like I'm considering converting World of Synnibarr to RISUS. Then again... hmmm... Talking Raccoon With Bazooka (4) and Cyborg Guy (3) against Flying Bear With Laser Eyes [5]... hmmmmmmmmmmm...

The "O' Stands for "Organic"

Okay, I may just be talking out my ass here, but In My Humble Opinion I think I've realized what the OSR is all about, what defines what it is.

PREMISE: The OSR is organic.

There are, I think, three aspects to an organic quality in old-school RPG'ing: Achievement, Neoteny, and Serendipity.

What do I mean by "organic"? Well, it's like growing tomatoes in your garden.

ACHIEVEMENT: You've planted this tiny seed in the ground and it's grown into a vine bursting with tomatoes. Tomatoes YOU have grown. No one else. It's a sense of accomplishment, and, of course, you have to regale friends and co-workers with stories of how delicious those tomatoes are, all the more for the fact that you grew them. And maybe give some away. Delicious tomatoes! Try 'em!

Achievement comes from both writing stuff (which is partly why OSR blogs are full of "LOOKIE WHAT I DID!") on the DM side, and in nurturing a character on the player's side. OD&D characters can die like flies, which is no biggie since you just take forty-five seconds and roll up "a relative" and have him wander out of the forest into the midst of the party and go from there. But when you do get that fragile Veteran or Medium or Acolyte up to Second Level, there's a sense of having accomplished something.

It's like Zak pointed out awhile back:

That "Riddles In The Dark" effect is why I like the Old School approach to plot and character and epicness and awesomeness.

Which is: you start with none of those things. You start by sucking. You start by sneaking. You start with one hit point. You start with no plot. You start anonymous and meaningless and arbitrary. You have three torches and a short sword and whatever armor you can afford and no feats or skills in a dot on a hexmap hitting another dot on a hexmap.

From the DM side, think about all the stuff that grew (organically!) out of OD&D and those three lil' books - not only the D&D gaming worlds like Greyhawk and Blackmoor and Arduin but entire other universes like Tekumel. Out of something that looks like typewritten notes in the back of someone's folder! That's achievement.

NEOTENY: Playfulness, creativity, innovation. You design your own tomato garden; nobody else has one exactly the same, even if you're working out of a book from the library. That plot is unique and what you do with it is your choice. Just tomatoes? Or maybe lettuce as well? Stick some peas in there somewhere? Nobody's going to come along and slap your wrist and say "NO THAT IS NOT THE RIGHT WAY".

OD&D was like that. Shared worlds? Hell, there were barely shared rules. Every DM ran into something he had to rule on, and the accumulation of individual house-rulings made the D&D campaign over here entirely different than the campaign over there. Over here robots and machine guns, over there pure fantasy. Over here, PCs kicking Odin and Loki's asses; over there, rugged Conan-esque swords & sorcery. Even the rules themselves mutated; use the "to hit" tables as written or come up with your own alternative? Do I want to be limited to +5 as the best enchantment on armor or weapons? Here's my "spell points" system so I can get rid of that Vancian crap. There's a detailed set of magic research rules (from The Dragon #5, reprinted in Best Of The Dragon #1) which I still marvel over, particularly the "The Sorcerer's Memorial Enchanting In Distress Rules". I have no idea if I'd use them in a campaign; they look severely broken. But I'm sure someone did. And they weren't "broken" for his world.

SERENDIPITY: Oh boy. Oh boy, oh boy. There are quite a few tomatoes on that vine. Didn't expect that. Can 'em, cook 'em, freeze 'em, hand them out to people on the street. "HERE, HAVE SOME DAMN TOMATOES!" The family starts complaining about the proliferation of gazpacho and marinara sauce and tomato salad. I just freakin' planted some damn tomato seeds. Who knew?

On the gaming side, us OSR types sure do love our random tables. Whee! Tables! Monster encounter tables, monster building tables, "stuff in a wizard's workshop" tables, random NPC tables, tables tables tables. Give me a bunch of tables and a couple appropriate dice and I'm a heppy, heppy "kat".

So are we really a bunch of morons whose only defense for a Vampire with a cow's head and three red dragons in a 10x10 foot room is "I ROLLED IT ON THE TABLE!"? No, please.

The tables are there for inspiration, which is why most of them shouldn't be used at a game, but before. (Which is a problem I have, as evidently others do, with the was-going-to-be-great DCC RPG. Although, you could just roll up a list of random results before the game and consult it when a spell goes wrong, I guess.) The dice are there to show you something you might not have thought of on your own, due to personal bias, gaps in experience or whatever. It's like opening a lil' Christmas present - what will I get?

There's also the quality of the unknown to Serendipity - the thing of "Hey, I didn't know it could do that!" q.v. the first time a new player runs into a Wand Of Wonder or a Bag of Beans or and Amulet of The Planes - or, better yet, one of those sweet artifacts from Eldritch Wizardry. Whee, a +5 Holy Defender sword! Only, why does everyone else's magic items keep getting drained...? And why are the hirelings so pissed at me?

OD&D was highly organic on all three counts. 3d6, in order, your M-U starts out with 1d4 hit points and a rusty dagger, 1st level Clerics get no freakin' spell. But keep on with it and pretty soon the Sorcerer is throwing Fireballs and the Cleric's doing Raise Dead. Achievement. Neoteny? Hell, you're barely given a set of rules, for Kord's sake! DM or player, you're going to have to innovate to get this thing working properly. Serendipity? What the hell can I do with this character that I rolled up? What's that magic sword that I found do, exactly? Hell, one of the very first articles about D&D, 'way back in Strategic Review #1, was Gygax's solo random dungeon generator. I also think of Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's "random monster" tables from Dragon #10 - which, he points out, are presented specifically to keep a sense of mystery about monsters for players who know 'way too much about the rules.

First Edition AD&D was organic - it kept the limits on beginning characters, but started the ossification of the rules, ideally in the name of convention games but possibly because someone at TSR - Gygax, whoever, - thought they needed a better rein on what was being called "D&D". But Serendipity - yowza! Just take a look at the back of the Dungeon Master's Guide - random tables out the wazhoo, including a reprinting of the solo dungeon generator. And they gave you this shit in a core book! Man!

Second Edition I don't have a lot of knowledge about, but it seemed to be less on the organic quality - you had a lot more options, but the rules seem to have ossified further. This was also the golden age of shared settings - Dark Sun, Planescape, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Mystara, pseudo-Greyhawk, Ravenloft. Which were great and all, but someone else was doing the universe-creating. And (as far as I know) all the cool tables were dropped from the back of the DMG.

Third Edition - even less organic, what with forgetting about recommendations for building your own world as opposed to gaming in one of their pre-made ones like XCrawl, Eberron, or Forgotten Realms V2.0. Achievement, meh - creating a character became a lot more complex all of a sudden, meaning instakill poisons and energy drains got nerfed. And the magic item list lost its cool artifacts in favor of "official" artifacts, with a list of "official" powers and drawbacks. And no more random tables in the back of the DMG.

Renfest D&D - hell, it's nigh impossible to die because that has been decided as "Not Fun", everyone is awesome from the start so Achievement becomes just BECOMING EVEN MORE AWESOME, the magic items are in the Player's Handbook for crissake, we've even disposed of wandering monsters, and there aren't any more secrets or surprises because that might inhibit taking full tactical advantage of one's situation. Lists of "magic items I want to get next level"! JESUS! You might still have the Neoteny, though that's pretty much it. And with an "official" character generator, that's that much less opportunity to write your own rules; give characters healing potions instead of healing surges, limit powers, that kind of thing.

So there you go. "That is the theory that I have, and which is mine, and what it is too."

Why can I not let this go?

Jeebus Crispies, I keep thinking about Shelly's dumbass article. I keep realizing things I should have commented on before. (Not so much fridge logic as fridge headdesk.)

* I initially thought DM Chris was sending the group through "Against The Giants", as his setup sounded a lot like the setup for the Steading, which is why I was thinking of cave bears, I guess. But would you really want to try to go through a epic cycle like that with Majeka Pootmaker and friends? Hand-holding and leading by the nose and stage-whisper-prompting the whole way? Which leads me to:

* It couldn't have been The Steading 'cause Chris mentions up front that drow were involved. BIG OLD-SCHOOL NOT-SPOILER: Drow are behind the Giants' attacks on civilization in "Against The Giants". The PCs are expected to winkle this fact out from tiny clues during the assaults on the giant holdings - things like "Eclavdra". But, again, assembling clues and noticing things that don't make sense would have been totally wasted on Giggles McCoy and company.

* Here's an old-school biggie: DM CHRIS DID NOT HAVE THEM MAPPING. He was drawing the maps for them. And I suppose that's yet another concession to the 4e dungeon prima-donna mentality; could you see Ms. Dungeon Tiles sitting still for "You see 30 feet in front of you and the corridor turns off to the West; there's a closed door 10' away in the East wall"?

* Shelly is all impressed about how she was "role-playing" when the grand total of the RP'ing she points out was her and the others doing funny voices. Cripes, you dolts, there's more to it than that! I submit Shelly really did more roleplaying when she had Majeka Headacheinducer gadding about the Underdark with a wine glass full of Merlot in one hand. Which is something, given what little I know about Majeka, I can assuredly see her doing. ("wine glass". JEEZUL!)

* Sudden realization: I was going to make a comment about "buying a leather mug" as opposed to Durinsbane crystal or whatever Makeja's wine glass was made of... and it struck me: these brats want Ren-Fest D&D. Tee hee, pay your $25, wander around the Underdark, have some turkey leg on a stick, watch the show, and go home with some loot. And goddamnit, that's exactly what 4e is all about - no risk, no danger, no inconvenience, no subtlety, no challenge worse than trying to find an ATM so you can pay for the quartz-crystal necklace you want. Oh, look out, here comes Mr. Gnoll The Rat-catcher!

Hell, that's what I'm calling 4e from now on - Ren-Fest D&D.

Which is the problem I have - I don't have a problem with the Ren-Fest; I've gone and had a good time. It's fun. BUT - it's artificial fun. You know exactly what you're going to get - shows, dealers, food on a stick. It's going to the mall with a veneer of pseudo-historicity about it.

Oppose that to going to a gaming convention and finding someone in the dealer's room with a whole load of cheap old RPG stuff, or wandering into a group playing some game you've never heard of before and sitting down to something new, or pulling out a copy of Microlite74 and a handful of teeny d6s in the green room and running an impromptu dungeon-delve. It's impromptu, unplanned, organic. Which is what OD&D and the OSR are to me. I think I want to return to this point later.

EDIT: Oh, for fuck's sake, of course the names of Majeka Prootwaddle's companions sounded old-school - they're cribbed from D2: Shrine Of The Kuo-Toa! I know I may have my old-school license suspended for not realizing that before, but it's been ages since I read the Canon as far as modules go, and I'm sitting there minding my own bid'ness and suddenly I see Fage The Kexy and Shab Heanling and Darg Blonke and I suddenly realize those names have been forever demeaned by being abused by a couple of Ren-fest D&D brats who have to be told how to explore and think that funny voices are the be-all and end-all of roleplaying. Pfeh.

So we've got three High Gygaxian names, and Majeka ShakeyerMoneymaker, who He-Man and She-Ra would have responded to with a *facepalm* and a "Y'see, sweetie, you really need a better name... like the Sorceress! She's called the Sorceress, f'crissake! Not Kerri Krystalwand!"

Tee hee! D&D is hard!

You know, I'm in danger of losing my union card for "Grumpy Grognards and OSR Curmudgeons Local 358" for my gross lack of slagging 4e aka WOTC's Folly, so, with a hat-tip to Greyhawk Grognard for inspiration, I'm going to eviscerate these pieces of fluff from The Coastal Mages, by one Shelly Mazzanoble. (Mind you, I've never read anything else by her, so I don't know if these articles are representative of her output... but if they are, it doesn't say much for WOTC.)

Auspiciously, it starts out with whining about How Different Things Yoosta Be and how did people Back Then ever survive blah blah blah:

“What’s a library?” we asked.
Naturally, we old-timers began to trip down
memory lane with our walkers and canes, rehashing
how rough it was back in our day. No GPS, no digital
cameras, no Glee!
“Back in my day I actually had to get up to change
the TV channel,” I said. “What a pain that was.”
“Back in my day I had to actually push a vacuum
around the floor,” Laura said. “Can you imagine life
before Roomba?”
“Back in my day, I had to roll up a D&D character
with a pencil and paper,” Chuck said, pressing pause
on his iPod Shuffle. “And do my own math.”
“Ew!” I said. “How old are you?”

Okay, that's pretty dismal, supposedly not knowing what a library is, but, trust me, it gets worse.

Shelly then proceeds to express disbelief at the idea of D&D without tiles and minis, wondering how you could possibly ever take proper tactical advantage of your fighting environment space if you didn't know which 5' square everyone occupied. The word "imagination" is briefly mentioned, but quickly dropped for more whining, this time about character death (oooh, ick!).

But in spite of the hideous drawbacks, the siren call of primitive stone-knives-and-bearskins gaming calls to Shelly:

But still . . . there is always something about the
way people wax on about the earlier editions of D&D,
and I’m not entirely sure it just has to do with a time
before microwaves and YouTube. (And yes, kids, there
was a time before microwaves and YouTube. Shut up.)

GAWRSH A TIME BEFORE YOUTUBE HOW COULD IT HAVE BEEN SO!?!

*ahem*.

Anyway, Shellly's willing to try this "feerst ee-deeteeon" stuff, even though she claims to not even own a pencil, so she sits down with her DM and rolls (EGADS WITH DICE AND EVERYTHING) up a new M-U, "Majeka Magicmaker", which Chris-the-DM says is "a very 1st Edition name". Hee hee, names were so silly back then! (Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter would kick Majeka's ass from here to the Barrier Peaks.)

Then we got a problem with henchmen - Shelly's sheet has a spot to list 'em, so in typical spoiled brat 4e mode she, of course, insists on having them:

“I totally want a henchman,” I say. “How do I get
one?”
“You’re not getting any henchmen,” Chris says.
“Not in my game.”
“But I’m entitled to them,” I explain, pointing to
the box on the character sheet.

and authority-figure DM Chris folds like a PocketMod:

Chris knows me pretty well, so in the interest of
time he offers a treaty.
“Fine. You can have henchmen, but they’re not
coming on the adventure. They have to stay home and
tend to the garden and draw you a bath and plan your
wardrobe or whatever. Let’s move on.”

Then, after we ASSIGN 3d6 rolls to Majeka's stats (3d6 six times in order evidently being a little too iron-man for comfort) we haz another OH CRISIS moment with D&D Barbie:

“Get your percentile die.”
“I have no idea what you’re asking me to do.”
He hands me the die that I’ve kept in my bag for
six years and never once rolled.
“For real?” I ask. “I always wondered what that
thing was for.”

SNERK.

And then we get the requisite "OMFG I can only cast a spell once a day and the monsters might hit me and ruin it ohmigod ohmigod that is just so unfair".

Throw darts? Use a sling? Hurl flaming oil? Oh, lordy, lordy, Majeka Magicfarter couldn't be expected to think of options like that! That's just so un-magicmakery!

And Armor Class back then was just so complex! DM Chris has to consult a chart to calculate AC, whereupon Shelly ends up with an AC of 2. (TWO? For a M-U? Cripes, and she's complaining) ? And much further whining ensues about how arbitrary a number it is and why is it so low and what she needs to hit someone and it's all so complicated and blah blah blah blah. I dunno, ten-year-old kids could cope with THAC0 and descending AC back in the 80's; I have no idea what Shelly's problem is. Maybe the Red Bulls she's been knocking back have actually been Potions Of Stupid.

By the way, we find out Majeka Nosepicker is 8th level. You know, just one goddamn level before name status, one level away from being able to "retire" to found her own stronghold and craft friggin' magic items. But this is just too weak for Shelly! *sigh*

Anyhoo - Part 2, and the vapid valiant adventuring party is off to do adventuring stuff:

I am Majeka Magicmaker, an 8th-level gray elf
magic-user. To my right is Laura, aka Shab “Shabulous”
Heanling, a 12th-level half-elf thief. Mark, to my
left, plays Darg Blonke, a 7th-level gray elf fighter, and
Chuck rounds out the group as Fage the Kexy, a 7th level
gray elf cleric.

Eeyurgh. What's with all the elves? Was there a delver's recruiting drive in Lothlorien or something?

And ohgod ohgod ohgod right away we start in with the "how do we know what our tactical advantage is?" crap:

“We don’t use maps either?” Laura asked.
Chris shook his head.
“Or Dungeon Tiles?” Mark asked.
“Are we Amish?” I asked.

and then Shelly does a lame "Who's On First" ripoff:

Before we began, he instructed us to pick a party
color, to which I immediately shouted, “Teal!”
My group stared at me with heads cocked and eyebrows
raised.
“What?” I asked. “I’m trying to channel the 80’s,
and teal was a very 80’s color. I had about four zillion
mock turtlenecks in teal, because it went great with
my peacock eyeliner.”
“It’s still a good color for you,” Laura said.
“Thank you!”
“He said ‘caller,’ ” Chuck offered. “Not color.”
Oh . . . right . . .

Oh, forcrissake, we didn't use 'em BITD either, so I have to conclude this was yet another example of "let's parody the typical 1st edition AD&D experience" bullshit. Yawn. Gygax was a big fat guy with a beard, you know. Tee hee.

And it's crisis time yet again as the heartless DM throws the PCs into the adventure head-first, without allowing time for the reading of proper boxed text or establishment of detailed back-stories or anything important like that:

We can’t just begin. We need answers first!
“Where are we?” Laura yelled.
“Who are we?” Mark asked.
“Tell us what is going on!” I shouted.
Chris shushed us. “Calm down. Let’s first get you
in initiative order."

AAAAHHH YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD YOU'RE DEPROTAGONIZING THEM!

By the way, evidently Shelly-welly knows damn well what a library is:

Oh, yes. Order. Organizing feels good and is the
best way to calm a potentially riotous bunch of rabble.
Every time we attend a library show and give out free
books, we always make the teachers and librarians
form a line. If there’s one thing they like almost as
much as free books, it’s self-sorting. (And if there’s
one thing they like more than free books, it’s crudités
and wine, but that’s another story.)

Ha, ha. Yes. Urm.

Twit.

It's at this point DM Chris seems to realize just what circle of The Inferno Minos has dropped him into:

“Hello?”
“Wait, are we playing already?” I asked. Usually
we line up our minis on the edge of the playmat to
signal it’s game on.
Everyone shrugged. Chris sighed again. Apparently
DM ing in 1st Edition is very taxing. “Yes, you’re
playing. Tell me what you’re doing.”

Yes, Shelly, I'm sure it's the taxing quality of 1st edition DM'ing that's his problem.

I was heartened to notice it wasn’t just me who had
trouble grasping the lack of in-game physical representations.
Man, we are spoiled.

No shit, Sherlock.

But DM Chris keeps on trying to get these blithering yahoos to THINK, as futile an endeavor as that appears to be:

“Okay, okay,” Chris said, scribbling something on a
piece of graph paper. “I’ll start. One of the townsfolk
gave you a map that looks like this.”
His drawing shows a corridor about one square
wide and six squares long.
“So we’re just . . . there?” Laura asked. “Alone?”
“I don’t know,” Chris smiled. “Are you?”
“Isn’t that something you would tell us?” Mark
asked.
“Isn’t that something you would notice if you were
looking around?” Chris prodded.
We gave Mark encouraging nods, guessing this is
something our caller might be able to find out.
“Yes.” Mark spoke with an authority appropriate
for a caller. “We are looking around. We are trying to
. . . see stuff.”
“Did you bring a light source?” Chris asked.
Oh, jeez, nothing slips by this guy. This is worse
than trying to return something to Best Buy without
a receipt.

At this point I don't know about Chris, but I'm cheering for the monsters.

(So what exactly do you do about light sources in 4e?

Oh, I know - THE SUN SHINES OUT YOUR FRIGGIN' ASS. Brats.)

So Shelly wants her damn 5' squares, and she's not going to let this go:

“You know what would work really well?” I asked.
“Dungeon Tiles. I have some at my desk. Want me to
go get them?”
“No,” Chris said, pointing at me to sit down.
“You’re seeing exactly what you would see with the
amount of light you have.”
I was pondering the strangeness of making our
fantasy game so realistic when an unfamiliar voice
came from my right.
“Shaaaaaaaabulous is claaaaaaaaaustophic.”
“What’s happened to your voice?” I asked Laura.
Mark nodded sympathetically. “Dairy bubble?
Happens all the time.”
“Oh, no,” Laura said in a weird, affected, half-
British, half-theater-snob accent. “This is how
Shabulous talks.”
Chuck’s eyes got all wide. “Are you roleplaying?”
“OMG, I think I am!” she said.

GRRRRRRR WANT CAVE BEARS TO EAT THEM NOW NOW NOW

“Did our light source go out?” I asked. “Because
I’m not seeing anything helpful here.”
“You have to say that in Majeka’s voice,” Laura said.
“That’s why you can’t see anything.”
Mark agreed.
Okay, so they’ve both lost their minds, but hey, I
was a theater major. The problem is, I wasn’t a very
good theater major, so the only accent I can do is that
of the Count from Sesame Street. I use it for everything—
Italian, Southern, Elvish.
“Majeka looks up once, twice, three times. Ah, ah,
ah. And she still can’t see anything.”

RABID TROLLS. RIDING CAVE BEARS. WITH +5 GLAIVE-FAUCHARD-RANSEUR-GUISARMES OF IDIOT SLAYING.

We braced ourselves, because without the map
and the minis (and yeah, yeah, I know I’m harping on
this but it was new to me!) it really did feel like I was
stuck in a dark, dank dungeon with a flimsy spellbook
and some friends who speak with weird accents
and giggle uncontrollably.

RABID FIRE-BREATHING TROLL SHAMANS CASTING CLOUDKILL AND METEOR SWARM RIDING TARRASQUES WITH I.B.S. RIDING ANCIENT MAGIC-USING RED DRAGONS WHO HAVE HAD A VERY BAD DAY AND ARE LOOKING TO TAKE IT OUT ON SOMEONE.

Then, thank Kord, the drow show up to save us:

Chris continued. “Out of the darkness you see
three creatures rushing toward you.”
“You said they were trying to get away,” I said.
“Guess not.” He rolled more dice and concluded
that Fage had been clubbed over the head for 6
damage.
Okay, so far 1st Edition seems like it’s just the DM
doing lots of stuff to the players.

Well, yeah, when you're insisting on having your wine-swilling idiot characters wander around the Underdark with no light sources and the collective INT of a befuddled Gelatinous Cube.

But then, mirabile dictu, the stopped clock is right for once today, the blind pig finds an acorn, Hell freezes over and Majeka Pooflinger actually does something intelligent:

Let’s see what’s in Majeka’s spellbook.
I chose wall of fire and tried to describe my actions
to Chris as well as I could.
“I’ll cast this . . . back there . . . where the rest of
the drow priestesses and friends presumably are, in
hopes it will erupt into a giant wall of flames that
keeps us separated.”
Instead of the usual “Are you sure you want to do
that?” he says when I’m about to do something strategically
dubious, Chris looked a little dejected as he
nodded and said, “Go ahead.”
And get this: Not only did it work and do 23
damage to everyone caught in the blast, but it was
truly a good, strategic move.

And then the others unload a can of whoop-ass delicate pint jar of inconvenience on the three poor helpless drow and, just like that, the game is over with. Woot. I guess.

What was that, like thirty minutes? Sheesh. Just try getting through the first round of combat in 4e in thirty minutes. These morans had no idea what they were doing and yet managed to get a ways underground and fight an entire melee in that time.

In the cheese-loaded tradition of other comic endeavors from the 80's, we finish out with An Uplifting Message:

“I can’t believe how much I enjoyed that,” I told
him. “I feel like I was way more into it than usual.
Like my D&D just got more real.”
My mom always said there was a fantasy world in
my head. I thought she was only referring to soap-opera
characters and stuffed animals.
“See what happens when you’re forced to pay
attention?” he said.
I did, but more important, I was beginning to
understand what all those boys in the 80’s found so
appealing about D&D. The danger, the excitement,
the adventures as big as your imagination would let
them be. Seeing is believing.
Or, in this case, not seeing is.

And knowing is half the battle! Or not knowing. Or something. Gag.

I guess this was all intended to be funny, in a kind of oh-so-ironic hipper-than-thou Kewl Kidz way. I guess. 'Cause I don't see the funny.

There was an article back in The Space Gamer #48 called "The Balrog And The Finger Of Death", by W.G. Armintrout, about a battle with a Balrog with painted miniatures on a battlemat, as opposed to the old-old-old days of D&D and an epic battle against a pair of Balrogs and a last-minute Finger Of Death spell that pulled the delver's asses out of the fire. The older game was the one that they remembered and talked about, because it was the more involved one - the one where they used their imaginations to envision these monstrous creatures moving through "the cloying darkness". As Armintrout put it:

So what's the point of these two stories? Simply this: last week we pushed some lead figures on a plastic map and played a game inside a dungeon; but against those balrogs many years ago I had an adventure! One was just a game, the other was an experience.

Which says exactly what Shelly does, except without the condescension and patronizing and snickering at the poor deprived barbarians who had to struggle along their games with their wildly complex charts and character sheets and graph paper, in the dismal shadowy past before Dungeon Tiles and full-color hardcovers and Twitter buffs.

And said it back in 1982. You know, back when we played D&D wrong, before WOTC came along and showed us the full potential of the RPG experience.

Snerk.

GRAAAAAAHHHHH

I wish to hell I had the kind of drive and dedication to gaming that I see in, well, every other freakin' RPG blog out there.

Burned out, I am. Devoid of creativity. The magic has gone out of Stars Without Number and I am back to fantasy RPGs, but all I can do is re-edit text files of Microlite74 and OD&D and Tunnels & Trolls. I can't do anything WITH them. I look at the stuff I've printed out for Mythic and I feel uninspired; I look at my collection of T&T solos and it's just all "meh". I pull out my copy of Palladium's Weapons & Armor with the idea of converting it into a system and I can't decide which system to use. Maybe I should convert the Arduin Grimoire books to Microlite74... bahh, what the hell for?

Why am I not PLAYING any of these systems? Why am I fiddling around with fonts for PocketMod versions when I should be rolling up characters and going on adventures? I've bought the Mythic GME and T&T solos and saved tons of random creation resources from blogs... why am I dicking around re-sorting the files in my "RPG" folder when I should be USING them?

Too many systems to choose from? Lack of self-confidence? A feeling of not having enough time?

I have no idea. But it's FRUSTRATING.