Once a geek…
[Note: this post originally appeared on my main blog, here. I have revised it somewhat.]
Lucas had been lobbying me for a while to teach him how to play pen & paper Dungeons & Dragons. He had played Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale on the computer, and seen some of my artifacts in the basement from the ancient days when we did such things by hand. Stuff I had not touched since the early 80's. I knew that the rules had gone through several editions since the old AD&D tomes I used to know by heart, and decided that I should investigate to see what the state of the art in fantasy geekdom was. I have to say that said state (I'm talking Version 3.5) struck me as quite a bit improved. I particularly liked the skill system and the way it makes all the basic character abilities have repercussions, even the ones that are not key to your class. For example, back when I played as a kid, if you were a fighter, you could care less what your intelligence and wisdom scores were. They were almost never relevant. Now if you have low wisdom you'll be bad at spotting bad guys or hearing them sneak up on you. If you have low intelligence you’ll be bad at finding what you’re searching for. And so on. I also liked the new melee rules, which incorporate miniatures to make battles a lot more tactically complex and interesting, and enable you to figure out with some consistency questions like "what happens if I stop to drink a potion while a hobgoblin is trying to skewer me on its halberd?" Reading of all these improvements, I started to get resentful that they hadn't existed back when my friends and I were playing. Why is there an inverse proportion between the quality of available pastimes and the amount of free time you have to enjoy them in?
You can probably guess where this is going. Someplace very scary. Because, you see, now I'm grownup and gainfully employed. Which means I actually have disposable income to spend on rulebooks, plastic miniatures, and battlemats. I'm now DMing my first campaign in over 20 years. (It stands for Dungeon Master, which I know sounds very S&M, but try to work with me here.) The players are Lucas, three of his friends, and two of his friends' fathers. I'm trying to make this a real role-playing campaign, one with an over-arching story line and characters that mean something beyond roll-miss-roll-hit-get-treasure. (I rationalize my efforts as providing a potentially useful educational experience, as the three of us adults interact with the kids in solving various tactical and moral dilemmas. Yeah. That's why I'm doing it.) So after they all rolled up characters I spent several weeks creating detailed backgrounds for them. I gave each of them a fancy printed copy of his deity's creed. I gave each of them an independent back story containing his unique motive for embarking on a quest, as well as important information that would be unavailable to the other characters unless voluntarily shared. I printed spellbooks in calligraphic fonts. Each person's backstory ended with his entrance into a particular tavern to meet with other potential travelling companions. And so on our first session I sat them all down at the table and let them negotiate what they wanted to do. It's been a very interesting dynamic. It seems that my telling them they had personal information not accessible to the others has made them regard that information as a resource to be jealously guarded. They're being very cagy with each other, even as they travel together and depend upon each other's abilities to survive. Which, I suppose, is just the psychological realism I was looking for. It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to learn to trust each other and work as a team. Right now there's almost no consensus building, no sharing of information that would benefit everyone. That will need to change if they're going to make it …
So since I'm putting a fair amount of time into this, I feel I may as well start documenting the storyline as it develops. Some day it will be a nice souvenir for Lucas. I have neither time nor aspiration to turn this into anything of literary value--while I'll try to make it engaging enough to read, my main goal is to just tell the story so we'll have a record of what we spent all those Friday evenings doing. Because some of the players might read this, I will not reveal anything about the characters' detailed backgrounds or motivations that hasn't yet been revealed during game play. I will probably revise earlier posts from time to time, if I think of additional details worth adding.
Lucas had been lobbying me for a while to teach him how to play pen & paper Dungeons & Dragons. He had played Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale on the computer, and seen some of my artifacts in the basement from the ancient days when we did such things by hand. Stuff I had not touched since the early 80's. I knew that the rules had gone through several editions since the old AD&D tomes I used to know by heart, and decided that I should investigate to see what the state of the art in fantasy geekdom was. I have to say that said state (I'm talking Version 3.5) struck me as quite a bit improved. I particularly liked the skill system and the way it makes all the basic character abilities have repercussions, even the ones that are not key to your class. For example, back when I played as a kid, if you were a fighter, you could care less what your intelligence and wisdom scores were. They were almost never relevant. Now if you have low wisdom you'll be bad at spotting bad guys or hearing them sneak up on you. If you have low intelligence you’ll be bad at finding what you’re searching for. And so on. I also liked the new melee rules, which incorporate miniatures to make battles a lot more tactically complex and interesting, and enable you to figure out with some consistency questions like "what happens if I stop to drink a potion while a hobgoblin is trying to skewer me on its halberd?" Reading of all these improvements, I started to get resentful that they hadn't existed back when my friends and I were playing. Why is there an inverse proportion between the quality of available pastimes and the amount of free time you have to enjoy them in?
You can probably guess where this is going. Someplace very scary. Because, you see, now I'm grownup and gainfully employed. Which means I actually have disposable income to spend on rulebooks, plastic miniatures, and battlemats. I'm now DMing my first campaign in over 20 years. (It stands for Dungeon Master, which I know sounds very S&M, but try to work with me here.) The players are Lucas, three of his friends, and two of his friends' fathers. I'm trying to make this a real role-playing campaign, one with an over-arching story line and characters that mean something beyond roll-miss-roll-hit-get-treasure. (I rationalize my efforts as providing a potentially useful educational experience, as the three of us adults interact with the kids in solving various tactical and moral dilemmas. Yeah. That's why I'm doing it.) So after they all rolled up characters I spent several weeks creating detailed backgrounds for them. I gave each of them a fancy printed copy of his deity's creed. I gave each of them an independent back story containing his unique motive for embarking on a quest, as well as important information that would be unavailable to the other characters unless voluntarily shared. I printed spellbooks in calligraphic fonts. Each person's backstory ended with his entrance into a particular tavern to meet with other potential travelling companions. And so on our first session I sat them all down at the table and let them negotiate what they wanted to do. It's been a very interesting dynamic. It seems that my telling them they had personal information not accessible to the others has made them regard that information as a resource to be jealously guarded. They're being very cagy with each other, even as they travel together and depend upon each other's abilities to survive. Which, I suppose, is just the psychological realism I was looking for. It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to learn to trust each other and work as a team. Right now there's almost no consensus building, no sharing of information that would benefit everyone. That will need to change if they're going to make it …
So since I'm putting a fair amount of time into this, I feel I may as well start documenting the storyline as it develops. Some day it will be a nice souvenir for Lucas. I have neither time nor aspiration to turn this into anything of literary value--while I'll try to make it engaging enough to read, my main goal is to just tell the story so we'll have a record of what we spent all those Friday evenings doing. Because some of the players might read this, I will not reveal anything about the characters' detailed backgrounds or motivations that hasn't yet been revealed during game play. I will probably revise earlier posts from time to time, if I think of additional details worth adding.
posted by CMN at 10:16 AM
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