Nuts-And-Bolts

Had an email from a GM earlier who reaches out to me for occasional game advice/suggestions. In addition to wishing me well with my recovering wrist (it is recovering...slowly but surely), the GM mentioned they are "getting better [at GMing] with each game" played. 

Which is awesome...duh. If you have a calling as a GM/DM, you WANT to see improvement in your craft over time. Imagine how frustrating to love something and then struggle in futility with it for years (or more).

Last December, I wrote (briefly) about the number of YEARS it took me to learn how to run AD&D in (what I consider) an "adequate" manner. Not "great;" probably not even "good," really. But definitely adequate. And, it should go without saying that I'm judging "good" and "great" by what I know NOW...with the benefit of decades spent in this hobby, watching DMs both good and...not-so-good. When I was 15, I (and my players) would probably have called myself a "good" DM, if not a great one.

My, how low we set the bar back then.

But we were kids. And I'd guess that our MAIN concern at the time was simply one of FAIRNESS. Was the DM acting as an "impartial arbiter of the rules?" Or were they being an asshole? Concepts of 'storytelling' and dungeon design theory were definitely NOT concerns for us back then. Could the DM be trusted to play by the rules and not be a jerk...THAT was the main concern. 

Now...well, I have some higher standards. Because I'm older and wiser and (somewhat) more mature then I was. Funny how that happens. If you'd asked me a decade ago, I'd probably say I'd LOVE to be transported back to my teens or twenties with all the knowledge I have now. But now? I'd say I rather like being the age I am, even though it means I'm balding on top, my eyesight is going, and I don't heal as fast as I used to. 

[the eyesight part is the one I struggle with the most]

I rather love where I'm at in my life, despite the challenges that this decade brings (every decade of one's life brings challenges, that's just how life is). But this is a fun one right now. Kids not quite adults, but on the cusp of it. Routines settled into some sort of semi-organized chaos. Yeah, money's tight and you can't eat out like you used to, but I've really learned to enjoy cooking at home. Every day is a bit of a struggle, but you know and understand what the struggle is all for...there is value and meaning and purpose. It's kind of wonderful.

Anyway.

It takes time and effort to learn how to do things. For [reasons]. I've been reading up on the lives of famous guitarists. And the thing they all have in common is how much they worked and worked and worked at their craft...for hours and hours and hours, before they achieved any type of success and even afterward (if they had any consistency or longevity). I used to own a guitar...I used to be able to play a few chords on it. I wrote a couple-three songs even (for one of my former bands). But I never spent hours upon hours over days and weeks and months and years becoming skilled or even competent as a guitarist. I didn't care much for playing the guitar. It wasn't a passion for me...it wasn't even fun. For people who become virtuoso musicians (with any instrument) there has to be something that drives the person to immerse themselves in it. Maybe they love the instrument and the music it produces. Maybe they see it as a means to an end (i.e. a career). Maybe they simply have nothing else going on in their lives/brains. 

In the end, none of those motivations matter. All that matters is the time and effort put into honing one's skills. You do something 40 or 80 or 100 hours per week, and over time, you WILL get better at it. 

As a teenager, I worked at fast food joints over summers. I got really, really good at making a Burger King "Whopper." Even today (decades since I last stepped into a fastfood kitchen) I could put one together in seconds...probably blindfolded if I needed to. In a way, it was a complete waste of time, since I never aspired to being a lifelong "maker of BK burgers." But I use the example of how one can train themselves to do something, just by putting in the hours regardless of motivation. We learned to read and write and walk and talk the same way. I worked at another career...a much more complicated one...for fifteen years and learned to do THAT in my sleep, too. Could probably still do most of it, if I were to go back, excepting the technology has probably changed.

D&D...specifically Dungeon Mastering...IS a passion and calling for me. I don't know why, but it is. And because of that, I've spent long, long hours reading and writing and playing the D&D game for DECADES. Just like those virtuoso guitarists, I spent hours locked in my room with my dice and my books. To the non-gamer, this probably seems ridiculous...all the skills I could have been learning instead. Whatever. The heart wants what the heart wants. I wanted RPGs...many of them. And reading them, playing them, absorbing them, burning them into my brain's neural connections...that's what I've done over the majority of my life. And to the person who does enjoy and appreciate these games...well, my dedication in gaming circles is usually recognized, if not respected.

Which, by the way, doesn't matter to me. The heart wants what the heart wants.

And so we come to AD&D: a vastly complicated game by the standards of most games played around a dinner table, but the bulk of its rules still (mostly) fit in two slim hardcovers. Seriously. If you were to set the magic item descriptions and optional appendices aside, the DMG would clock in at the same number of pages as the PHB...about 250 pages total. Compare that to the 5E where the PHB alone is 300+ pages. Can you grind 250 pages of rules? Study them, learn them, burn them into your neural cortex so they're as ingrained as the plot of your favorite television series or the procedures in your favorite spectator sport? Can you do that? Or is it too much to ask?

Spending hours...TIME...grinding is, as said, the key to building skills. It's those "nuts-and-bolts" that are the most important part of mastering one's craft. You may have a tremendous imagination and a penchant for 'storytelling,' but if you don't have the nuts-and-bolts of the game nailed down, that's all for naught. 

You want to write songs? Better learn your scales.

It becomes amazingly "simple" to DM a session of AD&D if you put in the work learning the rules of the system. The rules of AD&D exist to describe and define and delineate the possible actions the players take in the (imaginary) "world." This is why...when running...I don't care overmuch about my players' depth of knowledge. I describe situations and ask what they want to do (occasionally presenting options)...and then I lean on the rules of the game to adjudicate results. I don't negotiate with my players...there isn't a need. I don't hem and haw and consider "what would be fun" or "story appropriate" for the session. I allow the players to immerse themselves in the game world, and then I use the engine of the system to drive the car. It's knowing the nuts-and-bolts that make this possible. 

Don't worry about being a good Dungeon Master. Focus on learning the system. Do THAT and everything becomes a whole lor easier.

ASC3 Wrap-Up & Thoughts

Yesterday rolled out the last of my ASC3 reviews, reviews that I finished writing some weeks ago. This post (yes, the one you're reading right now...) was written many days later, giving myself some time and space to think about the contest as a whole.

Not that I've done a lot of that. I'm a busy guy and I've been exceptionally busy since the holidays finished in early January. "Non-stop" is the phrase that comes to my head...for most of these reviews, I read and wrote them in BUNCHES...huge, heaping piles of them...in order to get through my obligation as a judge. At times, it was a bit of a slog, and I'd guess that (as much as anything) contributed to the curtness of some of these reviews.  For those who wanted MORE feedback, I've done my best to provide extra thoughts in the comments section of each entry. For those who'd prefer a more private forum for complaining or questioning my methodology, I'm generally responsive to emails.

Overall, I was somewhat disappointed by the quality of the submissions this year. 'Course, it's not MY contest (Ben will be the final arbiter of what he feels is worthy of the compilation), but there seemed to be a real dearth of...what I would call..."complete" entries.  Lots of problems, and many of the adventures with the strongest creativity and best theming were often the ones that lacked proper execution. Some of the two-star entries had me more jazzed/excited than the handful of four-star entries...which shouldn't happen. But it did. And none of the adventure sites (in my opinion) warranted a five-star rating. Not one...despite receiving nearly 40 entries this year.

The types of entries was also a little disappointing. Of the 38 adventure sites, eight were written for AD&D and four were were written for some form of TSR Basic. That's less than one-third. Everything else was written for various retroclones or...other. Six for ACKS. Two for Seven Voyages. A Hyperborea, a Savage Swords. That's more for "non-D&D" than there was AD&D...what's up with that?

My question is not meant to be rhetorical. There's something going on here that is interesting. And, if you'll permit me, I'd like to speculate about it for a moment:

I enjoy the gaming community. But for me, the community is a secondary consideration to gaming. I already mentioned I'm a busy guy. Most of that "busy-ness" revolves around my family and all our various "stuff," very little of which involves gaming. Sports, music, socializing with (non-gamer) friends, school stuff, house stuff, day-to-day living stuff...this occupies the bulk of my time and attention. And it gives me a full life...a happy, satisfying life. The gaming stuff...which, for me, is a vocation and calling and a part of my basic identity...is always there. Like my eye color. Or my wedding ring. 

But the gaming community? I play game, I write games, I teach games. But games aren't a lifestyle for me. And I don't need to be immersed in the community of gamers to know what I'm about. 

And I am different from some gamers in this way. There are gamers...many gamers...who not only want this community but NEED it. They need to kabitz and be friends with likeminded folks who encourage them and validate them and accept them and relate to them. This is a HUMAN thing...we all "need" community to one degree or another to give us all these things. We are SOCIAL creatures; we do not enjoy being LONELY. 

Most of us. I've always been a little odd in that I like my solitude. But not always. And, generally speaking, I love people...gamers and non-gamers alike.

What does all that have to do with adventure writing? Gibson's contest is an on-line thing...something marketed to an on-line community. And those communities (like my blog readers, or Ben's) gravitate towards a particular type of gaming...an older style, an FAG-oriented style (what's now being called "classic"). And in larger community, you see vocal visionaries promoting particular games...games like ACKS and OSRIC and OSE, etc. And some gamers gravitate towards these vocal proponents, and a small handful becomes a small group and then a small community. Like-minded folks finding ways to be together with other humans.

And togetherness is something we all want and desperately, desperately need in these times.

The particular edition of D&D I play has a following, too...but it is older and more diffuse. Pocket tables (like my own) teaching and playing a game the same way  it's been done for 40+ years, long before "communities" and social platforms made networking dead simple. Geezers, in other words...geezers like myself who decry the way the hobby has disintegrated over the years but who (again, like me) can't be bothered to create a gravitational force that drags in folks searching for "community." AD&D is not a Church; a gaming session is not a Mass. For me, that is. For other people, the wider gaming community has replaced for them part of the thing that religion has done for so many people over the years. Provided a feeling of belonging. Provided a higher purpose outside themselves. Provided a way and a reason to bond with others.

All very good stuff. As I said: we're humans. Humans need this kind of stuff.

So while I'm disappointed not to see more AD&D adventure sites, I get it. And I'm okay with it...the "disappointment" I expressed was more personal than conceptual. I like AD&D...I'd like to see more AD&D adventures being written, published, play-tested. But it's a GOOD thing that we have so many people going out and creating...doing work...for the larger hobby. More entries this year than last year...Gibson's contest has grown with every season. That's fantastic. Because people need creative outlets and gamers need adventures and adventures writers are only going to get better the more they write, the more practice they get.

I look back at some of my own stuff, and I'm appalled at my earlier efforts.

Thank you to everyone who took the time and made the effort to participate in the Adventure Site Contest this year. Thank you for sharing your creativity; thank you for contributing to the hobby. Thank you for putting up with my slights and nit-picks and taking my sourness in stride. Thank you for making me THINK and READ and helped me sharpen and crystallize my own thoughts on design. And thank you for being an inspiration to others who haven't yet found the time...or the courage...to create their own adventures.

RPGs are meant to be played with others. By providing adventures, you provide more opportunities for people to play together. Appreciate you folks.

"Just A Game"

A long, long time ago...probably in the first year or two of this blog...I tried (at least on one or two occasions) to communicate my feelings for the RPG hobby and D&D specifically...the profundity of the thing, this activity, this game. Yes, yes, it's FUN...of course it's fun, duh...but I somehow have long felt that it is somehow important, too. And I tried to name why I felt that way (that this silly game of fantasy adventure was somehow "important"), and pretty much failed to find the words. Or even the reason.

Over the years (sheesh, 15+ I've been blogging!), I gradually came to the conclusion that the reason, if there was one, didn't really matter at all. The game was important to me, and that was enough. Perhaps whatever intuition I had that made me feel D&D somehow mattered on a larger scale than "personal" was confused narcissism: a justification of my own passion/obsession for the hobby. Lots of people have passions and obsessions; just throw me in the same category as collectors of stamps or baseball cards, rather than the research scientist looking for a cancer cure.

[by the way, I can make a case for the value of collecting; apologies if I offended with that last sentence]

However, as time has continued to pass and our world has continued to trend in a particular direction, I've come back to this inner feeling, this idea that gaming...specifically D&D gaming...is important and does have value beyond just being a "fun game." Surprisingly, I feel its importance more than ever in its value of creating human connection between people. Not just in the way that shared fandom of a sports franchise cuts across boundaries of race, gender, religion, economic background, etc. (one of the great things about sports), but in the way it promotes shared activity between people. If I'm wearing my Seahawk jersey (as I will be tonight in a Lord-I-hope-we-win game against the damnable Rams) I can make eye contact, nod, high five, or dap up any other person wearing the same jersey, no matter what our respective backgrounds happen to be. But playing D&D, I can sit down with someone and share an intimate imaginative space, holding discourse and trading ideas. D&D allows people to have a 'meeting of the minds' on a deeper level than most any activity outside our non-shared spaces (family, school, church, workplace, etc.). 

That shared activity is so much more profound than just shared recognition. 

So there's that. And I think that meaning and value and "importance" is going to become more meaningful and more valuable and more important as our world continues to move in the same direction it's been going the last decade or two. We'll see.

By the way, this holds true for any RPG, or any edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Those 5E people who are playing the game in a fashion unrecognizable to moi? They're still making human connections. That's a good thing...we NEED more human interaction between our fellow humans. So...yay!

HOWEVER, while that's the underlying importance of RPGs (as I see it), and something many (most?) of us might agree on, there are additional benefits to playing AD&D that I hadn't quite noticed until just recently...this morning, in fact...that, in my estimation, elevates my chosen edition in certain subtle ways above the hoi polloi of other RPGs, especially those with "modern sensibilities" like 5E and Shadowdark.

AD&D, in particular, is not about self-expression or collaborative storytelling. It is a structured game with fixed procedures, real consequences, non-subjective objectives of play, and an impartial referee. That structure creates trust which, in turn, enables risk. The risk makes choices matter, and out of that comes real camaraderie.

AD&D quietly teaches...and reinforces...things that modern life tends to erode:

• Respect for External Authority (the game has rules that exist outside personal preference)
• Negotiation Within Constraints (you can't just "try anything;" choices have costs)
• Delayed Gratification (progress is earned, not guaranteed or a matter of fiat)
• Risk Acceptance (failure is real and consequential)
• Social Trust (the DM is neither adversary nor servant, but the facilitator of the game/world)

While many modern games claim to support "social play," they generally shift authority inward (play "what feels right"), cushion failure, automate judgment, and prioritize individual expression over group coherence. Meanwhile, in AD&D authority (i.e. the rules) is external and known, the outcomes are constrained by procedure, failure is both possible and meaningful, and the group (based on the PREMISE OF THE GAME) is forced to work and adapt together.

This produces consistency, and it is through that consistency that trust is earned; it is not negotiated minute by minute.

What makes this especially powerful is that AD&D does all this while masquerading as nothing more than a game. It doesn't lecture, or moralize, or have some grand statement of "this is important." Instead, it presents the rules, a dungeon, and asks 'what do you do?' And week after week, the people playing:

• learn to listen
• learn to plan
• learn to balance risk
• learn to accept loss
• learn to trust someone else's judgment

All in the presence of others.

There is something deeply valuable about a game that requires presence, attention, cooperation, and acceptance of outcomes that cannot be endlessly revised or curated. Yes, AD&D is "just a game," but it's the kind of game that we could stand to have more of. The longer I live, the more I appreciate it.

Cauldron Wrap-Up

It's Saturday morning...not quite a week since the end of Cauldron III. I've been home (Seattle) since Monday night. Things are, more-or-less, back to "normal."

Sofia's (school) soccer season has ended (although we're still going to do some sort of pizza party), and it was a successful one. Our goal, set at the beginning of the season, was to make the playoffs in our first year of eligibility and we did so, being second in our division of ten, and number four of only eight teams selected. Next year, we will set our expectations higher.

Likewise, high school cross-country has wrapped up for Diego; his last meet (Thursday) I got to watch him finish #11 out of some 300+ kids (#4 amongst first year students) form eight different schools. It was not his best run of the season, and he felt he should have placed higher for this particular meet, but this was his first time doing high school athletics, and he had a pretty strong season.

Club soccer continues for both kids. Diego's off to Yakima today.  Sofia and I will be putting together the last touches of our Halloween costumes (normally, I'd be the one on "driving duty" for the five hour round trip, but I'm the Lector at 5pm Mass this evening).  School continues. Basketball season is starting. Etc.

This is my family; this is my life. And I love it. At Cauldron, I may be a God of the Gaming Table and a Creator of Worlds...at home I'm the dishwasher, the chauffeur, and the scrubber of toilets. It is the the way of life, and I wouldn't want to have it any other way. If I wanted it some other way, it would be some other way...we create our own reality, just as surely as Dungeon Masters create dungeons.

Why do I bring this up?

Cauldron is an amazing, incredible experience...one that I feel so blessed to have participated in, one that gives me so much joy, I feel the need to write four or five (long) blog posts about it. For an old gamer like me, it is three days of unbridled bliss...

[sorry, had to pause to feed my kid breakfast before he got on the road: two fried eggs, bacon, sourdough toast, pineapple juice. Dishes can wait]

...much as I find bliss to spend a week on Orcas in the summer. Or to spend two weeks with my in-laws in Orizaba. Or as it used to be to spend Thanksgiving in Whistler, BC with my mom...or the Thanksgivings of my youth in Missoula, Montana.

Cauldron is a holiday. It is not my day-to-day reality.

And I want it to remain so, as something special. The dates have been posted for next year's Cauldron, and it's early enough in October that I could make it work with the soccer schedule; I could do it, I could make it back for 2026....

*sigh*

Since coming home, I've been in near constant contact with the con-goers via the Cauldron discord: checking in, scrolling photos, discussing plans for next year, throwing out ideas of how to make the con even cooler than it already is (as if we weren't already on the edge of spontaneous combustion). Just trying to keep that feeling, that Cauldron "magic" going...even after the thing has officially come to a close. Iudex...a man who reminds so much of my good friend Carlos Chavez in Mexico that it is painful...even suggested (jokingly, I'm sure) that I consider moving to Europe.

Mm. I love Europe. But leave the Pacific Northwest?

No. I'm not quite ready to create THAT reality. For better or worse, I'm a loud, ugly American, proud of my U.S. passport. And for right now, I can't imagine living out my last days...and dying...in any place but the Evergreen state, tasting the fresh piney air and hearing the patter of rain drops (it's been pouring the last two days: typical October weather). I'm not trying to be morbid or a downer...I'm just sharing the real thoughts in my mind. Not just the last few days, but the last couple years. Ever since the first Cauldron.

[truthfully]

If only I could bring everyone out here! Host my own Cauldron...some sort of extravaganza on Orcas in the summer time (I mean, if we're just wishing/dreaming...). Show them MY neck of the woods, feast them on fresh seafood from the Puget Sound and beers brewed from our local hops, wines from the Yakima valley. Hell, avocados! Are there no avocados in Germany?

*sigh*

Pipe dreams. For now, Cauldron must remain overseas and...for me...just an occasional holiday. One that I look forward to, one that I look back on with great fondness.

But I miss the people. There were 80+ attendees at Cauldron this year. I gamed with more than 40 of them including: Settembrini, Prince of Nothing, Iudex, Doof, Grutzi, Michal, MichalS, Mike, Domenico, Henning, Alex, Tamas, Chomy, Sonke, Justin, Cris, Ludwig, DangerIsReal, Butch, James, Orlando, Daniel, Paul, Ollie, Jay, Walid, Dillon, Theo, Dreadlord, Tom, Pangea, and...gosh, so many others whose names (and/or internet handles) escape me at the moment. And then ther are the people that it was so good to see and talk to, even if we didn't game together: BlutUndGlass, Melan, DerOgre, Eria (duh), Ghoul, Lynchpin, GusB, Eric, Yandere, x_y_z, MK...so many, so many good people. 

Man, I truly, truly enjoy spending time with all of you...more than words can convey. 

And with regard to the gamers specifically...those of you who showed up at my table in 2023, and then came back for more in 2025 (sometimes TWICE)...well, it touches my heart. Honestly. That feels much more like the bonds of friendship than just "pick-up games at a con." 

I will be back. But I don't know when. I asked the age of the youngest player at Cauldron this year: twelve. I'm sure she and my daughter would have a blast (Sofia will be 12 in April). And I know Diego would have a good time gaming. I was considering taking them BOTH in '26.

But that air travel.

It's one thing for me to go 14 hours with small catnaps, and then pull my shit together enough to game hardcore over three days before flying home...do I want to put my kids through that?

Mm. 

It would be one thing if my entire family was into gaming...but that's not the case. The only way it would work is if we made it a "family trip" (which my wife would be down with...she loves to travel and digs Germany), and just made Cauldron a portion of a longer excursion.

But she (my wife) wouldn't want to game. And what would she do for three days while we were there? And would my kids want to game three days in a row (they're not as crazy as I am)? And would I be traveling with all my gear while tooling around Germany? 

No. Unfortunately, it doesn't make logistical sense. Which is a crying shame because playing AD&D with Euro kids in Germany would be an awesome experience for them that they'd both love. But it's not just a drive to Yakima or Spokane. It would be...nuts.

You create your own reality.

All right, that's enough discussion of Cauldron 2025...time to turn the page. I want to take a little break from D&D-stuff in general (yeah, right...we'll see how long that resolution lasts!) to get a handle on some other projects. Some of which ARE D&D-related but, well... The POINT is: I've got a couple-three blog posts already scheduled over the next couple days, but after that you can expect fairly light blogging for a few weeks; I've got OTHER "holiday stuff" to attend to.

Have a wunderbar day, folks!

[for ease of access:

Cauldron 2025

Let Slip The Dogs Of War Part I

Let Slip The Dogs Of War Part II

Let Slip The Dogs Of War Part III ]

Anti-Influence

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

I deleted my "X" account yesterday. I still have the FB account but I only look at every few months and haven't posted to it in years. I have a few discords I'm subscribed to, but except for the Cauldron one, I'm only checking those to see if people are direct messaging me. I'm kind of off televised news, though I keep tabs on major things going on in the world via NYT and the BBC. 

And my wife, of course...she's required to follow all the news as part of her job.

I have an...hmm..."odd" relationship with the ChatGPT AI (or "Oz," as I like to call it). I bounce ideas off it and dredge it for collecting and collating data that I can use for my own purposes. There are some things it does well, and some things that it doesn't. It ain't good at formulating creative ideas from whole cloth...for example, it is shit at adventure design. But with the right inputs and management, it can help critique, point out flaws, or suggest strategies for things I'm working on. It can also draw from a fairly wide swath of information floating around the internet and collate/collect that in one place for my own use. It's "word association" abilities are extremely powerful: for instance, it is VERY good at doing natal astrological interpretations (something I studied/practiced extensively in the past), even including things like Jeff Green's Pluto work, astrocartography, and hooking it up with various alternative forms of self-analysis (Mesoamerican astrology, Chaldean numerology, etc.). That biz is...so far as I can discern...already rendered obsolete by our digital oracle.

Of course, it can also do blog posts with the proper prompts...here's a version of my Q1 post from the other day, entirely generated by Oz to my specifications (including my own, slightly combative, style):

The Demonweb Ain’t Broke: In Defense of Q1 

Let’s get this out of the way up front: Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits is not a broken module. It is not a clumsy capstone. It is not some Blume‐butchered disappointment. It is, in fact, one of the most conceptually ambitious, mechanically coherent, and spiritually true high-level AD&D modules ever published by TSR.

The real problem? People don’t read it right. They come expecting a coronation and get tossed into a meat grinder. They want a cinematic climax; they get eaten by spiders. Good. That’s the point.

“It’s Just a Bunch of Random Monsters!” You mean, like every other classic dungeon module? The Demonweb isn’t a carefully curated monster museum. It’s a divine hunting ground. The ogres and gnolls? They’re not “out of place”—they’re minions of other demonic powers. Yeenoghu and Vaprak don’t send hand-written invitations to Lolth’s palace—they send troops. Gifts. Tribute. Some may even be spies, working their own angles. Does Lolth care if they live or die? Not in the slightest. She uses them like everything else in her domain: bait, misdirection, or cannon fodder. Players think they’ve walked into an ogre cave, and then two rooms later they’re fighting type VI demons. Welcome to the Abyss.

“It Doesn’t Match the Drow Stuff from D3!” Because it’s not part of it. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be. D3 ends just fine on its own. The whole Elder Elemental God thread? That’s Eilservs’ nonsense, not Lolth’s. You already solved the surface world problem by killing a bunch of giants and wrecking Eclavdra’s political coup. Q1 isn’t a narrative continuation—it’s punishment for pushing too far. You wanted to rob a goddess? You get dragged into her realm. No XP for surviving the fall, either. If anything, Q1 elevates the material. It doesn’t clean up loose ends. It hands you a loaded gun and dares you to shoot a god with it.

“The Layout is Dumb and the Web is Confusing!” Have you met Lolth? She’s not Asmodeus. She’s not running an orderly Nine Hells power structure. She’s a sadistic chaos demon who lures prey into her lair and toys with them. Of course her palace is a looping planar web of death. Of course it doesn’t make tactical sense. She doesn’t need defensible corridors—she can teleport at will and summon infinite demons. The layout isn’t a mistake; it’s a personality profile in map form. If your players can’t navigate it? Good. Let them get lost. That’s what happens in spiderwebs.

“The Magic Item and Spell Restrictions Are Arbitrary!” You’re in the Abyss. It’s not supposed to feel fair. The rules change because the cosmic substrate changes. That’s what makes it a plane and not just “another dungeon.” This is exactly how you make high-level adventurers sweat: strip away their crutches, tilt the field, and watch them scramble. Spells don’t work right? That’s not a bug—it’s a feature. The players aren't in Kansas anymore. They’re in Lolth’s mind-palace. If she wants your staff of power to flicker and short out, she doesn’t need a reason.

“The Final Battle is a Letdown!” Only if you’re bad at running gods. Lolth isn’t some CR-appropriate set-piece encounter. She’s a divine being. If your party expects to kill her in 12 rounds of initiative trading, they deserve what they get. The goal isn’t to win a fair fight—it’s to survive a divine tantrum in her own reality. You want closure? Fine. Let her escape, vow revenge, and ruin your party’s next three campaigns. Or kill her and deal with the planar fallout. Either way, it's more interesting than yet another evil high priest with a snake staff.

What Q1 Actually Is 

 It’s not a dungeon. It’s not a set-piece. It’s not a capstone. It’s a theological statement rendered in graph paper. It’s divine judgment in the shape of an adventure. It’s what happens when players mistake “level 14” for “invincible” and get handed their own entrails for breakfast. Q1 is one of the few modules that understands what high-level D&D is supposed to feel like: desperate, disorienting, and dangerous. Not balanced. Not fair. Not neat. Just deadly, weird, and unforgettable. 

The Demonweb Pits don’t need fixing. They need understanding. And if your players hate it, well...maybe they shouldn't have tried to rob a demon goddess.

Not bad, but still not really me. And not just because of the lack of typos and grammatical errors...the flow is somewhat different from the way I write (which is, admittedly, rather haphazard, so maybe that's a good thing...?). Being abrasive alone isn't enough to make something a "JB original." 

Not yet.

The thing is, the AIs available to us will only become smarter and more self-directive as time goes on...that is crystal clear, and I've come to accept that. Right now, AIs are on the verge of rendering many (most?) jobs that require "intellect" (i.e. non-muscle power) completely superfluous. And in a year or two, with the constant doubling of the things' computing power and expanding knowledge base, it could well render ALL intellectual pursuits (yeah, even adventure design) "superfluous."  And I'm...okay with that. Which is to say, I've come to accept that my brain, once considered somewhat special (at least by me), will be utterly dwarfed and pwned by a person with the right AI tool and one or two clever prompts. At some point, it will even reach a place where it won't need a human "overseer" to check its work...AI will have grow adept enough that it will be able to do that itself better than a human...ANY human...even one with decades of experience in a particular field.

That will be an interesting time to be alive.

And understanding this, I think I've decided that, for myself, I will continue to focus my life on the one thing I can control that AI cannot (although it can give me advice if I like), namely: how I live my own life. How I interact with my fellow humans, and what I do...in my daily life...that is in aid of the relationships and interactions I have with my fellow humans. AI can't get my kids out of bed, feed them breakfast, give them hugs with supportive words, and drive them to school. AI can't coach kids on the soccer field, firing them up with the right words, and instructing them in the tactics they need in the moment (our team is 4-1, by the way, with two games to go before playoffs). AI can't join its voice with others in hymns at Mass on Sunday, helping to create a shared, spiritual community. AI cannot make eye contact with people, shake hands, high five, or laugh out loud at a friend's joke.

And AI can't run a table as a Dungeon Master.  

As AI becomes more and more able to take over ANY and ALL work that is done over a computer (which includes everything from creating music to creating artwork to creating films with AI actors), I suspect that what will become increasingly valued within our society will be performative-based.  I don't see professional sports (as one example) going away any time soon, because even if you could make a robot that plays football (or any sport), it is not the operation of a machine that entices or inspires peoples. We have many fantastic machines in this world: airplanes and skyscraper-tall cranes and power plants. Remarkable marvels worth a glance, worth noticing, worth studying or writing an essay about. But that's not the same as following a human performer through their trials and tribulations and human drama and marveling at the skills they display in executing their craft.

As humans, we tend to be self-centered...and other humans are far more interesting to us than the machines that populate our world. 

So going to see someone perform music live, or going to live theater, or attending a sporting event...or any event where real, live humans are "doing" stuff...is going to remain a "thing" for a while to come. Having a friendly, smiling human acting as your cashier or serving you food or directing you at an airport is going to continue to be a part of having a functional society. Even if the majority of our books are written by AI and the majority of our purchases are delivered to our homes by autonomous Amazon vans.

That's fine. I'm okay with that. I have an identity that is based on how I live my life and how I feel about the life I live.

That wasn't always the case. The title of this post is "Anti-Influence" because there was a part of me that, once upon a time, wanted to be an influencer of some type (not that I would have used that term)...for the sake of my ego, I wanted to matter to other people. I wanted my thoughts, my words, my actions to have weight and help bring people around to my point of view. Over the decade-and-a-half that I've been writing this blog, publishing books, and participating in the on-line community, I probably have had some influence...in fact, I know I have, based on what people have told me.

But I'm done with that. I am. Call it a "newfound humility." I don't want to influence anyone anymore. THAT is not my raison d'etre...that is not the reason I was put on this earth. 

Which doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing what I'm doing (blogging, writing, communicating). It just means that, deep down, I'm not going to have any ulterior motive. I will continue to share my little pieces of this or that, and will continue to say things like "5E is bad, 1E is good," etc. (along with reasons why) but whether or not any of it has any IMPACT, or whether or not I have any "relevance"...something I used to stress about...no longer makes a difference to me. That is just chasing something...and not something worth catching at this point in time. Not even possible with the new changes to our world and the speed with which those changes are being implemented.

You, my dear sweet readers, will not see any more AI-generated content from me...I can promise you that (even if we reach a point where AI-generated content is truly indistinguishable from my weirdness). Books I publish, blog essays I post...they're all going to be self-generated. Not because I think they're better than what ol' Oz can do, but because GENERATING THAT KIND OF CONTENT IS WHAT *I* DO. "Writing stuff," well, that's my "work" (such as it is), and allowing AI to do it for me would render that work meaningless...or, at least, valueless to ME. 

I'm not doing this stuff to make money or influence people. Like coaching or DMing, I do it because I love doing it. ALL the things I do out of love seem to be things that have no financial incentive for doing them. And I'm okay with that, too (or, rather, I've come to be okay with that). Just being able to do them at all is a privilege that I cherish. Truly.

Have a wonderful week, folks.

: )

Death

I want to write for a moment about the phrase "deserving to die."

No. This is not (necessarily) a game related post.

One hears this phrase bandied around every so often: "So-and-so deserves to die." OR "So-and-so DIDN'T deserve to die." That the phrase happens so much in our society...or at all...says something about how WE (as a society) feel about death.

Pause that for a moment. To recycle a line from one of my favorite, Oscar-winning films:

"Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

I've mentioned this many times in many other posts, but I'll reiterate it again for the cheap seats: we are all going to die. I'm going to die. You're going to die. Our families and friends are going to die. Our loved ones, Our children. Our grandchildren. It's not a question of IF...it's a question of WHEN. Part of being human is being mortal...we don't last forever. Current science pins maximum longevity (with optimal health, nutrition, clean-living, etc.) at roughly 120 years. Most people will happily celebrate 100 (or 90!) so long as they're still ambulatory. The takeaway, however, is that our time here is FINITE. We end. All of us.

And we all have that knowledge...at least, anyone reading this blog should already know and understand that. This is not a secret of our existence. But whether or not one wants to face this truth...well, I'll not judge (too much).

We all die. Some of us live long enough to accomplish something we're proud of...leaving a legacy of sorts. This could be as "simple" as procreation, or it might be monumental institutions that will last for generations after we've shuffled off our mortal coil. Again, once we've passed away, such thing will cease to matter to us. We'll be gone...on to the next adventure (or next plane of existence or next incarnation or whatever happens "after"). 

So...what? So what, JB? It's "okay" to die?

It's not a question of whether or not it's "okay." Death is inevitable. Mortality is a part of the human experience. For good reason (in my opinion): there comes a time when it is time for the soul to rest from its endeavors during this existence...death is a welcome respite for the work (often painful work) of 'living.'

The sad part of death is mainly for those that are left behind.

[I say "mainly" out of the idea that a dying person may be resistant to death because they feel they have "more to do" before passing on...but evidence is that the world continues without us JUST FINE...this idea that we (perhaps) care upon passing is (at best) romantic or whimsical thinking]

We each have a part, a role to play in this rich tapestry of life in which we are all (while living) participating. When we die, our thread comes to an end...and that's O.K....but there are other strands that we have touched that might (and DO) continue after we're gone. For a while at least. And that, too, is a kind of legacy.

Why do I bring all this up? Why am I writing about it?

Recently a man was murdered in this country, my country (the U.S.A.). Sadly, unfortunately, this is not an unusual occurrence. Nearly 17,000 people were murdered in 2024. People with dreams, with plans, with ambitions. People with families that were left behind. People of all colors and ethnicities and economic spheres and politics. People who could have lived LONGER...maybe a LOT longer...if they had not been "cut down" by a murderous assassin.

This man that was murdered...I'd never heard of him (or if I had, I'd paid no mind and/or forgotten about him). But apparently he was famous. And controversial: much beloved by some, despised and hated by others. Having now learned something of him and heard his viewpoints on a number of subjects, I hold my own opinions, which I choose not to share at this time.

For this man to die, murdered, is not a good thing. It is not good for his family, it is not good for the people who loved him, it is not good for the people who stood against what he stood for. It wasn't even good for the person who murdered him and set out to (and succeeded in accomplishing) his murder. I say this with complete conviction: it is not good for the soul of a murderer to commit murder. I've known people who have committed murder (in war time) and I've seen the deep, deep scars it creates in their core.

In their core. But...that's something I could discuss at length and I don't want to digress from my current subject.

This controversial man was murdered, and there is nothing "good" about that. But his murder means nothing in terms of whether or not his death was "deserved." Deserve has nothing to do with it. Wherever his soul is now, it is evaluating its time on this earthly plane (in that particular earthly form) and considering "How did I live my life? What did I do for others while I was living?" For his own children he certainly did a LOT, bringing them into this world...something for which they should be eternally grateful. I am certain they will miss him immensely and, as a father (and son) myself, I empathize and feel for the tragedy of their loss. How terribly, terribly sad and frustrating their childhood will be without their father. 

I will say again: there is nothing good about a person's murder. No matter how hateful a person may be (or may be judged to be). With life, there is always hope...hope for change, hope for action, hope for making the world a better place. Even if I do horrible, horrible deeds. I can decide to change my ways and make a positive difference in the world...positive difference which might not "atone" for my past misdeeds, BUT IS STILL MAKING A POSITIVE CONTRIBUTION TO THE LIVES OF PEOPLE. 

Do people understand that? You might have been a piece of shit...for years!...but if you go out tomorrow and start helping people, being compassionate, working for the good of your fellows rather than the enrichment of your ego or pocketbook THAN YOU ARE MAKING A SOLID, POSITIVE IMPACT IN THE PRESENT. And, like it or not, we live in the present. And what we do in the present has an effect on what happens in the future. It doesn't make the past 'go away' but, to date, we haven't found the way to change the past. Best thing to do with it is to LEARN from it.

"Deserved to die." "Didn't deserve to die." F*** all that noise...both sides. WE ALL DIE. With the possible exception of Jesus Christ (and that's a faith question) no one has ever staved off death completely. The murdered would have died eventually, regardless of whether or not they were pissing off folks with their political rhetoric. Death comes for us all...eventually. It will come to ME. It will come to YOU. The question we ALL need to ask ourselves (as we look in the mirror) is:

What impact am I having in the world right now with the life I'm living, the actions I'm taking?

If I die tomorrow, my eternal soul (which I choose to believe in for...reasons) will not care overly much about the dead corpse it hovers over for a moment before "passing on." But it might...it MIGHT...care about the legacy it leaves behind. Will it be a legacy it's proud of? Will it have been a life that touched many lives in a positive, selfless manner? 

All of which, I understand, may make me seem callous or (at least) indifferent to the death...the murder...of a fellow human being. And perhaps I am. But I am not indifferent to the suffering of the man's loved ones that are left behind. I empathize. I've lost loved ones. And I can well imagine (I have a vivid imagination) how I would feel if I lost my child to a murderous individual armed with an assault rifle...the anger, the sadness, the disbelief.

All those various stages of grief.

We all die, sooner or later. For all I know, I might die today: struck down by a stray bullet, killed in a car accident, or murdered by an aneurysm in my own over-stressed brain. It happens. It is not unusual to die...it is (as said) inevitable. So it's up to me...to ME...to make sure that the life I live is worthy of being called a life in my eyes, by my understanding of what a "good life" is. Right now, that means getting up before the crack of dawn and getting breakfast ready for my high school student before taking him to school, and then coming home and repeating the process for my middle school student. Later on, it will be...other things.

This is life for humans. We live and then we die. "Deserve" has nothing to do with it. Living in fear...fear of the inevitable...is a damn waste of time and effort. Worry about what's important right now: living. Living a good life. Being a positive force in the world. Touching others lives in a positive way. Trying to leave the world a better place, not a worse one.

Yeah, there are cynics out there who don't buy any of that. "Get mine NOW, because when you die you're GONE." Okay, buddy. These are the folks who choose to live in fear...fear that they, too, will get murdered or struck down in some fashion and then they'll be GONE, unable to get anymore of THEIRS NOW. I've got news for those people:

You are going to die. Sorry. You will. The evidence, the facts, are clear on this account.

All right. That's enough for now...I've got a busy day ahead of me. Blessings and best wishes for all of you taking the time to read this (and for those who didn't, too). Happy Monday.

Yours In Faith

First Day

Today is my son's first day of high school.

It's pretty wild to think that I started writing this blog...heck, I published my first book!...years before he was born. And now he's a teenager embarking on the next four years of his academic life. Maybe not quite a "young man," but definitely getting there. Getting there.

I am wistful today (as one might imagine). I drove him to school this morning, dropping him off a couple blocks away...per his request...much as I saw dozens of other parents doing the same (probably at their kids' requests). Gave him some parting "words of wisdom." That's about it.

*sigh*

I am so proud of my boy. I could write for many, many paragraphs about all the reasons why, "glazing" him (as the kids call it these days). Hell, why not?

We just finished (yet another) soccer tournament this weekend as he captained his team to a decisive 3-0 victory in the championship round, going 4-0 in the tournament with a goal differential of +22. And I do mean "captained" quite literally: he's the captain of the team (with the armband to prove it), he's (IMO) the best player on the field, he's giving orders and directions like a field general on the pitch, keeping the energy up, keeping the discipline solid. He had five goals himself (plus six assists) and would have had more except the refs refused to award three blatant PK penalties (probably because we were already up 8-0 and 3-0 in those games) and because the coach pulled him in several matches to give bench players more play-time (in games where the result was already decided). Just remarkable what he can do.

Then there's the volleyball thing. He tried out for one of the premier men's volleyball clubs in Washington a couple weeks ago and made the team, despite being a full head shorter than any other player on the court (he's likely going to play libero for the squad); we'll be traveling to half a dozen different national tournaments around the country this year (like I needed that on my plate). But he loves it and he loves the sport, and he's so excited about it...about playing with other kids who love volleyball as much as he does.

Then there's the academics (top honors classes), the charisma and leadership, his ability to make friends (he's already cultivated half a dozen through his summer cross-country training), his devotion to his faith and activity in our church, his discipline, his attention to his appearance (I was never so 'put together' as this kid), his humility when interacting with his friends and peers, his kindness and patience and care for children younger than himself (even his sister...most of the time). He's a good kid...a good kid. He has the potential to grow into a good adult human, something we can always use more of in our world.

I hope and pray that he does get the opportunity to grow into a good adult human. Such is never guaranteed in a country that sees random bullets claim the lives of kids in schools and churches and in the streets and at concerts and...

*sigh*

When my son was just a cute, chubby infant (always those chubby cheeks), I had no idea what he would be like, what he would become. And, of course, he is still in the process of "becoming;" we won't see who he really is for another 20 years or more. But I could not have looked down the road 14 years and imagined the young man he is at this point in his life. He has several of my flaws (now that I could have anticipated...) including a lack of patience, a penchant for laziness and whining when not engaged, and the occasional (and understandable) fall into the trap of arrogance. But I do my best, I do my utmost to help him with those challenges, having frank conversations with him, explaining the whys and wherefores of these lapses, these human frailties that we all have. And he seems to have taken these conversations to heart..he appears to have learnt and grown and is already a better, wiser human than I ever was at his age. 

My boy is not me. We share many interests but not all. He prefers yacht rock to hard rock, for example. He enjoys the theater, but has no interest in acting or performing himself. He is a shorts and sweatpants kid that can easily spend 20+ minutes on his hair, while I wear blue jeans and ball caps year 'round (now, to be fair, I don't have any hair to spend time on these days, but even when I did I still wore a hat). He enjoys running (*sigh*). He is less critical than I am, less prone to see the negative, especially right off the bat.

But in more ways than not, we are alike. He is just a younger, better, more talented version of me...and talented in ways I never was and (in some cases) don't even recognize. Some of that is undoubtably stuff from his mother (duh), but not all of it. Some of it is just...him.

When he was an infant, I would just hold him and love him and marvel at him and cry thinking of how he would grow up and all these young years would be nothing but a fleeting memory. And now that he is grown, I just hold him and love him and marvel at him and cry thinking how he will continue to grow and all these young years will be nothing but a fleeting memory. But now I try to teach him, too. I love him so much. My life, rocky as it is (sometimes) is so good. I want him to have that, too. When he is an old geezer like me, I want him to be able to say, "My life, rocky as it is (sometimes) is so good." I really want that for him. 

Sorry. Just feeling a little emotional today. Thank you for indulging me.

Scheduling Conflicts

Let's just dive right in.

In slum-bagging it through the ol' Reddit detritus for a cheap-ass "Dear JB" to write, I am constantly assailed with post after post of people bitching about "scheduling:" how hard it is to get a day and time set when EVERYone can attend, or moaning and complaining when people miss a session or drop out because of rando stuff like "work" or "school" or "family."

*sigh*

Once upon a time, we lived in a world where there were far less concerns pressing down on us for our time and attention. There was no internet, no YouTub, no streaming services, no 5 billion different TV shows and movies to watch "on demand." There were no smart phones, no SnapChat, no Instagram, no "Meta," no discord channels to surf for hours on end. There were no pay-to-play phone games that ate up every last free minute that we might have to otherwise use for...oh, I don't know...THOUGHTS and REFLECTIONS or SIMPLE DAYDREAMING. The kind of stuff that would lead to ideas that one could work into their D&D game.

We lived in a simpler age where children were not being trained as polymaths, with music lessons and athletic activities and language classes all going on Every Night Of The Week. Instead you were either a "sporty kid" (with a couple of practices per week and a game on the weekend) OR some sort of arty kid (with a weekly piano lesson or acting class or something) and pretty much no other obligations aside from school, an hour of spiritual worship (pick your religion), and maybe a night of Boy Scouts or Campfire or whatever.

TIME. That precious commodity. We have given away So Much Of It over the years. I know I have...and my family as well. Now it's just a struggle...a struggle to find time to exercise (because it's good for me), to find time to sleep (because it's good for me), to find quality time with my family (because it's good for me), to find time to pursue my own ambitions and creative endeavors (because they're good for me, too). 

Where to fit gaming into this mix? There's not enough hours in the day.

Our time on this planet as humans is finite. We get (roughly) 120 years allotted to us, and this gets reduced considerably by our lifestyle choices...to the point that if we can cross the 90 year mark, most of us are celebrating like we won the lottery (and those last 15-20 years can be fairly burdensome ones to get through, depending on overall health). Those years are broken up into seasons filled with months filled with days and nights filled with hours...and many of those hours are accounted for, just for the sake of the necessaries of keeping us alive. We must sleep, frustrating as that may be...in a million years of evolutionary adaptation, no mutation has come along that keeps us from needing to spend one-third of our lives in an unconscious state.

SO...16 hours a day, 7 days a week for a grand total of 112 hours. Say you spend 40 hours of that on your "job" (whatever that is), 4 hours a day (28 total) on food preparation and consumption, another eight hours per week on bathroom activities (including bathing, grooming, teeth, waste elimination), three hours per week on "moderate exercise" (a bit more than recommended for optimal health but whatever), and, say, another 8 hours for home cleaning / maintenance (varies depending on division of labor in the household, need for lawn care, etc.). Of course some people commute (let's go five hours per week), and maybe you have a weekly "movie night," play, or sporting event with your family or roommates as a bonding activity...call that four hours. That leaves you with...what...16 total hours? That's a full day, right?

But, of course, it's never that easy. And even with those (fairly conservative) estimates time just keeps on slippin-slippin-slippin into the future. The only way you can guarantee your D&D game will happen is if YOU, Mr./Ms, DM makes it a priority to happen. 

Give yourself a four hour window. Pick a day and time that works for you Every Single Time, and commit to that. You don't schedule other activities that day. You plan your daily routines AROUND that time. You honor that time slot the same way you would honor any other important commitment...the same way you would with, say, your job or a university class. You put it on the calendar...weekly, semi-weekly, monthly, whatever...and you stick to it. And when the time comes up, you sit down in your seat (wherever that seat might be) prepared to run the game. 

That's how it works. Long term, that's the ONLY way that works. This haphazard, catch-as-catch-can method of tooling around everyone's schedule, making adjustments on the fly, etc. is all just exhausting, non-productive NONSENSE...and it will, eventually, derail your campaign, no matter how much effort you apply to "making it work."  

The session day/time only has to work for one person: the Dungeon Master. Without the DM, there's no game so, guess what? The DM is the priority.

Once you have your set session date, you inform your potential players of the date. And the players can decide if it works for their schedule, and whether or not the DM's game (YOUR game) is going to be a priority for their busy-busy lives. And maybe it won't be. Maybe they're not available on Thursdays from 6pm to 10pm. Maybe they have church obligations on Sunday mornings. Maybe their kid's soccer club takes them out of town on a lot of Saturdays and that's just not in the cards for them.

That's okay. You're not running a D&D game for your players. You're running D&D because you love it and you want to run it. 

If that's NOT the case...well, heck, I don't know what I can tell you. I love running D&D for my kids...Love! It!...but I don't run D&D for THEM. I run D&D because I love running D&D. If they did not want to play (because they have other obligations, priorities, friends, whatever), I would still run D&D. Because I love running D&D. I ran it before they were born. And I plan to run it even after they've moved out of the house and have lives (and, perhaps, D&D campaigns) of their own. 

It's not about the players. A solid, committed Dungeon Master can always get new players.

So, then, what happens if you HAVE players but one or more of them don't show up to the game? What do you do then?

Easy. When that happens, you just run the game for the players you do have.

As said, the players really don't matter. I don't design adventure scenarios for specific players...I just design adventure scenarios. My mind is on the world and the scenario, NOT on how the players will interact with it. I can't predict how the players will interact. I can't anticipate what they'll do when/if bad luck strikes and (for example) kills the cleric. Will the players abandon the dungeon? Roll up a new cleric? Decide to hire the village priest (because now Bob wants to play an illusionist or something)? Who knows? Who cares? 

Not I. 

I don't worry a whit about what PCs Sally and Bill and Terry are bringing to the session. What concerns me is the part of my game world they're in, and what adventures are open to them in that part of the game world. These days, my players (kids) tend to head "straight to the dungeon" (as soon as they can locate one)...in my youth, my players would futz about a bit more in town, getting into trouble or pursuing various ambitions. All that's fine...eventually their wallets will be empty enough that they'll start looking for some loot-filled adventure or quest. All their grandest schemes (generally) require money anyway. Just as in real life. My job is to make sure there are things for them to do (i.e. adventures) because I'm the DM running the thing and that's my responsibility as a DM.

So it doesn't matter to me whether Sally blows off the session because she's got a date that night, or is writing a term paper or whatever. Sally's character won't be available to the party (because Sally's not available), but the rest of the players can still posse up and trek out to the dungeon. Sally's PC is "off doing something" (sleeping off a drunk, or shacked up with some dude, or meditating at the abbey, or whatever)...adventurers, like their players, are a notoriously flaky bunch. The question isn't "where's Sally's character," but rather "what do Bill and Terry want to do?" Sally's PC can always 'catch up later.'

But what about players skipping a session in the middle of an adventure?

Ah, yes...always a possibility as, depending on how a session goes, it is not unusual for me to end a session with the PCs still two levels underground in some (probably corpse strewn) chamber, bagging coins from some newly discovered treasure chest. This is COMMON...I don't force players to 'return to town' at the end of sessions, and for long adventures (like the D-series of modules or some plane-traipsing extravaganza) such a return trip might be practically infeasible. So then: how do you, DM, explain when the next session opens and Bill can't make it because he came down with the flu? His ranger was bagging gold with the rest of the party at the end of last session, what now?

Again, easy enough: the ranger has gone missing. He stepped outside the chamber to answer the call of nature, or eat some rations without being assaulted by the smell of dead hobgoblin, and got turned around and lost somewhere in the dungeon. While the rest of the party sets about exploring (i.e. participating in the adventure) THIS session, Bill's ranger is hiding and/or wandering trying to find his way back to the party, avoiding wandering monsters, and trying not to get killed. Hopefully, Bill the player will be back to full health by the following session, and the ranger can "rediscover" the party...either in the dungeon or back in town.

But what happened to Bill's ranger "off screen?" Nothing of import. He fought nothing. He found nothing. He expended no resources. Maybe he used a torch...and subsequently found a replacement. Through ranger craftiness or blind, stinking luck he somehow managed to avoid combat and confrontation, and avoided falling prey to a trap. Perhaps he was paralyzed with fear and simply didn't move around much. Perhaps he knows the old ranger adage "when you get lost, stay in one place" and just waited for the other party members to find him. Who knows? But GAME-WISE he did nothing to warrant any change in his character sheet with regard to hit points, experience points, treasure tallies, nada. Somehow, his character just "lucked out."

And if Bill actually quits the game...say, he gets a job that precludes him from re-joining the Tuesday evening session the DM has scheduled...then something terrible has befallen his character. It was eaten by a wandering otyugh or something. Them's the breaks.

[unless the DM wants to use Bill's character as an NPC, of course]

You see, it really doesn't matter whether or not a player or three skip a session; the D&D game is not about individual players. Frankly speaking, the D&D game is not "about" anything at all. The D&D game is just a game. As a DM, I run the game, and I get the great joy that such a creative endeavor brings. The players? They just get to play...if they show up.

Now I understand that a lot of folks who learned the game in a post-DragonLance era are going to have difficulty shifting their brain into the proper mindset because (since DL) so much ink has been spilled and words vomited proclaiming that D&D is "telling a story." And all stories are "about" something. And usually that thing they're "about" are the characters in the story. And you see how THAT logic...built on a faulty premise...leads one to the (wrong-headed) conclusion that the players (or, at least, their characters) are necessary to play the game.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The only thing that's necessary to play the game is a Dungeon Master, armed with the proper tools (rule books, dice, etc.). Got it? The ONLY thing. So as far as scheduling "conflicts" are concerned there's only one person whose time and availability matters. 

D&D is an activity...a powerful activity that has the ability to forge bonds of friendship between people. But the game isn't necessary for those bonds to be sustained...people can remain friends long after their time and participation in the game has ended. We make the mistake of thinking that these relationships we create through the activity are contingent on continual engagement with the activity...that we will LOSE our friends if we don't find a way to make the game work for everyone to play. This is inaccurate. As we move through life, we encounter different people in many different activities and environments: at jobs, at school, at clubs, at church, at events, in sports teams, etc. Some of the people we encounter "stick" with us...for whatever reason...and become part of our social circle. And just because we change jobs, leave school, quite the team, etc. doesn't mean we LOSE these friends...we can still see them, and interact with them, as much as works for our (finite amount of) time. It's not the schedule that matters; it's the prioritization of engagement. 

Don't fear loss. Embrace the friends you have. And make MORE friends, build MORE relationships, while engaging in the various activities (like D&D) that you do.

Happy Thursday, folks.

: )

Addendum to "Nazis"

Just a quick addendum to yesterday's post:

I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons for a long while now. Since (roughly) 1982...about 43 years. To put that in perspective, Gary Gygax played D&D for 36 years (from 1972-2008) while Dave Arneson played roughly 37 years (from 1972-2009). While I'd imagine they did quite a bit more gaming than myself (as my "hobby" was their lives and livelihoods) I've been around...I'm not "new" to this game.

D&D is for everyone. Over the years, I have played "old edition" D&D (B/X and AD&D) with people of all sorts: Boys and girls as young as age eight. Straight men. Gay men. Straight women. Gay women. Whites. Blacks. Asians. East Indians. Pacific Islander. Mixed race. Mexicans. Canadians. All sorts of Europeans (hello Cauldron!). Proud "Rednecks" from Eastern Washington. Lefty radicals who'd take any opportunity to protest "the Man." Catholics. Christians. Jews. Agnostics. Atheists. People from "old (East Coast) money." People on disability who were unable to work. Ex-military (marine scout-sniper). Alcoholic hoboes. Ex-drug dealers/gang members. Guys who would go on to become Dominican monks. Longshoremen. Computer programmers. Cooks. Bankers. Musicians. Entrepreneurs. Married, family guys. Dating couples. Singles. Suave, charismatic professionals that worked out (a lot) and fat nerds that were the epitome of the "gamer sterotype." Democrats and Republicans and people who've opted out of the political system entirely.

I've played with a LOT of different types of people, from many different walks of life. PLUS a handful of people who I've never seen or met but only played with on-line...who knows what diversity those folks might have been representing?

Have I ever played with a Nazi (Neo- or otherwise)? Not that I know of. But it's certainly possible. Everyone has things about themselves that they keep to themselves. If they were a secret Nazi, it didn't affect my game at all...nor did it mar what appeared (to me) to be their enjoyment from the experience.

I've only had one person tell me that D&D just "wasn't for them" (although they seemed to be having a good time in the moment, while playing); that was my wife.  All the others I've encountered and run games for would have happily come back for more if circumstances (time constraints, priorities, responsibilities, etc.) had not intervened.  Truth be told, most often those "circumstances" were simply ME flaking out...being unwilling or unable to continue running the game, for a variety of reasons. Many of those people I abandoned continue to play today...just with other Dungeon Masters.

The POINT is that this "D&D thing"...having adventures, fighting monsters, discovering treasure. dying in filthy, subterranean environments....generally holds appeal for ALL types of people. It's not just a "straight white male thing." You'll hear that nonsense from some corners of the internet, but that's not my experience.

[hmm, now that I think of it, there was another guy who told me D&D "wasn't for him;" he had been brought to a session by his (enthusiastic) girlfriend of the time...a guy I'd known for a while through my brother. He was really outside his comfort zone with the whole experience (his interests lay in fast cars, making money, and drugs). However, since Justin is a white straight male, his exclusion from the hobby doesn't really impact the "diversity" of people with whom I've gamed]

And it IS a game for everyone...one that is playable simultaneously by people of varying skill levels, backgrounds, mental and physical capabilities (assuming you have a means of rolling dice or generating random numbers), giving a wide swath of humanity a chance to experience pulse-pounding action together...something that team sports can't even do, unless played at a very low level of competition.

And why does that matter? Because it is the experience of competition...of being "tested under fire"...that brings people together and cements bonds of lasting respect, camaraderie, and friendship.

You see this happen in other pressure experiences: military folks talk about this a lot. Having never been in the military myself, I've only had the opportunity to play with ex-military folks, but I've known quite a few men and women (many of them gamers) who've shared the bonds they've created with their "brothers" in facing true life-and-death situations.  I have no reason to doubt it.

On a smaller scale, I see it all the time in youth sports. My son has friends all over this town because of all the various teams he's been a part of with different kids from different schools with different backgrounds. Or here's a better anecdote: my daughter took a year off from playing club soccer, but decided to get back into it for the coming year. She tried out, made a team, and got put with a bunch of girls whom she'd never met before, but who (mostly) already knew each other. After her first week of practice she was having a lot of negative feelings...she was feeling left out and excluded and sad, despite enjoying the sport and having a good coach. 

Then came last weekend in which she played two games with the girls against real opponents. Now, her entire demeanor has changed...having gone through the games, playing with the others, suffering the ups and downs, being tested, and contributing she now has a whole different relationship to her teammates. She has a team of "friends," now...they laugh and talk together and have mutual respect for each other and she feels a part of the team. And I suspect (based on what I've observed in the past) that those bonds will only strengthen over the course of the season. Regardless, I've seen the shift in my own child.

It's what I try to produce and promote in the teams that I coach, too. Camaraderie. It makes for a better team and a better quality of play on the field/court/pitch.

Back to D&D: you can achieve this same thing through D&D play. I've seen it happen...it's why I make no bones about being an "adversarial DM" (ah, crap...that's a whole 'nother post I've been meaning to write...). Through running D&D, I can apply pressure that causes folks to come together and form (or strengthen) bonds that can only come from working cooperatively "under fire." Over the years, I've seen it happen many, many times.

And unlike my daughter's soccer team (which requires you to be an 11 year old girl of a certain quality of skill), D&D has practically no limits to the diversity of people that can experience it. Assuming everyone understands how to play, the people around the table can be any gender, any color, any age, any cultural/economic background, any political persuasion, any religion, any anything.  And the GAME can still forge bonds between these disparate groups of people. Again, I've seen it happen, many times. Sometimes to extremes: that hippy radical and redneck from Wenatchee I mentioned earlier? Those two ended up getting married (I was the Best Man at their wedding). Sadly, their marriage didn't last, but they were together for years and gaming was a shared passion that (along with love) helped them grow and change together.

On a smaller scale, I can point to my son's best friend who he hasn't gone to school with for 4+ years and who he never played on a sports team with. They are so different in so many ways: Diego is an ultra-competitive athlete, academic achiever, very religious, and tends to take himself very seriously. Maceo is NOT an athlete, not religious, not a great student, and totally at ease with and accepting of who he is (and who he isn't). But they've played D&D together (in my home campaign) several times, and those shared experiences are still things they talk about (sometimes) and allowed them to disregard all the ways they are different and simply focus on their shared friendship as two young, fairly wholesome adolescents. The two went on their first double date last Tuesday...Diego with his carefully coiffed hair, Mace with his blonde buzz cut...and, from what I heard, pretty much ditched the girls after lunch to simply hang out at the mall together. 

D&D can bring disparate people together in a shared experience in a way that few...if any...things can do. Yeah, there's something of that in attending a sporting event (you end up 'high-fiving' a lot of strange bedfellows at a Seahawks home game), but the interaction is not nearly as deep, nor as intimate, as gaming around a table. D&D can be a tool for forming connections with our fellow humans in a way that is sorely needed in our present society. Why not use it?

Ghettoizing, ostracizing, and partitioning off people we dislike and/or disagree with is NOT the path to a better world...it just ain't. As I wrote yesterday, we are different for a reason; part of living this life is (I believe) learning to harmonize with others. There is beauty in harmony; in music, a harmony is a unified whole, despite a composition of different notes. That's what we're striving for. Well, it's what I'm striving for.

Not that it's easy or simple. Not that it's a fast/speedy process. Not that it's convenient...but, man O man, don't we already have a lot of conveniences in our lives? Does everything have to be as simple and easy as ordering something off Amazon with the push of a button?

Learning to love your Nazi neighbor isn't an easy task. Neither is learning to be a Dungeon Master. For some people (including, perhaps, myself) the latter is far more easy than the former. And to folks for whom this is the case (like, perhaps, myself) I'd suggest focusing on THAT (i.e. learning to DM) and then simply worry about running an inclusive game devoid of interest in anything other than the action at the table and ability of the players participating. Focus on the game you're running, and let the game do the harder work of bringing people together.

Try it out. See what happens. If that doesn't work then, sure, go ahead and go back to the thing you KNOW doesn't work (kicking the unwanted untouchables to the curb)...that's always in your back pocket. 

I don't have any Nazi friends (that I know of). But even if I did, that wouldn't make me a Nazi.

[hmm...I guess that wasn't a "quick" addendum. Apologies]

"Fifteen Years"

It's 3am and I'm awake...again.

The part of insomnia that's really miserable these days is the state of my eyes. Once upon a time, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and just read a book until my eyes got tired again and get back to sleep (this didn't always work, but often enough). Now, my eyes are so bad, I can't even read my computer screen...it's just a big, bright blur. Fortunately, I don't need to be able to read to type...although I imagine my typos are fairly horrendous.

White on black text, however is easier to decipher (probably a way to change my blog settings, if I could read them...), and so I skimming the latest Reddit mailbag to see if there was anything "juicy." And I came across a player complaining about her DM "hating" on her characters because they're too effective (*sigh*) and he keeps introducing house rules to nerf their effectiveness.

[what kind of characters, you ask? how about clerics. how about rogues. Like...the basics. Just another shitty DM who can't handle the game mechanics of D&D...]

Anyway, she was writing that perhaps this is perhaps on her, not the DM, because she's been playing since elementary school and has some fifteen years of experience, mostly as a Dungeon Master, and...

Fifteen years?

Fifteen years?!

Fifteen years is a long f'ing time. The last time I worked a regular job-type job, I worked there for fifteen years, and that was (perhaps) about five years too many. Hell, I was there long enough to be vested in the pension plan (this was back when companies still offered pensions...). Fifteen years was definitely the longest I'd worked at ANY one place....

Fifteen years ago, I had no children. I've packed a lot of living, a lot of life experiences into the last fourteen years of being a father...so much so that remembering my child-less life before is just...ancient history or something.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years from now, my son will be almost 30 years old. Hopefully long graduated from college and having a career of his own...maybe even working on a second career. Possibly having a family of his own. Hell, in fifteen years, I might be a grandfather (still won't be retirement age...assuming Social Security is still around  in fifteen years...).

Fifteen years. The person writing this Reddit letter is probably closer to 30 than 25. Can you imagine? A person with fifteen years of D&D experience under her belt, almost 30 years of age, and the only D&D she knows is 4E and 5E? Because they started publishing 4E in 2008, seventeen years ago. And yet, after fifteen years of regular play...especially regular play as a Dungeon Master...I'd daresay ANYone qualifies as a "seasoned veteran" of D&D gaming. Regardless of the edition played.

Yes. Regardless of the edition being played.

Yesterday, I actually wrote that someone was playing D&D wrong (because they are), something I've tried hard to avoid putting down in print for years (I've been writing this blog for more than fifteen years, just by the by). Oh, I'll belittle and berate and bully and happily write there are better ways, smarter ways, more effective ways to play the game...sure. But I try really hard not to just put my foot down and say "you're doing it wrong." Because A) who made me the damn expert and B) if they're enjoying their game play, aren't they de facto doing it "right" and C) even if I am right and even if they are wrong, who cares? Will me writing it down stop them from playing how they play?

So I try not to come right out and say "you're playing wrong." I've done it a couple-four times over the years, but I generally have to be pretty worked up. And I often feel "low" after doing so.

NOW...can I even imagine telling a person with fifteen years of solid experience "you're doing it wrong?"

No. I really can't. Because fifteen years is a LONG ASS TIME. And if your passion and love for the game has lasted a decade and a half, to the point that you are still playing, in an age when almost NOTHING lasts fifteen years (aside from familial relationships and our closest friendships)...a fifteen year vocation/hobby is nothing to sniff at. You're not doing something "wrong;" you are doing something very, very right...at least, you have proven that it's "right" for you.

I am...and have been...possibly/probably too hard on these 'young whippersnappers' (30 year olds). It's just tough for a geezer like me to treat people who've never not known the internet with the degree of seriousness and respect that they (probably?) deserve. For that, I apologize...although, I'm sure that 20 years from now, they'll feel much the same about "kids" in their mid-to-late 20s who've never not known A.I.

It is what it is. 

Anyway...it's getting on towards 4am. I'm going to try to get some sleep...we've got a really huge day ahead of us, celebrating Sofia's birthday and such before kids skip town for Easter (Spring) break.

Happy Good Friday, folks. Sorry for the typos (I'll edit this later...when I can see more than a blur).