Audience Participation

Monday at lunch I ran a beginner D&D session for some co-workers who hadn't played since they were children. One dude is pretty big into D&D Online, which, compared to tabletop, is like having a driver's license from a different country. You know how to drive, but you don't know about driving HERE.

Before I continue, a digression: I sometimes forget that I'm smart. I hang around intelligent people, and I like reading and learning and various smart-guy pastimes. I'm used to, literally, being the dumbest guy in a room full of brilliant people, which colors my self-perception. So occasionally, when I've busted out some four-syllable word to a circle of blank faces, I realize that I'm not always in that room. Sometimes, I'm the smart one.

Hang onto that idea.

For the assignment I just finished, I got to make up adventure sites. I didn't have to detail them, I just wrote romance copy--a paragraph intro and hook. It's fun, but it's hard to invent something new in one paragraph.

For instance, I made up a site that consists of three wizards whose towers are physically miles apart, but interconnected with teleports. Once you enter from the ground and start throwing open doors, you never know exactly whose tower you're in any more.

That's an okay idea. You can do some fun things with that. But I wanted it to be better; I wanted to make up something that was so shockingly new and interesting that my editor would write and say, "Jeff, this paragraph is so compelling, I want to commission you to write this entire adventure up in detail for publication." Somehow, I wanted it to be super-extra-lightning creative, something that would perk up jaded professional ears.

Contrast this with my lunchtime D&D experience, where four adults go on the following quest: The town elders want you to explore a dungeon. Inside the front door, two goblins attack you. Later, in a different room, two more goblins and an orc attack you. There are chests containing treasure.

That's it. Ta-da.

They loved it. Had a great time. One guy emailed me later asking questions about it. They want to play again ASAP.

At Wizards, we would always tell ourselves that we weren't the audience, but I don't think we believed it deep down. We were connoisseurs of games, and we had increasingly nuanced, stratified tastes. Most of the time, we believed in those more than we believed in playing to our audience.

But the people who play the game are not that discriminating. They are project managers and electricians and suchlike. They don't walk around thinking about this stuff. For them, opening doors and killing goblins is plenty fun. Super-extra-lightning creative might be fun too, but it also might be unnecessary, or worse, overkill. They don't need, or even necessarily want, four-syllable words.

Don't hear me stumping for mediocrity, right? I'm just saying that I'm as close to the audience as I've been since I left Alabama to work for TSR, and it's good to get to know them again. It's good to be them again.

Our Paper Year

Today is Meredith's and my first anniversary, and it's been a great year.

When we met, I knew early that she would be an excellent lover and partner. I'm so glad she feels the same way about me.

There's no part of my life that's not improved with her in it, and year 2 looks to be even better.

Language Barrier

In my career DMing 3rd edition D&D, I have seen a bizarrely disproportionate number of new players take the Sylvan language, because it seems cool and logical. When you play a new game, you don't know how to optimize under the set of rules, and so you make interesting, but ultimately unsound choices for reasons you had no idea about. Sometimes those are subtle.

What I find interesting about such a complex game as D&D is that some unsound choices are not subtle at all. After all, you're a ranger. You spend time in the forest. Why wouldn't you learn the language of forest dwellers?

Mainly because no one speaks it. I haven't looked through the Monster Manual, but the number of creatures who speak Sylvan is probably one of those one-hand counting deals.

I was talking to my friend, Monte, once about why a multiplicity of languages in D&D is cool, but in Star Wars is a pain the ass. We more noted the discrepancy than attempted to explain or rectify the problem. But here's what I think:

D&D has a relatively small, closed set of languages. There are 20 in the SRD, representing more languages than your character will care to learn (especially considering low-level language comprehension spells). But the three or four that you know still represent a significant percentage of all available languages. There's a not-terrible chance you can understand any given language.

When the DM says that someone is speaking in a strange language, you lunge for your character sheet--is it Gnome? Infernal? Sylvan? It's possibly the dumbest, simplest kind of mini-game nestled in D&D: Did I make a successful blind choice? It's a crappy game; it's nickel slots--low stakes, low payout, all luck. But it's still compelling occasionally, in a reptilian-brain way.

In Star Wars, with a kajillion languages, the odds make it more like a lottery. "Trandoshans? Yes! I speak Dosh!" That might happen once in an entire campaign, if that often. After a couple of those moments without winning, you don't want to play anymore.

So there's that. But the unsound crux in D&D is that these multiple-but-not-overwhelming language options are unevenly distributed. Lots of monsters speak Undercommon, Goblin, Giant, Draconic, or Abyssal. But way fewer monsters speak Celestial or Sylvan. Statistically, you just shouldn't bet on Sylvan.

This disparity is compounded because someone who speaks a "good" language like Celestial or Sylvan is likely to be an ally. A DM needs that person to deliver info, not withhold it.

Different languages exist in fantasy games for two reasons: flavor, and to hide information. Flavor is great, and it informs design. But it is forest when you are looking at one particular tree. Important, but not pertinent.

Hiding info, on the other hand, is very pertinent, and doing it linguistically is an underused aspect of D&D adventure design. I've got half a mind to tweak the language rules in my campaign to offer more opportunity for interestingness here. But I've only really got half a mind for it, so it probably won't get done soon.

Until then, an easy fix is to create and employ more monsters who speak Sylvan or Gnoll or Ignan or whatever just to jump-start this underused mini-game. Because I like it when players make unsound choices for fun reasons, and I'd rather reward them for that than let the rules tacitly punish them.

120 Buttons of Victory

Last night I played accordion with the worship band at church. I’m pretty amateur at accordion, and I’m not sure the mic was even picking me up all that well. I only kicked a small amount of ass. But I kicked it so hard my foot will stink for a week.

Good Work

One of the tough lessons I’m learning in copywriting is, “Be positive.” You’ve got very little time and space to position and sell your thing, and you want to spend it talking about what the thing is and what it will do for the audience. Talking about what the thing isn’t or what it won't do either means you have plenty of space (like those super-wordy one-page magazine ads), or you’ve got a spit-take-inducing idea/execution that will move product.

However, I spend a lot of time thinking negatively. Some of that is foible (to be kind to myself), but some of it is studied. Because negativity is subversive. And subversive can be funny. And I like making funny.

So the tough corollary to the tough lesson is, “Be clever and funny, positively.” It’s doable, and it’s worth doing. But it’s hard.

Talk Shop

D&D last night was hilarious, as usual. We’re playing through the Red Hand of Doom adventure Wizards of the Coast published a couple of years ago. It’s a satisfyingly thorough module by Rich Baker and James Jacobs, skilled pros both, doing an uncommonly good job of adventure writing, a task so difficult and arcane and niche, I think it can probably only be done out of love, like building a ship in a bottle.

Despite all this craftsmanship, the players spent probably the first 90 minutes of the session walking their characters around town, visiting different merchants, selling stuff they found, or trading up for better stuff.

A dwarf smith, a human cleric, a halfling wizard. In every case, I put on a different funny voice and acted like the halfling or smith or town official. Ninety minutes of this. Every player taking his turn talking to the same person (me), saying things like, “Will you lower the price if I throw in a second masterwork scimitar?”

They asked with a post-modern, self-conscious veneer, but underneath it, barely hidden, was a genuine desire to get a pretend magic sword for 300 pretend gold pieces cheaper.

Later that night, it seemed faintly ridiculous—it’s just my friends talking to me in a funny voice. (My wife readily agreed.)

But it was still hella fun. It still held the attention of a room full of savvy entertainment consumers for much longer than I would have bet money on.

When I worked at Wizards, I was playing with a group of friends once, and was derided for trying to talk through a haggling session with the DM playing a merchant. Not the friendly razzing you get sometimes for inadvertent failure, but an angry, passive-aggressive disdain for wasting time dickering for 1 or 2 gold pieces, which only one person can do at a time, and which does not involve any actual “adventuring.”

“This is boring and slows down the game. That’s why we didn’t write rules for that,” was the message. It might even be a direct quote.

That was a bunch of years ago, and everyone is probably wiser. I, specifically, am wiser because I’ve learned that talking to your friend who’s adopted a funny voice, trying to tease out knowledge of an item that makes your character a little better, or saves you a few gold pieces, is the game just as much as trying to kill a hydra in a swamp. In console game terminology, it would be called a mini-game. Not a major part of the experience, certainly not the reason you drive half an hour out of your way. But it is clear fun, and as a designer, you succeed when you remember to account for this way of having fun.

I wonder if the pros remember that? I wonder if some of them have ever really known it? Rich and James provided for it, by taking the time to craft one-adjective personalities and one-sentence back stories for a dozen townsfolk. The players did not spend 90 minutes in town despite craftsmanship, but because of it.

Reviewing the material beforehand, I thought it was a designers' conceit, an extravagant use of creative resources. After last night I’ve decided it’s actually part of the job done well.

Dungeons & Digressions

My thoughts (let me show you them) all turn to D&D lately. Everything makes me think of D&D. It's like the Tootsie Roll commercial, except with elfs instead of painfully chewy candy. Here's what's been happening:

• I reinvigorated my long-running D&D game, and everyone's enthused.
• I fired up an RPG campaign wiki about it.
  
• I'm suddenly hard at work on a nearly abandoned wiki about a D&D fantasy setting with all the random details that, heretofore, had been in a long, long text document. It's like wikis were MADE for keeping track of Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, and the wild growth of a real-world encyclopedia using the format is just an over-elaborate offshoot project.
• Practically accidentally, I'm running a one-shot game for old skool D&D-ers at work this week.
• Last week, an old associate emailed me out of the blue and asked if I'd like to write some D&D material on a short deadline. (I said yes.)
  
• I have wikipedia entries on castles open on my browser at home, because I'm frequently referencing them.
• I downloaded Sketchup, a 3-D modeling program, because I thought, "This might be a good way to slap down some dungeon maps." (Jury still out.)
  

Any time my brain gets 10 consecutive seconds off, I'm thinking about making up D&D stuff. It's fantastic and strange.

In the past, paid game writing has been an invitation to tour all the terror and self-doubt I can dredge. This time, it's fun. I think I can see the difference... I think I know the trick now. I think.

As the Tick once enthusiastically opined, "Now to retain it!"

Faith AND Begorrah

Holy Week and St. Patrick's Day -- who'dathunk? It's actually a great fit if you spend a little time learning St. Patrick's deal in the first place.

Kidnapped as a child, and whisked away to a life of slavery in Ireland, Patrick escaped, only to return as the first missionary to the Irish, eventually becoming the bishop of the whole joint. There's the usual amount of uncertainty and conflicting stories about what Patrick did or didn't do. Regardless, the pagan Irish embraced Christianity with a joyous gusto, the likes of which Christians in later centuries would find wrong-headed, if not blasphemous.

Which wrong-headed Christianity would YOU choose? The one that parties too hard, or the one that disdains and discourages? Since I'm a sinner anyway, I'd rather ask forgiveness for the unrighteous fun I had.

My tradition swung the other way though, and now I'm clawing like a wolverine to get out of a religion that taught me not to like things so that I would not err. Oh, fallen world.

Our boyo confessed:

"I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated and least of all the faithful and despised in the eyes of many."

I pray for the cojones to be that kind of Jesus worshiper.

Payin' Dues

Here's the ideal copywriting story that you hear told:

"We were up until 2 in the morning trying sell this copier paper. Nothing special. No great price. Just plain white paper. The client hates every idea, and shoots down everything we come up with. Then, we're all half asleep and Charlie makes a paper airplane and it flies around the office, and everybody gets the same idea at the same time: PLANE paper! That's it! The client loves it, sales jumped 9000%, and we deforested Brazil making paper. The end."

Here's how the story has gone for me lately:

"The account manger thinks I'm a shmo, but won't say it to my face. He hands me this doomed job and after five concepts the client likes the two most boring ones, one of which doesn't work. So I have 90 minutes to come up with brilliant copy for an existing storyboard, because we don't have time to change the visuals. I stare at the wall for an hour, read half a thesaurus, and come up with two lame ideas. Then I notice the account manager is having an impromptu copywriting session with the project manager and the designer without me. They develop their own lame copy without my significant input. Presumably the client is satisfied, though no one will give me feedback unless I wrestle them to the floor. The end."

Not that I'm bitter.

Understandably, this story gets told much less often.

The Great Taste of Original Flavor

I was going to buy some Pringles at Wal-Mart today, because they were cheap, and potato chips are my favorite food in the world.

But there weren't any that weren't EkSTREEME!1!one!!! flavor. Man, what's up with that. I just want regular potato chips.


Unrelated: Holy shit, my blog is like a series of twitter entries lately. I woke up yesterday with an entire essay in my head. I hope I get that written down before I forget it.