Why I Am Silent

Haven’t posted in a while, have I?

That’s because I was expecting to have some work to do setting up the new computer and migrating everything over.

What new computer, you ask?

Hell, I’m asking the same thing, because it never arrived.

So, in lieu of actual content this week, here’s the timeline as it stands:

• Order Gaming Computer
  Beginning of January, ordered what I suppose would be considered a mid-range gaming computer so that I could make videos. Ryzen 7 CPU, RTX 2070 Super, 16 GB, SSD. Simple list of needs. Also ordered a special Bluetooth keyboard, for reasons I’m about to explain. Expected delivery: 2nd week of January.
• Move Old Computer
  My old computer is old, of course, and kind of exhibiting signs of old age, but I figured I could still use it to play DVDs. So I started moving it over near the TV in my bedroom. This also helps clear space for the new PC, because everything around that work area is pretty much a mess. New keyboard arrives, which is good, because it has the feature of being able to connect via Bluetooth to up to three devices.
• New Computer Doesn’t Come
  Get a message on the morning of expected delivery that the computer is being sent back and my money will eventually be refunded. No explanation, but presumably it was damaged in transit. Even though they have records that their own employees never delivered the PC, they won’t refund my money until 5 to 7 business days after they get it back in their warehouse. And since I usually don’t have much money to spare (which is why I waited years to buy a new computer,) I can’t order a new computer until I get the refund.
• Get Refund, Order 2nd Gaming Computer
  Finally able to re-order the computer I want. Fortunately, although the price had gone up while I was waiting for my refund, it’s back down to the price I paid before. Also decide to get a Bluetooth mouse that goes with my new keyboard so I can use one mouse and one keyboard for both computers. Expected delivery: End of January.
• 2nd Computer Arrives
  Actually got a package this time, but it takes a couple days before I even have room where I plan to set it up. Meanwhile, I’m struggling to use the old computer, because of course I wasn’t planning on using it to do actual work, like writing or something like that. My eyesight’s pretty bad, and the TV is just too far away for text to be readable at this distance. Oh, and I did get that Bluetooth mouse, too.
• 2nd Computer Doesn’t Work
  Connect new computer in multiple ways, with multiple cables, but no video signal, even though there's obviously power. Tech support takes a couple days, but they agree. Store goes through their own rigmarole but agrees. Will not replace PC or guarantee that I can buy it again at the same price, and it’s the same refund process as before: ship it back, wait 5 to 7 business days for a refund.
• Order 3rd Computer
  Ordered a different brand through a different store Friday. Not necessarily a slight on the previous brand or store, but maybe one or the other is having problems right now? New model is only an RTX 2060, but finding something close to my tight budget didn’t leave much options. Expected delivery: Tomorrow, or at least sometime this week. We’ll see how this goes.

Did not order a computer peripheral, because maybe that’s what’s jinxing it all.

I left some things out, like the computer I wanted before I ordered Computer #1. Went through configuring the system on the manufacturer’s site, but apparently you can’t actually buy computers on their website, but must call them and give them a reference number? Screw that crap, this isn’t the 20th century.

If you include that attempt, and if I get a working computer this week, the whole process basically took two months.

So yeah, if you’re wondering why there’s not much going on here, maybe it’s because all this is distracting me.

More on the Dragonlance Lawsuit

I have some things to say about the Dragonlance lawsuit, but first wanted to link to another blog's take on the complaint: Hack & Slash: On Dragonlance Denied

 

I'm not going to comment on who I think is in the right in this case. I'm not a lawyer, I don't have access to the contract, and have no inside knowledge of what actually went on. 

However, when I heard that the authors blamed the breach on other difficulties Wizards of the Coast has been having lately, I thought: I wonder if I do some Google searching, will I find any recent controversies over racial insensitivity and sexist behavior? 

It turns out that yes, WotC had to terminate their relationship with a frelancer who has admitted he's a sexual predator. And they had to apologize for a Magic the Gathering card that used white supremacist symbology. And they've been accused of racial prejudice in their hiring practices, and creating a hostile work environment for people of color. 

WotC may not be in the wrong for any of this: maybe the accusations are false, maybe they had no knowledge that something was wrong in the other cases. My point is not to say that WotC has done something wrong. However, they are obviously having some image problems, and as a consequence may be backing out of previously-approved plans that look questionable. 

And maybe they are doing this the right way, or maybe they're doing it wrong. I don't know. What I do know is that I've seen the same reaction in the D&D community that I've seen before, for example when WotC removed all negative racial ability modifiers a couple months ago. "Oh, it's because of those horrible SJWs, protesting the way fictional races like orcs and goblins are being treated, as if they were real people!" 

No, most of their troubles are not with people protesting fictional racial injustice. They are choosing to address non-critical issues instead of admitting to possible real-world injustices of a more serious nature. 

And again, maybe what they are doing is fine... but the reaction of the typical D&D fan doesn't seem fine at all.

Superhero Thoughts: Addendum

One of the main goals of writing My Thoughts on Superhero Cinema was to make some broad statements about superhero TV series. Then, I thought, “Nah, I’ll include that in the review(s) for the Marvel TV shows.” And now that I’ve published yesterday’s essay, I thought, “That’s going to make the reviews longer than I’d like.”

So, I’m writing this addendum.

The MCU TV shows break down into these categories:

1. The network broadcast shows (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, and Inhumans)
2. The Netflix shows (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, The Punisher)
3. The teen shows (Cloak and Dagger, Runaways)

The new shows being made for Disney+ might form a fourth category, but none have been released yet. Of those that have been released, I’ve seen everything except the last few episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (haven’t checked if they are available yet) and the second season of The Punisher.

The reason why I break them down into those categories is not really related to where they are shown, but shared characteristics centered on punchiness and connectivity.

Superhero stuff, as I explained yesterday, is usually “punchy” in a broad sense, focusing on fighting bad guys, but some MCU material focuses much more on physical fights – actual punching, plus some kicking and headbutting to keep the fights “creative”, and some gunfights as well. This is in contrast to superheroes who fight using super powers or supertech.

The other characteristic is how connected a show is to the rest of the MCU: crossover characters, references to events or characters in other stories, foreshadowing of events in another show/movie that hasn’t been released yet.

The “Network” category has martial arts and guns, of course, but includes super powers and supertech. They aren’t afraid of special effects. They also tend to have better connectivity to the movies.

The “Netflix” category is much more punchy and has a minimum of powers/tech that require fancy effects. There’s some indirect connectivity with the movies, mostly a few references to general events. They do interconnect with each other. They wind up feeling like a shared world of gritty mystery/crime drama characters who have a passing knowledge of Marvel comic books.

The “Teen” category is less punchy than the “Netflix” category and allows more super powers and special effects. Connectivity is at a minimum: they have one crossover episode between the the two of them and a handful of obscure references, mostly to a couple company names.

As a result, both the “Netflix” and “Teen” shows act like their own private universes cut off from the rest of the MCU.

You are probably going to notice a pattern in how I feel about the three categories as a whole when I do my reviews.

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My Thoughts on Superhero Cinema

I believe I already mentioned I’ve been watching tons of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and TV series. I will probably review them soon, but perhaps I should mention my background and biases about action movies in general and comic book superheroes in particular, so that no one will be too surprised.

I didn’t have much of an allowance growing up, and didn’t get to go to any comic shops… not even sure if my town had one. So my comic selection was limited and intermittent. I did pick up sketchy information on a reasonably wide range of comic characters, enough to develop a clear preference for Marvel over DC, although I loved the DC horror comics (and Plop!) Later, I borrowed a roommate’s large number of Spiderman and Fantastic Four comics and filled in a lot of the storyline that way. When I had free money as an adult, I tracked down as many issues as I could of my favorite character, Doctor Strange. I also bought the comic series that summarized the history of the Marvel Universe, and also those crazy encyclopedias.

One thing that took me a while to fully understand was that I really didn’t like what most superhero fans consider the core feature of superhero comics: punching things to fix problems. I like stories about people with unusual abilities, but I got bored with heroes zapping and powing their way through obstacles to win the day. So, although I wasn’t a fan of the X-Men when it became a big thing, I kind of liked the X-Men stories I did read, because even though they all contained an obligatory slugfest, there was also a lot of stuff about how society viewed mutants and how mutants reacted to the way they were treated. And although I was a big fan of Peter Parker and Benjamin J. Grimm as a kid, a big reason why I liked them is because they had a lot of personal issues that had nothing to do with fighting things. This probably also explains why I bought Howard the Duck #1 as a kid, and why I liked Doctor Strange despite never getting more than a couple comics as a kid. (More on that when I get to the Doctor Strange movie review.)

This kind of carries over into action movies, too, and I don’t just mean superhero action movies. It’s not just that I don’t find long moments of punching, kicking, headbutting, shooting, and blowing things up unappealing. It’s the way movies have evolved a certain action-movie look that turns me off: fast cuts, jittercam, use of blurs and shadows to mask what’s really going on, repeated shots of the same explosion, and just a general directorial style that tries to overwhelm the senses rather than give you a sense of what’s going on. You can probably guess I don’t much like Michael Bay films. You can also probably see now why I didn’t think highly of the Kelvin timeline Star Trek movies.

And beyond all of that, I have to say I have some serious reservations about the core concept of most superhero and action hero stories. Basically, I don’t think fighting is a good solution to problems, and I suspect the increasing number of movies that glorify exactly that may be the source of a lot of problems.

Still, I do like some superhero movies, either when the fight scenes aren’t as dedicated to sensory overload, or when there a lot of non-fight story going on, or a lot of humor, or the emphasis is not on fighting bad guys but on rescuing people from catastrophes. Or when it’s a good horror/thriller disguised as a superhero movie. Or when some or all of the superhero action is not punching, but solving the problem nonviolently.

The upshot of this is that my upcoming superhero review will disregard the part I don’t like (the themes of violent opposition to bad guys, for example) and focus on the quality of the cinematography, how I feel about the characters and secondary themes, how funny or moving the scenes are. Some stuff is just going to feel average. Some gets a better rating because other elements save it from being “just an action slugfest”. Obviously, I didn’t watch (and rewatch) something like twenty movies and a huge number of TV shows just to pan all of them. I’ve got my favorites, and others I thought were pretty good.

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Situations: Why Not Ability Checks?

Possibly the last follow-up question raised by the Situations: The Basics post would be: Why not use a straight Dexterity or Intelligence check, or other ability check?

Obviously, one reason is “Because I really like the idea of skipping rolls.” A unified, unchanging roll is simple to use. Letting players simply skip the roll if their characters are trained or have high ability scores is a big reward that they will appreciate.

But the more typical response of a veteran old school GM is to use “Roll Under Ability” as a solution, either 3d6, 1d20, or 1d100 under the score. This can introduce two issues that might be a problem:

1. Some players won’t like “roll under” because it’s the opposite of the way attack rolls and saving throws work. Some people get hung up on “higher is better” and just don’t like “roll under”. You might be able to appease them by treating the roll like Blackjack: higher is better, but the roll can’t be above the ability score. I may have more to say about this in the future.
2. A straight “roll under” ability check creates extreme differences between characters. Using a d20 roll under ability check, a character with Strength 3 will have a 15% chance of pushing a heavy lid off a sarcophagus, while an average character with Strength 10 will have a 50% chance, making the Strength 3 character very, very weak in comparison. It makes ability scores extremely important.

One solution, used by the Judges Guild, was to use a d% roll under ability. This makes the range much narrower (3% vs. 10%,) but also makes the chances punishingly low, even for characters with max scores.

A different solution, which eventually became a standard in later D&D editions, is to assign modifiers to different score ranges (-1 for Strength 3-8, +1 for Strength 13-18, no modifier for Strength 9-12.) This helps reduce the impact of differences between scores, but this approach (dice + mods > target) leads to its own issues:

1. People become overzealous about using just this method. The end result is people asking “Why not get rid of ability scores entirely and just use the mods?” To which I say “Why not just exert some self control?”
2. People become overzealous about target numbers. Most GMs seem to start out with three target numbers (DCs) at a minimum: Easy, Average, and Hard. Not only does this mean they are rolling too often (Use Rope or Wear Pants skill rolls,) but the open-ended nature of the roll tempts them into adding more DCs, which makes ability scores or other sources of stacking modifiers more important, which means leads to hacking to extend the ability score range or add buff spells, which leads to GMs saying “Now I need even more DCs to keep my players challenged,” and the death spiral of modifier overkill begins.

Dice + Mods > Target can be OK if it is very restrained, for example the Target 20 system (one target number) plus minimal ability bonuses, and preferably only one other modifier (no stacking mods.) Still, a system that lets players skip rolls most of the time seems far more preferable and avoids all the problems listed above.

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I Complain About Blogger

Blogger is about to force everyone to use a new interface, so they suggested that everyone try it out for a while as preparation. There's at least one major flaw: When you go to the Comments section of your control panel, Blogger shows you all the comments, including everything in your spam folder. 

This is monumentally stupid design. When I mark a comment as spam, it's for two reasons:

1. To mark it as training data for a spam filter, and
2. To send it somewhere so no one has to look at it.

Now, Reason #1 is apparently a joke, because I haven't seen Blogger filter out spam in years, but hey, maybe they will, one of these days. But at least I didn't have to look at it anymore in the old interface. But the new interface shows ALL comments as a default, and you have to manually select "Published" comments each time you use the interface, so basically there's zero reason to even have a "Mark As Spam" feature. It's obviously better to just delete spam manually.

There may be other major flaws, but I haven't used every single feature yet. I have other dislikes, but those aren't objectively worse features, just subjective experiences. I've only noticed one improvement, but it's something that only matters to someone like me who uses StackEdit for posting on Blogger, so I can't say I'd recommend the new interface to anyone else.

Stranger Things Review, Part II

Here’s Part II of my review and analysis of Stranger Things.
Part I of the review was posted earlier. Again, there may be mild spoilers, although I think I did a reasonably good job in Part II. Still, you might want to skip this if you haven’t watched Seasons 1 to 3 yet.

I said previously that I had to re-watch Seasons 1 and 2 before watching Season 3 because I’d forgotten everything. Why?
Consider the typical episode of a one-hour drama series. Not counting commercials, it’s between 42 and 45 minutes long. The plot of the episode is set up in the first five minutes, rises through 30-some minutes, then is resolved, leaving another five minutes to wrap up (and possibly set up further episodes.) In a two-hour movie, the numbers are more like 10 to 20 minutes set-up, 90+ minutes of rising action leading to a climax and resolution, then 10+ minutes of wrap-up.

That first five or so minutes has to hook you, get you interested in the story and tell you what to look forward to. The ending is the pay-off you wait for.

For a season of Stranger Things, the episodes are about the same length as an hour-format TV drama, but the story is told over the entire season. That’s a little over six hours of drama. The set-up is the first episode. The last episode is the climax and resolution, with the last 10 to 15 minutes wrapping up any loose ends and setting up the next season. That leave the middle episodes – about four and a half hours – to tell the meat of the story.

But the pattern of a typical “middle episode” is:

• Resolve the cliffhanger from the previous episode (about five minutes.)
• Continue the story, usually via three points of view.
• In the last 2-3 minutes, set up the next episode with a cliffhanger. This is where the actual “hook” is for most episodes, other than the first and last.

There’s actually little to no resolution of any main conflicts during an episode. It’s mostly a slow revelation of the facts behind the mystery, with each cliffhanger adding more to the mystery. The only conflicts resolved in episodes 2 to 7 are side conflicts, emotional conflicts between characters. Some of these emotional conflicts, like the Season 1 love triangle, would be one episode of a half-hour sitcom, if they were told separate from the supernatural thriller plotline. But the scenes of the subconflict are spread across the entire season, not one or two episodes.

In short, no one episode is a story in and of itself. The entire six-hour season is one story, both plot and subplots. You don’t feel a hook, build-up, climax, and resolution for each episode, but a stretched-out story. True, it has a relentless, driving quality to it and can keep you watching, but as I said in the previous post, it’s tiring. You keep getting hooked at the end of every episode, but nothing is resolved, and everything in the middle is presented with about the same level of intensity, so it’s emotionally exhausting.

Which means that you remember about as many moments from this entire six-hour story as you would from a one-hour episode of a typical TV drama.

There’s also that bit about the three points of view. Stranger Things follows the pattern of showing the audience a mystery at the beginning of a season, then splitting the characters up into three (or more!) groups and revealing a different slice of the mystery to each group. Once the groups have collected about as much as they can without overlap, they unite, share info, and realize the full details of what’s going on, then come up with a plan to deal with it.

That’s fine for Season 1. But then they repeat that formula for Season 2, just with different members in each group. And then they remix the groups and repeat the formula for Season 3.

And that’s not all that gets repeated. The primary group in Season 1, the one with the main characters, meets a stranger, and has to deal with interpersonal conflicts over whether she should be part of their group or not. In Season 2, the main characters meet a new stranger and have to deal with interpersonal conflicts over whether she should be part of their group. Thankfully, they don’t repeat that part of the formula exactly in Season 3, although there are a few more new characters added to the group (and minor conflict over one character we don’t actually see until the end.

Season 1’s plot revolves around one main character being missing most of the season. Season 2 has a different main character missing for most of the season. Season 3 doesn’t have any prolonged absences, but some main characters can’t find other main characters for a few episodes. It’s mostly a matter of missed connections/not being near a phone or radio, though.

In Season 2 and 3, a minor character (same one in both seasons) tells two main characters that they should hook up romantically, to resolve that romantic subplot. I mean, come on.

In Seasons 2 and 3, several themes are introduced and then quickly dropped. We get introduced to two new characters in Season 2. No mention of their family, a couple cryptic references to their relationship and their past. For a long while, I thought they were runaways, until we see the parents near the end of the season. We get enough details about them at that point that we see there could have been more of a subplot there, but we get nothing. It’s dropped.

We get a set-up for a theme of grief for one character in Season 3 … and then a few episodes later, it’s gone and forgotten. No further mention.

What I’m saying is: we’re getting lazier writing and unsatisfactory resolutions to themes and subplots as the series continues, but have to put the same amount of work in, more than a typical TV series, for these diminishing returns. It’s still entertaining. No series can be perfect. But it is a good example of why the typical streaming series leaves a lot to be desired.

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Review: Stranger Things (Seasons 1-3), Part I

Have been involved in a couple threads about media on other blogs (frex Monsters and Manuals on “Unlikeable” Frodo and Pits Perilous on Lovecraft not being scary.) And I finally got caught up last night on Stranger Things, so I thought I’d sort of half-review, half critically examine that today.

There will probably be mild spoilers, but I don’t plan on discussing too much of the plot. Just be warned.

Stranger Things is, as others have noted, primarily driven by '80s nostalgia. It’s basically “What if we do Steven King, but go full Lovecraft, and also mix it with every '80s sci-fi/horror movie trope?” A downside to this is that it’s not really scary, more like a sci-fi themed mystery with a bit of a dark vibe. Especially because a lot of the look and plot of it is driven by elements pulled from '80s movies and even a couple late '70s movies: Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing provide a lot of the visual design for the monsters. The character of Eleven and the government conspiracy that created the problems in the first place are mainly pulled from Firestarter and ET (with a lot of scenes echoing scenes from the latter especially.) The main characters and their relationships are patterned after The Goonies and Stand By Me. So, if you’ve seen those movies, you’re not going to be surprised by a single thing in the series, but if you love those movies, you’ll probably like the series, too, just by virtue of the Transitive Property of Nostalgia.

I’m not going to nitpick the series, because (1) there’s already too many “critics” taking that lazy man’s path to entertainment, (2) nitpicks almost always turn out to be wrong in some sense, and (3) the so-called mistakes are irrelevant if the story and presentation are strong enough to sweep up the audience and carry them along in their current. But there are some broad thematic problems with the series and some problems with its execution.

One theme that’s pretty much standard in any well-made TV series is “family”. In Stranger Things, there’s a focus on two literal families: the seemingly dysfunctional family of Will Byers that turns out to have a strong core, and the seemingly perfect family of Mike Wheeler which kind of falls apart except for Mike and his sister Nancy, who develop a stronger bond. There’s also the figurative family based on friendship, which begins with a literal D&D adventuring party and expands as the series continues. There’s also a series-long exploration of Eleven and who her family was, is, or will be, and Max’s really messed-up family, the adopted criminal family of Kali which nevertheless loves each other dearly…

Yeah, family.

And a lot of other themes that tie into family. For the first season, the main focus is on loss (the Byers and the “Party” lose Will, Nancy loses Barb, and a lot of time is spent trying to find them, either alive or dead.) The secondary focus is on trust, particularly as expressed in the slogan “Friends don’t lie.” In the second season, there’s more about loss (Will losing Eleven) and trust (Eleven and Hopper’s relationship,) but they also add jealousy and romance, especially with the addition of Max and two love triangles. There’s a lot about the strains of adding new members to a family dynamic, and grief in the beginning of the third season, and maybe a couple other themes get added as well.

But the problem, as you may have begun to guess, is that they keep adding supporting themes but not really handling them well. The family theme is always there and always strong, which is good. The first season is the strongest thematically, since there’s only two supporting themes and they each have multiple tie-ins. The second season starts getting a little muddled because of the new themes added, but not fully integrated. The third season adds new material kind of haphazardly.

And the reason why they aren’t handling the themes well is because of the fundamentally bad design behind a “TV” series that is not meant to be watched on TV, but is meant for binge-watching via a streaming service. See, a real TV series is meant to be watched in a serial fashion, one episode at a time, and you have to wait for the next episode. So, the episodes are designed to have stand-alone stories that tie into a larger story, the season arc or series arc. Each episode will have an A plot, a B plot, and possibly a very small C plot, and there will only be two themes at most in an episode. If there is a C plot, it will mirror the theme of either the A or B plot, basically acting as support. There can be more than two themes in a season, but they are only dealt with two at a time, to avoid distracting the viewer from immersion in the story.

But “Binge TV” isn’t designed like that. Instead, it’s designed as if it were one very long movie that you watch in pieces. This is because someone decided that the best way to get people hooked on streaming entertainment was to get them to watch one show in a four-to-eight-hour time block, in one or two sittings. They are thinking like network programmers, who try to use popular shows as strong lead-ins to other shows and lock viewers in to watching their network for the rest of the evening. Except, of course, since streaming services are on-demand and viewers can theoretically watch any random thing after finishing the current episode, viewers can also theoretically watch any random thing on another streaming service, or on a broadcast or cable network, as their next thing… so the only way to guarantee “ratings” is to lock the viewer into one entire show for the rest of the evening.

The consequence of that kind of thinking is that individual episodes of a streaming series aren’t very distinct. They aren’t interesting by themselves, but only in the context of the season as a whole. It’s worse for some series, where it often feels like a one- or two-hour episode of a traditional TV series that’s been padded out to run eight hours. (Side note: I think that was the real problem with Iron Fist: it wasn’t that Danny was too whiny, but that nothing was happening for long stretches of time.)

In Stranger Things, it’s not as bad as that. The story keeps happening, and there’s always stuff to pay attention to. But since none of the episodes can stand alone, none of the episodes stand out, either, except for the opening and closing episodes of each season and maybe the second season episode about Eleven in the big city. And as a result, it’s kind of hard to remember many of the details. I took so long to watch Season 3 because when it first came out, it had been a year since I’d watched the previous seasons and I’d pretty much forgotten everything. I had to find time to “re-binge” the rest of the series before binging Season 3. And I find binge-watching hard to do, because the structure of a streaming like Stranger Things is just … tiresome.

Looks like I’m going to have more to say on this, so I’ll finish up my review (and try to make it relevant to D&D) tomorrow.

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B/X Is Bad: Summary and Conclusion

I’ve written two posts about my opinions on B/X D&D.

What I don’t like about B/X:

• Race as Class/racial ability score minimums
• Spell Acquisition/Spell Prep

These are the main “dealbreaker” features of B/X that I don’t like. I also don’t like the “nickel and dime” approach to bonuses and penalties typical of B/X and other post-OD&D editions and clones: 1-2 on d6 for this, 1-3 for that, +1 to +4 on d20 for this other… I hate the idea of having to look up what to use for a specific situation, which is why I use a minimal number of mechanics and move away from bonuses and penalties in my own game materials.

I will add, though, that B/X might not be as bad as other games in this regard; I don’t have a B/X book, but if the B/X clone Labyrinth Lord is any indicator, almost all the rolls are 1-2 on 1d6 or 1d20 attack/save rolls, but there are a sprinkling of modifiers, plus the ability score bonuses that I’ve ranted against before. Still, it’s no AD&D or WotC D&D when it comes to a very rulebook-oriented, just-about-everything-has-exceptions approach.

So, do I hate B/X? Probably a little, but that shouldn’t matter to people who love it. Would I run B/X, or a B/X clone? Definitely not. Would I play it? If I didn’t have to learn any of the quirky rules, I wouldn’t mind it, I suppose. I’d be forced to pick something other than M-U as a class, though, because of the weird approach to spells.

But this leads into another comment. I embrace the principle “Players should never have to learn the rules. Most rules are for GMs, as an aid to creating and judging situations.” But judging by the way many people post on blogs or forums, there are a lot of people who think players should be rolling all the dice, should know what dice to roll when, should know what target numbers they are aiming for, and record these on their character sheets. So if I were asked to play in a B/X game, I would definitely need to ask some pointed questions to determine if this GM is one of those bad GMs who places the burden on players.

B/X Is Bad, Mmmkay? Part II

Continuing my rant about what I don’t like about B/X: I’m skipping over the post I promised as a follow-up about races, for now, and focusing instead on another element of B/X that I just can’t abide: the way magic-users gain and prep spells.

Unlike all the other versions pf D&D, a magic-user in B/X has exactly the same number of spells in their spell book as they are able to memorize and cast during an adventure. First level magic-users can memorize and cast one spell, so they only know one spell, and have exactly one spell in their spell books. Second level magic-users can memorize and cast two spells, so they add one spell to their spell books. And so on. The rules explicitly state that magic-users cannot copy spells from scrolls or from another magic-user’s spell books.

This may simplify the class, but it also limits an already heavily-limited class, especially at low levels. Furthermore, part of the motivation for adventuring, for magic-users in other versions of D&D, is to find more spells. Forbidding them from using spells found damps the interest.

But there’s something far worse about this design decision: it eliminates some of the challenge and strategy. A magic-user who knows eight spells but can only cast two during an adventure has to make decisions. Which spells are most likely to be needed? Should the party look for clues about what they are about to face, or just guess? Should they abort an adventure and return later if it looks like there was a better choice of spells? The only choice a B/X magic-user has is “use the spell now, or save it for later?”

Some of the B/X clones seem to agree with me. I notice Labyrinth Lord has characters begin with exactly one spell, but drops the restriction on adding spells to their spell books. So, players start with an extremely limited range of options, but expand to the same range as OD&D or AD&D as they play.

So, my complaint about how spells work in B/X is basically the same as my complaint about how races work. B/X stifles variety and restricts options too much.

B/X Is Bad, Mmmkay? Part I

In a comment on a blog link post, Norman J. Harman, Jr. expressed his opinion about Gygax’s writing and quality of rules. Which is fine, everyone can have opinions. But the comment ends with “B/X is a better game than AD&D.” And that had me do a double-take, because I think of both as being about equally bad, and certainly B/X had a couple distinct rules differences I’d consider worse than AD&D. And I’m not talking about minor quibbling differences that people always seem to focus on. I’m talking about the differences everyone seems to ignore that are basically the deal-breakers for me.

One difference is race as class. I’m not completely opposed to the idea, but I do think it’s a terrible design choice. People generally want to add fantasy races so that they can have more variety… so making all elves the same, all dwarves the same, and so on seems counterproductive. OD&D started with fighter-dwarf, fighter-halfling, and elves that could be either fighter, magic-user, or both, then expanded the options for those three races with thieves… and then B/X came along and got rid of the options. AD&D expands the options, and though I don’t think it did so in the correct way, at least it’s not B/X.

Continuing that line of reasoning: minimum ability scores is also a bad idea. B/X shares this with AD&D, though, and at least B/X doesn’t have minimum scores for the core classes, just the races, so that’s one thing in its favor. But having minimum scores at all, for anything other than rare classes like paladins, is a bad decision, again because it limits variety. You can’t play the weak but brave dwarf in B/X (or the weak but brave fighter or cleric or thief, in AD&D,) because hey, why have more variety in your game? Plus, it has the added effect of making ability scores more important and dominating the game, but that’s a whole other line of argument.

You may have noticed, in the Liber Zero class pamphlets, that none of the variant classes like Beast Master, Witch, or Apothecary have minimum scores. I decided to shift the opposite direction, away from B/X and AD&D, towards more freedom and variety instead of less.

Because dammit, even if I agreed B/X is a better game than AD&D, it’s not better than OD&D.

Star Wars from a Non-Fan's Perspective

People are talking about the Star Wars franchise again, for example Delta's D&D Hotspot: The Hobbit Autopsy by Lindsay Ellis. And I thought I'd share my perspective on some of the recent Star Wars material, as well as my feelings on the series as a whole.

Spoilers: I don't really care for the new movies, but I don't really think they're that bad, either. But I think there's a legitimate complaint about the films.

First off, I did not see the last several films or TV shows, but did see Rogue One, and is it called "The Force Awakens"? I'm just going to assume that's the name. Neither left a very strong impression on me, but I didn't hate them, and don't see how one is better than the other. They seemed about the same to me.

I had a roughly similar experience with the prequel films. I did not go to see most of them in the theaters, just Attack of the Clones, because some friends wanted to go see it in the opening week and asked me to come along, and I like my friends. And again, I didn't think it was as bad as advertised, although it's not something I'd pay to see again. Probably.

I have seen some or all of just about every pre-Force Awakens Star Wars film or TV show in some way: A New Hope on laserdisc(!), most of the other films on TV and DVD, some episodes of Clone Wars. And my assessment is the same: A New Hope is the best of the lot, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are lesser quality, and everything else I've seen ties for third, but the quality differences don't seem that big to me. The one exception is the holiday special, which is laughable.

But here's the thing: I found the very first movie to be entertaining enough, but it didn't really excite me. Everything else just seems like more of the same. And that may actually be a valid criticism, which others have come close to saying, but not quite: the problem with "post-Star Wars" Star Wars is that it's constructed by formula, based on what people enjoyed before. Sometimes, the rehash works. Sometimes, it doesn't, but enough of the rest of the movie appeals to the fans, so they give it a pass. And sometimes, the rehash goes horribly wrong and there's not enough appeal in what remains, and the fans trash it. Some of the fans don't know why they don't like the new stuff, or suspect and can't admit it to themselves. Some latch on to the wrong things to criticize, based on their prejudices, and start complaining about the main character being female, or not enough characters being white. But the reprehensible nature of some of these criticisms doesn't erase the fact that there is one legit reason why they don't like the new movies: they are just tired of Star Wars and don't realize it.

It's not just the plot of the latest movies being almost identical to the original. Star Wars started repeating itself very early on. The first movie had the swoopy dogfights in space, vehicles winding in and out of each other's paths in ways that didn't always make sense... but fans seemed to love it, so the next couple films had more swoopy vehicle chases through asteroid fields or forests, and the prequels carried on the tradition with podracing. Yoda went over well, so naturally everything has Yoda in it from that point on. Big weird alien buddy Chewbacca was popular, so they kept bringing him back, but when they tried adding Jar Jar as a Chewbacca-like alien in the prequels, it didn't go over as well.

Sometimes, people love this stuff anyways. I certainly love a lot of stuff that is technically garbage, so I can't fault people for liking stuff I think is just a retread. But maybe the people who don't like the newer stuff should admit that most of it is no worse than what's already been done, and consider that maybe they're just ready to move on to something that's not Star Wars.

The only problem with the new Star Wars is the same problem mass media has had for ages.

More on Metagaming

My previous post on metagaming started a mini-discussion. Robert Conley gave his own definition of metagaming in the comments, and expanded on it on his own blog. Dennis Laffey clarified that he didn’t entirely disagree with the original definition of metagaming in the video, but focused more on the natural conclusions you have to draw if you are using a definition like that.

And I totally get that. I didn’t give my own definition of metagaming, either, or really address what I thought of that definition. But now is the time for me to talk directly about how I define metagaming. Or rather, to say I haven’t quite decided how to define it, because I’m not entirely sure it’s a useful concept.

Here’s my line of thought on this: When we make up a new word with the “meta-” prefix, it’s to talk about an abstract level one step above, beyond, or removed from a more direct concept. An example directly relevant to RPGs is metaplot, the story that some RPG products create that overrides the plot ideas individual GMs and/or players create at the table.

So what would “metagaming” be? It’s the abstract level above the level of game rules or game play. Behaviors that override the game rules themselves. Both of the metagaming definitions being discussed incorporate some sense of that. But I’m thinking that roleplaying itself overrides system-level concerns. It’s the real metagame level. What’s usually being discussed in debates about metagaming is something interfering with the roleplaying aspect, because the player is either using knowledge that the group considers outside the character’s reach or socially manipulating the GM or group to get their own way.

The solutions usually proposed to fix the metagame problem are either system level (XP penalties for acting out-of-character, for example) or social level (having a serious talk with a player.) You can, as I suggested previously, see this itself as metagaming… or meta-metagaming… or maybe metaroleplaying. It’s really more like a back-and-forth between game system and player control, with one overriding the other for a while until the balance seems tipped too far in one direction. I’m not sure you can actually pin down what counts as metagaming, or what counts as bad metagaming, even for an individual group. It’s something that’s constantly in flux.

I may have more to say on this after Thanksgiving, as I mull it over.

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Is This Metagaming?

Dennis Laffey has a post on his blog where he responds to a video discussion about metagaming. I’m not going to discuss the video itself, because Dennis has that covered. But the discussion itself got me thinking about that definition given for metagaming: “Using any knowledge the player has instead of knowledge that the character has available.”

I’m surprised Dennis didn’t take exception to that definition, since it seems to depend a lot on the definition of roleplaying as “acting in character” or being an amateur thespian. If you believe the true purpose of an RPG is to pretend to be another person, expressing their feelings and motivations rather than your own, then naturally anything that breaks character is going to seem like a step beyond the game’s intentions.

But what gets me is that people into that kind of roleplaying never seem to see the game rules themselves as a violation of roleplaying. Instead, they frequently try to use game rules to enforce acting in character: dice rolls to see what a character knows, XP awards or penalties for how the player plays their character.

It seems clear to me that a focus on rules is what ruins roleplaying. But maybe that’s just me.

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Reload Last Save?

I’ve been playing modded Skyrim again recently, so it’s reminded me about something that irks me in video games. It’s easy in Skyrim to get suddenly overwhelmed by enemies and swiftly killed… and then the game loads the last save and you start over. The worst things that can happen are:

• forgetting to save for a long while and losing a lot of progress,
• getting killed so close to your last save point that you get stuck in a “death loop” and have to abandon that save, rolling back to a previous save.

Sometimes, it’s even better to die in a couple situations to gather information about coming dangers. All of this can break immersion, if that’s what you’re looking for in your game experience. Dying really doesn’t matter.

Which brings us to a point many OSR bloggers have made before: dying has to matter in old-school games. This is why there’s so much pushback against “fixes” like negative hit points, healing surges, or eliminating save or die situations. There’s certainly room for discussing proper GM practice, or giving players a few more options to avoid instant murder. And honestly, old school play isn’t really more deadly than other RPGs, as long as you play smart. But the general feeling among the members of the OSR community is that play should be thoughtful and cautious, and death should be a constant threat. Remove too much of the threat and you turn the game into a meaningless adventure simulator.

OSR Splinter Faction

There have been a couple posts lately debating whether or not the OSR is dead (because reasons.) I will only link to this one at The 3 Toadstools, not only because I agree with the basic point, but also because it links to several other posts, so I don't have to do it myself.

One of the things people on both sides say is that the OSR is splintered. But I'm going to ask: Is it, really?

The core OSR experience is to revive old school D&D and some of its practices. Few people who were involved with that have stopped playing old school games. They are doing what they always did. Are they a unified community? Well, no, but they never were. There were always some people who didn't talk to each other. Hell, I left Dragonsfoot more or less because of a handful of people who dominated those forums and made the conversations unpleasant, one example being when they started insulting Isaac Bonewits after he died, because ... they were good Christians, I guess? That was one year after I started this blog.

So there's really no more splintering than there was at the beginning. What may be confusing people is that there's a whole extra set of people that weren't part of the OSR back then. These are the people who think of the OSR as being edgy, DIY, light mechanics RPGs. They aren't really interested in old school D&D at all. We could debate whether they are really OSR, but the point is: there are at least twice as many people who identify as (or are linked to) the OSR as there were originally, and there is a sharp divide in their interests.

It's not because one faction has split away from the other. It's because a new faction has joined.

Perhaps it's a bad alliance. Perhaps the two factions will never get along. But the point is, the OSR has expanded as a result, not splintered.

I Hate Will Saves

On the previous post, Andreas Davour asked what my problem with Will saves is. I’ve answered bits and pieces of this question before, but maybe it’s time to address it directly in a single post.

Let’s start with my broadest objection: I like the old categories better. Part of that is because the old system names warn players about unexpected dangers in the game. They specifically do not include mundane dangers, like falling. The new system names are general actions and provide no special clues. Players should already know that their characters can dodge or resist urges, so a Reflex or Will save tells them nothing.

A more specific objection: having a Will save tells players they can resist magic by being strong-willed, instead of avoiding magic through luck, destiny, divine favor, or even a bit of magic of your own. My first rule of saving throws is: You escape supernatural dangers by supernatural means. If there are mundane means to avoid magical effects, such as diving into a river to escape a fireball, the mundane effect almost always works in marginal cases. Saving throws are meant for exceptions, not ordinary consequences of actions.

My second rule of saving throws is even more relevant: You play your character. The GM doesn’t play your character. Your character behaves the way you say your character behaves. Having a Will save tells players (and some bad GMs) the opposite: that you can lose control of your character if you fail a save. “You said your character is abrasive. Make a Will save or your character starts insulting the baron.”

In broader cases, like falling asleep because you are tired, I don’t allow a save if there is a mundane action that can solve the problem. If you are tired, sleeping will fix that. If you, the player, choose to have your character skip sleep, then your character is tired and suffers the ill effects until your character sleeps. There is no save to avoid the consequences of your actions.

For a Sleep spell, arguably a save vs. Magic might be appropriate, although notably there is no save for Sleep in the original description of the spell. Nor is there a save vs. Detect Evil, or vs. illusions like Phantasmal Forces. The way to avoid Detect Evil is to not be evil. The way to dispel an illusion is to announce “I don’t believe this is real. I try to touch it to prove it.” This automatically works. Allowing a Will save to “disbelieve” actually takes that benefit away and makes D&D more of a numbers game instead of allowing strategy and critical thinking.

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Ability Check: Summary

I want to summarize what I’ve been saying about ability checks, discuss some of my principles driving my choices, and maybe draw some conclusions. Here’s what I have so far.

1. Part I (General)
2. Part II (Mental)
3. Part III (Physical)
4. Part IV (Con Checks and the missing “Charisma Check”)
5. JB’s rant that inspired it all
6. Robert Conley’s response

The short version of all that is that I use Con Checks (adversity rolls) in a few extreme situations (system shock and resurrection survival,) don’t use other stat checks, but in a few rare instances, I may allow a flat roll (like 5+ on 1d6) to avoid or get out of a bad situation **if the player comes up with a good reason why they should have a chance… or more often, allow them to skip such a roll if I normally require it. That “good reason” might be “I’m extremely smart/agile”. But just as often, it could be “I’m a 4th level Hero, not some flunky” or “I paid money to train for this kind of thing”.

So, I don’t see myself as using or needing ability checks. But what’s my reason for doing so? I believe in these principles:

1. Rules are meant for the GM, not the player.
2. Fictional situations are more interesting than predefined systems.
3. It’s the GM’s job to enable play, not prevent it.
4. GMs describe what player characters see and sense. Withholding information about what they can see and sense is cheating.
5. Bottlenecks are no fun.

It seems to me most ability checks wind up being Knowledge Checks or Spot Checks, which violate principles 3 through 5 at the very least. And yet, these are what people immediately think of when defending ability checks, and the rationale always given is that if GMs don’t allow an INT check to see if a player knows things or can see things, then the only other option is for GMs to list room descriptions in agonizing detail in their notes, and for players to describe every single detail of their character’s background, or every single detail of which objects they are examining and in what way.

Pixel-bitching is not the only other option besides search rolls. Ten pages of backstory is not the only other option besides knowledge rolls. GMs could just be generous with information. Everything the players can see and sense should be described, in whatever manner seems appropriate, and the game should just move on.

And I’ve had the urge to go farther than even that. Here we are, arguing about when and how to use rolls to recognize or deal with dangers, but maybe we could fix it all some other way?

It all started with surprise rolls and opening stuck doors. A surprise roll is really a roll to see how soon characters or monsters can react. Being surprised means you lose an action or two. Rolling to open stuck doors seems different at first, until you notice that U&WA gives some rules for breaking through a door in the naval combat section, and no roll is needed, only time and manpower. The Open Doors roll checks to see if one person can do it quicker.

So what if we stop rolling to see if characters succeed at a task, but instead roll to see if they can complete the task quickly under pressure? And ability scores don’t adjust the chances of completing the task, but adjust the time? Or, in the case of non-time-critical tasks, they limit the quality?

Ability Check: The Missing Side

I’ve been talking about ability checks and why I don’t believe in using them for almost anything.

1. Part I
2. Part II
3. Part III
4. JB’s rant that inspired it all (he regrets it, I don’t)
5. Robert Conley’s response (also worth a read)

Last post, I covered physical abilities, but didn’t include Constitution. Why?

Partly because it’s not something you can use for an action. (“I’m going to try very hard to be healthy!”) But there is a passive check associated with it, even in the original three books. Men & Magic mentions that Constitution allows characters to “withstand being paralyzed, turned to stone, etc.” and gives the following guidelines:

• Constitution 13 or 14: Will withstand adversity
• Constitution of 9 - 12: 60% to 90% chance of surviving
• Constitution 8 or 7: 40% to 50% chance of survival

It’s not entirely clear here, but Greyhawk later clarifies this as a system shock roll, and AD&D eventually splits this into System Shock and Resurrection Survival. I prefer to roll 2d6 under Constitution. But still, it’s a Constitution check, right?

Let’s think about something else first: Charisma. For all the talk of using 3e, 4e, or 5e mechanics in old school games, you don’t see much talk about Charisma Checks. Why is that? Perhaps because of the way the old school reaction roll is a much more interesting and useful mechanic than a simple “roll under Charisma” or “roll and add Charisma modifier to beat a DC of 9” could ever be.

You have five possible results (at least!) Charisma gives a mod in the range of -2 to +4, although arguably this should be applied to an NPC’s loyalty, not the reaction roll directly… and yet we all do it, don’t we?

But people have seen me adapt the reaction roll table to all sorts of other things, like the weather, or thief skills, or … well, system shock and resurrection survival, as a death and dismemberment table.

Which brings me to a side point inspired by FrDave’s comment on the original ability check post:

I personally use the knowledge check all the time; however, it isn’t really for the character, but for me as the Referee. I improvise a lot. Thus, I face the issue of a player asking me questions that I don’t necessarily have an immediate answer to.

Using rolls as a GM improv tool is good. I approve. But my first thought was “Why not use the reaction table or a similar table instead of an ability check?” Including the ability score seems superfluous to me in most improv cases. In some cases, it’s useful to treat an ability score as a limit, which is what I would use a 2d6 adversity roll for: if a PC suffers severe physical trauma or is raised from the dead, roll 2d6. Ignore the result unless the roll is higher than Con, in which case the result is used with the reaction table to determine how horrible it is (Very Bad = instant death, Very Good = might survive a few hours.) Optionally, interpret the 2d6 result a different way if the roll is a success (Bad = scar, Very Bad = crippling injury.)

So although these checks are technically ability checks, I’m using them in a much different way.

I’ve got at least one more post on this topic, perhaps two, depending on whether I can both summarize my position and suggest where I’d like to go in the future with the ideas of ability checks in a single post without going on too long.

Ability Check: The Physical Side

I said ability checks are the devil and looked more closely at mental ability checks, concluding that I can skip almost all of them except for a few rare exceptions. But what about physical ability checks?
There’s no physical equivalent to knowledge checks or spot checks, so that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about.

Dexterity sometimes functions like Intelligence and Wisdom when avoiding bad situations, like avoiding slipping off a ledge. The discussion of Bad Conditions in the previous post applies here, too, perhaps doubly so. Not only do most physical actions not require a roll, and the rolls I use are usually “5+ on 1d6” unmodified by ability scores, but also high Dex for me usually means skipping a roll, rather than rolling a Dex check. Inching along a dangerous narrow ledge has a chance of falling, unless a PC has a very high Dex.

Strength may occasionally react the same way. If a PC is stuck in a bad situation and a player suggests a strength-based way of avoiding it or getting out of trouble, Again, not treated as an ability check. But the strength-based actions most people think of are Open Doors, Bend Bars, and Feats of Strength like winning a tug-of-war or rolling aside a boulder.

I use the straight 1d6 open doors roll from Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, not the strength table from Greyhawk, so it’s definitely not an ability check the way I use it. And for bending bars, I’d probably require a 12 on 2d6. I might disallow bending bars for very low strength, or improve it to a 6 on 1d6 for very high strength, but that’s as close as I get to an “ability check”… and I’m tempted to do something else entirely.

For feats of strength, a contest of strength like a tug-of-war is the only place where I might consider actual Strength scores. Even there, I’d most likely use a 50-50 die roll if the sides are evenly matched, a 5+ on 1d6 chance of winning if the PC side is weaker, or a 5+ chance of losing if the PC side is stronger, with an extreme disparity between sides meaning an automatic win for the stronger team. But the number of people on each side of a contest matters just as much, if not more, just as it matters more for things like moving boulders. “It takes three people to move the boulder” works a lot better for me than some kind of Strength check, because it eliminates the roll.

If I really wanted a roll for feats of strength, including bending bars, I’d be more likely to use damage as the mechanic. People do 1d6 damage. Set a damage value for the boulder or iron bars and let characters do damage when they try to push or bend. More people does more damage. More time, in some cases, also does more damage. And as I suggested before, monster hit dice or Fighter level can increase the amount of damage… and yes, even Strength, based on that 1d6 damage per 8 points of Strength equivalence I mentioned before.

Strength	Damage
3	1d6/2
4-5	1-2
6-7	1-1
8-9	1
10-11	1+1
12-13	1+2
14-15	2-1
16-17	2
18	2+1

The vast majority of physical ability checks involve actions, but Constitution checks are a passive ability. It’s certainly physical, but I’d like to cover it in yet another post, seeing as this one has become quite long.