The death of EGG led me to a lot of thinking; some would say... midlife introspection.
In response, while penning a tribute game, I found myself writing up an essay. Here it is...
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The only logical path, upon hearing about the death of Gary Gygax, would be that I would end up running an AD+D session in his memory. There wasn't a hesitation, and I was jarred by the quick and affirmative RSVPs that began to arrive at my in-box.
It isn't just about my late childhood and early teen years wrapped up in books - game worlds articulate yet arcanely worded. It wasn't the teen and early twenty something years - spent around tables late in the evening with friends and friends of friends. And even a few people I downright detested... immersed in fantastic tales of our own creation...magic, monsters, mayhem.
It was about honoring a figure who, unknowingly, had contributed a huge amount to my own interest in fantasy, horror, science-fiction and literature... all through the words and dice which mechanize a fantasy role-playing game. That being of course, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. And through this game I found other games. And gaming conventions. And LARPs and medieval re-enactment. And dozens of unique, endearing, unsettling, obnoxious but never boring personalities through out the last 3 decades. I only met EGG once, briefly. He was very friendly and patient with all of his friends and fans. At Gencon, his first in many years... recently reinvited back by WoTC - he was completely in his glory.
It was never a thought that it wouldn't be a pure first edition game. This is how I had billed it! Play the REAL D+D! Remember those days guys (and girls)? A real nostalgia trip. Raw and bare-bones. System Shock Survival checks and all. None of that wussy Forgotten Realms 2nd Ed stuff and surely NOTHING from 3rd Edition... So I set down with my PHB (a tattered 1978 with the statue on the cover, thank you) and began to dig back in to pages long neglected...
A flood of memories... long nights and longer weekends. Caffeine, sugar and eventually beer. The nights of nerdy camaraderie at gaming conventions far and near. It was heaven... I'd come home. And with this memorial session to the Pope of Gaming I'd rebuild my old house exactly as it was befo..
And then I realized something was gnawing at the base of my brain... And it wasn't a Mind Flayer. "Wait a minute... thats right... all thieves had exactly the same skills at any given level. Fighters had what ... how many abilities ... none? Mmmmmh... I seem to remember this looking a lot more... complex and depthful."
So I did what I tend to do best with gaming rules systems... tweaking... pulling from the (*hiss*) 2nd Edition non-weapon proficiency chart. And then I began to re-examine the ranger and cleric... And soon I found that I had caved. My game model was slowly becoming closer to second edition (which, aside from enhanced character development and many wording clarifications was actually not so different from first edition). I even began pulling in "enhancements" to the fighter class that look amazingly like... third edition feats... But... it was still second edition rules.
This led me to a lot of thought. Perhaps brain power I should have put elsewhere. But we all know gamers and how they obsess over the "insignificant". Why my compulsion to spend even a few hours making these modifications? Why cling to a game system that by all counts is "outdated". Nostalgia? Comfort? Familiarity? By the time I had gotten done translating Feats into second edition rules I had long since given up on those territories.
And then all the lights went on. We, even the pen and paper RPG culture, have given into consumerism and embraced notions of "progress" where none is really needed. Or at least, we shouldn't have to pay a multi-million dollar corporation for the sanction to "progress". I can blame no one for making money off of their product, idea or hard work. I blame no one for buying new things and enjoying the sense of freshness and change. In short I had begun playing 3rd Edition D+D over the previous versions simply because it was there. And "everyone else" had... But how many of us who have made this switch have actually evaluated what rules system we like better and for what reason? Was there anything really wrong with second edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons? Even a lot of the less sensical rules had been weeded out in favor of house rules over the years. It isn't like we had needed a new edition book to tell us how to do this.
I was resistant to Third Edition for many many years. On several levels. To me it was such a restructure of the game mechanics that it wasn't D+D any longer. I didn't want to spend a huge amount of time or money on a new version of a game that I had played for at that point nearly twenty years with mostly my imagination and a couple of books. And of course dice; and more dice. I wasn't so interested in supporting a company that I deemed responsible for in essence deteriorating the gaming genre with a proliferation of serialized collectible cards. A genre quickly turned marketing scheme repetitious and thoughtless. I thought the same thing would happen to MY Dungeons and Dragons.
Ironically, in 2000, I wasn't playing RPGs much at all. I was involved in graduate school and other projects. And when I thought of RPGs I thought of White Wolf and the Story Teller system. So I continued, for many years to not even consider D+D 3. Then I played a session with another long time gamer. I built a character... and I felt like I had constructed a really customizable and sleekly designed persona. The skills and ability to stack classes seemed much more in tune with the Zeitgeist of the late 90s and turn of this century. I fell in love. It was less about Dungeons and Dragons and more about a transparent system of mutable and interchangeable abilities that could be applied to any RPG setting. It was great!
So I played and ran sessions in D+D 3. It was fun. This version would surely last another three decades. And then... the changes started... the... expansion supplements. With more and more traits to stack... More and more "completely optional" books which started to seep into every discussion of building a new character.
I began to realize that it was less about building a character and undergoing a process more closely akin to building a customizable stack of point modifiers (not unfamiliar to those of us who spent too much time and money on CCGs when they were the "in" thing).
And worse, beyond the Player's Handbook... most of the new abilities, powers, bells and whistles had little concept besides Kewl Powers. Did we really need those twenty extra prestige classes? Were they really anything other than a transparent method of further increasing your roll modifiers? It wasn't a Tolkien-esque fantasy come to life. The average D+D book looked like something between bad anime and redundant amateur fantasy fan-fic. The D20 system became hackneyed and video-gamish.
Then 3.5 and more of a focus on maps, counting squares, target facing and attacks of opportunity (has anyone found this concept to actually ENHANCE anything in their games?). And yet more supplements in which the rules were just different enough to requisite buying yet more core books. Only four years after the game had been "revolutionized" by Third edition.
The software model: put out a half working version, let your paying customers play test it... then charge them for a newer version. At least OGL got Gary Gygax back on the payroll, and according to his own words - WoTC had treated him better than TSR ever had. So they still had marks with me, and thousands of other resistant D+D players on that count.
And oddly - in the end - most gamers just ate it up. They bought the books, all rolled level 47 Arcana Warrioress Candle Making Baking Seamstresses, and simply kept the WotC (now Hasbro) money machine rolling.
I fell out of love with 3rd Ed D+D Summer 2007. I tried to adjudicate a cleric turning undead, and manage a fight between several opposing figures... These two combats which should have been quickly resolved through common sense... took far longer than I recalled any other relatively simple RPG scenario taking. In the end I did what I always did... fell back on judgement calls and heroic storytelling and threw the book out the window to further progress the plot. At that very moment during that game I thought... perhaps we should have stuck with 2nd Edition?
3.5 encounters have as much potential to become clunky, twinky rolling events that play like a CCG deck fighting a miniature wargame army. Wasn't the original billing of D+D 3 is that it would be more about streamline and less the old 'wargame feel' that was the TSR version?
In all fairness D+D 3 does still present a broad and interesting range of character options. The dicing is intuitive and the DM can - through target numbers - create a large number of flexible outcomes in various situation. However in the end it is certainly no easier and "role-playable" than any earlier version.
And now... just 4 years after another slew of new and overpriced expansion products... we'll have 4th Ed D+D to fix all of these "problems". Now, instead of a table-top RPG which capitalizes on the modular stacking mechanics of the mult-million dollar card game industry... we have a less personalized assemblage of rules cobbled together from the mult-billion dollar WoW phenomena. Characters are promised to be able to take on more foes at once, have safely and generically balanced abilities, and be more geared towards 'group balance' and 'functionality'. The character is now defined by "party role" instead of individual professions with defining skills and abilities in terms of a developed persona in an immersive fantasy setting. It sounds like capitalizing on now wildly popular terms and concepts to me. Much as CCG 'stacking' did in 2000.
From Talent Trees to Taunting Tank Warriors, DPS rogues, and "controller" mages... Rules being touted as so fast and easy that even the wife and kids can play Dungeons and Dragons... Forums on which people are referring to the new version of D+D as an upcoming "MMO". If the projected market plan goes forward expect 2012 or perhaps even 2010 to see 4.5 filled with patch-like "nerfs" and "buffs" fer yer toonz. It is clear that the emphasis of WoTC come Hasbro will no longer be to capture gamers infatuated by ultimately individual and customizable mechanics. But expand their target market to wallets of millions of MMO players who in essence don't really care about playing a "character" so long as they get to PWN something. I heard they will even have D+D books supplemented by online crib notes in L337.
An archaic dinosaur? Get with the times? And why should I? To allow my imagination to deteriorate, my social skills to vanish, my vocabulary and sense of wonder at face to face story telling and interaction to erode along with the rest of the upcoming "why me" generation and 30 somethings that have embraced the massively online world? Will 4th Edition DnD be any better or worse than any other version of D+D?
Or will it like its predecessor simply in the end become such an entirely different game that it should bear a different "brand" title. I don't need a computer rendering of my character to replace my imagination. Nor do I want it. I don't want the (monthly subscription plan based "Insiders Club") convenience of thousands of pre-made player resources at my fingertips instead of sitting down for just a few hours... and preparing and thinking. I'd like to have a role-play session in which we get to know each other well enough that it may become a social unit; not a weekly game in which I hope half the group doesn't become too distracted to log on. Or that I have to compete with myspace and facebook while attempting to run a scenario I've written. Or worse yet... deal with the dreaded "Dual-Boxing" MMO player who also has signed up for your D+D session. If you thought people swapping M:TG cards during an encounter was annoying... just wait...
We'll continue to hear people say they have no time to work on an RPG session or travel to a friend's house for 4 hours of role-play each week. And that we must start to rely on prefabrication and telecommunication technologies in order to RPG. Oddly, many of these same folks have endless hours to PWN n00bz, LwTz, and argue about American Idol in ventrilo.
Role-playing is role-playing. I've seen good role playing sessions with miniature armies, as well as rock-paper-scissors. A system does not inherently foster role-playing. However a system which allows you to create a comprehensive and unique character firmly planted in a well developed setting does facilitate the ability of the player to take on a role. It makes it easier to imagine. D+D 4 may do this. But the business model is my concern. The notion of role-playing becomes more and more tied to the miniature and computer game subscription... we stand to lose the sense of imagination and wonder that this hobby should be about.
I had forgotten how relatively easy AD+D was to run and play. I had convinced myself as to how much more intuitive 3.0 - 3.5 D+D is than the "dated version". There are no fewer things to recall than in D+D 3E. The "to hit" charts were in reality incredibly easy. Target placement and the use of a battle-map, while present, was not so essentially built into the rules as to affect character creation (if you don't believe me, look at how many feats rely on character facing and positioning). There were few formulas to min/max. You looked at a chart... The only thing the player really *had* to do was occasionally look something up and roll the dice.
I can't deny a bit of guilt over the Gary Gygax Memorial game sessions taking on a form less "pure" than originally envisioned and touted. It now will contain aspects of the rules that he had little or no control over... and until very recently... had not gained any real compensation or notoriety for.
But I'll perhaps honor him most by instituting the underlaying rules upon which the entire hobby is predicated upon. The game is purposefully mutable and open to modification. The Game Master is the final arbitrator in the rules and scenario of the game. And the golden rule is... have fun and be creative. That is the best way for me to pay my respects to Gary Gygax.
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Regards,
Kathartes
(J.Harford)
EGG Tribute Game, D+D 4 Editions
Linear Mode
