2/9/15

I left Boston in 2007 to escape the thin job market. At the time, there was work down here in sunny Florida. The prospect of gaming again seemed slim. I had a few opportunities to game with my old group from back home, via email, Facebook or some other web based medium. Old disagreements and general lack of interest continue to kill that venue.

   If you type "ruin D&D game" into a search engine, you will get thousands of very similar sounding rants and blogs. You have arguments about the rules as written(RAW), the rules as intended(RAI), rule zero(The DM is always right), and variations on creativity/imagination. I think everyone has an example of a D&D game being broken. For example: D&D breaking is bad

   One of the things you don't see often is a player or game master admitting human error. It's not always the game rules or game system. Sometimes players and GMs want to debate the game rather than play it. Amateur lawyers and sports bar refugees can't gather without trolling for a heated conversation. The odds are good that any gaming group has at least one OCD or Asperger Syndrome type personality in attendance. In my groups, that would be me. More than likely it's a half to majority ratio. Throw in a scholar of human behavior. You know the type. He or she can't resist throwing a banana peel and or a wrench onto the table. Sociopaths are just as drawn to this hobby as introverts.

   You end up with a group of people who can't resist pushing other peoples buttons and people who get all tangled up if their buttons are pushed. Another blog mentions this behavior. It sums up ways of dealing with offenses and offenders. It's a downward spiral. It starts by mentioning the issue to the offender and goes down the list of time outs, voting off the island to outright kicking them out of the game. Dealing with players who disagree. In my experience, the average role player is just happy to have friends and a group to play with. The idea of removing even a disruptive force from the table is counter intuitive on a very deep level. Some groups have been "friends" for years.

   Simple human pride dictates that we never ever mention such things. The truth is, RPGing is a tribal hobby. Camaraderie and pride are tangible boundaries in this venue. Rules lawyers don't ruin a game. They are it's backbone. Min maxing is not a sin or crime, it's gaming excellence. But...and here is a big but.... the campaign background is the base for all of it. The  GM must have a tangible universe that has immutable laws, especially if it's a fantasy game. If you min-max or power game and have a concept, well that's just awesome. Unless of course, your concept is not possible or likely to exist within the campaign. This is where people get defensive.

    After 25 years of listening to various complaints about game balance, Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition (D&D3e) happened. It IMHO was a long overdue fix for a fun yet broken hobby.  I hadn't DM'd in a while and had started to seriously consider reviving the old game. With the new rules, old problems could be smoothed out and fixed.

   If you're an old gamer, you understand Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D or 1e) was brilliant, yet it lacked many things. If you had the energy to argue longer and louder than your opponent, you could use this as an in game advantage. You didn't have to be right. Belligerence was more than enough.

   When the d20 system first showed up, it seemed like a long awaited cure. Prior to this, there were dozens of games and systems. Now, there were three kinds of games. D20, based on d20 and non d20. Most of the D20 games were very loyal to this new set of rules. The basic theme seemed to be about balance and having a benchmark to work with in order to have a group of players and characters that had a similar power level. To be continued........