This post is intended as a part of the July month D&D Blog Carnival.
I’m late getting in on this, but I really wanted to put some thought into this so I don’t sound like a moron. I have decided that Gaming is a worthwhile substitute for religion, for me. I make no claims as to the existence of Pelor or Boccob, I do not believe that Lloth exists as such, but I cannot explain how completely gaming, and especially D&D, has changed my outlook on my own power and place in the world. Please don’t take this as evangelism, insanity, or flame mongering, it is not, I know D&D as religion sounds crazy and I know it won’t be for everyone. I just have taken my respect for the human imagination as a tool of empowerment a step further than most would.
First, the basics. I believe that D&D (and RPG’s in general) are part of a sort of understanding that we are, oftentimes, ill adapted and powerless in nature as human beings. The world is bigger than all of us, and most of us know it, so how can we possibly hope to overcome our own natural limitations? To decide, I think it can be useful to look back at a time when the natural world was even more hostile and dangerous. The ancient Shaman might attempt to gain authority and knowledge by wearing the still recognizable pelt of a wolf and going into the wilderness to fast and contemplate it’s ways. He would take on the role of the wolf in the world, and understand how it survived, and teach his people what he observed and why it is useful. Somewhere, maybe before, maybe after, ancient peoples constructed effigies of beasts and would engage them in a hunting-like ritual exercise not entirely different from children playing “Cowboys and Indians” or the like. Once again, the roles of one or more entities was substituted for by the imagination. So where is the parallel in the modern world?
Enter the modern world. The computer that I am writing this post on can process ~60,000 instructions per second. Every day we hear death reduced to figures on the news, whether it is U.S. troops or a bus accident. Anyone I know can tell you what percentage of Americans have tried marijuana. Anyone can recognize(at least vaguely) the meaning of a Full Scale IQ score. We live in a world where statistics make up a HUGE part of our reality and how we perceive it.Every day we become more and more statistically literate, and we don’t even know it. What better vehicle, then, for an esoteric practice than the mathematical definitions of people and animals given in D&D? We roll up a character, give it a personality, an appearance, an occupation, maybe a specialization, and it becomes a symbol of us in this fantasy world, one that will always bear a resemblance to what our real world is, however changed it may be.
But D&D isn’t just about simulation and symbols, and nor was shamanism. D&D is also about stories that you compose by participating in them. A boy scout camp activity that has it’s root in a Native American ceremony and a practice of psychadelic use by authors involves sitting about a fire telling a story by taking turns, each new storyteller picking up where the last left off. The point is to cooperatively create a meaningful story from which each storyteller might learn something about his role in the group. Plus, it’s fun.
Take these three principles and the purpose which they serve, combine them, and you would have something at least recognizable as a role playing game. In the modern west, a person’s religion often restricts a person’s worldview, making them more helpless, and prone to place blame rather than seeking to understand the nature of people’s actions, morals, and use that knowledge to affect a positive change in the world. D&D directly circumvents this, we as players and DM’s take on the role of good characters, evil characters, wizards, warriors, and all the other archetypes and analogues that comprise the game, and I believe that greater understanding, and yes, even capability can come from the experience. Game? A spiritual framework based on a game? Or something much more than the term game implies?
I call them that, anyway.
It’s always gotten on my nerves how objects (in D&D) that were resistant to magical effects or dampened magical effects were scaled to a certain level of resistance, but immunity to magical effects still existed. In my opinion, SR should just be exorbitantly high in the case of immunity, requiring a natural 19 or 20 to reach. At any rate, no more than a 10% chance, but a chance nonetheless. The reasoning is this: Some limited entity provided the object with resistance to magical effects. The magical effects are therefore, subject to the caster’s limitation. If the caster’s limitation is greater than the PC’s limitation, then the PC should have a chance to overcome the enchantment. D&D doesn’t really provide any way of doing this in house, so I have a critical hit rule for ‘Immunity’ that works pretty well. So, to rectify:
Forceful Will
When a character takes this feat, it affects all spells he casts, without preparation. If an object has immunity to ‘x’ magical effect, roll a Spell Resistance roll. If that roll is greater than 20+ the object’s hit dice, and is higher than 15 the numeric effects of the spell are reduced by half and performed as normal. This applies to damage, teleportation, et cetera.
Adrenaline Check
If a character’s party has been reduced to fewer than 1/8th of it’s total hit points he can roll a percentile to do one of three things.
I would really love to be a narrativist, but I can’t. That’s not to say I’m not good at participating in stories, it’s just that, like most nerds, I’m really, really bad at being anyone but myself. I’d like to say “Screw the dice” like the gaming philosophers, but I can’t, because in the end, I’m actually a pretty terrible role player(As long as I’m not giving a psychotic twentysomething trivia nut control over the fundamental nature of the in game universe, a.k.a. playing myself as a mage). Clinically terrible, as a matter of fact, my self monitoring(the ability to adapt one’s own behavior to suit a social situation) scores are abysmal. Don’t get me wrong, I got a lot better at it after I started as a GM and had to role play multiple NPC’s, but it was slow in coming. The reason that I like mechanics so much, and the reason that I emphasize them here, is because within those frameworks, people like me can overcome their limitations and play as beings they normally couldn’t. That’s why the mechanics exist outside of combat, in my opinion.
For instance, I had a friend who really enjoyed playing human rangers. He was a good role player, liked to participate in the story, but natural lore was not his area of expertise, nor had he ever been hunting, and he hadn’t had so much as a pet hamster. It was just something he aspired to in his perception of high fantasy. He was intellectually gifted, but rangers generally utilize dexterity, wisdom, and charisma(all of which he was lacking) for their class ability’s so intelligence usually sat at about 12, so he found himself needing to scale back his intelligence to fit with his character in some cases. All in all, as a matter of fact, the character he played was as far as could be reasonably from who he was in real life, and without some kind of descriptive mechanic to substitute for what he could role-play for what his character could do. He knew what his character’ moral goals were, and he knew how to express his character’s opinions, he just wasn’t that character enough to role-play in some cases, like handling animals or speaking with NPC’s. Is this a good thing? Of course not. The game would be much more fun if we could all take on the exact personality of our characters, but most of us are either good or bad at it to a greater or lesser degree and almost all of the time it can be accommodated. Is this a bad way to run a game? Only if it gets in the way and prevents everyone from having fun.
What I like to do, as a GM who struggled past my bad RP issues and as a follower of the behavioral school of psychology, is reward my players for good role play related to their social skills, by giving them the oppourtunity to describe what they mean AND what they say, what they are doing while they are saying it, et cetera. If a sorcerer is juggling fireballs while he is making an intimidate check, that’s a bonus in my book. If a paladin describes to me how he is calming his frightened horse, that’s another bonus. If a player tempts a guard by carrying his money in plain sight or a impresses a blacksmith by wearing a beautiful sword, thats a bonus(although lesser). It’s all to encorage the players to role play better.
My two cents. Laters, all.
I have been frustrated with the lack of behavioral science in RPGs for a while, now. For instance, GURPS and Ravenloft, both of which have sections on mental illness, listed Schizophrenia as what is propely termed Dissociative Identity Disorder. Figuring out a way for game mechanics to handle mental illness and symptoms thereof, however, is a significant task that is ultimately useless if the players I run with are any indication.(That’s a joke, btw.) Instead, I think that there should be an idea of moral alignment more closely tied to psychology, and less restrictive and arbitrary than the D&D alignments. The alignment cube is my attempt at this vision.
The cube is 6 units by 6 units by 6 units, starting at one and going to 6. The X axis is labeled from evil to good and is more or less self explanatory, but the order is very, very important(going from 1-extreme evil to 6-extreme good). The Y axis is labeled from anarchy to hierarchy, representing the character’s willingness to ignore legal channels in situations that call for it, and how loose their criterion for situations that call for it are. Once again, the order is exceptionally important, and must go from 1-extreme anarchy to 6-extreme hierarchy. The final axis, the Z axis, is labeled from resolution to cowardice, representing the characters determination to uphold such values as previously stated. I also use this number, minus 3, as a bonus to the character’s will save in my games. Also, a character with a 5 or 6 on this axis cannot electively fail a will save.
No you have three scores that describe the range of actions that the character is likely to take. To determine the space on the alignment cube that this occupies, use a diagram of a cube and mark each whole point on the cube’s axes. Draw lines betweeen them, and viola! An alignment that allows leeway for lapses of a character’s judgement and makes a clearer distinction between spectrums of moral alignment.
Now, spells that affect lawful or chaotic characters or good or evil characters must be accounted for. There are two ways that I we are be able to do this. First, simply using a number >2 as an indicator of evil or anarchic alignments, 3 and 4 as neutral alignments, and 5 and six as good or hierarchic alignments works satisfactorily. BUT, if we want to account for the characters moral frailty and willingness to change in order to survive in the face of a harmful spell, the character can make a wisdom check DC18 +1 per point of resolution to shift his alignment 2 points and reduce the spells effect. After doing this, the player suffers a -2 to will saves for 1 day.
That’s the alignment cube for players. It’s still more or less a set of guidelines, but will probably be more descriptive of the character’s intent.
For GM’s, there is an added bonus to the alignment cube. This can be used as an aid in guaging the reactions of NPCs. For example, Bjorn Jabobson the dwarven paladin has 6 on good, 5 on hierarchy, and 4 in resolution. That means that he’s probably pretty dull, but also that if a character wants to ask him where the nearest brothel is and whether they serve baby-steak, he has a more definite chance of being outraged and arrest the character than if the character asked whether he can light up a jay in the privacy of his own home.
Here’s how:
Evil/Good=6, Bjorn is dedicated to good and will not resort to evil in any way, even if it is for a good end.
Anarchy/Hierarchy=5 Bjorn believes in government, but understands that people are fallible and can write laws that are evil.
Cowardice/Resolution=4 Bjorn is not terribly flexible with his moral character, but he is willing to be sneaky in harmless ways.
Therefore, if the baby-steak seeker is asking Bjorn something, he’ll probably ask “Are you joking?” before striking. If the character seeking baby steak says “Yes,” Bjorn rearranges his bodily feng shui. If he says no, Bjorn probably lectures him on making jokes in such ill taste and tells him to get the fuck away.
If the character asking about the lagality of his recreational activities has his, ahem, activities on his person, then Bjorn confiscates them and lets the character go with a stern warning.
