Tuesday, March 04, 2008
You botched, Gary. Hand in your character sheet.
Gary Gygax is dead. And I have to say that I have mixed feelings.
Thank you, Gary, for inventing the RPG.
That’s about all of the good stuff I can say.
I’d have more good stuff to say, but you have left me bereft.
When an RPG is really good, there are few things as engaging and fun. That almost never happens. Because it attracts a number of people dissatisfied with their lives, their illnesses and neuroses get projected to giant size in a bad gaming group, which is to say MOST gaming groups. There was a time when I lauded RPG’s as like “theatre without the theatre people.” Now I can safely say that I’d enjoy an RPG experience without typical gamers, as well.
The list of things wrong with gamers is wild and diverse. None of them always apply to the same person. But get a gaming group together and, in my experience, you’ll inevitably run into many mental and emotional problems.
Now, get a group of ten people together for any reason and you’ll find any number of emotional ills. But there is something about gaming that really puts it all on glorious parade.
At its best, gaming isn’t about dice. It isn’t about statistics. It isn’t about charts. Or maps. Or little lead dolls. Or bean counting.
Dice and stats are necessary evils, I suppose. But what do they ultimately protect under the sheep’s clothing of fairness?
They protect the unimaginative from the imaginative.
Because, at its best, gaming is about collaborative storytelling. And dice/stats should be sprinkled in as little as humanly possible to accommodate that “fairness” fad I keep reading about. And to keep things a little unpredictable. The unexpected is part of good storytelling.
In your heart, you know I’m right.
(In my time, I’ve only known four GM’s who really got that.)
So, what does Gary Gygax have to do with all of this?
Back in 2005, I was playing RPG’s a lot. Close to twice a week.
Anyway, as a storyteller and people manager by profession, I kept seeing many GM’s make weird decisions. At best, their decisions were uninspired and paint-by-numbers, out-of-the-module. At worst, they magically managed to squeeze out all of the fun from what should have been the ultimate version of grownup Cowboys & Indians. Almost, it would seem, on purpose.
The experiences I had were so reliably tepid-to-bad that it almost seemed counterintuitive. How were people involved in make-believe so bad at it? It was like dealing with passionate cinematographers who were totally blind. How was this happening?
And then I read a book about being a dungeon master or gamer or something. It was a book about gaming. Written by Gary Gygax. What a humorless, pompous dolt. This book explained it all. THIS is where all the limited thinking was coming from. I’m not saying that everyone read that book. But I blame Gygax on creating a culture that really encouraged this.
Imagine Disneyland managed by Frank Burns. That’s what we’re talking about.
Gygax. Gygax.
Long ago, separated from D&D. It was a system needlessly complicated yet strangely bland. It was like a wild, sensual Latin dance as interpreted by Lawrence Welk.
Finally, two versions and over twenty years later, we get D&D 4.0. I’ve been reading the reviews on AICN and it seems like the game finally encourages good storytelling and rewards imaginative playing. Finally. I feel vaguely sorry for my old gaming associates, because they – and their style of gaming – are in for a world of hurt. It is D&D for the iPod generation. I say that as a compliment. The iPod is an elegant machine, artfully designed, intuitively controlled, of infinite utility, that makes technology serve even the most technologically uninitiated.
Part of me imagines that Gary Gygax read the reviews and died on the spot.
No, I’m actually not glad he’s dead. That would be cruel.
But it strikes me as ironic that he should die just as D&D evolves past the limitations he seemed to impose upon its creation.
Gary Gygax is dead. And I have to say that I have mixed feelings.
Thank you, Gary, for inventing the RPG.
That’s about all of the good stuff I can say.
I’d have more good stuff to say, but you have left me bereft.
When an RPG is really good, there are few things as engaging and fun. That almost never happens. Because it attracts a number of people dissatisfied with their lives, their illnesses and neuroses get projected to giant size in a bad gaming group, which is to say MOST gaming groups. There was a time when I lauded RPG’s as like “theatre without the theatre people.” Now I can safely say that I’d enjoy an RPG experience without typical gamers, as well.
The list of things wrong with gamers is wild and diverse. None of them always apply to the same person. But get a gaming group together and, in my experience, you’ll inevitably run into many mental and emotional problems.
Now, get a group of ten people together for any reason and you’ll find any number of emotional ills. But there is something about gaming that really puts it all on glorious parade.
At its best, gaming isn’t about dice. It isn’t about statistics. It isn’t about charts. Or maps. Or little lead dolls. Or bean counting.
Dice and stats are necessary evils, I suppose. But what do they ultimately protect under the sheep’s clothing of fairness?
They protect the unimaginative from the imaginative.
Because, at its best, gaming is about collaborative storytelling. And dice/stats should be sprinkled in as little as humanly possible to accommodate that “fairness” fad I keep reading about. And to keep things a little unpredictable. The unexpected is part of good storytelling.
In your heart, you know I’m right.
(In my time, I’ve only known four GM’s who really got that.)
So, what does Gary Gygax have to do with all of this?
Back in 2005, I was playing RPG’s a lot. Close to twice a week.
Anyway, as a storyteller and people manager by profession, I kept seeing many GM’s make weird decisions. At best, their decisions were uninspired and paint-by-numbers, out-of-the-module. At worst, they magically managed to squeeze out all of the fun from what should have been the ultimate version of grownup Cowboys & Indians. Almost, it would seem, on purpose.
The experiences I had were so reliably tepid-to-bad that it almost seemed counterintuitive. How were people involved in make-believe so bad at it? It was like dealing with passionate cinematographers who were totally blind. How was this happening?
And then I read a book about being a dungeon master or gamer or something. It was a book about gaming. Written by Gary Gygax. What a humorless, pompous dolt. This book explained it all. THIS is where all the limited thinking was coming from. I’m not saying that everyone read that book. But I blame Gygax on creating a culture that really encouraged this.
Imagine Disneyland managed by Frank Burns. That’s what we’re talking about.
Gygax. Gygax.
Long ago, separated from D&D. It was a system needlessly complicated yet strangely bland. It was like a wild, sensual Latin dance as interpreted by Lawrence Welk.
Finally, two versions and over twenty years later, we get D&D 4.0. I’ve been reading the reviews on AICN and it seems like the game finally encourages good storytelling and rewards imaginative playing. Finally. I feel vaguely sorry for my old gaming associates, because they – and their style of gaming – are in for a world of hurt. It is D&D for the iPod generation. I say that as a compliment. The iPod is an elegant machine, artfully designed, intuitively controlled, of infinite utility, that makes technology serve even the most technologically uninitiated.
Part of me imagines that Gary Gygax read the reviews and died on the spot.
No, I’m actually not glad he’s dead. That would be cruel.
But it strikes me as ironic that he should die just as D&D evolves past the limitations he seemed to impose upon its creation.
# posted by Doctor Lao @ 4:28 PM 
