Campaign New August 31

I'm returning to the old newsletter format today.

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

Summer has been surprisingly eventful in terms of player activity despite that half of the scheduled sessions have not been played by anyone, and a couple of the usually more active players have suffered reduced availability. I'm very happy to report that Amy B, Monica R, and Scott B have joined us, Josh L has created a character in anticipation of re-joining us, and Alex W plans to join us as soon as he is able. Sadly, John S has decided to retire from the game.

The time gap between the least and most advanced characters' timelines has narrowed to 45 days after peaking at 80 days. The geographic gap has widened however, with characters as far flung as Waterford, Castlenoe, and the Mountains of Mis.

In a fascinating turn of events, the last session saw the first overt player-versus-player actions of the game, one character picking the pockets and leaving for dead her comrades in the dungeon after a near total-party-kill.

I've previously asserted that while AD&D is ultimately a competitive game, skillful play at the lower levels is cooperative. The last session may be the exception that proves the rule. I'll withhold further analysis and discussion for the time-being, but this may be a very interesting and informative case study to improve our understanding of early competitive play in AD&D.

SCHEDULE

The next scheduled game is Tuesday, 8 Sep.

Please remember that you are invited and encouraged to bring new players to the table with you any time. You are likewise invited and encouraged to request impromptu or ad hoc games at any time. I will always have characters on hand for use and adoption by any player. Barry has indicated that he may be available for ad hoc sessions on some Wednesdays, so reach out to him if a Wednesday night game might work for you. Also let me know, because if I'm available, I'll be interested in playing, or possibly refereeing if Barry can't.

TIPS & TRICKS

The Role of Simulation

Perhaps the defining characteristic dividing games like AD&D from games like chess and tennis is "tactical infinity," the allowance within the game to take actions not explicitly described by the rules. I touched on this last April using the iron spike as an example. The only rules around the iron spike are that it costs 1 copper and weighs 1 pound. There are no rules and just one suggestion about what a character or monster might do with it and that is to anchor a piece of rope. In our game, characters have successfully used an iron spike to hold a portcullis up and a door closed.

How can players imagine innovative things to do with spells and equipment, and how referees decide how such innovation should be handled? A lot of modern gaming writing will recommend things like "the rule of cool" as the best way to handle situations that the rules don't cover. Those games have different objectives than ours. In our game, on the spot rulings that referee needs to make for situations not covered by the rules are governed by two principles: 1) consistency with the existing rules of the game, and 2) consistency with our understanding of how the world works. That second principle is essentially simulation: imitating in the game what could happen in the real world. We do that instead of making a ruling that "creates epic moments" as one modern game writer put it because we are interested in fairness and predictability rather than story.

The reason fairness is important to our game, and not so important to modern expressions of the game, is that our game is competitive and our referees are also players. There are characters in our game who have played at times with me as their referee and with Barry as their referee and there has been zero difference in what rules were used and how they were applied. Likewise, I have played characters that Barry has refereed, and Barry has played characters that I have refereed. Eventually those characters may rival for lands and resources and it's important that neither of us has had any unfair advantage.

The reason that predictability is important to our game is that it allows players to innovate actions. Not every action is on the table, for example a player suggesting his or her thief climbs the back of a giant in the middle of combat to gain a backstab bonus. While arguably "cool" and "dramatic," it is also unreasonable once one carefully pictures the maneuvers involved. In this case, it's also violates the rules as the giant would certainly be aware of the character climbing his back if such a thing made any physical sense. Players are constrained by "reasonableness" that comes from a shared understanding of how things work. It is at least as much a burden on the players as on the referee to think this through lest they waste their valuable session time asking if their character can shove the elephant into the pit, or some such nonsense. On the other side of that coin, practical innovations, such as carrying a potted plant into the dungeon in order to use some plant-affecting spell in a place in which plants aren't normally found is perfectly possible.