Dungeons and Dragons Part 1 - A Tangled Web of Rules

I was in middle school when it happened. I cannot recall why, but the sensation hit me suddenly. A impulse rose through my chest and bubbled over into my head, swirling about like pasta in a rolling boil. I suddenly wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons (D&D).

At that time in my life D&D was no more than a vague notion for me. I asked my father what D&D was like and his only recollections were playing with a group of college buddies and kicking a rust monster to death. That aside, my only other knowledge of the game was a faint acknowledgement that there were lingering assumptions that it was evil and that those associated with it were of irredeemably nerdy. Given that, at the time, I was knee deep in nerd culture, having developed a liking for Magic: The Gathering cards, the latter did little to keep me from investigating and my curiosity easily overwhelmed the former.

I discovered a short time later that if D&D were truly associated with devil worship that there were almost certainly more affordable ways to get involved. The first books I bought were $20 a piece, a small fortune for me at the time. I'm still uncertain as to how I managed to come into enough money to afford two of the three core books I needed at the time. 

I set about reading the first rulebook and was almost immediately overwhelmed. My first taste of D&D was 3rd edition, which to this day is still a tangled mess of rules, although I can't deny that it had a lot of flavor. The arcane texts I pored over seemed to be written in some combination of foreign language, ciphers, and a particularly sadistic form of algebra. Determined to play, however, I valiantly forged ahead trying my best to pretend I had any idea of how to play the game. I still remember the first time I sat down to play a session with my friends and slogged through roughly two hours of confusion over rules and a single encounter. That session also happened to coincide with my first attempt at DM'ing. (DM = Dungeon Master aka. the person who runs the game.) My best friend took over the DM's role on the next session and had a little better luck, but the game never quite caught on in our circle.

My first forays into D&D were not a complete loss however. I was fascinated at the concept of the game, an imaginary world in which all the actions and interactions took place soley in the minds of the players and the DM. I adapted the concept into a game which used randomly chosen Magic: The Gathering cards to determine encounters and potential resources. Somewhat surprisingly it was a hit with a few of my friends. From that was born the inspiration for a new game world, one which I played without any form of rules or equipment. It was the essence of D&D in its purest form, a game of the imagination, with only a sheet of paper to keep track of gear and items you picked up along the way.

To this day I still consider it unfortunate that D&D 3rd edition turned me off with its complex web of rules and perverse love of tables. Fast forward a few years, however, and I began to develop a taste for a little more structure. The expensive set of dice I had bought to play D&D continued to tempt me, untouched as they were for so long. Their bright contrasting numbers and geometric shapes called out for use and I obliged. In high school, on a whim, I began crafting my own role-playing game. Had Wizards of the Coast, the company that publishes the D&D books, known at the time I'm sure they would have wept bitter tears for their lost profits. I stole the dice system and the combat rules that appealed to me and mashed them into a simplistic yet effective framework for my own custom game. I didn't even have classes, you were just your character. I later named it 4312 for the year in which the game took place. It was an absurd post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy smashed together from all my interests and it was an instant hit. 

Looking back, my 4312 game was a modern DM's fever dream. I introduced new rules whenever they were required, there were no books for the players to point to or pages of rules to pick apart. I kept my player's character sheets when they weren't playing since I was constantly upgrading and changing things around. I was still getting a feel for how to balance weapon damage, life points (aka. hit points), and determine which stats did what. And frequently I was the only one who really understood what my items were intended for or how finer details of the rules worked. While that might sound like poor practice, and in same ways it is, it also resulted in much more experimentation and creativity from my players. It was exactly what I had always expected from D&D. 

To this day 4312 is still the longest running role-playing game I have been involved with. I played with my initial players, Tim and Brandon, all the way through High School. I even managed to involve a number of other random people along the way. That is until Patrick showed up.

Patrick seemed to appear out of nowhere one day. He befriended Brandon seemingly overnight and soon he just seemed to be hanging out with us all the time. He also happened to bring with him years of D&D 3rd edition experience. It seemed impossible that anyone could comprehend and effectively wield the living mass of rules that was 3rd edition, but somehow he managed it. Little did I known that I would be drawn again into D&D's siren call, or whatever sound a small tome's worth of technical fantasy jargon sounds like. (In my previous experience it typically sounded like a book slamming shut followed by a defeated sigh.) With Patrick offering to take the helm of a D&D campaign, however, my fate was sealed. The legwork was going to be taken care of and after so many years I couldn't help but want to give it another shot...

It's All Vague

Earlier today, as I sat outside smoking a cigar and enjoying the humid heat of a Maine summer, it occurred to me how vague the entire world is. This wasn't the first time such a thought had struck me but, especially in regards to all my thinking about the art of writing, it seemed particularly poignant.

In a world where there seem to be more and more divisions and distinctions as time goes on, perhaps the concept that everything is ultimately very vague is rather counter-intuitive. But from where I sat this afternoon, trying to cool off, sitting in a stiff metal patio chair, and gazing aimlessly about a downtown area, the world did, in fact, seem quite vague.

Running the concept through my head yet again, the idea seems very Zen. All distinctions are a concept created by our minds. Hang with me, I'm not getting get hippy or stoner on you. When you get right down to it, society is comprised entirely of written and unwritten rules that aren't, at all, immutable.

Let's take a work environment for example. We'll start with a single department at just about any facility. You have employees and you have at least one supervisor in most cases comprising a single department. Although there is nothing that actually distinguishes, in physical reality, the supervisor and the employees they still work together because of the rules of the facility and the nature of jobs/work in our society. If the employees don't do their jobs, or if the supervisor doesn't do their job, they face consequences. Why? Because of the established rules of the facility/workplace and the expectations of society. However, those rules were created from, essentially nothing. One day someone decided that things would work better if they were done in a certain way. That someone creates a rule and finds people who will follow it. Further systems spring from that construct.

That was roughly how my train of thought progressed, and I began to expand upon the idea. If the rules that make up all of our society were created, upon either a logical idea or arbitrarily, then, other than consequences imposed by other people or physical realities, anything goes. Our economy in America relies upon a system in which people are evaluated by the tasks they are able to perform. People are evaluated by their work history and their proofs of education and experience. People earn money from working jobs that are classified and categorized into various tasks and roles. What is all this for? So people can earn money and make a living. Ultimately though you don't have to do this. Working is not required to live in the literal sense. Even in the context of the modern working world you do not have to get a job. If your goal is to earn money then all you have to do is determine a task in which you can convince other people to give you money. (Although you should perhaps consider taking into account the laws and customs of your region before you attempt this.)

In practice the fact that so many people abide by the rules of society, the economy, the justice system, etc. limits your ability to ignore the existence of established rules and systems or even to introduce new ones. None of this is really surprising given a moment's thought, but the thing that really made me pause was the realization that we are all just making this shit up as we go along. If you consider the the highest tiers of skill and knowledge in all areas, leadership included, there is nothing that determines your progress forward. There is no set roadmap for what is discovered next, or how to manage a country, or earn money. Our systems as a human race rely solely on a 'whatever works' policy.

All things considered this is kind of scary. The various forms of government, countries, justice systems, scientific advancement, education, economic systems, parenting, language, hierarchies, and just about anything you can think of distills down to "Hey, that worked! What now?" To which I suppose the proper response, the driving force behind all of our achievements as a species, would be "Huh, I don't know. Fuck it, let's wing it."

From the Ground Up

I made the decision to restart 'No One Will Recall' the other day. I moused over the select-all box and clicked, and the boxes below, the ones next to my posts with titles I had felt "witty" or held some imagined depth, were marked in turn. And as I hovered over the delete button I hesitated, though I felt no reluctance. I hesitated as I waited for some pang of guilt or change of heart but it never came. I have a history of keeping most of my previous writings, no matter how terrible, as a kind of growth mark. My old writings are a notch on the wall so-to-speak that allow me the chance to gauge how far I've progressed, or grown. This time, however, I had no desire to save or reread my disparate writings one last time before I consigned them to oblivion. My default state normally embodies some level of disconnect but I had become disconnected from my writing, an unusual circumstance for me. I had experienced a betrayal of self in my words and my writing suffered accordingly. I was writing for the wrong reasons. I clicked delete and started from the beginning.

Now, more than ever, my site name is exceedingly appropriate. Of the dozen posts that used to clutter this anomalous corner of the net, all are now absent. Gone. I doubt anyone would have known had I never mentioned the matter. 

I consider myself a writer, even if I cannot call writing my vocation at this time. I write so that I can hone my ability, expand my mind, and examine my thoughts. I write because I have heard that much can be learned through mastery beyond the scope of a skill, and I want to test this for myself through writing. I write because I enjoy writing and have things to say, even if I don't always know how to say them. I write because I am arrogant enough to believe that what I write, or will write, is worth reading and might make a difference.  That's why I write, but I had forgotten for a time. Without those reasons I'm not really sure why I was still writing. And even now, though I have refocused my thoughts on why I began writing, I cannot say why I chose writing and not, say, graphic art.

With all this in mind I've decided that if I am starting from the beginning I should build a good foundation for my writing. I've struggled for several years now, writing on and off, to reach this point; that is, I have reached a point where I can really start to take my writing more seriously. So, as my first step forward I'm hashing out a basic open-ended framework for bettering myself and my writing. I have every expectation that this list will change in the future. After all, this is only the beginning.

5 Basic Rules for Improving my Writing

1. Write often. 

2. (Regarding #1:) Do not worry about what you will write about. If you write enough you will figure out what you really want to write.

3. Whenever possible: Wait at least 24 hours, reread, and revise.

4. Read often and actively, not passively.

5. Explore different genres and styles both in writing and reading.