My Understanding of Dungeons & Dragons

Note: If that Wayc guy still wants to contact me, I replied to his comment with how to contact me. I didn’t hear from him after that so I assumed he hadn’t seen it, and he left me no way to contact him.

We now begin the blog post proper

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So, while I rarely got a chance to play the actual pen n’ paper Dungeons & Dragons, I do read a lot about it, and here’s what I’ve come to understand.

Keep in mind, I’m speaking as a guy who was introduced through computer games, which is normally a bad thing, but…

Well… apparently (especially if blogs like Grognardia and documents like “A Primer on Old-School Gaming” are any indication) if you want to get the experience of playing D&D in video game form, the place to look is NOT Pool of Radiance, Baldur’s Gate, or Wizardry…

… Rather, the place to look is games like Zork, King’s Quest, and Monkey Island.

The way a lot of sources describe the experience of D&D (before it became numbers-focused and computer-gamey) reminds me more of the problem-solving mentality of such games than anything else. For example, the Primer I mentioned brought up the issue of discovering traps. In the olden days apparently, instead of saying “I use my check for traps skill” and rolling a percentile, players were instead expected to ask intelligent questions about, and pay attention to, their environment. This was, for example, the reason the ten-foot pole existed: If you suspect a trap, you could poke the floor ahead and see if anything happens (and it didn’t necessarily have to be said pole you poked with–a cane, a piece of broken-off cobblestone you happened to find nearby, a stick off the ground, all would do the job).

The difference is that in D&D, any reasonable solution could work. Annoyed by that part in Phantasmagoria where the lead character will only pry open the trapdoor with a crowbar? In D&D you could try to do the same thing with a longsword if you wanted, the DM would allow it because its logical.

The genre of computer game that is actually called RPG (and which is usually recognized as the descendant of pen n’ paper RPGs) tends to instead play up the numbers aspects, which from what I’ve heard had a bad effect on the original product. Hell, one reason I hated Third Edition at first sight is because it looked way too number-crunchy to be played without the aid of a computer–a clear sign to me that the game was made with PC licenses in mind. To hear certain fans say it, the game never got any better.

To be honest… while I like electronic RPGs, I always felt that the adventure (whether text, parser or point n’ click) genres had a bunch of advantages, my only gripe being the common “only one solution in-game when in real life you’d have tons of options” issue. In that sense, pen n’ paper role-playing sounds like those but in an idealized version that lacks that problem… unless you have an unreasonable DM.

The problem, then, is… well, if I ever played D&D, that is how I’d want to play it. With players using water to find pit traps and then looking around for deactivation mechanisms, or opening chests from behind in case of poisoned darts, or saying “I feel along the edges of the painting for anything that might be a switch.”

The problems I anticipate, then, are:

A: Players who don’t understand what I’m getting at, give me constantly confused looks and wonder why I feel its wrong to just say “I use my disarm traps skill,” and are still confused even when I explain it to them in baby talk.

B: Players who get what I’m going for, but want to play their way anyway because its their preference, and who want to force it on me.

C: That one guy who wants to be a fucking powerhouse badass. I’m sure we’ve all had that player (and its invariably some little kid)–they just come in and say “well I have a magic wand that conveniently solves all my problems!” and trying to veto that just makes them mad.

D: People who want to play a more recent edition, or else an entirely different RPG that I’m not at all familiar with.

See, here’s an issue I have IRL… my area doesn’t have a lot of D&D players, and those that exist have always been of one of the above types. The thing is, its either live with it, or don’t play D&D at all. What can a person do?

This, incidentally, is why I don’t like multiplayer-focused computer games as well: They may be the best thing ever, but it means jack shit if nobody else is playing. They are very much collectivist in that if you like something that everyone else hates, the game will change to accomodate the majority. At least with single player, my subjective experience is maintained come rain or shine.