Musing: Voiding the Warrantee

It almost seems like the monthly of D&D campaign is trapped in Xeno’s Paradox and I never quite seem to get there. This is my last chance to blather on about it before I actually have to produce something. So blather I do.

There’s the well-known Alfred North Whitehead quote “The safest general characterization of the philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." That gets bandied about in various other contexts with different names, but RPGs, with their very specific, documented creation date, are footnotes to Gygax and Areson. I hold this to be self-evident. Bust more than that, I think that all of RPGs after the original D&D come from ‘voiding the warrantee’.

To the best of my knowledge Lisa Padol coined that phrase in the meaning of taking a game system and using it to do things that the original designers never intended. Her example of this was using D. Vincent Baker’s “Dogs in the Vineyard” not just in other settings but without using the community design rules which Mr. Baker insisted were integral to the game. Once you do that, she argued, you’ve voided the warrantee and can no longer complain that the system doesn’t work as advertised.

The three little brown books and their supplements presented a very specific game of exploration, interaction and conflict built around some incredibly versatile ideas: that the ‘figure’ used has a distinct personality; that the physical figure can be abstracted away entirely, eliminating the need for any game board at all and making the figure a ‘character’; that the character’s experiences carried from one game session to the next allowing for improvement of skills and personality; the expansion of the referees role to that of creating a scenario against which players form a semi-unified front. Yes, the inclusion of fantasy and SF elements in war gaming was interesting, but they had been going on for a while at various war gaming clubs. The concept of a referee who had to make on the fly decisions when people made crazy ass moves with dragon minis when fighting Napoleonic soldiers was also established among war gamers. It’s the big four ideas I mentioned that were unique and powerful.

And as such were immediately taken out and tinkered with in ways that would void the warrantee. Of course, the original LBBs ended with “why do you want us to do more imagining for you?” or words to that effect – the designers were urging people to fill in the games gaps in their own ways, implying there was no warrantee.

Later, of course, Gygax would famously declare that too much of that sort of thing rendered D&D to be a “non-game” since there was too little continuity from table to table. If no one was sure what rules were in force it made his dreams of respectable tournament play (and quite likely higher profit margins, and a clear legal break with Arenson) impossible. Hence AD&D and its much more rigid, theoretically complete rules.

Anyway, it’s not entirely true that there were no warrantees: the game as presented worked just fine. OK, the rule book was a opaque but it could be easily taught and was no worse than other small press war game rule books out there. (I remember my own confusion as to why Villains & Vigilantes had its sectional numbering system until I started playing Magic Realm and saw that it was drawn from the old war game rules.) But people wanted the game to do things for which it was not designed.
The game has creatures from Tolkein in it, how come it can’t accurately model Tolkein? It claims Howard and Burroughs are inspirations but it doesn’t accurately model Conan and Carter? If it’s meant to model big adventure novels why does my PC keep dying? Why isn’t it more realistic in its combat? Why isn’t it more realistic in its depiction of magic? (?!?!) Why isn’t it more realistic in its depiction the church in the Middle Ages? Why do gold pieces give experience points to anyone? Why does killing monsters give experience to wizards? Why isn’t there a more detailed kill system? Why doesn’t it have more pole arms? (For God’s Sake, think of the pole arms!)

Of course the answer to the first half of these questions is “it’s inspired by, not modeled on; isn’t trying to be anything except itself.” The answer to the second half of the questions is “It’s an abstraction to keep play moving, deal with it.”

These were, of course, unpopular answers for some people, and gamers have spent nigh unto 40 years trying to get the rules in the LBB to do things they weren’t mean to do, voiding the warrantee over and over again. Hell, this whole blog is dedicated to voiding that warrantee by producing my own game rules for specific campaigns, trying to twist the tools of roleplaying into highly specific configurations far outside anything the original designers intended. And that’s good. It’s great that Gary and David told us to stop asking them to imagine for us at the end of their seminal work. More of us should do our own imagining rather than waiting for the great rules/story gods in the sky to provide us with our consumable entertainment.

What isn’t good, at least in my humble opinion, is denigrating the original D&D games, or indeed any older game systems, because they didn’t do what we later decided we wanted them to do. Taken on its own Dungeons & Dragons is a perfectly fun, playable game. It’s not broken, as long as you’re not using it to do something it wasn’t designed to do.

If you void the warrantee, the designers are not responsible for your lack of fun. If you don’t find the game as written fun, it’s probably because you enjoy other games, not that this one is broken. I can play Cribbage for hours. Setback bores me to tears.

A Distant Inheritance, which wraps up on April 20th, was built from the ground up for a very specific style of fantasy campaign. Being a tale of knightly princes, elven wizards, stalwart hangers and Halfling burglars it’s the sort of thing that lots of people would turn to some flavor of D&D to run…and D&D would do a crap job at it. Oh, you could make it work, but it wouldn’t feel as much like the Hobbit as A Distant Inheritance does, and I’d have to twist a lot of rules to get the same story driven outcome. D&D is just a bad fit for this sort of fantasy; trying to force it won’t make anyone happy. In May I’ll be starting a D&D game (in fact, next month’s D&D game) with this same group of players) and it will be in the service of a very different game.

Which is how it should be.

Hufflepuff & Ravenclaw 12

12: and the Monster of Amristar chapters 8-10

Chapter Eight: Drama!

A Storm of Dragons!

The first sessions of the Dramaturgy club show it to be a chaotic mess, but the sort that always coalesces into a single whole, as is the nature of theater. The class doesn't get into any of the specifics of Dramaturgy as a magical form - changing the world through theater - but over the years Jasmine will be able to learn more about it if she chooses to do so. There's a classic battle going on between Professor Ogham & Madam Hooch, where Hooch wants to do Dragons! & Ohgam wants to do the Tempest. Being unable to reconcile, they are leaving it to a student vote. Both stories focus transcendent changes at the end of one’s life: Prospero's tragic abandonment of magic & Grizzledbellow's ascension into the heaviside layer. Both are intended to lay the ghost of Voldemort, to make you know who reflect on his life and actions, if he is even still alive.

Neither will work - you know who is just too big a target. Still, all the club members are told to read both plays and vote on the decision. Until that decision the students do some general auditions and basic drama. I know that Jasmine will be here, but I don't who else.

Castle Mordha 0

So next week I'll start with Castle Mordha proper, spending a month digging in to classic D&D. One thing that amused me during the first stages of character creation was how some of the younger players took the original D&D rule of 3d6 in order for the stats.

One of them looked at a state block with a 15 strength, 13 constitution and nothing below average and declared that this wasn't the character he wanted to play. I asked him what type of character he did want to play since there are no human class stat minimums and the demi-human stat minimums started at 9, so he qualified for every class, and I hadn't even given the class descriptions yet. "I don't know," he said, "but not this."

"Why not?"

"I dunno. Because."

Huffelpuff & Ravenclaw 11

11: And the Monster of Amristar Chapters 5-6

Chapter 6: The Second Day

This is the beginning of the second session, which I hope will cover from the beginning of classes to the end of Christmas break. This was the start of our second session so I had a chance to ask the players what they intended to do with the day in advance and plan accordingly. These notes should give you an idea of what you might need to do to prep.

Hufflepuff & Ravenclaw 10

10: And the Monster of Amristar Chapter 3-4

Chapter 3: The Banquet

This chapter completes the general exposition.

In the waiting room

"Welcome to Hogwarts. The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the great hall you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory and spend free time in your house common room.

"The four houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Slyterin and Ravenclaw. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding wizards & witches. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs earn your house points while any rule-breaking will lose points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the house cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours.

"The Sorting ceremony will take place shortly in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you're waiting."

As the PCs fret or make themselves more present-able, the Grey Lady will slip in through the back of the room, looking pensive and clasping a large text to her chest. Her appearance will freak out the first years no end, calling for a general Bravery check on d6 to keep from yelping - Peri and Rowena miss theirs, Grendel makes his. She will approach Castor and whisper in his ear "Be not afraid. A ready mind is humanity's greatest weapon and strongest shield, so you are well armed. But be vigilant. Older troubles seldom rest easy, even as new life is born." Castor will feel that his head has been struck by a boreal wind as the Lady's lips brush his ear.

At that the Grey Lady disappears and McGonnagal returns to bring them into the hall and the hat