Yesterday, I started detailing some of the new D&D campaign my friends and I are currently playing. I opened by explaining their blank stares when left to their own devices (as in that old D&D gem, "Okay, so what do you want to do?"), then I seemingly digressed into roleplaying styles, my enjoyment of the game, non-gamers, and so on. But these were no mere ramblings; these concepts are pertinent to the discussion. Anyway, this post will, ostensibly, get to the point.
Playing Style
To say my current players have a gaming "style" at all is incorrect. They're both neophytes to the hobby and neither has even the slightest idea as to gaming "styles" or anything else. I could classify their approach to the game by comparing it to existing playing styles, but it still wouldn't be accurate, nor fair.
So, understand that this discussion does not assume my players are anything other than gamers - the players controlling the main characters (PCs) in an extended (Advanced) Dungeons & Dragons game called a campaign. I'm not talking-down to you; that sentence can be read and re-read throughout the entirety of this discussion, as it flawlessly defines my current playing group (myself excluded). That sentence defines every term at-play here.
As I said in the first part of this discussion, I am a Roleplayer. My (greatest) roleplaying pleasure is completely immersing myself in the game and gaming world. Though rusty, at the height of my gaming passion, I was so good at doing this that I didn't even realize non-gamers with That Face (were any present), the eyerolls of fellow gamers who preferred we "just roll the dice and get on with it," or even the fact that I was completely naked.
Wait - not... not the naked thing. That was a hot day and I was on a lot of medication, first-off. Secondly, that guy does not tell that story right.
The real point here is that I'm aiming to get my small collection of neophyte gamers to the place where we can all lose ourselves completely in the game and gaming world. However, they have no fucking idea what to do, how to play, or anything else!
The Problem with D&D
The problem with D&D is the same as ever:
First of all, it is "weird." Funny-looking dice and no board aside, you assume the role of a person who is quantified almost solely by numbers on a page. But more than anything else, there's Required Reading. A whole, whole lot, in fact (if you really want to play D&D). Frankly, that shit is off-putting.
When I first said, "So, what do you want to do?" it was as if I were hearing it from far away. I could have chucked it all at that point, as the fact that I had uttered the Words o' Doom right out the gates did not bode well, but I sighed and strapped myself in. After all, it's been at least 15 years since I played D&D - I deserved to go a little easier on myself.
Still, the blank stare on their faces should have been trademarked; every experienced gamer who has introduced the game to anyone knows that Blank Stare. I could trademark the entire posture, setting, et.al.: Some confused dude with a piece of paper in one hand, an open PHB in front of him, twiddling the "funny-looking" dice with that open-mouthed, "Whaaa-?" It's the same, every time.
I had made the cardinal error as a DM.
DM: My Fault
Notice I am taking all the blame here - it's all mine to take!
As a DM, I had not prepared them for what to expect. I had told them nothing about how roleplaying works. Even worse, I kept treating them as though they already knew the stuff. In my head, we're just scrambling together a pick-up game; to these guys, I'm randomly ushering them through no fewer than a dozen books with abstruse directions like, "The table with that sword's to-hit bonuses are in the front. Don't forget to record your back AC - it makes it easier for ambushes and Backstabbing." Of course, all of that makes perfect sense to me, as it does any D&D player; to the rest of God's Creation, it reads: "WTF? -insert BlankStareTM-"
Furthermore, I was headed into a full-fledged campaign without the first note! I mean, I'd doodled an idea here and there, read some Dragon articles on campaign creation, thumbed through the Campaign Guide and the rest of the books I intended to use, but I'd made no actual, concerted effort to put a game together.
D&D was always the fallback. In the entirety of my gaming history, no matter what else was going on, "Let's play D&D" was always a viable option. Every gamer has at least one D&D book (even if it's just a copy of Dragon with an article for another game he actively enjoys) and most everyone we knew had far more than that. Like a lot of gamer groups, pretty much every one of my peers had enough of the system that we could pick-up a game in minutes, no matter where we were.
Many were the nights where character creation for the game we'd planned on playing ran so long that we knew we wouldn't get to game, so we'd strike-up a game of Dungeons & Dragons while the next guy worked on his character. By the time I was a senior, almost all of them were "pick-up" games, never to be continued. I have folders full of great characters I got to play once for an hour or two. I have vivid memories of saying things like, "Well, he was with [that character] and [that other character] in [that tavern in that town], but we're never going to finish that and he's ready to go, so I can use him." You'll encounter a lot of very interesting, very detailed, though low-level, NPCs should you ever play in one of my D&D games - I've got dozens of them!
So, to my mind, we're basically a bunch of grizzled, old D&Ders, dusting-off the books. Elfen Rangers and Thief-Acrobats; Dwarfen Warriors and Clerics; Halfling... no one ever played a Halfling - or a Gnome, for that matter - so fuck them. Anyway, there are a lot of basic D&D concepts you not only can't shake, but that seem so fundamental to you whenever you even think about D&D that you eventually assume everyone knows them. Beholders, the Tarrasque, the very phrase "the Flanaess," whoever the hell Bigby is... D&D is its own animal, though it didn't begin that way, and few of us Old Hands play using anything "Official."
Worse yet, I couldn't even remember the system! I knew it was d20, but all I could think of was The Problem With The System (you want to roll high sometimes, low others). All I had to do was look-over the Combat chapter, et.al., but still, that's pretty bad prep work when you're dealing with a completely neophyte group!
The fault lay with me: not only did I not prepare these budding, young, brand new gamers for the experience they were about to have, I hadn't prepared the very game they would be playing!
And Yet Another Strange Interlude
Um, yeah... about that - I tend to ramble. Anyway, continued in yet another post (which really will Get to the Fuckin' Point!)
© C Harris Lynn, 2009
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