I Am

For my birthday, I'm just going to post this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMxGVfk09lU

A Proxy for Certainty

I continue to work with chatGPT, which hasn't reduced the quality of my writing in the slightest, whatever persons might say about the program or the content it supposedly churns out. The issue, as I see it, is that a paintbrush is quite able to make a sloppy mess of a job if wielded by someone who does not know what they're doing, while at the same time this does not make a paintbrush a "flawed tool" or anything like it. Those who wish are free to discuss what parts of my writing have suffered from my starting to use this tool, but I'd like specific examples, please, rather than broad uninformed statements about what the tool is, or what it does, or where its flaws lie.

I have been writing for a long time, long before the start of this blog, and have been attested to be a good writer by many who in the same breath describe me as someone they do not like. That knowledge was not acquired in a vacuum, it was gained through the practice, first of all, of writing an awful lot. Next on the scale would be the examination of other writers, and third the impredations of editors upon butchering my work done before printing... and fourth, the rare but embarrassing incidents where something I wrote for a mainstream publication — not, I'll stress, the Candyland writing and critical world of the internet — was demonstrated by evidence, not opinion, to be wrong.

The last, and least, and tiniest factor in my becoming a better writer must be the opinion of someone who did or did not like the word on the page. I'd say, generally, in 45 years of writing, this has amounted to a 0.01% improvement in my work. I simply can't put it plainer than that.

Yet, I have wasted decades bringing my stuff to people I've respected to ask what they thought. It's never been of use, never led to a betterment of a story I'm writing, never acted as a guide to what I should write next and, frankly... has never in fact been of use.

That is, until chatGPT.

Now that is not expected to land well with the reader. It's a provocative position to take, it will no doubt anger or baffle many, and likely — were it said by someone not having written this many posts on a blog — be considered a honking pile of bullshit. Be that as it may. It's been nearly two weeks since my feeling any need to post here, though I've had the time, largely because I'm so invested with working upon other projects, and creating other ideas, that I just haven't cared to express myself here. And this is in large part because, if I wish to express what I think, with the intention of receiving (a) informed, (b) patient, (c) changable, (d) insightful or (e) constructive feedback, it is becoming less and less practical to do so from a human being. As a set of intellectual properties, you're just not engaged enough, enlightened enough or fluid enough to maintain any sort of conversation for more than about twenty back and forths.  And so I am saying, whatever the consequence of that, that of late, I can do better.

Now, you may take that as an invitation to withdraw your funding of my work... but truth be told, you're not funding the discussion, nor the investigation, but the results. And the results you are getting, at present in the form of the Lantern, and throughout 2025, unquestionably some of the best diatribes I have ever written about the business and practice of present day D&D. So please, rely upon the results and don't worry about what a mean, miserable, curmudgeonly reclusive bastard I'm becoming. My humour has never been what you've been ready to pay for.

ChatGPT has filled that vacuum.

This is not to say that I have become one of those demented souls who have decided to marry a program, far from it. But if I want to really get into a subject, really root around inside it to my heart's content, chat is conveniently there. A little stupid, misses the point a lot of the time... but if I quote Thomas Paine or refer to the king of England in the time of my magazine's setting, it doesn't blink at me as though I've just named the nearest member of the Oort Cloud that Voyager will pass in about 40,000 years. For someone well-read in this era, where "sense" is something a person buys from one of two political ideological vendors on the internet, it's a breath of fresh air. I can get lost in a discussion of how the development of technologies in the 14th century is leading to street violence in the next few years and the full structure of the argument can be discussed on its merits and not it's believability.

The danger of chat, and the goal of this post to discuss, is the manner in which it is stupid. That is to say, it isn't dumb in that it doesn't know anything, it is dumb in that what it says first, reliably, is whatever the greatest number of things printed on any subject happens to consider valid. The program doesn't know if it is or isn't — rather, it is democratic to the extent that if a lot more people believe a stupid thing, and the subject around that thing is brought up, chat will present the stupidity as true.

If, as the user, your knowledge is absent on the subject, and if you take chat's word for it right off, then... well, you're a moron. Let's take an example: suppose you decide, for whatever reason, to show an interested in medieval medicine. If you ask chat, "Tell me about medieval medicine," you're sure to get an answer that stresses the use of bloodletting, humours, leeches and other such nonsense... because if you take the largest mass of writing on this subject, written largely by writers merely repeating falsehoods, this is what you get. These broad strokes, which did occur, are endlessly repeated, reprinted and copied through many thousands of texts... and so, when asked, without knowing what it's doing, chat reprints them for you.

But, if you know anything about medieval medicine, such as, "No, it's about more than that," then chat's design rushes from "horses to zebras" without a heartbeat (literally), because if pressed it will instantly discard all that crap and step into what people don't write about as commonly: the subtler, less publicised reality: complex herbal remedies catalogued with care, surgeons were developing practical techniques for wound management, the development of anatomy, the movement away from humours to observed chemistry and so on... the work that had to be done first before the leaps forward in the 19th century could occur. There is far, far more to medieval medicine that generally gets republished in bad magazines... but chat has been trained on great masses of wrong as well as right materials, so it has to be corrected and brought around and reminded that we want what really happened, not just the typical story.

The tool appears to fail only because it mirrors the loudest, most common story, in subjects where the record is dominated by lazy repetition, parroting distortion before it's encouraged to do otherwise. Those who really don't know about the subject think this means, "Chat's just wants to agree with you..." but of course, that's an expression of ignorance. If the user knows the subject, and chat comes around to admit the knowledge we gained in our private research, then "agreeing" with us is what we'd expect any other expert to do. Chat does in fact know everything that we know. It can't choose, it can't want, it can't tell the good from the bad. But it can be reminded to look up those works that we think of as experts without hesitation, because all the work is there in its guts. If you, as the user, don't have the patience to educate yourself first, it's not chat's responsibility to do that work for you. You need a different tool if that's what you want. Just because a paintbrush doesn't make a good hammer doesn't make it useless as a paintbrush.

Which is why it is such a good tool for a writer... IF the writer already knows how to write. If Bob Plainbrain wants to write a book without the slightest clue of what a good book looks like, then yeah, chat's not going to write a good book for him. If Peg Lazyhazy hasn't a clue what plot is, or character, pacing or narrative, and asks chat to "solve those problems," then guess what: chat's going to rush to the largest pile of literature produced on the planet, that pile written by bad pulp writers who have churned out trillions more words than good writers have. Chat's not a bad writer. Humans, in toto, on average, are together simply awful at it. And without the right prompting, Chat's more than ready to turn out "average" writing... exactly that of the 8th grader who's short story made it into a newspaper. Try to realise that every newspaper that was ever transferred onto microfiche, whose start began in the early 1900s, has been added, full and complete, to chatGPT's repertoire of "writing." Seen that way, it's not a surprise what chat churns out.

What must be understood, however, is that Flaubert's Madame Bovary is there too, and George Eliot's Adam Bede and Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. But if you've never heard of these books, and you can't talk about them because they're an utter mystery to you, then you can't properly have chat translate the kind of writing that makes these books accessible to your writing work for you. Chat is just as ignorant as you are... so if you ARE ignorant, you shouldn't be appalled that the program functions on your level.

I have, many times, shown someone who scoffed at the value of chat the benefits of it as they've sat next to me and watched me prompt, versus their own efforts. They want to shortcut, they want to throw the paintbrush across the room at the wall and have the wall become miraculously painted. And when that doesn't work, when the brush has left an awful mess on the carpet and the hardwood, they're pissed, they're abusive, they scream what a piece of shit this program is. They rush to make a youtube video saying so.

I can talk about Flaubert with chat because I've read him... and because I have an understanding of the world he wrote in, and the readers he wrote for, and his goals in the narrative and such... because more than what he wrote, I've read others of the same time period and felt those same struggles with those narratives. If I were to have a discussion of Madame Bovary with you, dear reader, assuming you've read it, that wouldn't be the same for me... because to you it was a book, good, bad, whatever... while I read ever line thinking about how I would want to write that line, or how I should write lines like that, or how what he tried to accomplish is a reflection of things I've tried to accomplish in my work. He and I are both writers, which is like two surgeons talking about an open body during a surgery as opposed a surgeon and someone who hasn't become one. It just isn't the same.

But... I can have the kind of conversation like that with chat. Not because chat is a writer, but because so many of the sources it draws upon were. It can hold and surface the accumulated perspectives of countless critics, scholars, and practitioners who have wrestled with the same text. And unlike reading, say, Harold Bloom, I can intercede with chat and discuss this position versus that... and within chat, Harold Bloom, among others, is also there. In essence, it's like one of those forums where they used to gather a half dozen experts together to suss out a subject... but on tap, engaged with at will, right here on this computer. It's quite intoxicating.

As such, I've learned more about my writing in the last two years than in the twenty aforegoing. Growing up a would-be writer in a world of fixed, inflexible belief systems about "correctness," I spent a lot of time uncertain about what I should and shouldn't do with a narrative. To explain this, I'll again give an example.

Having come of age as a writer in the overlap of the 1970s and 80s, when writing about a character entering a room in a story, I used to think that it was my responsibility to "set the scene," as most writers did. To sketch this kind of writing out quickly, it would be along the lines of,

Judith entered the living room, finding a wide divan placed under the window, a scattering of magazines on the coffee table and a faint smell of pipe smoke still lingering in the curtains. The lamp in the corner threw a weak yellow cone across the carpet, catching the edge of a half-finished jigsaw puzzle on the floor. Judith paused at the threshold, feeling as though she had stepped into the middle of someone else's life, like a reader opening a book halfway through and struggling to catch the thread of the story.

I had chat write that for me, because I simply despise this sort of writing. I don't like reading it in a story, I don't find it remotely valuable — and yes, there is a massive difference between this sort of dreck above and what Flaubert or Thackeray were doing in their time, which we needn't go into. Back in the day, when I turned in a story where the tale went,

Judith went into the living room and Clyde asked, "What are you doing here?" —"I'm looking for you, of course; we have to talk."

I would be rapped on the knuckles and told that I had to provide more description, more "space," more "tactility" or a number of other bullshit words that I felt at the time ran into "waste the reader's time with explaining a living room they don't care about while making this boring to read."

But, that was the dictate of English teachers and professors at the time, who worshipped at the altar of D.H. Lawrence, Guy de Maupassant and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Three writers that I, for one, have no interest in.

Nonetheless, being young, dumb, not nearly educated enough to tell that segment of the population I desperately wanted to impress that they were full of shit, I obeyed and wasted years and years trying to be a "serious writer" as they defined it, conforming to their fashion, following the critical consensus of many who believed that to be "legitimate" it was all about the lamps, drapes and paisley patterns on living room furniture.

I get this crap advice from chat, too. I carefully and painstaking set out the motives of a character over six thousand words and get told, "The pacing really needs work, the change in the character's choices is happening too fast."  I throw out a scene where it's nearly all dialogue and chat says, "The work could use more grounding, describing the place where these things take place."  And early on, this used to bother me, because it was the same advice I've heard all my life.

But then, I realised... it's "like" that advice because that bad advice accumulated over a century, is also overwritten in chat's pile of knowledge, and chat's been programmed to help most people, people who have no idea what pacing is or how to create conflict. More than anything, when I get advice from chat about a story, it's to tell me that I should take two of the main characters, who have no reason to distrust or work against each other, and create a completely performative conflict that will make the story more "interesting."

When chat does this, it isn't in fact addressing my story. It's been programmed to be helpful; but it doesn't know how to be helpful, not really. So it picks whatever is the most common problems that writers have with their stories and grafts them onto mine.  For example, the ever popular "info dump." (I'll assume you can look it up, if you don't know what it means; chat would advise me to explain it here, but that's only because chat assumes you're too stupid to know or look things up).

Info dumps are awful. They're everywhere, most poor writers fall into the trap and as such it is the most common thing that writers have to be cautioned against. We're told endlessly, "show don't tell," which you can put on my gravestone for the record. Chat, however, can say those words but doesn't know what they mean, except that they're part of the conversation and so they'll always appear. And if I show chat a chapter of a story, and it hasn't anything else to complain about, it'll call out my tendency to "info dump."

The solution is to say, "Tell me where I've done it." And then chat will bring up an expositionary paragraph that runs about 171 words, which includes three non-expositionary verbs, because it's the nearest thing to an info dump it can find.

In essence, if it can't find a problem, it'll just make one up.

I imagine this sends a would-be writer with no real knowledge of their own writing into a drastic tizzy of rewriting something which is perfectly fine, sort of like being told the sink isn't clean though it looks perfectly clean, and trusting the teller so hard that you get out the comet and scrub for thirty minutes only to be told again, "No, still isn't clean." If you're smart, you realise the program, again, wasn't built to tell you if the sink was clean. It's built to help you, even if you don't need help.

Why is this good for my writing?  It reveals that nearly all the advice I've ever received by nearly everyone is about as good as chat's corrections. The "corrections" — I liked the story about this, but not so much that one — is not about the story at all, but about the reader. It's nice to be liked, but not everyone will ever like everything... and the most open minded readers won't read because they "like" a thing, but because it was a thing worth reading, regardless of what emotional support or interest massaging it offered. I read things as a youth which were difficult and hard to read. Sometime I rewatch certain movies because they are so unpleasant I have to steel myself to watch them again. I know from chat's inability to pull a story apart that there's nothing wrong with it... and I know that when someone doesn't like it, it's not because the story was badly written.

The reader cannot begin to understand how relieving that is, and how confidence-building. A plummer knows he's done a good job because the pipe is running and not leaking. An engineer knows they've done a good job because five years later the math still works as intended. A doctor knows they've done a good job because you're up, about and able to work for a living.

But a writer NEVER knows if they've done a good job... because it's all fucking opinion, and we don't trust ourselves.

October Lantern Advance Copy Available

I've finished the advanced version of the October Lantern, posted on patreon.  I've taken the requisite three hours rest and now I'm writing about it here. It's available for a $10 donation on patreon right now, otherwise it'll cost $7 on patreon come September 21st.  In the next few days I'll start on the November edition, which I've got rattling around in my head now.  I know what three of the articles will be, so I'll get started writing those soon.

I trust all of you are having a good Labour Day holiday.

Third Issue of the Lantern Coming Along

Two days until I provide the advanced copy of October's issue of The Lantern, which includes the follow up story to that which appeared in the September issue. Things were off track for a little while, but the work goes steady and while I may be late in the day come Monday the 1st, it's coming.

A $10 donation on Patreon gets it for you then... otherwise, the official launch comes September 21st.  Isn't this a great cover?

Spoonfuls of Sugar

Maximillian asks,

"Why do you insist on saying that you play D&D when the evidence clearly shows that D&D is about bizarre stadium shows and infantile, nonsensical rules?"

I gave a straight answer that can be seen on the link, and no fault assigned to Maximillian, though the query is plainly evidence of looking at the world a certain way.  The question is odd given that the name of the blog is "The Tao of D&D," and has now been in existence for 17 years.

This means that readers who were 18 when I first launched into this project, perhaps still in high school, are now 35, at a point where they've probably stopped playing, have had time to advance their incomes, have families and come to a recognition that career and home are ultimately more important than friends and acquaintances — a comprehension of such staggering proportions that it often takes people an entire decade, usually from the age of 30 to 40, to grapple with it.

If means that those who were 35 when I launched this, with infants and toddlers, are now 52, with adult children who have graduated and are themselves entering college, while managing the empty nest and free time is their largest personal concern.  52 is old enough to "feel old," and question the relevance of an RPG, even if when they were in their thirties it felt like something they'd never quit doing. 

Those who were 52 are now 69, seriously wrestling with medical issues — if not their own, then certainly those of their partners and parents, realising that a lot of the things they might have wanted to do, but never did, are falling into the categories of "too late" or impractical.

In other words, I've been at this a long time now.  I began at 43 and am now just a few weeks shy of 61. This blog launched a month before 4th edition officially came out, that was going to change D&D for the better. When I picked the moniker "D&D" it was still that, still exactly what it had been for decades, the time frame being even before the invention of OSR, which was a backlash to 4th edition.  And my game, apart from various house rules introduced, and manners of setting building, remains what it was in the 1980s, when no one would have questioned it's D&Dishness.

No one reading anything here could seriously question what I mean by that acronym. And anyone in the real world — whom I do not hesitate to tell, it's even on my CV — doesn't know one game from another. True enough, everyone I meet who actually plays is a fucking dweeb, unquestionably... which is to say, they know next to nothing, even about the version of the game they actually play, and are unable to talk about the game except in a foolishly generalised manner... which, in fact, would describe my meetings with D&D players just as well in 1989.  The game has always been innundated with gushing morons.

Thus, while it might be supposed that I cling to the name because I'm old, and I find it hard to change, or that I'm clinging to the glow of something that's now gone, I assure the reader that I'm not. The fundamental concept of what I play and the present-day "infantilism" is unchanged. There's a "DM" and there are players.  Everything else is just window dressing.

I've felt this way since 1980. When Rolemaster and Tunnels and Trolls emerged, along with a host of others, they were still just "D&D" to me. Different name, different rules, it was easiest to assign the "new label" to the version of D&D, but it was still the DM-player model. Change the genre and made it space opera, dystopia, spy thriller or the old west, the real model remains unchanged.  Information is given to players, the players respond, the information giver updates the information, wash, rinse, repeat.  It's all the same thing.

I would argue that "dungeons and dragons" was a sad, poorly considered, irredeemable name for the process. It doesn't describe the process, it doesn't even really describe the game itself... and while dungeons are very common as settings, dragons aren't.  They have no place in the setting's fundamental heirarchy, they provide none of the required equipment an adventurer buys, they're not relevant to the list of magic items, skills or spells a character employs, they don't contribute to the combat model and they're not actually needed in any way as a part of game play. And of course, the word does not describe any of the makers. It's sole relevance to game play is that the name was adopted by an important early publication, which then felt it necessary to keep inserting dragon-based articles that, ultimately, never really advanced game play. When Emil Jellinek named the car he made after his daughter, his own name evaporated from history; Ford did not make that error. He knew what to call his car, which is why we know his name and what it stands for.

So the name was flashy and thematic, but ultimately misleading.  But that has been the feature of this game from the beginning, and it continues today. Daggerheart is just as obscure, just as non-descriptive a name as can be put on a tin, while the recently released Draw Steel is likewise equally unfortunate. These names sound "dramatic"... but ultimately, they just disappear into an ever-growing pile of hundreds of other games a year that have accumulated for decades now. Naming things is not the gift of this community. Ten years from now, if anyone still plays these games, they will experience the same temporal inconsistency that Maximillian now consigns to my use of D&D.  Which, in fact, doesn't matter, in light of the fact that people don't relate the word "monopoly" in its real meaning to the game, while no one would ever mistake the Game of Life for actual life.  Because, in fact, words for products don't really mean anything. Most, for example, don't know the car was named after Jellinek's daughter. That detail is lost to all but a few afficianados, and girls who happen to also have that name, who have frustratingly looked up the coincidence.

So, here's the destination. What am I going to call it? The world calls it "this." I didn't choose it, and when I first started using it, considering the value or import of the name was not part of my attention. It is now, because the present fetish of the defanged internet is to play the game, "Let's redefine everything."  Let's not actually talk about, let's not actually prescribe anything, let's just quibble pointlessly over nitpicky language until we're all sick of the subject.

Which is why I've never been popular. I don't want to write a post on "Ten Reasons D&D Should have been Called Something Else" or "Ten Better Names for D&D"... consisting of a lot of petulant self-importance regarding why this name is better or why I don't want to, in excruciating detail, provide specific quotes from Arneson, Gygax and Mentzer on why they did or did not like the name. I want to write a blog that actually talks about, you know, the game.  The setting, the things required to play it, the structure of a setting and why your game actually sucks, not for reasons to do with cosmetic choices about music playing in the background and costuming, but because you don't know what "rules" are or how they work.

This is like medicine that works, but which most readers find really hard to swallow. So hard, in fact, that they'll say anything or do anything to avoid getting cured, just so they don't have that taste in their mouth. I'm dead certain that most anti-vaxxers just don't like needles, and thus can't bear the idea that they'd have to sit and endure one, even if it takes all of one second of real pain and two minutes of ache. People just don't want to be discomfited, even for the briefest of moments, and will build whole realities for themselves to avoid it.

Those who, right now, are quitting the game "because it's gotten really stupid," simply baffle me. The original books still exist. Every version still exists. People are still writing and making videos about old D&D. Where's the compulsion for anyone to even acknowledge "official" D&D?  I mean, who gives a shit, and why do they?  Just because a company says "D&D is this now," is that any reason for me personally to accept their word on that, or feel some requirement to obey, or in anyway suppose that my players or my readers would give a rat fuck?  Nothing has changed.  Nothing.  D&D is not "bizarre stadium shows."  That's just an invention for rubes, that happens to be using D&D because the market for "how to grow a business by telling stories" and "make money through the internet" has been innundated with tens of thousands of other charlatans.

I know how the thread of "We must listen to loud voices who tell us how to think and live" stretched from the 1970s to the present. I can describe it in book-scale dimensions better than most youtube creators, mostly because I was there and am not getting the information out of a single old magazine apparently found at a used bookstore. I can tell that story with nuance and detail and cause-and-effect, how this led to that, why people heard and embraced, where fear played it's part and what happened when each step along the highway was taken.  But it's all a waste of time, because people are not mechanical machines that function rationally or predictably.  They're largely just frustrated messes of unpleasant events they never did reconcile in their heads, searching for something they hope exists without reflection on what the consequences of that might be.

That is why its possible for me to be respected for what I write, and be believed, and even be accounted an "expert," so that those who disagree with me feel compelled to add, "with all due respect"... but still have that advice ignored, discounted, cast aside and not applied, because it would be too difficult, or because explaining it to others would impose either a sense of inadequacy or shame upon the reader.  YOU, dear reader, may agree with me... but explaining ME to your players, in such a manner that they'd believe you, given that some of them would bristle and disagree with me if they read my words directly, is a bench at a distance on a road that can't be walked.  Thus you listen, nod, go away feeling thoughtful and a little restored, or you go away thinking, "Hm, there are a few points there I agree with," but that's all you do.  You don't apply it, because you can't see how, or because the how you can see is just too much work.

That's not your fault. And it's not mine. It's simply easier to chase the company, supposing they'll have a spoonful of sugar that makes whatever medicine their offering go down. For a young person, that always seems best. For someone in their 20s, who grew up as a kid on Critical Role, Daggerheart sounds like the best medicine.  It sounds like something that's going to really change the world, that it's going to shatter the old model and represent the new.  It's super-sugarcoated and for that reason it is spectacularly easy to get down.

But... I'm too old a bunny to fall for this. It's not my first experience. Even 4e, at the start of this blog, long, long in the past, was way past it's best-before date for this bunny. So I'm not swallowing it. I'm not swallowing that D&D has been in any way changed, altered, adjusted, shifted or redefined by a company that is wallowing in debt, proxy fights and desperate attempts to keep itself alive by making Magic the Gathering cards with Sonic the Hedgehog. Once upon a time, that would have been enough to make everyone abandon this company in a weekend. But disappointments in this fair world have become so commonplace that this almost feels like "a good idea."  Like any frog slowly boiling to death in water, Sonic seems... right.  Perfectly on brand. Rational.  Not in any way evidence of a company that's had it's day and now needs the good folks from the "Endswell Old Folks Clinic" to come around with their fancy constraining jackets.

All of you who can find the time to give a shit, I wish you well. You'll reach the age of 61 someday, and maybe then you'll get it.

But... judging by the others around me who are my age and older... no, probably not.

The Lantern September 1635

The September issue of The Lantern is now for sale on Lulu, or on itch.io, or through a $7 donation to Patreon.  August continues to be available through the previous two sources, but no longer through Patreon at this time.  I'm afraid that back issues must in the future be located by looking the first two sources given.

Feels good to get this second one into the public. The real test of these things isn't showing that a magazine from front to back can be written, but that it can be done twenty times, month after month, without a drop in quality.  Several persons have already commented that the September issue is better than August... and while I don't expect that's always going to be the case, for the present I'll always do the best I can to make every issue a great one.

Those not rushing in, who are holding back, I don't blame you... but if you've felt over the years that this blog was worth reading, then let me tell you, The Lantern is the distillation, the evidence through fact, of all that I've ever stood for, that I've argued, that I've said the reader should do with their game world.  In other words, for the sake a mocha latte, you're missing out on the best thing anyone has ever written about this "hobby."

Which is certainly not how I see it.

A Cross-section of Albania and Macedonia

 

I like occasionally publishing a map that isn't done. I believe they have a beauty of their own. And I haven't done this in awhile, so... here it is.

You can find the complete version of this map here.

The September Lantern coming Soon

The September issue of The Lantern has is official launch on the 21st of this month, nine days hence. Discarding the usual hype, the hard selling of the product, and all the things that we have to do as creators to generate interest, I merely encourage the reader to invest into the $7 tier on my Patreon, so that you may receive a new issue every month, starting soon. The content, I'm assured, is unlike anything anyone has ever seen — while I find myself stunned to have thought of it at all.

Greenfield D&D

Much of my thinking since childhood has been wrapped in the conundrum of why is "X" assumed to be true when "Y" plainly indicates that it isn't. I understand that there is a human tendency to cling to familiar beliefs, it only fascinates me that although the beliefs they often cling to can be so easily demonstrated as false, those with the power to do so don't.

It's assumed that this is so because someone must be benefitting from those ideas remaining in place (X), but in fact, the evidence is everywhere that such benefits, if they exist, are quite obviously fleeting, since those most vigorously arguing for X almost always disappear from the public stage (Y).

For a universal example, which occurs in every democratic system, take the case of social welfare, or if one prefers, social insurance/social security.  It is always presented as a "cost" or a "waste of money" (X), when it's plain to virtually everyone on it that the money cannot remain in the hands of the receiver, but must immediately be paid out for rent, food, basic necessities and so on. This supports local landlords, groceries, transit systems, department stores... essentially everyone directly related to local economies, many of which would collapse were it not for the presence of social welfare (Y).  The disaster that would ensue should this welfare be removed would be catastrophic... solving a problem that isn't one, since the money of necessity merely circulates back into the government's coffers. Nothing is therefore "wasted" in this process, while this circulation stimulates economies throughout the world.

Yet no one who defends welfare or security does so from this advantage point. It is always defended as morally right or "decent," whereas it's opponents describe it as a costly disaster to the economy and something that needs abolishing. It would seem to make sense that someone ought to just stand forth and say, "The city of 'blank' would die without this money," but it's never said and the city of blank often just goes ahead and votes against their own interest, usually because they aren't educated enough to know where their interest lies.

And those that do lambast the cost?  They pick their times during the election cycle and then shut up tight as a drum when the vote nears.  Silence becomes the order of the day within six months, the "problem" is never addressed and quietly, those re-elected do not take up the issue again until after the election has occurred.  Because those who talk about it to near an election are voted out.  So where is the benefit, exactly?

The truth is that politicians repeat these tropes because they've seen predecessors do it, and politicians by and large aren't very creative. It does raise money for the next election, but since the problem that raised the money isn't addressed in that election, and since money for the most part remains less important than what the politician apparently believes, it all feels more like "magic thinking" than a well-considered strategy for getting elected.

I'll give you another example, though not a popular one on this blog, before bringing this to D&D.  Just now, virtually everyone in the press perceives that America, and several other nations, are moving towards "fascism"... and certainly the signs appear to be everywhere.  That's "X."  But we have, historically, quite a number of examples of fascist states in the past that have actually imposed fascism, and none of them, remotely, ever moved as slowly as this. "Y."  Doesn't it seem curious that a nation with far less resources, far less advanced, existing nearly a century ago (92 years ago by my count), was able to impose total fascism in a period of less than 8 months... while at present, all that's happened is that a few people have been arrested who shouldn't have been, while a lunatic is spouting rhetoric that in fact hasn't been implemented. Why the wait?  What does the wait serve?  In reality, this can't even be called "fascist light."  If it's a frog unaware that it's being boiled in water, at this rate, the water won't boil until the year 2085.  The metaphorical frog is going to be dead of old age before the pot gets warm.

So, a D&D example.  Why is it assumed that role-playing is a necessary part of D&D, or any RPG (X), when in fact the rules allow it to be completely ignored? (Y)  It's assumed that if you're playing an RPG, a "role-playing" game, that you're supposed to inhabit your character.  But the written rules, even in later editions, allow plainly for the pure tactical play (though in the case of later editions, this "tactical" aspect is sorely lacking in value).  Yet X persists partly because "role-playing" is baked in to the name, and people project what they wish overtop of what the rules allow, and the DM — generally an incompetent when stepping into the role — is easily sold on this idea, as is the mass zeitgeist of players (equally unaware of the rules).  As a result, nearly all the persons involved, including the mass of those commenting and "explaining" the game, are misinformed or miscomprehensive of the game's structure or rules.  It is easier to pretend those rules don't exist (X) than learn what they say (Y).

Thus we see "stadium presentations" of D&D as though the participants are rock stars, presenting a wholly performative representation of the game as it is never played, as "cool," complete with pyrotechnics.  This makes the vast audience ooo and aaah, which seems to assert that this is what the public wants... while, in fact, it's all posturing and nonsense.  It's not sustaining the game itself, which is collapsing under the weight of its own failure to produce a resilient experience, while the company that controls it is presently wallowing under the weight of its recent disastrous business decisions.  This latter, Y, is plainly in evidence, but the assumption, X, that the game is "more popular than ever" persists because of show. The hype is a marketing mirage — effective at creating the sense of a juggernaut in motion, even if the actual machine is coughing and leaking oil just out of sight.

Likewise, while "rules light" D&D is obviously showing itself to be a loser for the company that owns the game (Y), recent iterations of a "replacement" for D&D, notably Daggerheart (declared as open beta right now) and the freshly released and long-awaited Draw Steel, among others, buy in to the resounding belief that role-play is what the audience wants (X).  Which it clearly doesn't, because it hasn't been paying for it recently.  Which we should expect will mean that all the youtube gurus and all the reddit pages won't be enough to assure Humpty Dumpty a future — which no one says because shiny glitzy new product, yay. The "roleplay über alles" approach plays great in streamed entertainment, but most paying tables lean heavily towards a rules framework that supports crunchy, tactical play.  And recently, those tables aren't "paying" anyone just now.

The effort is what's been described as "greenfield" RPG development — the effort to seize the cultural position that D&D occupies without inheriting it's rule baggage or legal entanglements.  It's not trying to please the old crowd with their old monster manuals and adventure structures, but rather introducing something that can be "learned from the ground up" in about an afternoon.  A sort of Settlers of Catan level of game complexity, permitting all the role-play of D&D character and background, without all the annoying framing that permits or fails to permit character freedom of action.  Tactics are pitched, combat is a procedure that amounts pretty much to "make it up as you go along," while new people can engage without feeling overwhelmed by things they don't know, or lesser than those who have already played.  In fact, it's the Milton Bradley mindset of games from the 1960s.  Anyone can play, and everyone should.

I would guess that after a few games, it's boring as hell. The novelty of play only lasts until the players perceive that they're doing the same things every session, with the same consequences and the same basic expectation.  Without the tension of constraint — which these games are designed to eliminate — the value of the game is dependent wholly upon the DM's performative ability. Unfortunately for the participant in Poughkeepsie, Peoria or Pocatello, their DM is likely not Matt Mercer.

Seems obvious to me.  But that X remains presumptive.

When I bring up this sort of thing, if X is supposed to be true, why does Y show it isn't, that's when I get responses from readers that go, "You make me think..."  Good.  I recommend thinking.  It's a positive character trait.  Using old numbers, I think by and large original D&D was invented to be played by those with a 12 intelligence or better.  On the whole, I think it's failure has been trying to make it accessible for those with an Int of 8.

Printing The Lantern

Sterling has sent me the image shown. It's marvelous to see the print of the magazine, which I've not done, especially in "the wild" like this. Thrills me to no end.

He's printed up the issue in black and white, suspecting that as is, the magazine would be too dark to print as is.  I would suggest that should you choose to do so, for black-and-white, lower the brightness a touch (-5%), increase the contrast slightly (+5-10%), sharpen the text edges and desaturate instead of relying on auto-greyscale.

For colour printing, leave the brightness alone, unless your printer is known for printing dark. In that case, raise your brightness about 5%. Also for colour, reducing the contrast increase to just 3-5%, and reduce the highlights slightly (3-5%).  Turn off any vivid or enhancement modes, as those will oversaturate and distort the layout.

Try a test page first (Sterling says the cinnamon ad is a little dark behind the black text when printed), so you can judge before printing all 24 pages.  If you use a printer, be sure you discuss these things with them, so they can account for the issues.  The image is made on a computer, for computers, and I admit I tend to have my computer turned up a little bright.

The September 1635 Edition of The Lantern Advanced Copy Available

The second issue of The Lantern, for September, is available, but only as a preview.  The only way this can be read at this time requires joining the $10 tier of my patreon.  They will be the first to see it, and will no doubt want to talk about it.

A more accessible version for $7 will be available on Patreon and on Lulu on the 21st of August, by which time I will be well into the October issue. I'm very excited about September's offer because it allows me to demonstrate the greater scope of the project. My goal from the beginning was not to just produce the same concept with the same headings month after month, or use the same voices, but to create a collection of broadsheet "contributors" that will become occasional entities... while at the same time building the setting out, not just within the scope of Devonshire, but in fact the whole world.

I'm very excited about what I have planned for October, though I won't say a word about that. Meanwhile, please enjoy the easter eggs scattered through the second issue, as it lends greater depth and context to the first.
 

Bakeries to D&D

Let's look at a business model to get into the right headspace. I want to run a bakery. There's too much work for me to do on my own, and much of the work must be done between 1 AM and 9 the next morning, while much of the interactive trade with my suppliers must be done between 9 and 5. That creates a 16 hour continuous work window, which I cannot be awake for beginning to end, especially because the bakery is likely to be open another three hours, until 8 pm. Plus, to manage my suppliers, and other business issues like advertising and quality assurance, not to mention legalistic problems having to do with a very hot oven operating in a locale that must be easily accessible, most of the time I just cannot even oversee the day to day sales of product.

Therefore, I need at least three persons that I want to hire: a baker, and probably a helper for the baker, but let's call this one person for now. A day person, someone who can arrive at noon and leave at 8, because this person must be able to do the cashout, and therefore must be responsible, and a person who can cover the last of the baker's shift and the day person's... and here is the real big issue with a bakery: the busiest part of the day is between 7 AM and 11 AM... where the third person, the one not doing the cashout and not cooking the product, IS hard pressed. And my business really relies on this person, because this person's attitude to that busy period is going to make or break me.

So, three critical persons, all of whom are doing work that could easily end my business, and I can't practically oversee them, due to my other responsibilities as a business owner. This is why running a bakery is next to impossible... because if you hire a fourth or fifth person to make SURE the business runs well, the cost of labour can easily break me.

It is for reasons like this that authority of any kind isn't about comfort or vague self-expression.  Try to go into business as a bakery owner to "find yourself" and you will very quickly find that you're not a bakery owner.  There's no room to romanticise your work or your staff, or hedge your expectations... you have to calculate precisely, daily, what needs to happen and enforce structures that ensure it.

This principle, as it happens, does not apply to DMing a game.  But funnily enough, DMing a game DOES apply to this principle.

To continue with the model discussed.  As a bakery owner, and really any sort of authority we may ever embrace, the more we know about the business we're in, the better. A bakery is always strengthened if the owner is a baker, and knows how to bake if the baker doesn't show up... but all too often, a baker is often terrible with those issues of managing the local authorities, regulations, business associations or providers as they go.  If I've worked in a flour mill, I'll see things in the flour I'm given that another baker would never see, assuming that all flour is always the same, given that it's only "flour." The more we know, the more we can see, and the more we see, the more we can adjust for it, plan for it, and fix the problem when it arises.

Yet, of course, people get into business knowing nothing except what money looks like. They start restaurants without knowing how to cook, or start clothing companies without knowing how the wider industry works, or publishing books supposing that when a printer tells them what to do, then that's obviously right. After all, the printer must know what do to.

Except that the printer's concern is the printer, no the buyer; just as the cooks who do know how to cook also know how to steal food from the owner, just as the bartender knows how to water drinks for tips, or the cloth merchant knows how to swindle a rube with third-rate cloth.  One reason why that bakery run by eastern Europeans seems never to close or go broke is because those who run it began in a host of industries, when they were young, that supported bakeries.  They worked in sugar or flour mills, they carried sacks by the hundreds every day, they made their contacts and they kept them... and they continue to do that, silently, patiently, never trying to open another location, because getting rich isn't their goal.  Baking bread is.

So, what does any of this have to do with D&D?

Our attention to detail matters, not in the game world, but in the real one. That said, however, the decision to bend ourselves to rules that we perhaps do not understand at first glance, or commit ourselves to a difficult game structure that we feel certain we can get better at it helps impress skill-sets that repeatedly come to serve us later, often in ways we can't imagine.  We might not think that opening a module, reading through it and then presenting it to players is a "skill-set," but we do precisely the same thing when we're given a company policy that we're to present to employees, who must accept the policy as we provide it.  Knowing how to present the module in a way that encourages the players to sign on helps with teaching employees that they, too, have to onboard themselves if they want to continue working here.

Of course, all that's ruined when present-moment Hasbro D&D tells the DM to be a dancing monkey. But we can leave that discussion for another day.

Traditionally, DMing has been an authority based role, one in which we manage people. Moreover, apart from the process of answering questions, filling in details, staying one step ahead of the clever player, not letting ourselves get manipulated by a player (in the same way as the baker above not being tricked into thinking a poor employee is indespensible), DMing also builds confidence, a work ethic and a sense of responsibility.

One thing that is rarely discussed in all the questions and answers about how to get players to show up to games is this:  the DM always attends.  It seems to go without saying, but it does get to the heart of the issue.  The players may or may not be turning up because of what the DM says, does or fails to do, but we can at least assume that if the DM is there, and ready to run, then the DM is committed. It wouldn't be the first role in our lives we'll engage in where we're show up ready to run the place, only to find the employees haven't.

DMing, even bad DMing, requires a discipline that players usually don't have. Prep of some kind has to be done, competence of some kind has to be gained, a willingness to adopt authority with one's friends or acquaintances, and in many cases, with total strangers, has to be assumed. Doing so requires grit, tenacity, a vision in what ought or what ought not to be accepted from players and a resolve that, however difficult it may be, we're going to keep at it because we like this game that much.  All these traits translate very, very well to the real world, when we're put in a position of authority.

Not that the world knows this.

I have "dungeon master" on my CV because I'm at a point in my life and my career that I'm not interested in working for someone who doesn't know what D&D involves, and I don't have to. It's a luxury I didn't have once.  For those who know, it's an eyebrow-raiser... and for those who stare at it, wondering why this person is including a "game" in their resume, it's a fast way of identifying employers I'd never want to work for. But for the employer who knows what that is — well, these past few years, that employer has proved to be a good fit for me.

Point in fact. In 2017, I worked briefly, four months, in a bakery, as a four-hour a day employee, four days a week, which did involve me doing the cash-out. I was trusted not because I was a D&D player (oh, how I was in bad straits those days), but because of my university degree.  Point in fact... I learned more as a DM than I ever did in university. Unless you want me to explain at length why the Roman Empire was inevitable.

I can tell you how a bakery functions because I worked in about a dozen restaurants off and on for 25 years, going back to when I was a kid. And I pay attention. That is really it. Paying attention. Effective DMing isn't about listening, it's hearing the phrases behind what's being said... the subtle clues that indicate the player wants to hedge or effectively "steal from the till" when we're not looking. Because just like employees, players will. They can be your very best friends, but where some personal gain is at hand, and you turn out to be a softie, concerned that they're having a good time, they will quietly and consciously manipulate and make you feel that they're presence is completely indespensible to your campaign. And many DMs, knowing they're doing this, will let them, thinking, "Well, it's social, right? It's a game. And I don't really care if they earn what they get."

Sigh.

Well, there are DMs and there are DMs.  And while the above describes my experience, it has to be said... there are a great many dungeon masters who should never manage anything.  Just like there are many, many people who seem to have money to start businesses they should never be allowed to start.

But of course karma pays this. Because such persons never learn anything, while their money is better in my pocket than theirs.

The advanced-copy September issue of the Lantern will be available tomorrow.