On Gygaxian Naturalism & Unnaturalism
The term Gygaxian probably rests most strongly in three different qualities:
- The erudite and innovative use of literary language, usually archaic
- The implementation of a fantastic Gygaxian Nautralism
- The presence of unmistakably quirky and weird Gygaxian Unnaturalism
And I would add a fourth common element that I do not think is Gygaxian so much as it is old school generally, but has come to be equated with the term among internet gaming communities:
4. The use of DM fiat, and contesting the skills of the players instead of characters
What I wanted to visit today is how the two qualities of Gygaxian Naturalism and Unnaturalism intermingle to form what I think of as typically Gygaxian Dungeons & Dragons and led to the creation of AD&D as a uniquely Gygaxian product.
Gygaxian Unnaturalism is best covered first, since it actually comes first in the development of the Gygaxian school of thought. The idea of unnaturalism is much less talked about among gamers today, even OS gamers. I first came across the term on, yes, James Maliszewski's Grognardia recently while re-reading his entries. However, other old school gaming bloggers have also referenced the term. As I currently see it, this mode of gaming is rooted in the weird and pulp origins of D&D as expressed in the original edition. This sense of oddness, unreality and the fantastic is and should be an integral part of D&D. Now, to some this may seem like an obvious point. After all, D&D is a fantasy role playing game and filled with orcs, goblins, elves and gnomes, dragons, unicorns, giants and gnolls. Of course it is fantastic and supernatural, that is the name of the game after all isn't it? Well, no, not exactly.
You seen the second term, Gygaxian Naturalism, gives a frame of reference for the second term. I also feel that the blending of these two elements are what actually is critical to Gygaxian roleplaying. I won't go into detail here on what Gygaxian Nautralism is, as it is discussed in numerpus sites throughout the old school online community. Just do some Google-Fu and you'll come up with tons to read through the night. What I will say is that as D&D developed, Gygax created in a direction that aimed for a degree of verisimilitude in his gaming. Some called it simulationist, but I like to give it ore of an ecological definition. The world had to make some degree of sense. This can be seen in the first publications of the World of Greyhawk. Oerth had a very naturalistic and even scientifically plausible origin. The development of the races of men seemed to follow a course similar to the development of men and cultures in our world. What's more, the fantastic creatures endemic to the D&D worlds also had culture, a reason for being and a society that went on outside of whatever the adventurers did in the world. Now, this wasn't true right off, it developed over time. Early adventures were replete with rooms of kobolds and other beasties just awaiting the arrival of adventurers, often guarding randomly placed treasure. But as the game and Gygax's creation grew it took on an increasingly naturalistic approach to fantasy world building.
Granted others have taken this further than Gary ever did, and that is part of the point as well. If you take it too far the game can lose its sense of wonder and strangeness--the unnaturalism. You see, goblins in our world would be a massively strange and bizarre occurrence. It would be reality shattering if you happened to run into one. When, in D&D, goblins are routinely known and encountered--even if dangerous and unfamiliar--much like wolves or mountain lions are in our world. Running into a wolf in the wild would scare the crap out of us! It might be a wondrous, and aweinspiring moment, but we still wouldn't feel comfortable standing too close. The real point is that we would not consider it unnatural. Amazing? Frightening? Of course, but wholly natural. And see, seeing a goblin in a naturalistic Gygaxian world would also be something similar. Perhaps goblins are creepier, more dangerous, sinister, even evil, but still natural within a Gygaxian world. Goblins have a language, a culture, individual motives, relationships, and pursue their own lives ost often independent of any encounters with player characters. Characters in the world would also know this, and though they may hate them, hunt them, while still being terrified to enter their subterranean lairs, they would consider them natural within the structure of their world.
What is needed, what is wanted, is an unnatural, unexpected, terrifying, wonder inducing element that we all crave. That sense of weirdness replete in favorite sons such as Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Abraham Merritt, and others. This sense of the unexpected is what any 0e players often aim for. The oft counseled advice to create new monsters to surprise your players, catch them offguard is, at least in part, due to the need to recapture the wonder. We have all experienced the feeling of being a bit bored, when we open the creaking dungeon door to find a troop of kobolds waiting behind it. Kobolds?! Not again!! The strangeness which is a part of any 0e simulacra, Crypts & Things, DCC RPG, and LotFP are also examples of this quest for the weird in the game, and an effort to build it into gameplay. But, these games often abandon, or do not pay enough attention to the naturalistic necessities required to make the unnatural standout. In a world where all is unnatural and strange, even the unnatural can become mundane.
Allow me, if you will, an example in our own world. Though not a perfect one, I think it illustrates my point. But for a moment you have to allow your worldview to include the possibility that all might not be as it seems in this apparently materialistic world in which we live. If you have taken any time to delve into the paranormal in our world. Even if it was only to watch a horror movie and lose yourself in the high strangeness that creeps over your consciousness as you let the strange taste of fear embrace you, you should be able to at least understand what I am about to say here. In our world, the search for and study of the supernatural is inherently frustrating. Two primary reasons exist for this. First, there is the bizarre nature of such experiences. Those who see ghosts, UFOs, bigfoot, or traffic in such things for long all speak of how real, almost ore real than real these experiences feel. At the same time they talk of the sense of unreality, of high strangeness and almost always of a sense of overpowering dread that comes over them and their surroundings. Now, whether you believe such experiences are real or not--the sensations and experiences these people have are very real, more than real, to them. However, the second nature of these phenomena is their very elusiveness. This very fact is what does cause so many to doubt their experiences, especially materialists. For you see, the minute one tries to pin down their experiences, get at the facts, or track down the cause, the answers see to evaporate like smoke. Phantoms of the mind in a very literal sense. But these phantoms haunt us, and haunt our civilization. And no amount of rationalism will dispel them from our collective minds. It is in this very natural world, where the stories of elves, goblins, demons and angels find their origin. And the recorded encounters with such beings are events of high strangeness indeed.
Now, the metaphor is not perfect, but part of the reason I think fantasy role playing games have such an appeal to so many is that it gives us the chance to vicariously experience a world that brings these legends to life. However, unless the world continues to offer wonder to those that play it, the truly magical even this world can begin to seem mundane. Now, while world of D&D offers magic on a daily basis and offers such a difference from our everyday mundania that we keep coming back even for that. However, Gygaxian gaming includes a strange unnaturalism that Gygax expressed in such works as Dungeonland, the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, and the Tomb of Horrors, but in truth such special spices are sprinkled throughout most of Gary's work.
The melding of the two approaches are what makes a game unmistakably Gygaxian. And it is, in my opinion, what sets AD&D apart from other editions.
You seen the second term, Gygaxian Naturalism, gives a frame of reference for the second term. I also feel that the blending of these two elements are what actually is critical to Gygaxian roleplaying. I won't go into detail here on what Gygaxian Nautralism is, as it is discussed in numerpus sites throughout the old school online community. Just do some Google-Fu and you'll come up with tons to read through the night. What I will say is that as D&D developed, Gygax created in a direction that aimed for a degree of verisimilitude in his gaming. Some called it simulationist, but I like to give it ore of an ecological definition. The world had to make some degree of sense. This can be seen in the first publications of the World of Greyhawk. Oerth had a very naturalistic and even scientifically plausible origin. The development of the races of men seemed to follow a course similar to the development of men and cultures in our world. What's more, the fantastic creatures endemic to the D&D worlds also had culture, a reason for being and a society that went on outside of whatever the adventurers did in the world. Now, this wasn't true right off, it developed over time. Early adventures were replete with rooms of kobolds and other beasties just awaiting the arrival of adventurers, often guarding randomly placed treasure. But as the game and Gygax's creation grew it took on an increasingly naturalistic approach to fantasy world building.
Granted others have taken this further than Gary ever did, and that is part of the point as well. If you take it too far the game can lose its sense of wonder and strangeness--the unnaturalism. You see, goblins in our world would be a massively strange and bizarre occurrence. It would be reality shattering if you happened to run into one. When, in D&D, goblins are routinely known and encountered--even if dangerous and unfamiliar--much like wolves or mountain lions are in our world. Running into a wolf in the wild would scare the crap out of us! It might be a wondrous, and aweinspiring moment, but we still wouldn't feel comfortable standing too close. The real point is that we would not consider it unnatural. Amazing? Frightening? Of course, but wholly natural. And see, seeing a goblin in a naturalistic Gygaxian world would also be something similar. Perhaps goblins are creepier, more dangerous, sinister, even evil, but still natural within a Gygaxian world. Goblins have a language, a culture, individual motives, relationships, and pursue their own lives ost often independent of any encounters with player characters. Characters in the world would also know this, and though they may hate them, hunt them, while still being terrified to enter their subterranean lairs, they would consider them natural within the structure of their world.
What is needed, what is wanted, is an unnatural, unexpected, terrifying, wonder inducing element that we all crave. That sense of weirdness replete in favorite sons such as Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Abraham Merritt, and others. This sense of the unexpected is what any 0e players often aim for. The oft counseled advice to create new monsters to surprise your players, catch them offguard is, at least in part, due to the need to recapture the wonder. We have all experienced the feeling of being a bit bored, when we open the creaking dungeon door to find a troop of kobolds waiting behind it. Kobolds?! Not again!! The strangeness which is a part of any 0e simulacra, Crypts & Things, DCC RPG, and LotFP are also examples of this quest for the weird in the game, and an effort to build it into gameplay. But, these games often abandon, or do not pay enough attention to the naturalistic necessities required to make the unnatural standout. In a world where all is unnatural and strange, even the unnatural can become mundane.
Allow me, if you will, an example in our own world. Though not a perfect one, I think it illustrates my point. But for a moment you have to allow your worldview to include the possibility that all might not be as it seems in this apparently materialistic world in which we live. If you have taken any time to delve into the paranormal in our world. Even if it was only to watch a horror movie and lose yourself in the high strangeness that creeps over your consciousness as you let the strange taste of fear embrace you, you should be able to at least understand what I am about to say here. In our world, the search for and study of the supernatural is inherently frustrating. Two primary reasons exist for this. First, there is the bizarre nature of such experiences. Those who see ghosts, UFOs, bigfoot, or traffic in such things for long all speak of how real, almost ore real than real these experiences feel. At the same time they talk of the sense of unreality, of high strangeness and almost always of a sense of overpowering dread that comes over them and their surroundings. Now, whether you believe such experiences are real or not--the sensations and experiences these people have are very real, more than real, to them. However, the second nature of these phenomena is their very elusiveness. This very fact is what does cause so many to doubt their experiences, especially materialists. For you see, the minute one tries to pin down their experiences, get at the facts, or track down the cause, the answers see to evaporate like smoke. Phantoms of the mind in a very literal sense. But these phantoms haunt us, and haunt our civilization. And no amount of rationalism will dispel them from our collective minds. It is in this very natural world, where the stories of elves, goblins, demons and angels find their origin. And the recorded encounters with such beings are events of high strangeness indeed.
Now, the metaphor is not perfect, but part of the reason I think fantasy role playing games have such an appeal to so many is that it gives us the chance to vicariously experience a world that brings these legends to life. However, unless the world continues to offer wonder to those that play it, the truly magical even this world can begin to seem mundane. Now, while world of D&D offers magic on a daily basis and offers such a difference from our everyday mundania that we keep coming back even for that. However, Gygaxian gaming includes a strange unnaturalism that Gygax expressed in such works as Dungeonland, the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, and the Tomb of Horrors, but in truth such special spices are sprinkled throughout most of Gary's work.
The melding of the two approaches are what makes a game unmistakably Gygaxian. And it is, in my opinion, what sets AD&D apart from other editions.
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