We're Not In Kansas Anymore Toto

Long Ago L. Frank Baum wrote a series of books that took the world by storm. His first The Wonderful Wizard of OZ was a resounding success and introduced the world to the magical world which Baum often maintained was a real place. Himself the Royal Historian of OZ. He transported millions of readers to these realms in their mind's eye and helped their imaginations soar to new creative hieghts. It is no small debt that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien owe to Baum for first showing the world the keys to such incredible realms. And Baum himself owed a great debt of gratitude to the nursery rhymes, folk stories and fairy tales of the world. Thus we stand on the shoulders of giants in everything we do.

Thus it was years ago still that Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax, Don Kaye, Rob & Terry Kuntz and others began playing a game with what seemed endless possibilities. This game would come to be called Dungeons & Dragons. It too took the world by storm. Another key had been discovered that allowed us all to play with our imaginations in ways we had never really before considered. We owe a debt of gratitude to these initial explorers. And truly all that has come after has been by standing on the shoulders of giants who came before. The true tribute we give to these men is that we continue to play, that we continue to enjoy and we are still creating almost 4 decades later.

Any who follow my blog regularly know that I have been in a time of transition. My slightly rebellious nature has not let me stay idle as I look to recapture what I felt all those years ago when I first played AD&D. It was a time of endless wonder and magic. No one could see the ends to the depths of possibility that lay before us as we reveled in this new playground opened by those early pioneers. For several months and even years now I myself have wondered exactly what was that magic in a bottle that Gary, Dave, Rob and others passed onto us. Where was my magic and where was my game.

Recently I have had the pleasure of conversing with one of those pioneers. An unassuming man with little pretense, Ron Kuntz has some profound and deep ideas about what exactly RPGs are and specifically what D&D is all about. He is a man that has stayed true to that early artistic spirit he first felt as a boy and has journeyed far and wide to see where it has led him. This has made him controversial to some who might like to cast D&D into hard and fast definitions. But it has also made him a light for the truly artistic and creative souls that pursue something deeper than easy answers to questions that plague many gamers today.

For now I reserve much of the details of our exchange, as it is still ongoing; With his help I hope to present some of his ideas here in the forms of interviews and the like. But for now I simply say Rob has helped me see the moon. The metaphor to which I allude is that once expressed by Bruce Lee. "It is like a finger pointing the way to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory." Let's just say that I have been staring at the finger. I think lots of us have. Hopefully Rob is pleased with the metaphor, and doesn't want to kick me in the pants. Because Rob does not like the idea of being set up as some sort of gaming guru. He'll tell you when you first meet him he's just another human, just like you.

The thing that Rob does have is an innate scholarly nature. His knowledge on gaming design and the current research in this field and several others is impressive. For this reason if not for a host of others, Rob has something sorely missing in today's gaming world. long term experience and knowledge in gaming design. Not the redesign of already existing games, but the design of new, original games. Of searching for new keys that might lead us to new realms of creative discovery and simply fun.

The problem now in teh gaming world is that we've all been hanging around in OZ so long that it has become just like Kansas. And we're so busy telling people not to leave state lines we have limited ourselves in discovering new creative lands. Don't limit the human potential. Don't tell people they can or can't. Let them discover for themselves. Otherwise we begin to lose that initial wonder the creators first unleashed those years ago. I now worry in retrospect if I have not damage many new andd young gamers impressions of the possibilities of the game by my own concretized ideas and advice.

D&D is a simple concept and a simple game. But it is also infinitely profound. The glory and wonder and detail of it all is in the playing. Not in how well we can draw or describe or scientifically detail the finger. Let's get back to shooting for the moon. Grab a game, any game and play. Play the way YOU want to, the way YOU feel like. Take D&D to realms it has never been--because only YOUR imagination and creativity know the way.

That Was Then This Is Now

So, if D&D was focused on free form creativity placed completely in the hands of the players and DM initially, what did it become? And did any of this element stay with D&D over time?

Evidently the advent of AD&D was born out of several needs. First there were issues involving Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax that related to lawsuits and the like. Gary needed a game that was distinct from what had come before. Even though the original rules were formalized by Gary much of the initial work was forged by Dave. I personally see the work as a synergy, but that's just personal commentary from the outside. Whatever the case, lawsuits were one reason Gary needed to create a distinct game. This had to do with intellectual property rights. But I really don't see the problem other than maybe Gary and Dave didn't get along. Or maybe Gary saw the game as his or Dave did. Hard to say. And I'm not sure exactly how this worked, because the original game was published through like 1979 when AD&D was finished, but whatever.

Second, there was the revelation provided by Rob Kuntz that AD&D was a response to the commercial opportunity to market supplements, modules, campaigns and the like to a hungry and very eager audience. Rob mentions this idea being spawned by the receipt of a submission module. But there seems to be other indications that Gary already was aware that people wanted content. Greyhawk was the first, then Blackmoor and shortly after Eldritch Wizardry, Gods, DemiGods and Heroes and Swords & Spells. Strategic Review and Dragon Magazine were also providing supplemental info since 1976 or so. The disconnect for me is that like most human decision this was a complex one. Could be that the module submission was the first time they really considered module creation, but the idea of creating content seemed to be a part of D&D early on.

So how and in what way was AD&D different? Well, first of all we get a complete rewrite of the rules, additions in numerous areas; more detailed class descriptions; addition of optional rules like psionics & the bard; exposition of basic cosmology of the D&D universe; lots of design helps for dungeons, wilderness, aerial, and campaign types. Combat was kept basically the same, but the charts changed and lots of additional rules were added. We get quite a bit of prose about how the D&D universe works in terms of basic physics, magic and the like. We also get a bigger and still strongly Greyhawk flavored list of magic items, and spells. The rules are presented a little more organized than the original books. The game is basically the same in theory only more detailed, complex and content rich.

The effect for me is that AD&D is a more limited fantasy game in scope. But only slightly so. What I mean by this is that the realm of AD&D is understood to be a Medieval European Fantasy setting with some of the universal structure inherent in the game. You can opt of just about everything: the Greyhawk flavored elements, optional rules, additional combat rules, the cosmology. Pretty soon you are playing a fairly basic game. But you do this by cutting away from the game. We didn't play this way. We used all the magic items, artifacts, cosmology charts, tables and on and on. We didn't use weapon speed, but just about everything else was added in the mix. Our game was sort of the standard AD&D world. Fairly well written out, explicated and contained in the 3 main AD&D books.

We did create dungeons, campaigns, npcs, worlds, magic items, and other stuff. So why was what we did different from what 0e people did? Well, the difference was in terms of scope in my opinion. AD&D implied a sort of carbon copy series of worlds that all felt pretty much the same. Bigby's Crushing Hand, Mordenkainen's Disjunction, Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer, Baba Yaga's Hut, The Hand of Vecna were all there regardless of what dimension your world might exist within. Even when you left those elements out a D&D world carried a sort of default definition from AD&D on. Now it didn't have to be this way, and I have talked with others who did it differently. It wasn't until much later in my gaming career that I began to step outside of that box.

Personally I think AD&D reinforces that kind of narrowly defined play. That's not necessarily a fault, and it certainly doesn't proscribe other types of play using the system. Gary himself makes it clear that cross genre games are possible and TSR has produced for your gaming pleasure: Boot Hill, Top Secret, Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World ... well you get the idea. Gary also speaks at some length about designing your own adventures and campaigns. So this model still existed within AD&D, but the game itself was fairly narrowly defined within the classic high fantasy route. I also know that there were many that continued the old approach to gaming and took AD&D apart and reassembled it to their liking. I suppose, for me and my early gaming friends, we were accepting the game RAW as the model designed to play. Straying outside that box was only to be performed with caution. An idea Gary himself reinforced within the DMG and his later book RPG Mastery. This was a clear departure from the earlier approach.

Subsequent editions increased this divide until we get to DnD 4e where rules for balancing encounters and constructing adventures, properly disseminating treasure value and XP are so tightly constructed that it is clear you may only create within a narrow tunnel of design. Now, technically nothing prohibits you from straying outside this structure. You can still do just about everything you want, but try and change core mechanics or structure and you usually get rebellion. Take powers out of DnD for instance and players often complain or refuse to play. Limit race and class selection and grumbles, groans and outright refusals are received. The game is what the game is, don't screw with it. Try and amp up an encounter or throw something in unexpected and 4e gamers chide you for not balancing the game. Can't be too hard, or too easy. Has to be "just right". You can try to change things, but the ethos works strongly against the free wheeling, creative anything goes days of 0e.

Now, if you can find a group willing to allow you free creative license with whatever version you play then great. Like minds make for progress. But why play a game where most players don't like that appraoch? Wouldn't it be better to play a game where everyone understands that they are entering an unknown and unexplored region of the imaginative landscape? Where the familiar tropes and landscapes are left behind as they sally forth towards a realm of high strangeness and unexpected danger. A land where you can truly let your imagination soar.

So What Is D&D Anyway?

Here I am, a 30 year veteran of RPGs and particularly D&D, reconsidering what the heck this game  means anyway. What was it's founding intention? And what does that mean for D&D today? First off I feel the need to clarify that though I've been playing D&D (mainly AD&D, but I've played most versions) since 1981 I am not a child of the 0e era. I was not 'in" on the founding period of D&D and I am also still barely scratching the surface of true D&D history. So please take what I say with a grain of salt. No matter how passionate, dogmatic or grognardly I may come across. These are just the opinions of one gamer seeking understanding.

It seems to me that the game was originally about free form creativity in a role playing game atmosphere. You had a referee or DM that would be responsible for creating the adventures for the player characters and eventually a campaign or world in which these were to take place. You had players that would assume the role of character types drawn from the speculative and adventure fiction of the time. The game was designed to be cross genre like much of the fiction of the period, but was essentially a fantasy game. Combat structure was basic and simple, characters were basic and simple in terms of mechanics. And the game rules were kept straightforward and few. Hence the term "free form". There was lots and lots of wiggle room for creative personalization and basically anything goes.

I'm loathe to say the game was designed to focus on roleplay as a way of covering all the inherent rules-gaps in the game, but it certainly enabled that. There were those gamers, I'm sure, that filled in those gaps with personalized rules and extensions of the rules to more consistently address those concerns. But these technicalities were left up to individual DMs and their groups. The game also allowed lots of openness for additions of new classes, treasures, monsters, and the like if players and their group so desired. In fact it seems that was what was expected.

And, as has been previously mentioned, the game to this point (the initial publication of Greyhawk) was still considered done, complete, as is. You needed nothing more to play the game. The quote from Gary "Why have us do any more of the imagining for you?" is indicative of this approach. The game was designed for players and the DM to take control from here. And from what little I know and understand about the way early games were played with Gary, his kids, Dave Arneson, Rob Kuntz and others the games were all played this way. Creation of the milieu happened as the game unfolded. The newness of it and the fast and furious gaming of those early days necessarily required lots of improvisation and experimentation and free form creativity. At least it appears this way when one reads the stories of early games. Gary would literally stay up late after a session to finish the next level of the dungeon so he could be ready for the next day's session (this is from his EnWorld Q&A). All of these comments and explanations make it clear that they expected everyone to play the game like they had when they were first discovering and enjoying it.

Now, that being said obviously D&D changed over time. There were certainly different fanbases with different ideas of what the game was about with each successive iteration of the game. I was one of those. I was introduced to the game via AD&D and that determined how I saw the game. The real question is how much of that version of the game, and later ones, were truly different in the minds of the players from the original game? And could that early creative ethos have persisted in later editions and if so to what extent and in what form? More on that next time.