D&D4REAL: WHAT IF D&D WAS REAL?

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of OSR type blogs and very much enjoying them. Certainly I agree that old school play has a lot to recommend it and certainly, while I can think of many aesthetically more pleasing games than D&D in terms of game design, I have to admit that yes, I still love D&D, warts and all; indeed I concede that in many cases those warts are beauty spots! However, I draw the line in claiming that all the rules found in those Red and Blue boxes were works of pure genius. D&D has always been too guilty of letting the numbers influence the play rather than the other way around.

For example, I don’t think this is a controversial statement: it is strange that the area that takes up the most space in the rules and takes up the lion share of many D&D games, thus you could argue is the most significant part of game play isn’t “role-playing,” but combat. Okay, that doesn’t have to be the case nor am I suggesting that it is universal, but let’s be honest, it sure takes up as much time as anything else.

Why? Because the rules emphasise fighting over any other part of the game. There is obviously plenty of justifications for this, mainly the fact that many other aspects of the game can be “role-played” while arbitrary actions can’t easily be “role played,” hence the war game roots of D&D have a chance to shine. Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe a game system stands and falls mainly on its combat rules and I think my reviews reflect that. However, think of the emphasis that a typical D&D character sheets gives to combat stats over all other numbers: AC, HP, THACO, weapons, weapon damage… Even attributes, when you really look at them, tend to lean towards the combat side of the game. Str, Con and DEX all have a predominant emphasis on combat mods rather than other feats of strength, stamina and agility… And it doesn’t end there: when you come down to it most of the most widely useful spells have a combat bias.

No one could argue that the D&D character sheet puts any significant emphasis on any other aspect of the game other than fighting and keep a straight face. AD&D with its weapon profs, AC mods, etc… is even worse! I’m not saying that D&D (in all its variants) is the only offender, but certainly I’m struggling to think of another game system that devotes quite so much space just to combat.

(I’m not saying that combat shouldn’t be part of a fantasy RPG, as it plays a part in the literature that spawned it, yet I’d argue that there’s more to a Conan tale than just hacking and slay. His stories revolve around all sorts of peril and adventure, it is his character and the narratives told so well by REH, rather than his fights, that are his appeal.)

So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that most D&D adventure (published or otherwise) put fighting ahead of character interaction with NPCs or plot or whatever else… Hence the dungeon, little more than a labyrinth of monsters and mayhem, only occasionally interrupted by the odd pit trap or poison dart trap. Combat is engrained in the game because the rules encourage it. And why not, it’s fun. And even the most cynical critic (which I am not one) would have to concede that there are other aspects of the game too… But I think combat and a dull interpretation of combat, derivable from its war game roots, which mare the game.

But it is interesting that the rules of the game don’t just persuade us, the players and DM, that combat is the heart of D&D… They also persuade the PCs too! Don’t believe me? Well, players are relatively unique in your game world, right? They and they alone (plus a few exceptional NPCs, which I’ll get to later) have Levels and not HD, thus only they improve. Almost vampirically they get more powerful as they kill, gaining Levels as their fallen opponents lose blood…

Some old school players say this trend actually started with AD&D.2e as before that PCs gained exp from treasure too and thus the game encouraged using your head and taking the bootie by non-violent means… However, if my experience is typical, this is massively disingenuous. What percentage of encounters did your PCs really use stealth and cunning to steal the goblin gold over more strong-arm tactics? Less than 5-10% of the time, I’d wager. Certainly, you’d rarely leave a lair of humanoids alive… And why should you? Okay, during those early Levels stealth probably makes more sense, but as your character gets more ludicrously tough then soon stealth looks like a waste of time… Why not take the treasure and kill the goblins, neatly gaining exp for both!

And this makes perfect sense from the PC’s POV… Sure the risks are initially high, but the rewards are vast. Soon you’ll be two, three, four or more times as powerful – just in innate abilities… When you add magic items in the mix, you can see the attraction. Power is addictive.

Now, I find this logic interesting and rather counter to how most 2^nd generation systems approached the rules. Take Cyberpunk for instance: it developed rules that modelled the genre and the setting (such as Humanity and deadly combat). The rules reflect an aspect of the genre, influencing play for a reason, but the genre influences the design of the rules first. While D&D seems to operate in the opposite way: the rules influence the setting. It’s all very arbitrary. By accident rather than design the game rules made a world that was modelled on war games and boardgames only. It’s like an egg laying a chicken…

For example: the infamous ‘Ecology of a Piercer,’ where Dragon magazine for an April Fools tried to make sense of this most illogical and absurd monster, as the stats defined it, i.e. it drops from the ceiling to impale its prey, but has no movement, thus how can it reattach itself to the ceiling? It’s one of the many absurdities and paradoxes of D&D. A fun and harmless one, but how often have the arbitrary and ill considered rules influenced the design of the D&D setting rather than, what I think most would agree would make more sense, the other way around…

Really the paradox doesn’t matter, the world of D&D doesn’t have to make naturalistic sense, because neither does much fantasy or myth, yet it still seems a counter intuitive way of creating a setting, let alone playing the game. Of course today there’s too much ecology in modern settings and not enough magic. The Piercer is magic… let it be… let it be…

Now, this all this guff is only an observation, as, in reality, I quite likes it (I definitely love the Piercer). My only problem is that the D&D game doesn’t see this upside-down logic through to its logical conclusion. So, this got me wondering, what would the culture of a real D&D campaign setting be like if the rules were allowed the really influence the world. As things stand Greyhawk et al operate purely as a veil draped over the rules. The rules say one thing, yet the world says something else. Most D&D settings are influenced by Middle-earth and psuedo-Medieval culture (all very prosaic really), but with the rules operating in a way that would suggest a very different society might have evolved.

Which got me wondering if the game play and the politics of a setting could be further mutated by Gygax’s crazy rules? The alternative Real D&D world that I’m imagining is a world where the rules of physics follow the rules of Gygax rather than Newton and Einstein… I ask myself, would a world covered with monsters in every hex-shaped mile develop the same infrastructures as 10th Century Western Europe? I’m willing to bet that a Real D&D world might look very different to the halfway house that is Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms… Very few if any D&D settings seem influenced in anyway by the very real and destructive and powerful magic that exists so commonly there. What might it be like?

This is the starting point to my campaign setting and scenario design… The culture, laws, ethos, mores and stories will follow the rules of the game rather than some pseudo-Medieval game world or Tolkien rip-off with the rules bolted on without influence on anything but combat. This is going to require some rationalisation of the rules and some extrapolation as to what those rules and rationalization will mean for the PCs, NPCs and monsters of that world. My decisions, no doubt, will be fairly arbitrary, but I shall try to make some sense out of it. Obviously my rationale will be my own, so others might draw different conclusions.

My premise is that everything included in the Basic and Expert/Rules Cyclopaedia is true and to be found in my D&D4REAL world. The exact tone and distribution is up to me. It’s going to be an illogical mash-up of myths and fantasy settings (like all D&D worlds are), but further twisted by the presence of monsters, magic and PCs as the game rules present them… Any thoughts and comments will, as always be gratefully received!

It might require some house ruling to fit, but basically it’s going to be a relatively unmodified Basic D&D game with all its insanities on full view. The details and geography of my world aren’t important (as I’m unlikely to run it); what’s important is how the rules are going to affect game world, thus I will be placing the game world (in an underhanded way) back in its rightful place as an influence on game play… Kinda…