Meet the Adventurer's Guild

A quick glimpse of my current roleplaying party's characters. You can see the full image here: Full Image Size

Why bother Part 2- Electric Boogaloo

There’s a unique sort of interaction when you play a game like D&D. There are laws to how the game is played that aren’t down in the book, but phenomena that continually crop up in almost every game ever played. The shenanigans that players start out of the blue are always confusing and forcing the DM to totally improvise the situation. When proposed with an obstacle, players are more likely to just break it down than figure out the proper solution to it. Particularly the later is different from how someone might play a video game. In a video game, the player easily accepts the boundaries of its reality, but in a tabletop game, the player is much more likely to disbelieve that it’s the only way through. There are countless other ways to approach the situation, regardless of logical progression. John Harasyni compares such behavior to general psychology:


“To be sure, in spite of this important strain of goal-directedness and rationality in human behavior, human beings often fall quite short of the perfect rationality postulated by normative theories of rational behavior. There are at least two major reasons for this. One lies in the (often unconscious) emotional factors pointed out by various psychologists from Freud to Festinger...” [1]


This can be shown in all sorts of board games, regardless of the roleplay situation. The player is emotionally motivated to believe that there is something else to the situation, and is less likely to approach it from a sheer logical position. This is particularly seen in interactions with NPCs, Non-Player Characters, more so than puzzles. Since the game is based on playing a role, the emotional origins of the character comes into play far more often than the logical conclusion(s) of what would be ideal, for the most part. There is game theory on “belief operators” that will determine, or guess, at how a player will react to a situation, based off of previous experience and how they perceive the situation. Asheim Geir mentions several specific situations:



“-If two events are believed, then the conjuction is also believed
-an event that is always true is always believed
-an event that is never true is never believed,
-if an even tis believed, then the even that the event is believed is also believed
-if an event is not believed, then the event that the event is not believed is believed.” [2]

Although the whole process sounds convoluted, it breaks down how a player, is willing to accept something. Perhaps they are approached by an NPC with a red scarf, but the last red scarf wearing NPC they encountered tried to kill them. The player is immediately unlikely to believe that they are trustworthy whatsoever, and may very well never trust that NPC, regardless of what may be presented to them. This reckless self-preservation is even seen as a darwinistic instinct;
A way the player will adapt and try new solutions in order to find an ideal behavior.

“We have seen that classical game theory is formulated in terms of payoff functions for each of the players. There is a connection between the payoff functions of game theory and fitness function for individual players that links Darwin’s ideas to game theory.” [3]
- Evolutionary Game Theory, Natural Selection, and Darwinian Dynamics

This process of change is often one that any good game is designed to keep up with as well. The player and game both adapt to each other: As the player believes certain things to be true, it’s up to the dice and the DM to make sure that those beliefs are either shaken, or further confirmed, in order to encourage the player to continue or discontinue such behavior.

“Since beliefs in a sequential equilibrium are consistent with the strategy profile, beliefs are consistently updated as the game is played. Given these updated beliefs and the strategy profile, the behavior strategies used by a player maximizes her expected payoff at each of her information sets. Thus, as the game is played, a player has no incentive to deviate from her strategy at any of her information sets.” [4]
- Games and Decision Making

This can also be seen in how players interact with each other at the table. As they learn the relative patterns of each others characters, they formulate group strategies, sometimes to poor effect or surprising efficiency. The game encourages a type of military strategy, as if the whole table is a group of generals forced together in order to survive a war. Richard Duke talks about the significant of war-room strategy in board games:


“War or situation rooms are another useful example of a gestalt communication mode. These usually contain a cartographic map and/or physical model of the region of concern, but that are additional supporting systems which provide other information. Usually the physical representation (map and/or model) is kept current, and this updating makes it a dynamic process… These rooms are a careful abstraction of the most significant real-world characteristics... Gaming/simulation goes one step further than the war room example. In addition to the materials, gaming/simulation. will have a series of scenarios depicting possible courses of action.” [5]
- Richard Duke’s, “Gaming: The Future’s Language”


The tabletop roleplay format particularly encourages this, as the game isn’t entirely reliant on numbers. Instead, there are the two random factors: The game master who watches over the players and designs the events within the game to react to how they’ve reacted previously. Meanwhile, the dice throw in another random factor, to deter even the most logical of solutions. Game theory presses heavily on randomness for all of these reasons. Players are given wave upon wave of incentives to try and experiment with their environment, particularly one as volatile and adaptive as a roleplaying one. These motivations comes not only from the game, but from the players themselves, a self-replicating cycle.


It’s widely acknowledged that this is often what makes tabletop roleplay survive as a game style. Board games can always be replaced by computer functions that can randomize and make all of the numerical functions, but the computer cannot quantify the human factor. Instead, a human must take the helm of the game design, apply game theory, and plain personal reaction, in real time. The game master herself is, technically, a player, and experiences all of these same reactions, but in reverse effect. It’s a constant cycle of action and reaction that recycles itself as soon as it needs to. The whole free-form of it takes mathematical ideas and applies them to emotional and abstract concepts, keeping theory and practice entwined into a functioning game format that simply cannot be replicated.





[1] Harasyni, John. Rational behavior and bargaining equilibrium in games and social situations. London: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
[2] Gier, Asheim. The Consistent Preferences Approach to Deductive reasoning in games. Norway: Springer, 2006.
[3] Thomas, Vincent, and Brown Joel. Evolutionary Game Theory, Natural Selection, and Darwinian Dynamics. London: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
[4] Charalambos, Aliprantis, and Chakrabarti Subir. Games and Decision Making. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
[5] Duke, Richard. Gaming: The Future's Language. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1974.

Why even bother with tabletop?

The importance of tabletop role-play, particularly Dungeons & Dragons is one that is severely underplayed. Despite being a niche market, this style of gameplay has touched upon most modern day fictional media, and remains an incredibly effective tool for both interaction and learning to write. It’s a dying market that really needs more attention, or at least more money.

Now, there’s a point to be made about how much of an impact D&D has made on the world of fiction. But more often than not, it’s something of a secret, even to those that are familiar with the creators of said works. If you follow the background of most prominent authors, screenwriters, and even actors, check obscure interviews about odd questions, you might discover that quite a few people that made it big played D&D when they were younger. One of the more interesting examples would be Dan Harmon, creator of the NBC comedy show Community. Not only did Mr. Harmon play D&D when he was younger, but his first touch with fame was based on D&D. Harmon, along with a few others, was part of an improvisational comedy troupe known as The Dead Alewives. Although most of their work was unrecorded or simply lost in time, one piece particularly remains, their D&D parody skit. Some of the most famous lines about the game come from here, ones that people who have never played or really know much about it might well know. Lines such as, “Roll to see if I get drunk!” and “I wanna cast magic missile!” among others. A game requiring such creativity often sparks and kindles the creative instinct in people, especially at an early age.





The game, and tabletop role-play in general, heavily encourages creativity. Although a good chunk of it can be dice-rolling and number crunching, it simply cannot function without a story, without characters, without players willing to put themselves forth into a fictional world to some degree. Arguably the best games are when people become very engrossed in the world, and in their characters. Forming complex motivations and flaws, an in-depth character worthy of a novel. It can often require making a character that is both realistic and relatable, especially in the context of the gaming party, where all the characters have to get along to some degree in order for the party to function. It’s not hard to see how the ability to role-play a character well translates easily into writing a character well, especially when not limited by the whims and means of other players or the Game Master running the whole world. The Game Master, who may not play a character, has to play all of the side-characters, and construct a world that makes logical sense, but is also pleasing to the players. A combination of these skills gives a good basis for creating a fictional world, one that is interesting to the reader, but still within logic and bounds of what is expected of fantastical settings. Characters that change and react as appropriately as a person grip the reader much better, just like gripping your fellow players. Particularly as a non-linear sort of narrative, told by several point of views, but only seen through one. It’s an incredibly useful expression of creativity, that ultimately functions as practical and entertaining.

An interesting side-effect of tabletop gaming is one that most people might not expect; it brings people into the whole genre of fantasy and science fiction. Not particularly in just that perhaps they enjoy wizards and knights much more, but they begin to be more willing to grasp onto creative things like that. One could refer to it as a “nerdy gateway” of sorts, where someone who doesn’t have many “geeky” habits to so speak may pick up some after becoming engrossed in the game. This is because of the role-play aspect, it overwhelms what might put people off of sword and sorcery, and puts them more into a social setting. Instead of being a wizard that would get beat up in high school or mocked by coworkers, they’re interacting with people they enjoy, exchanging jokes and witty quips with one-another. The game is, after all, just people telling each other how they think a story is being told, which is something people do all the time without dice or books.


But instead of it being primarily from a one-person perspective, it’s a group effort, everybody banding together and forming a single mental image, and managing to function an entire game with naught more than a handful of numbers and game pieces. Sometimes, not even that, just the pure basis of social interaction that happens to take form of a fantastical story. It’s a great format for somebody who isn’t ready to jump into more “hardcore” things, and may just be looking to socialize with their friends. It encourages people to read, to explore further into the worlds that these are based off. They hunger for more of the feeling of being in a world, of being the hero, of creating heros, and creating worlds.



As a past-time in a mild danger of disappearing, due to most of it being passed down by word of mouth or invitation by friends, it’s an american past-time that has determined a lot of what we see around ourselves today. An exercise in creative self-expression and social interaction among peers, it’s something that should truly be more acknowledged as something beyond young adult men in a basement, and more as an opportunity to explore something that most people never will get to.

The History of Dungeons & Dragons

The phenomena of Dungeons & Dragons is an interesting one, to say the least. It’s something that most people are familiar with on a superficial level, particularly in the Americas and general Western world. But if you get to asking people about the details of the game itself, they can’t detail past the idea of rolling dice in a basement and pretending that you’re slaying dragons and saving princesses. Most people seem to not really know that D&D is to tabletop roleplaying as Lord of the Rings is to the modern fantasy novel, in that it is not quite the first, but it certainly was the first of its kind. The first edition of D&D was released in 1974, primarily developed by Gary Gygax, widely considered the father of tabletop gaming. Gygax was a developer of some of the original Tabletop Wargames. Wargaming bears a strong resemblance to Roleplaying, both employing the use of dice, miniature figures, and even terrain. D&D was a huge step forward in engaging the player, letting them possess a single character, instead of an entire warring faction. This truly changed the genre of Tabletop from a literal game of dice, and strategy and added in the aspect of Roleplaying, truly creating the genre of Tabletop Roleplaying.[1]

D&D’s classic setting system is still based loosely off of J.R.R. Tolkien’s own works, often coining the term, “Tolkienesque Fantasy.” With stories of elves and dwarves, rogues and mages largely based off of the Tolkienesque concept, it allowed for an interactive fantasy novel that anybody could participate in with a book and a set of dice. As it is with most things that are the first of its kind, D&D has ruled the roleplaying world, and to this very day it is still the go-to system for most. There isn’t a single system out there that can’t attribute part of its inspiration to it. The game mechanics today are based off the idea of the d20 system, using a twenty-sided die for most of your rolls in the game. Also employing other varieties of multi-sided dice, from the strange d4 all the way up to 100-sided die to determine unique factors and actions of characters and the worlds they interact with. D&D didn’t take too long to change, releasing the first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons manual in 1978 and Second Edition Dungeons & Dragons in 1989. Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons followed up in 2000, introducing the d20 system, which was the biggest, and most widely accepted, revision to the game mechanics. This was when the original development company TSR, Tactical Studies Rule, was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, who had been famous for the card game Magic the Gathering. This change in publishing marked the point when the tabletop gaming world would truly begin to split and diversify. 2003 marked Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition, bearing similarity to 3rd edition, but mechanics within the game had been changed.[2]
At this point, many gamers within the D&D world, and those who had begun to explore games
that had branched off into different settings and systems, began to have what many would refer to as, “Edition Wars.”

The biggest schism within the roleplaying community can be again seen with D&D’s development into the modern era. 2007 brought about Dungeons & Dragon’s Fourth Edition [3], the current edition of D&D. Many long time players had grown attached to the 3rd and 3.5 Edition of D&D, with 4th edition introducing vast game-changing mechanics, many claimed it to be an entirely new game, sparking a feud between New and Old. Many gamers refused to play the fourth edition, or were vastly disappointed by it. [4] One of the most prevalent complaints was that it felt too much like a video game, criticizing that it was trying to emulate games like World of Warcraft or The Elder Scrolls, losing a lot of interest and flavor of playing outside of a computer. Similar to how many video games have been criticized, many proclaimed that it was too simplistic in their attempt to make it accessible. Truly, anybody could play it, but experienced D&D players had varying interest in it, many receiving it as just a way to pandering for a larger demographic. With a market hole left by WotC, Paizo Publishing stepped up to bat to replace the void that was classic D&D style game style. 2008 brought the world The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, which bore a remarkable resemblance to 3.5 edition of D&D, but with further updated rules and mechanics. [5] It instantly clicked with the community, heavily dividing fans between Fourth Edition, Pathfinder, and older editions of D&D. The past four years have been a struggle between those systems, with Pathfinder managing to rival D&D’s long time standing
as top dog of the roleplaying world.

Early January 2012 brought about a hope, or perhaps yet another contender for the fight.
WotC announced plans for development of the Fifth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. This time
citing that they would focus more on player input and play-testing in order to make a system that
would appeal to all sorts of players. [6] Many gamers have been interested, and wary, of the
upcoming Fifth Edition, planned to come out sometime late 2012. Leaked play-testing has had
mixed results among interested parties of the niche hobby, but so far development had managed
to stay relatively under wraps. The future of D&D may very well be a combination of past
editions, streamlined for the common person, but developed for experienced players. Or perhaps
yet another new approach to tabletop roleplaying. Until Fifth Edition is released, only time can
tell.


[1]“The History of TSR,” Wizards of the Coast, 2003, Accessed February 19th 2012, http://
www.wizards.com/dnd/dndarchives_history.asp#HISTORY.

[2]“Dungeons & Dragons,” Wikipedia, Accessed February 19th 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Dungeons_%26_Dragons.
[3]Chris Perkins, Wizards of the Coast, D&D Introduction, Youtube Video, 6:12, September 22nd
2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76yhnu4Kwew.

[4] Justin Alexander, “Pathfinder vs. 4th Edition (Grrr...),”The Alexandrian (Blog),February 21st 2011, Accessed February 19th 2012, http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/2734/roleplayinggames/ pathfinder-vs-4th-edition-grrr.

[5]“Pathfinder Roleplaying Game,” Pathfinder Wiki, Accessed February 19th 2012,http://
www.pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Pathfinder_Roleplaying_Game.
[6]Ethan Gilsdorf, “Players Roll the Dice for Dungeons & Dragons Remake,” The New York Times
Online, January 19th 2012, Accessed February 19th 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/
arts/video-games/dungeons-dragons-remake-uses-players-input.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all.

Tabletop Art Vlog

Check out this video for my personal take on the importance of art in the tabletop world.
I'd suggest highest quality so you can take a look at the images, and feel free to pause to examine.

A personal beginning

Truth be told, the first time is awkward, it always is. Even with friends, although I can be grateful that it was with friends. Luckily, one of our

friends, Jim, is an experienced D&D player. He immediately slips into character, a farmboy who’s looking for work, even feigning tipping his hat as

he describes his character doing so. My brother, who happened to join us, is playing a silent battle-torn juggernaut. We get along well, and I feel

Rayne does as well. Some mood music is put on in the background as we exchange our pseudo Wild West

pleasantries. I adopt a strange accent, mixing Texan drawl and stereotypical Chinese tourist.

The man across from me is dead drunk, supposedly a captain of a ship. A ship is good, ships mean space, ships mean moving. I’m pretty sure [That means I’m not] that he’s an easy way off this rock and into more money. Money is good, money means sugar, sugar is my new drug. He seems too hammered to

realize that he’s offered me a cushy salary, “Ah’ll take dahr jawb.” I tells the man, who seems to groan with acknowledgement. Whatever landed him here

evidently got him in the dumps.

Cowboys in space: A mixture of two genres that, when objectively approached, are remarkably similar. This is the basis of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, a

short-lived television series with a cult following. Something I’d been a fan of since it had aired. So when one of my friends approached me to play a

Roleplaying game based in the same universe, I was fairly willing to jump into it. Most people hear about Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), the original

tabletop roleplaying game. You make a character, and list up stats that indicate bonuses or number of sides the dice you’ll use should be. All in all,

a simple concept. So a number of us meet up and start charting up characters, abilities, stats, and most importantly, personality.

I’m the pilot. A character archetypally associated with somebody who’s light-hearted, but talented, and I took this to heart. I made sure to determine

how much of an Asian mutt, so to speak, my character was. In this future, Asian and western culture has fused together in mostly a singular identity,

most people speaking a form of Chinese as fluently as English, depending on how well they’re educated. Rayne, my character, is a bit odd, to say the

least. He’s an ex-drug addict, grew up in a Buddhist monastery, and trying to get out of the smuggling business. His thought process is decently

eloquent, his vocabulary not so much.

The next morning I’m greeted by a confused captain, who’s gone and hired two new hands for the boat. One’s pretty unremarkable, dirty hair, dirty face,

smells like manure. He tips his hat at me in greeting, dropping an unremarkable remark. I reply with a discerning remark, “Yewh smell rike shit.” He

shrugs without commitment in response. The one next to him concerns me, two heads taller, silent, scarred up worse than an old saloon. I make sure to

speak to him, inquiring upon his position, “Ahhhy, whay yoo gawt haired anyhoo?” The man does not speak, merely making eye contact and giving off a

slight growl. The captain interrupts, “Who are you, again?” I explain to him, “Ai’m the pilot, cap’n.”

“Roll for piloting.” My GM, GameMaster, informs me. I roll a twelve sided dice, the highest skill one can have in this tabletop system. I roll,

excited to finally be using my skills.

[3]

My GM winces slightly, “Er… Try again, I don’t want us stuck here next session.”

[7]

My GM checks her notebook and nods, “Okay, good enough.”

A few minutes in, and we’re beginning to relax. My bizarre accent mixed with other tidbits of roleplay seem to have relaxed us into the environment of

collectively imagining things around a table. There are there other people, or characters I should say, an engineer, ship medic, and ship companion. A

companion, in this setting, is something of a culturally glorified prostitute. In reference to Geishas, a companion is a vital asset for a travelling

ship, as they can get access to essentially any planet due to influence among powerful people, particularly men, but not always. Part of the upper

crust of society, it’s a rare event that such a lady be on such a ship. I decide it’s a good point to establish a relationship with her. Interestingly,

she, the character, is French. I think we get along well.

After the captain’s finished giving me orders, whatever they were, I see a small shuttle docking into the side of my brand new ship. I snap my

suspenders and stomp off to see who has the gall to dock themselves onto it. When the doors slide open, I’m bombarded with scents of perfume and

incense, and an array of vibrant and rich colours, deep red and gold in particular. An extravagant woman of strange descent steps out of the small

cockpit, out of view of the extravagant living quarters. She doesn’t look to be native, or even from around the system, most likely descended from the

core lot. She explains herself to be a companion, taking up the offer by my captain Sartre, who has entered the room positively beaming. I don’t

particularly approve of the companion system, and storm off, alerting the ship of, “Ruttin’ whores on our goddamn ship!”

After getting to know one another, some encounters being a bit more intense than others, it’s time to leave port. I fire up the engines, coordinate our

navigation systems with the main operating system, and begin takeoff.

The engine sputters initially, but then we blast off into the sky, sending dust into the desert wasteland below, locals bellowing at our blasting

engines for my disregard to their proximity.

I love my job.