The Gaming Philosophy of The Perilous Dreamer

[El Borak]

The Perilous Dreamer I was surprised to see this over at theRPGsite The 2019 annual Christmas Game - D&D is not a shared storytelling game!.

thedungeondelver wrote:

The stories of D&D are not character backgrounds or elaborate plots created by the DM. They're the memories we create when we play, whether meta-game or within the game, they're the "Remember the time Bob cast invisibility on himself, and tied the Giant's shoelaces together as the giant slept?" moments.

Snip

It's memories like that, which are the "story" of D&D games.

This sounds just like what you have been preaching for years.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Dec 18, 2019 0:17:50 GMT -5 El Borak said:

The Perilous Dreamer I was surprised to see this over at theRPGsite The 2019 annual Christmas Game - D&D is not a shared storytelling game!.

thedungeondelver wrote:

The stories of D&D are not character backgrounds or elaborate plots created by the DM. They're the memories we create when we play, whether meta-game or within the game, they're the "Remember the time Bob cast invisibility on himself, and tied the Giant's shoelaces together as the giant slept?" moments.

Snip

It's memories like that, which are the "story" of D&D games.

This sounds just like what you have been preaching for years.

Well this is unexpected validation from an unexpected source. This is precisely what I have been preaching the entire time I have been on the internet.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

I posted on my blog about this Old School Game Play - One Point of Many where I said in part:

So a few points, one is that agreement with my long standing stance on "story" and from this particular source was quite unexpected. I have always said that "story" in D&D and specifically in OD&D does not exist prior to the start of game play and further it is not something that the Referee introduces to the players at the table. "Story" is the shared memories created through play at the game table as the players interact with the Referees campaign world.

A pre-existing "story" would be a novel or a script and such a thing would by its very presence constitute at the very least some railroading and most likely a lot of railroading. Such preexisting "story" would also limit the actions and decisions of the players and it has been my observation that it also creates parts of the game world (and NPCs) which cannot be touched.

The original design of D&D and particularly OD&D is an open-ended sandbox. A sandbox is filled with content, but no limits are placed on the players, they can go off the prepared map and new content is created on the fly, improvisation is a Referee's friend and primary toolkit. Also, importantly, in a sandbox the PCs can "wreck the world". This is crucial to the concept of "player agency."

The whole concept of "wrecking the world" is a used as a pejorative by the railroaders against the standard paradigm of an OD&D sandbox game world, but in a sandbox there is no such thing as "wrecking the world", it does not exist as a concept for the simple reason that the world was created for the players to explore and since there is no script to follow the players can do anything they want within what is physically and magically possible for that specific game world.

The second thing I noticed about the thread at theRPGsite is that over 36 hours after it was posted no one else has posted in the thread. It is being studiously ignored. Meanwhile the threads both before and after it are quite active.

The third thing of course is I do not find this surprising given the emphasis placed on "story" these days.

*I said I would get back to the subject of posting in the thread on the forum later. On Twitter I found two different posts with a list of questions, one of which is in the form of a 30 day challenge. It is my intention to begin soon, maybe even next week on the first and then start the 30 day challenge on on New Years Day on the second. I plan to talk about them in the thread and also post about them here on the blog. So that will be a long series of posts that should run about 45 days once I get started on it.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

So probably next week I will start working on this:

*I said I would get back to the subject of posting in the thread on the forum later. On Twitter I found two different posts with a list of questions, one of which is the form of a 30 day challenge. It is my intention to begin soon, maybe even next week on the first and then start the 30 day challenge on on New Years Day on the second. I plan to talk about them in the thread and also post about them here on the blog. So that will be a long series of posts that should run about 45 days once I get started on it.

here in this thread and then following up with blog posts.

Since we also have coming up in January 2020:

Celebrate the whole month of January 2020 for the 46th birthday of OD&D with as many good focused posts that we can muster for International Original Dungeons & Dragons Month and celebrate January 25th, 2020 as International Original Dungeons & Dragons Day.

These will work together well and I hope to end December with daily posts, continue for the whole month of January and into early February. The delay in starting until sometime next week is because for late January and early February I want to have those posts written ahead so that if I am just not up to writing for a week or so it will be all right.

[ripx187]

I have always been greatly inspired by Professional Wrestling, to everyone's dismay. When two or more men are in a ring and engaged in the art of wrestling, they are telling a story. This story is very simple but no less dramatic. It is in this vein that I refer to as a story. Things are going on in the background, a meta-game is being played around the PCs, plots and plans by the NPCs are central themes. Alone, they aren't story, but they are cohesive in the overall experience.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Dec 19, 2019 13:02:04 GMT -5 ripx187 said:

I have always been greatly inspired by Professional Wrestling, to everyone's dismay. When two or more men are in a ring and engaged in the art of wrestling, they are telling a story. This story is very simple but no less dramatic. It is in this vein that I refer to as a story. Things are going on in the background, a meta-game is being played around the PCs, plots and plans by the NPCs are central themes. Alone, they aren't story, but they are cohesive in the overall experience.

I kinda get what you are after; however, I see Professional Wrestling (which can be fun to watch sometimes, my one grandmother born in 1892 loved it in the 60's and 70's) as a pre-written, scripted story which is very different from D&D. Yes, a living sandbox has NPCs and a world that rolls on whether the PCs are there or not, but the past exists, the current is being created during play and the future is yet to be determined. In Professional Wrestling, the winners and losers of each match are pre-determined. It is all scripted, there is, if you will, no player agency. Where in D&D (my D&D) there is no scripting and nothing is pre-determined. I always wonder what is going to happen with the PCs and the NPCs. It is an organic whole that has a life of its own. 

[ripx187]

Dec 20, 2019 12:26:18 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Dec 19, 2019 13:02:04 GMT -5 ripx187 said:

I have always been greatly inspired by Professional Wrestling, to everyone's dismay. When two or more men are in a ring and engaged in the art of wrestling, they are telling a story. This story is very simple but no less dramatic. It is in this vein that I refer to as a story. Things are going on in the background, a meta-game is being played around the PCs, plots and plans by the NPCs are central themes. Alone, they aren't story, but they are cohesive in the overall experience.

I kinda get what you are after; however, I see Professional Wrestling (which can be fun to watch sometimes, my one grandmother born in 1892 loved it in the 60's and 70's) as a pre-written, scripted story which is very different from D&D. Yes, a living sandbox has NPCs and a world that rolls on whether the PCs are there or not, but the past exists, the current is being created during play and the future is yet to be determined. In Professional Wrestling, the winners and losers of each match are pre-determined. It is all scripted, there is, if you will, no player agency. Where in D&D (my D&D) there is no scripting and nothing is pre-determined. I always wonder what is going to happen with the PCs and the NPCs. It is an organic whole that has a life of its own. 

Wrestling stories, especially character stories, are very slow and long term. Take a guy like Triple H for example, if you just watch it a couple of times or not pay attention to him, you won't notice. He acts like a macho man who is always in control, but if you really watch you'll see that that is far from the case. HHH has never won a match by himself, he starts factions and destroys them as soon as somebody gets to his level, the only thing that means anything to him is being champion, if he isn't then he fears that others will see him as he sees himself. A fake, a loser. This story-line has played itself out through decades, with no mention that it was going on. To casual observers, this guy is amazing, but he is playing a character and he sticks to that character.

That to me is what is inspiring. This is a very short form of his story, and it isn't just him.

Undertaker, when he arrived he was in a very dark place. Through decades his story unfolded, and Undertaker began to heal and get away from his obsession with death and hiding who he was behind an obvious persona. That character was as happy as a wrestler could be, until his brother betrayed him, bringing up all of those old wounds that he thought were healed and throwing him right back into the dark and scary world of black magic that is The Undertaker. A hold-over from the cartoony days of 80's wrestling, aimed at children actually presented a very tragic psychological element which had nothing to do with scripted matches or pre-defined storylines, but a conscious decision on the part of the performer himself.

Kurt Angle, his long-term story carried over into different promotions and tells the tale of a man who peaked young and then exploded in a very negative way. He is the opposite of Triple H in many ways, he knows that he is great and thinks that he should be this great inspiration for people but he isn't. Little things happen, and this affects his character. A notable one was the first time that he bled in the ring. At the time you can see him looking at his blood in horror, and looking at the man who did it to him and something inside of him clicks. This is how it is done, and I'm going to get him before he gets me. The guy was already intense, but at that moment, and forever afterward, he was even more intense. It awakened a brutal nature that just wasn't there before that event. He no longer was content with humiliating your heroes with his Olympic winning style, he was going to hurt them.

So, if you made it through all of this, I agree with you. The external stories that are on tv really don't matter, not to a character that stays true to his character and wants to tell a deeper story. I can't think of any medium which allows this much freedom, and it was always there for those guys who managed to keep their personas for many years. Even if you think that there was a character change, where suddenly they come out doing some other gimmick, and they keep that gimmick for a while, this usually is still part of a larger story. A story that only makes sense once you have enough material to actually look at and examine. Did this person stay true to who they were behind the bells and whistles? You will notice that the greats always did, and the story that THEY were telling was much deeper and subtle than what was being presented at the time.