Dungeons and Dragons - Retrospective, Nostalgia, or genuine desire.

I recently was a panelist at a convention on GMing and after the panel I had a conversation with Jeremy Petter of the now infamous Loading Ready Run internet comedy troupe and something he said has struck me since, "Dungeons and Dragons is the Gateway Drug of the roleplaying hobby." While some people might shake their heads at the statement I was struck by the profoundness of it. Dungeons and Dragons is historically where the Table Top roleplaying hobby began and as much as it may have problems there is no small amount of nostalgia attached to the system and setting in this current era's zeitgeist.

When asked "what was your first gaming system?" I answer honestly that the first one I got interested in was White Wolf's World of Darkness, it was dark, full of neat stuff to read, and made for excellent fodder for my imagination. But when I think about it the World of Darkness was always That Cute Red-Headed Girl to my Charlie Brown. I had to grow up a lot more to get to the point where I could find the people and the place to play it. By comparison Dungeons and Dragons was My First Girlfriend. The first group I could get togeather and play with was in university, they were people I knew, and yeah, on the quality scale they were inexperienced but enthusiastic. Then somehow, I found people who wanted to play my first love, World of Darkness, and it was good. But somehow at the lofty heights of low-mechanic storytelling role playing I found myself looking down from Olympus thinking to myself, "huh, that still looks like fun, " and "oh, look over there!" Other people were doing interesting things too!

It's odd to consider oneself a veteran hobbist at my youthful age of 26, but I could argue (successfully) that I have the experience to back it up. I have run games to successful completion, LARPed, I have run conventions, I have panneled, demo'ed, homebrewed, and argued the subject matter, but with my years in the hobby I'm back at square one of just wanting to play some Dungeons and Dragons. Strange, no? I am playing a game I enjoy, I am making plans to run one or two games, but when I was standing at my stove cooking up some pasta sauce I found myself wistfully sighing that I haven't been in a good D&D campaign for the longest time. It is the next chain of thoughts that I find more interesting, the urge to shut up about my desire to pull out the D20 and keep it quiet before my friends hear about it.

If there was a commonality between the numerous friends I have who tabletop roleplay is that most of them love storytelling systems but have developed an antipathy to Dungeons and Dragons. The reasons are various and more often than not justified: the rules are too complicated, the system is too combat based, it's a Skinnerian reward system for the ego, there isn't enough support to tell a good story, the sub-genre of fantasy that it's based upon is too juvenile/simple/silly/Tolkeinian, it doesn't tell the kind of story I want to tell. I say, "fair enough, but knowing these things why do I still want to play it?" What about this game still appeals to an experienced and somewhat jaded customer?

Nostalgia! That lying warm-in-your-belly feeling of comfort that reminds you of brighter, simpler, and happier times. Nostalgia is a powerful force, it takes you back to places, it can make you spend tons of money, it can help you ignore problems, nostialgia like puppy love can make you stupid. Seems like a harsh assessment no? I don't think so, I think it's the truth, nostalgia acts as a wonderful motivator for people to do things then later regret them. It takes memories cuts away the bits that might spoil the rest, and makes them as permanent as a fly stuck in amber. I remember my favorite characters, I remember the neat tricks I pulled off, heck, I even remember some of the dumber moments that have become funny stories around the gaming table. But I don't forget the dissapointments, the irritations, the poor players, and the things that just didn't work out. There's the associated memories of reading the fantasy genre when I was an adolescent, the escapist books that can help bolster a shy youth's courage enough to think "I can do this." I'm not willing to lie to myself and say that isn't a part of it, but the hobby is about escapist role-play, and it's about having fun doing so, so why this escape?

There's a phenomenon of managers in the service industry randomly taking a menial job off a subordinate's hands such as washing dishes, sweeping up, or some other mindless task. The idea is that after dealing with such high-concentration jobs that there is much stress relief in performing a mindless task for a bit. I bring this up for two reasons: 1) Tabletop RPGs are supposed to be a fun escape, and 2) for many people having this kind of escape can be empowering enough to face real life again. Given current economic situations, having a bit of a power-fantasy can be a healthy response. I've seen this in Players in MMORPGs, they take great satisfaction in being one of the biggest baddest dudes around, it is the sense of acomplishing something that took many hours and feeling awesome because of it. Though I, rightfully or not, feel a smug sense of superiority over people who dedicate that much time to a MMORPG I know that playing make-believe with several friends isn't much more societally acceptable.

I suppose when I get down to it, what I crave as my friend Sam so astutely pointed out is the melodrama of the Fantasy Epic, "The hero always saves the world/ the villains get what they deserve/ the boy always gets the girl..." (Great Big Sea, When I am King) The melodrama of the fantasy narrative has a place in my world of stories that perhaps is currently experiencing a lack. Not to mention the simplicity of: the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and when the black and white of things is simple enough that the grey is obvious and fun. But melodrama is doable elsewhere, which brings me to the other element: the fantasy epic. When I think of the D&D story model I think of the "peasant to king" saga that is taking a character to new heights of power, authority, and greatness.

But then, without the other players there is no group experience. D&D is a strategic group effort, the point of the game is to cooperate with each other to succeed whatever scenarios the GM thinks up. Humans as a rule find the process of creating an emotionally charging group exercise pretty easy, it's not hard to do and it creates a connection between people who participate. I still think fondly of the D&D sessions that I have played through and both the characters and the players who I shared the experiences with. No melodrama or epic storyline would be complete without friends to explore them with.

Mage the Ascension House Rule

So, I've been thinking.

Yeah, I know a shocker. I've been pondering about games rules of late, and obviously when an idea strikes me but I know I'm not going to use it right away I might as well put it here. Darker Days Podcast in episode 4 put forward several house rules for Mage the Ascension that I rather liked.

- Static Difficulties on Arete rolls(+5 if ritual/rote, +6 Freecasting, +7 if Vulgar/Distracted, with a few basic modfiers: -1 with Foci, +1 when Combining Spheres outside of a Rote, +1 If there are Witnesses, etc.)
- Rotes having greater benefit ( -2 to Paradox rolls, +2 difficulty on detection)

- Runes of power (Write down mystical mumbo-jumbo/small device/whatever for +1 success to duration)

- Spend a willpower dot to cut loose a spell so that it self-maintains (does not count towards spell limit)

However, in light of the the fact that two of these house rules come from Mage the Awakening's take on the rule part of me spent some time awondering about one of the rule changes they made in Awakening's Mechanics of Spell knowledge. The idea of what inherently limits the spheres/arcana and it's mechanical effect. In Mage the Ascension, the maximum number of ranks in a sphere equals your arete. So if you had Arete 3 you could only learn up to rank 3 in any of the spheres unless you raised your Arete to 4...which is a feat in of itself at a whopping 28 XP nevermind the cost of spheres. So I'm considering a house rule based upon the idea that Mage the Awakening introduces that Gnosis is not an immediate cap upon the level of Arcana. Of course having a higher Gnosis helps you learn more Arcana, but you don't need gnosis 4 to gain Rank 4 in any Arcana.

So this is what I propose instead for Mage the Ascension: Your spheres are capped your Arete + 1, so an apprentence mage at Arete level 1 could have level 2 spheres. Mechanically some might claim that this represents a degree of power creep, but I say BULLSHIT. Developing a specialty sphere costs 7 x New Dots, Developing other spheres or Arete costs 8 x New dots. A mage going from Arete 2 to Arete 3 must spend 24 exp. Which with a conservative ST takes about 12 sessions or with a more Generous ST takes 6 sessions, assuming that one is saving XP just for that. From a Game-play perspective it doesn't affect the chance of success overmuch because of the small pool that is being rolled. The need to accrue successes for specific effects just means that magic can be more flexible for variety of effect rather than potency. From a within world perspective what this means is that one can explore the depths of spheres before they achieve great power. In fact, this further raises the question of choosing between spending to enhance a person's power or a chance to increase the depth of one's ability. This seems like a fairly easy house rule to integrate that will encourage players to not immediately maximize their Arete at character creation.

Additional Houserule Idea: Avatar Teacher.
I've always felt that "Avatar" as a background kinda sucked. While it was useful for gathering quintessence and channeling it, as a shard of reality that is responsible for magic and responsible for most mage's capacities for learnng spheres and arete, it really does Jack-Shit otherwise unless the ST really makes the most of it. So I've got a small house rule that I think adds a certain something to it, reduce the cost of Spheres and Arete by Avatar background + 1. So at minimum at Avatar 1, a 2 xp discount at maximum Avatar 5, a 6 xp discount.