What's the Point?

This is, ultimately, the question I've been wrestling with for the last year or so.  Why play D&D?  Especially OSR/TSR D&D, with encumbrance, logistics, prime requisites, and PC death.

This is an attempt at an answer.  It's only about half-coherent, and I can't tell whether it's obvious or just obviously wrong.  I don't love it, and I don't expect you to, but I figured I'd get a rough draft out.  I guess my new bar for 2018 is a post a month; maintenance doses.

D&D is an artifice for character-building for the participants (traditionally, poorly-socialized young men).  Success in OSR D&D requires a number of properties which are useful in real life, which may be worth taking the time and energy to develop (and to encourage one's acquaintances to develop) in low-risk environments.

What are the lessons that various antiquated features of OSR D&D are aimed at teaching?

• Stats in order - Play the hand you're dealt.  As Hamming said, "I will do the best I can with what I got."  
• Prime reqs - In terms of class selection, you can fight your rolled "nature", but you'll get a lot further faster if you play to your high stats.  Different classes demand different virtues of their players; thieves need risk-tolerance and faith in the rest of the party to come rescue them, wizards need patience, caution, and careful spell-timing, fighters need courage, persistence, and willingness to sacrifice themselves, and clerics need humility, the ability to accept that sometimes you're not the star of the show.  Prime reqs push you towards classes that you don't usually play, and situations that test virtues you might not be so good at.
• Mixed-level parties, characters with very different stat distributions - Life isn't fair.  If you're on the weak end, resenting the strong won't get you very far; work with them for mutual gain.  If you're on the strong end, treat those weaker than you well, because you might have a reversal of fortune at any time and end up back at the bottom of the heap.
• Monoclassing, minimal build - You are not special by default; you are Joe Fighter by default.  If you want to be somebody that people will tell stories about years later, it's on you to do something notable, not just to be something notable.
• Mapping, encumbrance, rations, Vancian magic - Come prepared, plan ahead, pay attention to the details.  Neglecting them can get you killed.
• PC death - Memento mori.  Some day, you will die.  Yes you, reader.  You can run from it, or you can accept it, figure out what you want, and go get it or die trying.  It's important, I think, that unlike eg Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia, death is not short-term inevitable in OSR D&D.  You need players to get attached to their characters, and that doesn't happen when death is too frequent.
• TPK / Near-TPK situations - How panic-prone are you?  If other players are panicking, do you keep your head, or do you catch the panic?  Can you calm others?  Watching panic spread through a group of players is really remarkable.  When you get crushed, do you ragequit, or reflect calmly on your mistakes and return for vengeance?  The reason PCs don't make morale rolls is that their players are dealing with their own, very real, morale.
• Levels / fully-quantitative and exponentially-scaling advancement - If you want to get ahead, you have to be willing to take some risks.  After the first couple levels, it doesn't just happen anymore with any sort of regularity.  You need to say "I want to level", to choose it.  And then you need to put in the work, take the risks, and probably get a little lucky.  And that's true of life too.  I'm hitting this point with my career, where I've done well but the organization I'm at is just small.  I find myself with a choice between slow, pretty-safe advancement over the course of years, or choosing to prioritize advancement and doing the work to make that happen, either somewhere else or via personal projects in my free time.  Since I'm here writing blog posts, you can guess how well that's going.
• Phases of play (dungeon / wilderness / domain) - Advancement has side effects, most of which involve new challenges, more responsibility, more patience, and more paperwork.  This is what happens to conventionally-successful people.  You can't have your cake and eat it too; you can stay in the dungeon forever, but you're not going to get over 6th level if you do.
• Old-School Wish - Be careful what you wish for.  Someone was once very surprised when I mentioned that I give out wishes in my games; she said "But wishes destroy campaigns!"  And I laughed.  No, wishes are temptation.
• Rulings, not rules - Negotiate for things that you want.  Don't appeal to authority; convince me.  Whine, bullshit, do math, resort to bribery, whatever, these are valid approaches and you should learn them all.

In conclusion: I really do think OSR D&D presents its players with challenges which are well-suited to the development of mindset / personality traits which are adaptive, and rewards them for performing those virtues, not merely playing someone with those virtues.  Other games foster different virtues; 3.x rewards you for reading rulebooks, finding loopholes, and doing math, which are very useful skills.  Traveller...  rewards you for automating the trade system, which is something, I guess.

What place does Fun have in this conception of D&D?  I agree with Tao that Fun Is Not The Point.  Fun is, however, a necessity.  If your game is not fun, your players will leave before learning the lessons the game could teach them.  So strive to make your games Fun Enough (probably Type 2 Fun); there's a balance.  Unfortunately there may be a race to the bottom with fun; games which are more-fun tend to outcompete games with are less-fun in the marketplace for players.  These games which are more-fun also tend to lack the features which promote controlled but real adversity, and consequently growth.  I do not know how to resolve this problem yet.

What place does Narrative have in this conception of D&D?  Likewise, narrative is a device.  Humans like it, and therefore you can exploit their preference for it to make your game more appealing, and consequently more effective at cultivating virtue.  I have been wrong about narrative.  There might even be some aspirational "play the sort of person you'd like to be" upside to dealing with characters and stories, but that's not something I would know anything about.  Classes are a very Jungian structure to begin with...

What place does Simulation have in this conception of D&D?  If you seek to prepare your players for Real Life, making your game reasonably realistic (at least to the level of "actions have consequences, which you can predict by analogy with real life, except when noted by the rulebook") is sensible.  Simulated details provide a hook for Attention to Detail, and can also factor into Convince Me.  I have probably over-invested in simulation in the past (but it was fun for me, so not a total waste I guess).

What place does Game have in this conception of D&D?  The game element, of luck and challenge and risk and reward, is pretty central.  But I suspect one of the lessons to be learned from OSR D&D is that yes, you can play the game well, and you can win it, but it's sort of hollow and the reward of power is tempered with paperwork, as opposed to setting out to do your own thing and winning on your own terms, like Rary.

What is the role of the DM in this conception of D&D?  Courtney hit the nail on the head with "shaman leading the group's collective vision-quest."  You are here to help them become what they could be; to point out their flaws, to put them under eustress, and to reward them when they grow.  And in this light, the ritual character of the D&D game which I found so disturbing seems perfectly natural.

I apologize, DMs, for adding "spiritual guidance" to your prep burdens (using a loose, materialist definition of "spiritual", as in "of or related to the human spirit; ie, morale, emotion, and character").  I certainly do not consider myself qualified in that department.

All this still doesn't answer the essential question of "is it worth it?"  If you're spending 12 hours a week on prep+game for four people, you're looking at effectively three hours each of time investment per week, for a very ill-defined return.  Could you do better by just...  unstructured socializing with these people for the same amount of time, and talking about their problems?  I think maybe no - the game and the ritual provide a context where failure and self-examination are tolerable, where we can get at hard truths precisely because we're all lying.

The ultimate measure of the game, from this perspective, might be "do people outgrow your games, and go on to live happy lives?"  I spoke with one of my old players recently, and he mentioned that he has come to see RPGs / storygames as a form of "group therapy."  I don't know that I'd go that far (those are very soft words), but I think it's reasonably consistent with my meaning.



Addendum:

I don't mean to say that TSR D&D was intentionally designed as a training program.  I think training is a welcome, desirable side effect which can justify the activity; for another example, consider The Morals of Chess or mahjong's correspondence with reality.  Norbert Wiener, in The Human Use of Human Beings (one of the seminal books of cybernetics), discusses the function of play, and argues that generally, play is training in vertebrate species, who come into the world with much more plasticity than eg invertebrates; you will never see an ant play.  We humans play as well, and for the same reasons: training and pack-bonding, in preparation for the difficulties of life.

Book of ACKSalted Deeds II: Design Decisions

Having laid out the intended structure of my religion revision, I now find myself at the tricky bit - implementation.  I have a few concerns that I definitely need to keep in mind throughout this process.

• How difficult should it be to work minor miracles?  And at what cost should they usually come?  On the high end, what can a character with an 18 Piety and a bunch of vows make happen, and how often?  On the low end, can a character with 3 Piety even have a chance of successful prayer without vows?  Does prayer's efficacy or scope scale with level?  What should the probability distribution on success look like?  
• 2d6, reaction roll style?  Problem: small modifiers rapidly dominate the die-randomness.
• Or d20xd6, RL&L-table style?  Problem: need lots of table entries, d20 split into groups of 5 is not very granular and is also dominated by die-randomness.  That might be desirable for pentulant Classical-type deities, though.  What goes on the d6 edge of things, though?
• Something else, like 2d10?  Gives a bit more modifier-space than 2d6, without the extreme swinginess of a d20.  Strongly tends to the mean, though.  d12+d8 flattens the middle range, but doesn't change much beyond that.  I dunno man, coming up with good probability distributions is hard when you're not exactly sure what you're looking for.
• Prayer Spam, particularly as it interacts with henchmen and domains.  If you're the guy with 3 Piety, but you have a henchman with 18 Piety, can you get him to pray in your stead?  What about at 14th level, when he's basically the pope?  Should prayer frequency be a per-player resource, as it is assumed that henchman prayers are ultimately for the player's benefit?
• How does the Divine Power subsystem interact with the new system?  What about item creation?
• Divine power can be burned to provide a bonus to prayer rolls, or just to increase the scope of the results?  I actually sort of like the idea that divine power is the only significant way to scale up miracles - it makes conversion / expansion and temple-building a priority for anyone planning to make regular use of prayer.  Also provides an explanation for heresies and rivalries within a church - priests compete with each other for influence over the flock, and heresies tend to bring the doctrine closer in-line with what the flock wants to believe in order to win them over.
• And as long as you keep your vows, heresy's A-OK in the deity's book.
• Divine item creation is superseded by receiving magic items as gifts from deity as a result of high prayer roll?  (Athena's shield, Hades' helm, and Hermes' shoes, Nethack granting spellbooks on prayer, ...)
• Sacrifice quantities.  I desire to make sacrifice difficult to game, in that a major / high-effectiveness sacrifice should actually cost the PC something fairly dear.  Fortunately, deities know things and can avoid accepting gamed sacrifices, but it's a hard thing to nail down and provide guidelines to players.  Maybe use the Standards of Living table and the bribery rules as a starting point?

Book of ACKSalted Deeds I: Overview

I've been meaning to write this (series of) post(s) for a while.  I have, in fact, false-started on it twice already.  Perhaps this time it will run its full course.

I am dissatisfied with religion in D&D.  Clerics are boring and don't exist in an adventuring capacity in sword and sorcery or western myth or medieval literature (with the exception of that one guy on the Bayeaux tapestry and maybe Joan of Arc) or most of the other relevant sources for D&D's tropes except the Old Testament and post-D&D works which were influenced by the game in the first place.

So, says I, let's burn 'em down and start over.  Let us consider a more Greco-Nethack model of religion (yes, you read that right).

• Wisdom is changed to Piety, and explicitly models the character's ability to propitiate powerful spirits, much as Charisma models his ability to relate to other mortal beings.  Wisdom / Piety continues to modify saves vs spells and RL&L rolls, as a measure of passive protection provided by the character's spirituality.  Piety also modifies saves to avoid or mitigate divine retribution.
• Piety modifies prayer rolls.  Anyone can pray for deliverance, but some characters are better at it than others.  A successful prayer roll may duplicate a divine spell or provide another boon to the praying PC as appropriate for the deity and the circumstances; a reasonably high roll may provide the requested aid, but at future cost (failure to pay is at the supplicant's peril).  A bad roll may anger the deity and bring about a curse or smiting, or it might just have no effect.
• Prayers typically fall into about-four categories:
• Deliverance from immediate peril ("Thor save us from these ghouls!  Please!").  Typically manifests as minor miracles if successful.  Turning undead is a lower-difficulty special case.
• Protection from an anticipated danger ("Thor, please accept these burnt goats in exchange for not capsizing our galley in a thunderstorm during our next expedition.").  May manifest as blanket de-facto plot protection, or re-rolls on saves, or a bonus on saves, or a re-roll on encounter tables, or...
• Good fortune in a planned endeavour ("Thor, grant us strength in battle and bolster our courage during our raid against the orcs two islands over.").  Probably primarily a limited re-roll mechanic within deity's sphere of influence.
• Guidance (Thor is probably not the best deity to pray to for guidance, but "Loki, grant us gold-wisdom in our pillaging" might work).  Answers questions or bestows prophecies or what-not.
• Other circumstantial modifiers for prayer rolls are dependant on the deity in question - a jealous deity may grant a penalty if you have prayed to another deity recently, a sacrifice before the prayer may grant a bonus, and requesting aid too frequently is likely to result in some deific ire (once per week per character without penalty sounds sort of reasonable).  A corrupting deity may grant a bonus in exchange for abandoning the worship of another deity.  Some deities favor certain races, while others look kindly on those who follow certain codes of conduct.  Which brings us to...
• Vows and taboos are codes of conduct, accepted voluntarily as part of a religious ritual.  While a vow is observed, the supplicant gains a small bonus to prayer rolls for certain deities and may gain a small proficiency-like bonus or other minor boon (like a single, set low-level divine spell per day).  Additionally, the vower may gain some measure of social standing within the church (bonus to reaction rolls of other worshippers).  If a vow is broken, a forgiving deity may give a character an opportunity to do penance, while an unforgiving deity may make with the smiting.  In either case, a vow-breaker is likely to suffer considerable social stigma within the community of worshippers of his deity.
• Oaths are similar to vows, except that while vows are mainly negative ("Thou shall not...") or routine ("Keep the sabbath holy..."), an oath is more of the form "I swear with Crom as my witness that this fortress shall not fall while I yet draw breath.".  An oath compels the swearer to heroic or exceptional action.  Successful completion of an oath may result in a boon (like a 10% bonus to XP earned over the course of its completion), while failure is liable to lead to smiting, cursing, or shaming by the church community.  Swearing an oath which the deity finds unagreeable or rules-lawyerly is likewise cause for negative consequences.  A character who dies with an oath unfulfilled may attempt prayer to be permitted to return to life or haunting undeath - otherwise, he is tormented in the afterlife for his failure.
• Quests and crusades are subsets of oaths, typically caused either by a mediocre prayer roll and required as payment by the deity, or requested by divine revelation.  A quest typically requires the retrieval of a holy object and its return to the church, while a crusade usually requires the conquest of a holy land or city.  Embarking on a quest may grant probationary membership of a holy military order, if any exist for the deity in question, while completion thereof is likely to result in full membership or promotion.  Leading and winning a crusade may result in the crusader being proclaimed a Defender of the Faith, Hammer of Deityname, or otherwise exalted far and wide, and is also likely to result in an expansion of the victor's domains.  In either case, substantial improvements in church standing result, and vows can sometimes be bent while on a quest or crusade without risking divine retribution.

So.  I think this would be an interesting* alternate take on religion in D&D.  A serious-ass take, that might require DMs to actually think about their deities/cosmologies and players to actually interact meaningfully with those cosmologies.  Come on, players, you weren't playing clerics anyway...

// TODO

I have noticed a trend of late - I start a post, get halfway through, and then never finish it.  So far:

• Post(s) of ACKSalted Deeds - In which I attempt to replace clerics with a NetHackian prayer system (also piety scores, vows, oaths, quests, curses, and smiting).
• Remaining threads, surviving enemies, and explanations of things left open at the end of the Shieldlands campaign
• Variant cleric spells

I also have unstarted posts on:

• Barbarians are coming!
• Curses as item creation mishaps table for ACKS
• Would a Warhammer By Any Other Name Strike So Deep?
• Misc notes on preparing one-shots for the coworkers

In any case, still alive, been mostly programming and playing on Steam in free time instead of actual gaming.  Games coming to linux is the best and worst thing that has happened in a while :\

Heresies of Midnight

So you wanted to play a cleric...  but the only god in town is a dark and terrible deity set on devouring all life, light, and magic in the world.  The rest of the party's not on board with this agenda.  So what's a cleric to do?

Heresy, I tell you!

The heretic legate brings a lot to a Midnight party.  Healing magic's great, but an air of legitimacy is even better.  Of course, like all Midnight characters, you still have to be careful, because if your heresy is discovered, you and all of your companions are in for a very bad time...

Unfortunately, more historical heresies are over theological points that wouldn't really be all that interesting in a D&D game, or which wouldn't make any sense for an evil religion.  Slightly more promising are the regional heresies like the Donatists.  In Midnight I could see a plausible heresy regarding the doctrinal correctness of the orcish wise women (I apologize for failing to remember how to spell urasatch kuradeen; I don't have the Midnight book available at the moment).  The Church of Shadow naturally has no interest in yielding spiritual authority to the orcs, and so having studied the oral tradition of the wise women and decided that it is superior would constitute a minor heresy liable to improve one's relations with the orcs (they are, after all, Izrador's chosen people).  Likewise, Sammael and the Order of Truth (or Light, or Shadow, or something?) present a plausible pair of targets for subversion.  Maybe some bloodthirsty Dornish cult of Izrador left behind runestones across the North with a syncretic doctrine fusing ancestor worship and undeath with the worship of the Shadow.  Their teachings were eliminated from canon by the Order, but continue to appeal to Dornish legates.  Individual legates who received (or claim to have received) divine inspiration from Izrador might also challenge the Order's orthodoxy.

Aspect-based heresies might be interesting; sects that emphasize one part of Izrador as more holy than the others, or supreme / dominant.   Unfortunately, he's an awfully monolithic deity, and his domains are fairly bland (that I recall).  A legate venerating the chaotic transmuter-nature of Izrador, as evidenced by his miraculous transformation of dwarves into orcs and the warping of the Highland Imps, would be a fun and very heretical character unlikely to score any points with the religious establishment, though.

Racial heresies are also tempting.  The writings of the Mad Dwarf might reconcile the Shadow and traditional dwarven beliefs beautifully, and so tempt dwarves to the worship of darkness.  If one accepts the existence of the Traitor Dwarves (Black Iron Dwarves?  I forget their name), one can only assume that such a heresy might find fertile ground there.  Likewise, an elven heresy that blends nature worship with Izrador (as a 'world-spirit of darkness') might find purchase in the woods, or worse, bring otherwise Shadow-fearing human legates to the practice of elven sorcery.  Such a heresy might even be secretly supported by Ardherin, as such heretical sorcerer-legates could provide cover and breathing room for his apprentices.

We're starting to get in to 40k-grade heresies here, which suggests another.  In 40k, unorthodox inquisitors have been known to strike bargains with or even employ xenos.  A heretical legate might find it justifiable to employ the fey, as they are useful, might even be convertible to the One True Faith, and are conveniently easy to dispose of when necessary.  This is, of course, quite useful for an adventuring party whose players desire to be other species.  Unfortunately, it's also still likely to get everyone killed, just slightly more slowly than would normally apply to a party containing fey, at least while under domain level.

A domain-level legate (bishop) could get up to all kinds of fun heresy, though.  I find the image of a sect of legates who believe that protecting their flock from rampaging orcs, issuing coinage, and teaching writing for accounts-keeping in order to improve the economy and ultimately strengthen Izrador's war effort being branded heretics amusing.  The Propsperist Heresy, if you will.  This is also the point where you could start getting away with providing sanctuary to sorcerers and fey, or establish a heretic stronghold (like that one in my Crusader Kings game that keeps revolting...  damn Cathars).  A heretic bishop would likewise make a convenient patron for a heretic legate and his party, provided they were of similar heresies.

Of course, where there are heresies, there are inquisitions...