Return to Mar Tesaro - Prologue

As I've said in previous posts, I've been running a Dungeons and Dragons campaign for the last several months.  Since writing typically helps me to organize my thoughts about topics, I thought it might be worthwhile to start a series on the setting of my campaign.

Back in 2006, I'd never played a tabletop RPG.  I was introduced to Shamus Young's website via his webcomic, which lead me to his synopsis of a campaign set on the island of Mar Tesaro.    Reading his stories made me want to try the games for myself, so I went to my friends with a proposal that we play D&D.  "Sounds great!"  they said.  "What are you going to run for us?"

Instant campaign.  (Some assembly required.)

This was a pretty daunting prospect.  It wasn't just that I hadn't played an RPG before, much less run one, or that I knew almost nothing about the game itself, but the fact was that I didn't really know what to do for a story.  I certainly wasn't about to write a new setting myself, and I didn't know anything about the established D&D settings like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk.  Mar Tesaro, however, looked perfect.  I was familiar with it, there was just enough detail available to provide for a campaign, and the story was already provided; all I had to do was plug in my players.

I've written about how that campaign went.   In retrospect, I made a lot of "new GM" mistakes. I treated Shamus's campaign too much like a script rather than a guideline.  I expected my players to interpret the clues and come to conclusions the same way Shamus's players did, and that's really just asking for trouble.  With a few notable exceptions, I basically presented Shamus's setting with only the thinnest veneer of personal touches to it.  Half the time I used his NPC dialog verbatim.  This wasn't a sophisticated effort, but everyone cuts their teeth some way or another.

In the years since that game ended, I've learned a lot about the finer points of running and playing games, both from having more experience and from listening to others tell their stories.  One question I kept asking myself, though, was how to take that Mar Tesaro campaign and do it right, make it mine, apply all the ideas and lessons I'd absorbed since the first game.

Last year, my players returned to Mar Tesaro.  This series is going to be about how I turned that beginner's effort into a mature setting and story.

Heading the Whisper - Epilogue

This post comes about five months late.  Part of this is because working on a D&D campaign has left me rather apathetic about writing in other arenas.  A significant part of this, however, is that I was also reading Frank's dissertation, the source of the entire series, and I wanted to finish it before I wrote this addendum.  I'm not that slow of a reader, just a lazy one.

In any case, the dissertation was a real eye-opener.  It's interesting how something can transform from the original, academic document into the Bible-study style product that resulted.  Frank indicated an interest to do more with the project; I do hope he turns the dissertation into a book, it's very well written.

Looking back at the series as a whole, an interesting picture begins to emerge.  The problem we have, not just as Christians but as a society, is that we idolize work.  It becomes a locus of identity, we expect it to be meaningful and fulfilling, both financially and personally.  We extol the pursuit of passion and denigrate labor.  We spend years of our lives and accrue incredible debt in the pursuit of degrees which facilitate work.  Any efforts to change that path and pursue a new career seems daunting, enough to invoke indentity crises.  On top of this, the people who are there to offer spiritual guidance frequently have a very different view of what it means to seek a career than those in other professions; a pastor describing how and why he chose to go into ministry is going to tell a story that sounds surreal to someone explaining why they chose to become an interior decorator.

It's really no wonder to me we have a screwed up perspective on vocation.  We expect much of it, and yet treat it as an entirely separate category of life from faith.  We frequently expect God to bless it as a venture without treating it like a consecrated activity.  If this entire series could be summarized in one point, it would be that our career, our job, is supposed to be an extension of our faith.  It is a powerful vehicle for serving God and loving our neighbor.  When we forget this, we turn our vocation from a means to an end.

This is the very heart of the struggle I had in college, and I suspect many people feel the same way in that situation.  You're trying to figure out what to do with your life.  You expect the clouds to open up and a divine proclamation reveals the answer.  There's a very real fear that missing out on this will not only mean you have missed out on God's intent for you, but that you are not truly serving him as you were meant to.  How much of that thinking stems just from the way we talk about "calling?"  It completely misses the point.  It's not about what  you are doing, but why, and how.  A quote from the series, whose attribution I can't remember anymore, said, "God loves adverbs.  He doesn't care how good, but how well."  (Google tells me it might be Charles Taylor who wrote this originally.)

When this series started, I was cautious.  In the aftermath of it, I'm thirsty for more.  The entire approach helped me think about calling in ways I wish I would have ten years ago.  I'm eager to explore it further, and I can't wait to see what Frank does with the material.

Heeding the Whisper - Week 7

I may be almost a month behind, but at least this series will finish up before the new year.

In the final session of the Called study, titled "Sneak Previews," we discussed what a calling should mean to people who look forward to eternity.  We discussed three somewhat-related topics:

The primary idea of the topic is that our calling is not just a temporal, earthly concern, but one that will carry importance and meaning into the new Jerusalem.  When the prophets talk about the redeemed creation, they paint a picture of a place where life still happens, where commerce and culture are active and thriving.  The popular notion of heaven frequently involves white robes, fluffy clouds, and endless noodling on the harp, but the biblical picture is that we'll still be living and working.  Work itself was never itself cursed, but when creation was cursed, work became a toil.  It wasn't bad, it was just difficult.  When all things come to fulfillment, what we did in the here-and-now will be important.

This does raise the question, what will we do in the redeemed creation?  I'm not sure we'll have an answer until we get there.  There are a lot of jobs that only exist because this world is fallen and imperfect.  As a scientist, I have a particular interest here, because my job involves discovering hidden truths of the world and using that knowledge to make it better.  When all truth is made plain by the light of Christ, when all flaws have been rendered from the world, what will that leave for me?  I don't know.  I can't wait to find out, though.

The second idea, which flows directly from the first, is that we have a responsibility of working towards the renewal and redemption of creation.  This is not to say that Christians can bring about "heaven on Earth," but we abandon our charge to be the "salt of the earth" by leaving the world around us to rot in corruption.  Of course, what this means is an entirely different can of worms.  A lot of people have thrown their hats in with politics as the means of living out this principle, but there's a lot more to it than that.  I still think the most effective way of redeeming the world around us is through the gospel, one heart at a time.

The final idea that came out of this session involved the impact of our calling and our life.  There are a lot of people who see most of the impact from living out their calling right away; a doctor, for example, sees patients recover and walk out the hospital door.  For the rest of us, however, the true reach of our lives may never be fully realized until we leave this life behind.  One example used is Ruth; in the book of Ruth, there are no miracles, only the story of a faithful woman who finds love in a foreign land.  Yet Ruth is counted in the genealogy of Christ, making the mundanity of her life more significant in retrospect.

A truly interesting example Frank gave for this was the story of Rodriguez, as told through the documentary Searching for Sugar Man. Rodriguez was a guitarist whose music never found fame in the US; he did, however, develop a huge following in South Africa.  The man lived most of his life in obscurity, and his fans in South Africa didn't even know he was still alive.  Some time ago, he was "re-discovered" and invited to South Africa for a concert.  Imagine his surprise, coming onto the stage to an audience of thousands, cheering fans who knew the words to his songs better than he did.  It's a remarkable story, and its connection to our calling is significant.

I'll have one more post on the series to wrap up the various ideas that have floated around, and I hope to have it out before January.

Heeding the Whisper - Week 6

I realize this post is incredibly late at this point.  The series has actually ended; well, sort of.  Scheduling conflicts and holidays pushed back my small group's completion of the study until next week.  My own tardiness in putting up this particular post has more to do with figuring out just what I wanted to even say about the topic.

Week 6 of the study involved the role of "calling" as a tool in evangelism.  This series has dealt with the implications of living out your faith every day of the week, which means treating work as an extension of faith.  It's not just that work is something separate from the life you lead on Sunday morning, but it should be an integrated part of that whole.  Since sharing the gospel is the highest privilege and responsibility in the life of faith, work must also be an integrated part of evangelism.

In particular, the idea of "calling" can be useful in evangelism.  It's something that a lot of people will find familiarity with, even if they don't understand it in the way that Christians understand it.  (Well, to the degree any of us even understand it.)  Just like Paul taking the altar to the unknown god and turning it into a vehicle for the gospel, so we should use calling to find and reach people where they are.

Frank has said that this was the entire basis of his thesis, which was itself the basis for this series.  It's sound advice.  If you believe that God is reaching out to every person, the way a person wrestles with purpose and calling can definitely be an opening for the gospel.  They hear God, even if they don't understand it.  (Or, in Paul's words, "Therefore what you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you.")

This is probably much more complicated in practice, though.  This area runs up to a problem Christians have been having since New Age spirituality became so prevalent in the West, in that the language used by Christians has been co-opted to mean something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike it's original meaning.  The shared language doesn't just extend to the idea of a calling, but to what that should mean as well.  Most of the world understands morality through the lens of "good deeds;" it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you're a "good person" who does "good deeds."  The "calling" a person wrestles with then becomes a matter of finding something you enjoy doing and/or being able to do "good deeds" through it.  It's not entirely divorced from the ideas we've been discussing the last several weeks, but it's certainly a bastardized version of it.  

The heart of the matter is that our calling is God inviting us to participate in his work.  Expressing that to a world that wonders whether such invitations are possible . . . well, that's the hard part.  I'm not really sure I have anything profound to add that wasn't already said by Frank in this series.  Avoiding formulas.  Listening.  Humility.  Explaining ourselves.  Everything that evangelism is supposed to be.  

Heeding the Whisper - Week 5

¹¹ The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. ¹² After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
1 Kings 19:11-13
New International Version (NIV)

This is the week that I both anticipated and dreaded.  The possibilities were multitude:  Controversial, enlightening, unhelpful, etc.  Frank went with the latter, unfortunately.  I don't blame him, there's only so much you can do with thirty minutes of sermon and 20 minutes of video.

The ultimate question to be addressed by Frank this week was to ask, "How do I know my calling?"  Which sounds an awful lot like, "How do I know God's will for my life?"  Frank's answer was to that there's no real rule for this, that one must simply pay attention.  Not particularly helpful.

In the past when I've looked at this, there were a number of sign posts, so to speak:  The Bible, mature counsel, inner witness, circumstances, personal desires, common sense, and special guidance.  Let's break these down:

• The Bible:  Pretty obvious.  Everything we understand about God's calling is done so in light of revealed truth.
• Mature counsel:  There's a lot to be said about the advice and wisdom of those around you, whether it's people with experience, experts in a field, those who know you best, or elders in the faith with good discernment.
• Circumstances:  There's that old saying, "When one door closes, another opens."  You can tell something about God's calling by your circumstances.  I'm not going to be running a bible study for high-powered executives anytime soon, for example.
• Personal desires:  Another obvious one.  The heart of man is prone to foolishness, so it's worthwhile keeping a tight leash on this sign post.  Still, the best servants are those who serve gladly.  "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." --Frederick Buechner (via Frank)
• Common sense:  Still obvious.  God's not calling you to be a missionary to Mars colonists, at least not at the moment. 
• Inner witness:  This is the still small voice.  The Holy Spirit dwells within the hearts of believers, and it offers God's testimony and guidance to those receptive to it.  Many describe this as a voice heard not with the ears, but with the heart, or God speaking directly to your soul.  The verses in 1King above are frequently quoted in this regard.
• Special guidance:  This is the audible voice, the "road to Damascus" type event.  Paul experienced a lot of this, as did the prophets.  Think John writing the book of Revelation. 

Interpreting the signs is tricky.  As Frank said, this is going to be different for everyone, and you can't really know how to read these signs unless you're in the moment.  Even then, sometimes it takes someone from outside the circumstances to help interpret them (see mature counsel).  The problem, as far as I see it, is in the last two parts of the above list.

First, and most obviously, special guidance is not normative.  This really should go without saying, but so many situations from the Bible are used as examples of inner witness when they are clearly special guidance. 

The bigger problem for me is the haziness of inner witness.  My best understanding of the scriptural basis for it requires a rather generous interpretation of the verses; it's not exactly clear that the thing Christians describe as "inner witness" is the same thing the justifying verses are describing.  Plus, truly interpreting such a thing is incredibly complicated.  It is, by definition, an inaudible voice.  The inner witness ought to be an obvious phenomenon, but a great number of Christians ask how they can be sure they're "hearing" the voice of God in their heart.  Even worse, it acts as a trump card for many people, both internally and externally.  Short of special guidance, it trumps all other sign posts as it's "straight from the horse's mouth," and many Christians will use it as a bludgeon against other Christians.  It's an embarrassment when two arguing Christians both declare that the Holy Spirit has told them they're right.

Why don't I just write off the matter entirely?  Because the idea that the indwelling Holy Spirit has no interaction with us stretches credulity.  What that actually looks like is far more than can be adequately covered in a blog post, but to reject it would be to reject any level of mysticism or sacredness in the faith.  This form of spirituality may look like foolishness to an unbelieving world, but there are people out there absolutely hungry for such things in their lives.  We make the same mistake as the naturalists to reject anything that cannot be empirically analyzed or quantified.

I have no real conclusion, here.  This week's message brought me no closer to a satisfactory answer than I was before.  Perhaps Frank will tackle it some other time. 

Heeding the Whisper - Week 4

I have to admit, this week's session threw me a bit for a loop.  Frank's overall message was an analysis of the cultural religious milieu, a preoccupation with generic spirituality, hazy eastern/new age mysticism, a prevailing belief in the unity and "one-ness" of all things.  A Christian critique of these ideas isn't really new territory these days.  According to Frank, "spiritual but not religious" is one of the fastest growing religious identifications, although I still have to wonder how relevant it is to deconstruct the ideas.  In my own experience, non-religious (and aggressively so) folks tend to be far more common.  There was a lot of talk of a deep cultural thirst for the sacred, but it's a very subtle thing on the whole.

On a side note, the title of "spiritual but not religious" is so bizarre.  As if being religious is such a terrible thing.  It's one of those little oddities about the current cultural climate of the west.  You can be spiritual all you want.  Just don't let it actually affect your life in any way.

So what does all of this have to do with one's calling?  Frank sort of lamp-shaded it, so it feels necessary to expand on it a bit.  The idea is that living out our calling is not just a personal venture, but a public one.  It is something we do not just out of faithfulness to God and a fulfillment of our life, but as a matter of showing the glory of God through our lives, bringing truth and healing to a world desperately in need.

Living out our calling means understanding the world we inhabit.  If we're to always be prepared to give an answer for our hope, if we're to effectively reach people where they are, then we have to understand where they are.  This doesn't mean we have to be ready to tear down the beliefs of others.  Ravi Zacharias frequently relates an Indian proverb that there's no use offering someone a rose if you have torn off their nose.  Just as Paul used the altar to the unknown god to introduce Christ, we must be able to diagnose the thirsts and longings of those around us attempting to find some form of spirituality.  We aren't selling Christianity, but we are crafting the approach of the message.  The difference is subtle, but important.

Most importantly, living out our calling means doing so on God's terms, not ours, and most definitely not the culture's.  Understanding the influences of the broader culture around us can be very complicated at times.  It's like the old idea about boiling frogs slowly; if the water starts of cool and eventually comes to a boil, the frog doesn't understand what is happening until it is too late.  (I'm given to understand this isn't true, but it is still a useful symbol.)  It's hard to be a dispassionate observer of cultural influences when you're steeped in them all the time.  Subtle assumptions and ways of thinking can be difficult to isolate, which can have repercussions down the line.  We have to be wary of these things, and keeping on our toes means not just being wise to the Christian metanarrative, but also to those of the world around us.  If we're to live out our calling effectively, we have to be cognizant of such influences.

Overall, this week's chapter felt like a bit of an aside, a "B story."  Still, it marks an important aspect of living the fulness of the Christian life.  My deepest concerns with the idea of "calling" have yet to be fully addressed, but I look forward to seeing what Frank has to say in the coming weeks, whether he addresses those concerns or not.

Heeding the Whisper - Week 3

In week three of the Called series, we discussed what it means to lead a public life as a Christian and how it relates to our calling.  If we think of our calling as our true purpose, the unique and personal way in which we are to serve God and the Kingdom with our life, then having a clear understanding of how we live that out in front of an unbelieving world becomes important.  Throughout the series, Frank has related our current cultural situation as to being "exiles" in Babylon; we either live by our values or we live by those of Babylon, and it's very difficult for us to act as "ambassadors" to Babylon if our faith is not evident in our lives.

One of the things that was emphasized in this session was the pressure in our society to remove Christianity from the public sphere.  We split our lives into public and private arenas and draw lines about which things belong where.  In recent years, it has become a widely held, if not prevailing, belief that one's religion and faith belong squarely in the private arena, that bringing faith into the public arena is not just a breach of etiquette but actively hostile to those who do not share your faith.  What's rather ironic about this, at least to me, is how the internet and social media have been tearing down the walls between the arenas.  Many people put their lives out on display for the world to see, reducing the line between private and public to a blur.

For Christians, this split is something we must fight to overcome.  A faith that happens only on Sunday mornings is one that has no transformative power.  If you aren't living by Christian values in the workplace, school, or any other public space, then what values are informing your actions and choices?  It is rather difficult to be faithful to the Christian life, especially when it comes to evangelism, if all evidence of said life is sequestered away from the world we're trying to reach.

It's a complicated matter to address what that "public life" should look like, though.  It's not just the hair-trigger response to displays of faith as "offensive."  Living out the faith can seem obtrusive to certain parts of life.  Nobody wants to be "that guy."  Jesus's promise that his yoke is light seems unlikely if we must fuss and fret over every detail of our day-to-day actions and interactions.  Is it trite to say that we must simply try to be mindful of our actions and always ready to give an answer for our faith?  Probably.  But I'm not sure how else to deal with it without writing a treatise on the matter.

One other issue that was particularly interesting to me was Frank's emphasis on the story of Joseph in Egypt.  If you don't remember, Joseph receives dreams about his family bowing down before him.  His siblings don't take this kindly and have him shipped off to Egypt as a slave, where Joseph continually finds himself rising to the top of bad situations.  The thrust of it is that Joseph spent years in Egypt, first as a slave, then as a prisoner.  His visions, his calling, must have looked very confusing in those years.  It can often be very difficult to discern your calling in light of your current circumstances.  We can only act on the information and wisdom available to us, and trust God to continue guiding us as we go. 

Heeding the Whisper - Week 2

The best way I can sum up this week is that our job is not our calling, but it is certainly not less than our calling.  Our work, whatever that may be, is a vehicle for living out our calling, even if the work is simply a means to provide for life's necessities.  We were made to work, and to find joy in that work, and we honor God and love our neighbors by the way we perform that work.

I'm really glad a distinction was made between profession and calling.  I think too many tend to blend the two, Christian or not, which can lead to a lot of confusion and heartache.  In times past, a distinction was made between "holy professions," the priesthood or the mission field, for example, and secular work.  One was noble work, the other not so much.  One was a "calling," the other was . . . well, biding your time, essentially.  Perhaps we've gone the wrong direction.  Any work can be a calling, but if your career must be a calling, then you've set yourself up for grief.

The importance of finding joy in work is another important point, and one I think has warped over time in this society.  This NYT article about men who do not work is a case in point.  Although the recession of the last few years has taken its toll on people, purposefully avoiding work because it's "not fun" or "beneath you" is an awful attitude.  Albert Mohler frequently described the dignity of work, that it's not just something we're made for but a responsibility; there is no work "beneath you" if you have a family to support.

The NYT article above made me think quite a bit about people of my own generation who aren't working at the moment.  Many went off to school being told, "Get a degree, something you love, you have to have one," only to end up with an expertise in a subject for which there are few jobs available.  (Though there are some unfortunate people snookered by unscrupulous departments that inflate their alumni employment statistics.)  There are probably plenty who are similar to Mr. Beggerow in the above article, obtained their degree and then won't work anywhere but their purported field, or even their dream job.  In a sense, that's understandable.  If you've spent thousands of dollars becoming an expert in a given field, it can seem like a waste of an investment to abandon said field. 

Those who went off for advanced degrees are an interesting case, though.  Grad school has long been, at the least, an escape from unemployment or a means of advancing oneself in a competitive field.  There's growing sentiment that universities have been over-producing degree holders, resulting in unemployment, among other problems, for the holders.  Folks in those situations can find it especially tough.  Many end up with such specialized knowledge that their options are limited, and jumping fields can be rough if the employer could just find someone who does have the right specialization.  Leaving behind the field for which you spent 5-7 years of grad school can be like amputating a limb, an agonizing decision.  Taking "lesser" work isn't frequently an option, either.  There's little incentive to hire a PhD holder for a minimum wage job, since they will leave just as soon as they can find a better option.

Of course, most of this is just diagnosing the problem.  We have such a strained relationship with work in western society.  At least for Christians, coming to terms with what God intended for work to be is a start. 

Heeding the Whisper - Week 1

After the first week's session, I can say this will definitely be an interesting study.  Of course, it was great to see everybody again.  There's always a lot of to be said for drawing off the wisdom of those around you.

To summarize the first session:  In order to lead a worthy life, we must not just understand what our calling is, but what it means to follow that calling as servants of Christ in a hostile world.  Much of the emphasis was on the latter,  describing the nature of the postmodern world and how we can set ourselves apart from that. Though there wasn't much said about understanding your calling, I do still have a few things to say on it.

There's a lot of advice about finding or identifying your calling out there.  Our pastor really favors a quote by Frederich Buechner, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."  There's a variety of other things said in this regard, but the overall idea in finding your calling is both knowing yourself and "watching the signs," "keeping the antenna up," "listening for God," and so on.  This is frustrating to me, though, because this is frequently described in very mystical terms.

I'm not going to ignore the possibility of the mystical in the faith, but I definitely don't think it's normative.  Finding your place in the world, discerning your calling, is something that everyone will experience, but few will hear that "whisper in your heart," or whatever the current popular term is.  Worse, many Christians discuss it as a definitive manner for discerning the will of God in many other circumstances, making it complicated for those who don't experience it.  Am I a bad Christian?  Am I "ignoring" God?  Am I not paying attention?  Why am I not having that experience?

As I've said before, this is something I've wrestled with for years.  I don't really have any sort of answer, but I think it's something that doesn't get talked about nearly often enough.

The other major part of this session, the discussion of finding our place in a postmodern world, is interesting to me, as I've read a number of authors who suggest that we're not so much in a postmodern world as a post-postmodern world.

It's hard to argue with the idea.  Postmodernism was said to have been the reining mindset in the post-WW2 era, and we are far removed from that society.  People under 30 have most of their interactions with the world through electronics:  Texting, email, Instant Messaging, Facebook, message boards.  So much connection, but very impersonal.  So much knowledge, but no depth.  With the extent of disinformation on the internet, truth, and not even in a metaphysical sense, becomes a tribal matter. 

Even with metaphysical truth we may be in the post-postmodern era.  The postmodern reckoning made morals and truth out to be relative and personal; there was no "wrong" answer to these matters because it was ultimately a question of what works for each person.  Those under 30 have been raised in a society that by-and-large ignores questions of truth, religion, and morality.  It's not that they're atheists, antagonistic towards the idea of faith.  Faith isn't even on their radar, it's an alien concept, an interruption to the status quo.  Morality in the post-postmodern paradigm is a function of victimhood, and everyone is a victim.  Right and wrong isn't a function of values, it's about offering benefits to the aggrieved and punishing privilege, real or perceived.

None of this changes the mission of the church.  I just find it interesting.

I look forward to seeing what Frank has in store for the remainder of the study. 

Heeding the Whisper - Prologue

At my church, Hunt Valley Church, we're starting a new series this week called, well, "Called."  We'll spend the next seven weeks discussing the idea of the "calling" in the faith, how it relates to vocation and direction, what it means to follow as an individual and as a Christian in a hostile and alien world.

I'm really looking forward to this, as I'll be leading my small group during this series.  This will be the first small group I've lead since I was in college, so I'm a bit nervous, especially because I struggled with the concept of a "calling" in the past.*  The entire series is based off of the dissertation of our pastor.  I can only hope he will address the actual idea of a calling in the series and not assume that everyone is on the same page regarding the nature, definition, and workings of a calling.

If this Sunday's sermon is any indication . . . well, I'm going to reserve judgement.  There was a lot of time spent discussing living in a way that we have been "called" for, living in a purposeful way, leaning on Daniel (as well as Rack, Shack, and Benny) by way of example.  Nothing out of the ordinary, but it didn't hit the points I would have hoped.  We'll see how the first week of small group goes.

* - On a side note, it's really weird reading the older posts on this site.  This blog has been around, ostensibly, since 2003. My writing style and interests have changed a great deal since then, especially since the web has changed since then as well.  My writing has improved over the years, though I suspect it's become rusty, as my blogging slowed to almost nothing after I moved to Baltimore.  I suppose, if nothing else, this study will be an opportunity to find renewed purpose in the blog. 

Theory vs. Practice, or "How did I get myself into this mess?"

I'm going to assume the dearth of posts lately hasn't escaped your notice.  This isn't like the other long periods of blog-silence, my creative energies are being channeled elsewhere these days.  A few months ago, I started talking about the Dresden Files RPG.  Well, now I'm actually running a campaign of the game for my gaming group.  I'm even keeping a wiki of the campaign for the group, or others, to follow along.  If you're at all interested in such stories, you might find it worth a read.  Although I've already fallen behind on the session synopses, surprise-surprise.

Despite the last few posts I've written here being about the theory of running RPGs, I'm finding myself completely overwhelmed at times trying to follow my own advice.  Yes yes, "Gaming is hard," blah blah blah.

Take my earlier posts on making all called rolls count.  The general advice there was making both failure and success interesting, and not calling for rolls if either state was boring.  In practice, this is more difficult.  A big part of playing RPGs is getting to toss dice.  Most players will balk at the idea of letting their dice sit idle for the majority of a session.   It's not so simple, because most failure states are boring, and players ask to roll their dice.  A lot.  Typically, this will go something like, "I want to find out what I can about that NPC and what he's been doing."  (Maybe your players word their questions that vaguely; I try to push my players for specifics, but sometimes I forget.)  Because my players hate me, this will always be regarding an NPC for whom I have not prepared answers.  Which leaves me about 3-5 seconds to answer the following questions:

• Is this NPC worth an answer?
• Will the player have the capacity to find these answers?
• Do I have an answer to the question at all?
• What makes sense, and does this critically affect anything?
• How difficult should this be, and what is their chance of success?
• Should I encourage them to take measures to increase their chance of success, if needed?
• What should success look like?
• What should failure look like?  Should I just deny the information, let them have it after a delay, cut off a finger for the information?
• Oh crap, they're already rolling.  Why are they already rolling?

Yeah, no pressure.  Repeat that for four more hours and you can see how all that theorizing about proper challenge design gets chucked out the window in favor of hemming, hawing, and hedging. 

A lot of this is me being my own worst critic.  I have incredibly high expectations for myself, and despite my feelings of inadequacy, my players have issued mostly praise for the way things have gone so far. 

I guess the lesson is that RPG theory is only as good as its ability to be implemented under fire.  (I.E. No battle plan survives enemy contact.) 

When to call for a roll: Further thoughts

I've considered a few more things worth tacking on to my previous post about calling for rolls.  Hey, if I'm lucky, this could turn into an entire series of posts.

The Knowledge Dump
Many games have knowledge skills; for example, in D&D 4th edition, you have History, Religion, Arcana, Dungeoneering, and Streetwise.  It can be tempting to put game information behind these skill rolls in order to get some use out of them.  I'm inclined to think these days, however, that that is a bad idea.

Information about the game world touches on a lot of elements.  It gives depth to the setting, showing off the skills of the GM (or whoever wrote the material being used).  It provides players tools for interacting with the setting and understanding the nuances of how things work.  It can even be critical for short-term goals, such as deciphering the instructions to a puzzle in a dungeon, or discovering the location of a mission-critical goal. 

So why would putting any of that behind a skill roll be a good idea, given the chance of player failure?  If it's mission-critical stuff, then we're back to the problems in my first post on this topic.  If it isn't mission-critical, then risking the players not rolling high enough does not provide anything.  Your world will seem flatter and less interesting for the lack of information.

However, if only ancillary information is put behind knowledge skill rolls, some players may be less likely to take them, since they don't provide anything "necessary."

Success, but . . . 
The Dresden Files RPG describes this strategy as, "Success, but . . ." and I really like it.  That scenario from before, with the locked door?  Instead of interpreting failure as the players not getting through the door, the players get through the door but make so much noise that they attract a guard's attention.  I like this, as it makes failure much more interesting without letting the game grind to a stop while your players make the same roll over and over until the dice-gods relent. 

Here's an example to put it together:  Let's say your players are looking for the location of a mages' tower long lost to common knowledge.  They rightly suspect that the historical archives in the capital city will have the information they seek.  The player with the best score in History would want to go to the archives to study and find this information. 

In the past, I might have had the player roll, with a bonus to the roll for using all the reference material of the library.  This still invites the possibility of failure, unless I make the bonus so outlandish that the information was coming one way or another.  I don't think this is a very interesting way to do things.

There needs to be a way to give the information on a failed roll, but offer up a minor penalty to the players anyhow.  You could say that the research takes longer, depending on how badly the roll failed, but that can be game dependent.  In some games, the passage of extra time might not mean much to the players, nor to the GM.  Instead, let's say that failure results in needing the staff of the archives to help the players find the information they seek.  Of course, the staff of the archives doesn't work for free, so it'll cost the players some amount of gold to pay for the services.  Even better, let's say that instead of paying in gold, the players could offer to run "errands" for the archivists, retrieving specific historical texts from the locations they visit, including that mages' tower.

Failure has been made more interesting, but what about success?  If the players are getting the information either way, success needs to be more than just, "You don't get punished."  Perhaps, in finding the location of the mages' tower, the players also find some other interesting bit of information.  A treasure depot, perhaps?  Or maybe they learn about some of the defenses the mages' tower used to have, giving them a heads up on what to expect when they get there.  Maybe there are monsters in the tower now, but the excellent research gives them an advantage in combat when they fight the monsters.  In a completely different route, you could say that the player's research leads him to translate a section the archivists had been unable to interpret previously, so they pay the players for their help. 

It seems like it would be difficult to make every skill roll this dynamic and interesting; not every player action is quite so complicated, after all.  Still, as far as skill rolls are concerned, I think a little extra planning and the right frame of mind can do a lot to add to a game.

When to call for a roll

I tend to discuss RPG topics with my friends, and one of the topics that came to mind a while back has stuck with me enough that I think it's worth putting to the blog:  When do you ask your players for a roll?  It might seem simple enough, but it starts delving into the fundamental aspects of how (and why) RPGs are played.

For the uninitiated, RPGs tend to have players roll dice to determine the outcome of any event the player wants to resolve which would have an element of randomness to the outcome.  For example, you would roll to see if you hit a monster with a fireball, and then roll again to determine how much damage the fireball does to the monster if it connects.  But you might not roll if you're, say, hitting a door with an axe, since inanimate objects tend to be easier to hit.

There was something in the Dresden Files RPG books that I really liked, and I think makes for a great jumping off point.  This is the advice they give GMs when considering whether to ask their players to roll:  "1.  Consider success.  2.  Consider failure."


When you're asking someone to roll for something, there is the implication that they could fail at what they're trying to do.  For the game to be fun, both success and failure need to be interesting.  Combat seems to cover this automatically; if you succeed at a combat roll, you're that much closer to victory, and if you fail, that much closer to defeat.  But skill and knowledge checks, well, there are definitely right and wrong ways to handle those.  Here's some examples as to how that might work:

The Inevitable Victory
Let's say there is a locked door, and a character with a skill for picking locks wants to get through it.  If they succeed, great, they get to find out what's on the other side, but what if they fail?  Some GMs might just tell the player to try again, and keep that up until he gets it right.  That's boring.  Same thing if you let every other player with a lock picking skills to take a crack at it, as the odds are good that at least one person will roll high enough to make it happen.

Oh, and if they get through that door?  There needs to be something worth seeing on the other side; if it's nothing of interest to the game, then you shouldn't have had them roll to get through the lock in the first place.

The Quick Recovery
Let's take another scenario:  This time, you have the player in a treacherous situation, like avoiding a trap or accident of some kind.  The player rolls to avoid the trap but fails.  The consequence?  Let's say a small penalty, or some minor damage.  This is a fine consequence.  But let's say that you then avoid any situation where the consequence would matter . . . what was the point?  If the trap did damage to the character, but the character immediately gets to sleep it off, then there was no reason for asking him to roll to avoid the trap in the first place.

The Necessary Success
Quick story:  I ran a game in which my players spent a lot of time fighting an evil lich who had raised an army of zombies.  At the end, they met with the leaders of the combined mortal armies to push back against the lich; the idea being that they were going to ask the military leaders to lead the charge against the lich.  So I had a player roll to see if they go for it.  He failed . . . and I just let him have it, anyhow.

What was I going to do?  The game had been building to this climactic final showdown, why would I just cut it off because of a single roll?  That roll should never have been called for in the first place.

So, I think I can see a few principles for calling for rolls in an RPG:

• Success needs to be meaningful to the player's goal
• Failure needs to have consequences that are both felt and tested
• The game cannot hinge on a successful roll

I'm willing to bet I could come up with a few more, but this seems like a good place to start.

Non-Combat Gameplay

First things first:  If you think video games can be more than just mindless entertainment, and actually enjoy considering their potential and meaning, then you should be watching Extra Credits over at The Escapist.

That said, their most recent video was about non-combat gameplay.  In short:  A great majority of video games are mostly played through combat, and while this is both entertaining and a cheap way of introducing tension and drama, it neglects the many other aspects of life that video games could entertainingly portray in order to tell a good story.

Why is this so?  I imagine it's the same reason sex, by which I mean scantily clad females, is so ubiquitous in video games.  A great deal of both the creators and the players are male; while this has balanced somewhat in the last decade or so, men seem to be the dominant force in the industry.  And let's face it:  Men like violence.  I don't mean this in any sort of denigrating way, it's just the sort of fantasy which we enjoy.  Let's save psychology and philosophizing about why that is for another time.

Could you make a game that is entertaining which doesn't involve combat?  I've no doubt.  But I think the thing that will ultimately make that sort of game successful is a good story, not good mechanics.

The problem is that unless you have programming good enough to respond to a wide variety of player inputs, these sorts of games will probably be a long series of if/then statements.  If player does X, computer responds with Y.  Which is fine, and I'm sure it can be more complicated than that, but it will eventually boil down to predictable management of minutiae, which is going to be problematic for this sort of gameplay.

The entire idea is that you're offering a different way of overcoming obstacles in these games.  Not combat, basically.  If you don't replace the elements that make combat a cheap dramatic resource (tension, risk, the unknown possibilities), then the gameplay becomes formulaic.

Which is not the kiss of death for game, as I said; it's just that the impetus is then on making a good story.  I loved the Phoenix Wright games, and I think they're an excellent example of this sort of thing.  But I'm skeptical we'll ever see a game that fully replaces combat with philosophical debate, pushing the cloak and sheathing the dagger.