Rando

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Currently doing something I haven't done in a long, long while...sitting at a typical, boutique Seattle coffee shop, swilling a caffeinated beverage, and eating a pastry while blogging. Reminds me of my 30s, I tell you. No, I'm not REALLY back on the caffeine and carbs...it's just that it's the holiday season. Which is to say: it's cold in Seattle. And right now you can't turn around without running into a bagful of Halloween candy. And the Thanksgiving-type food and baked goodies are just getting ready to spring on you. Not to mention the hot, mulled wine (if you can get it...it's a pain to brew it yourself, though I have the 'fixins'). Basically, I'm just giving myself a pass to be slothful when it comes to my normal dietary "discipline;" we'll get back on the kale-and-sardine salads next week.

I'm feeling nostalgic.

And I'm looking at a post-it note I wrote myself with several possible topics. One is...well, we'll get to it, just not today. Another is about pacing when it comes to running your AD&D game...boring. Oh, and here's one about presentation of rules versus setting...yeah, not really in the mood for that either.

Random tables? Yeah, okay.

Not a rant, per se, but please allow me to be crystal clear in how underwhelmed and unimpressed I am with random tables, especially in lauded or critically acclaimed gaming products. To me, most random tables are just another (elaborate) form of padding in a game book. And by "padding" I mean useless (or next-to-useless) filler. I suppose it can be considered a form of art, a demonstrated expression of an author's creativity...but, man, it's pretty small beer compared to other forms of creative expression. As I said, I am largely unimpressed by the random tables that (other folks) celebrate

Which might seem a little contrarian. Because "old school" aficionados seem to love-love-love the random tables. A quick google search of WHY the OSR enjoys their random tables is that that they're considered a primary tool to spark emergent gameplay, injecting disruptive chance and unbiased fairness into a campaign and/or game session. The OSR has loved their random tables since at least as far back as Curtis's The Dungeon Alphabet (2009?), both as a means of sparking a DM's imagination and as acting as an 'oracle of imperfect information'...a prognosticator of chaos. As someone who's been a part of this "scene" some 17+ years, how could I not be on board the Random List Wagon? Am I just trying to be controversial for the sake of "blog fodder?"

Not really...this is a stance I've held for years. Back in 2011, I cited "too many random tables" as my main gripe about the DCC game. And I wrote (in that post):

There are very few random tables I use in my own games. Um…like none really (really? Yeah, I guess not). Even the placement of treasure and monsters is done “by hand;” I suppose I do use tables for wandering monsters on occasion (it’s rare that I use wandering monsters at all, actually), but that’s about it. My random dice rolls are left for the frenzy of combat, the resolution of negotiation, and the riskiness of saving throws. 

 Everything else is pretty un-random in my games.

And all that holds true to this day. I do (often) use the treasure tables in the Monster Manual for stocking particular monsters' lairs, but I am often using the ranges and averages (based on percentages given) rather than actually dicing for treasure. Magic items are an exception, however, mainly because I find dicing on the DMG tables gives a very good, accurate spread of variable items.

But other than magic items and wandering monsters? Nah, I don't really use random tables...these days.

HOWEVER (and this may account for some of my bias against the proliferation and adoration of these lists) as a kid (mostly circa age 12-14) we made extensive use of random tables. All sorts of random tables! Two caveats though: #1 these were mostly used for TOWNS (which were given notoriously short shrift in the rule books), and #2 for the most part, we (both my co-DM and our fellow players) developed these random tables ourselves. Most of these had to do with drinking establishments...names and types of taverns, what kind of booze was available, what kind of DRUGS were available (a lot of drug use in our adolescent games...), what the local constabulary/law enforcement was like, etc.

We DID take the pick pocketing results random table from Dragon #104 ("Was It Worth the Risk?" by Bruce Barber, 1985), but mostly we made our own. I imagine that it was articles like that (and, of course, the Wandering Harlots and Dungeon Trappings tables in the DMG) that gave us the idea in the first place. Heck, my faulty memory of how we played 40 years ago is probably doing a disservice to just how many random tables we used...random door types, random locks, random traps, random poisons of various types, etc.  Also random temples/churches, random love interests, random nobility types...all sorts of randomness to help fill our unpainted, unscripted campaign setting.

But this was our second campaign...what we always referred to as our First (AD&D) Campaign, as I've discussed in my personal history...a campaign largely concerned with exploring and learning the 1E system, and doing most of our adventures OUTSIDE the dungeon (having "done dungeons to death" in our "Original Campaign," a B/X-1E hybrid). If one were to watch us play, it would have been marked by how little it was "about" anything. The characters wandered the roads and wilderness of a world map we created on the fly (without hex maps), creating towns and monster lairs ("adventure sites") as needed. We, perhaps, spent MORE time in towns and villages (getting into trouble) than delving actual dungeons, and the random tables both broke up the monotony of what were (essentially) all 'one-horse-medieval-hamlets' and gave us some "suitably adventurous" stuff to do.

Mostly with sex and drugs. It was the 1980s, people.

AHEM. But I don't roll that way anymore. I certainly could...but random world building is pretty much the antithesis of what I consider the Dungeon Master's purview AND responsibility. It's not that you, as the DM, must painfully wrack your poor, beleaguered brain to come up with "creative" situations and scenarios, but in order to keep your players engaged with the setting, your world must have a certain rhyme and reason to it as well as verisimilitude. 

Look: a small town is going to have a certain type of economy (generally: one that can feed its population). Guardsmen are going to behave in a certain way with regard to certain situations (in other words NOT in a "random" fashion). Nobility and hierarchies are based on land and wealth and power (especially the power to defend itself). If someone's building a castle or keep, there has to exist the resources (both material and labor) for this to happen. Cities and townships have relationships with each other, both as rivals/allies and/or as trade/economic partners. Etc., etc.

And dungeons should have an (appropriate) place in your world as well.

You CAN create a campaign setting that is simply random, blasted, post-apocalyptic wilderness with random shit in each map hex but, for my money, that type of play gets OLD after a while. And by old, I mean staid and stale. Which, I'm sure, sounds like an oxymoron to those who love the gonzo, wahoo, weird sword & sorcery shtick. Eh. Different strokes for different folks. 

I just know what works for me...in the long term. FOR ME, the dice are a tool for adjudicating chance in situations where the random effects of chaos and fortune must be subsumed in the abstract for the sake of game play. Does your character inflict damage during the one minute combat round? Does your character manage to get under cover in time to avert some of the dragon's breath attack? Is your watchperson asleep at the wheel when the bear wanders into your camp at night? These are the situations where a random die roll enables and compels game play.

But world/setting creation stuff? Man, I am looking at this copy of Veins of the Earth (picked up at auction at Cauldron) with its "random types of darkness," "random cave features," "random smells" and "sounds," etc. No. This is all useless, useless padding. I'm sure there are some who would call this an aid, a tool, a "springboard" for their imagination. To me, it's a crutch...and one that will do nothing to exercise the legs of my imagination. Better to come up with your own random tables (as we did as children) than to rely on someone else.

What? Are you saying you AREN'T a creative, imaginative person? 

Do your own reading and research...and then inject your own imagination. That would be my advice to any and everyone, only (or mainly) because that's what I do and it works for me. My campaign world is just the Pac Northwest, using numbers and situations from the late 1800s - early 1900s and then giving it a swash of fantasy "color." It's enough...hell, it's plenty. That and a handful of pre-published modules (re-purposed to fit the campaign) have been enough to sustain me for nearly seven years...and I've only explored/detailed a VERY small section of my campaign map. Little slices here and there...man, there are so many more ideas I have, I doubt I'll ever get to them all in my lifetime! And I don't even have to create "new monsters" or "new magic items" to keep shit interesting. Just AD&D is enough...so chock full of fantasy is this game.

A little side anecdote...and perhaps a random one (pun intended!)...but I had the chance to catch the first couple episodes of the latest House of the Dragon season last week. And what did it feature, but a bunch of ship-to-ship battles, and a bunch of medieval-style warfare between armored humans and armored humans. Fun enough, but then you add DRAGONS...burning ships, devouring troops, forcing surrenders (and sometimes getting shot down by ballistae)...what fun! It absolutely reminded me of my recent forays into Chainmail; how could it not? That's awesome fantasy...and do you not think I wouldn't like to showcase something like this in my own campaign? You don't need a Big Bad Evil to fight against...a lich queen or Sauron type. Just pirates and bandits and rival lords and humanoid hordes and would-be tyrants. That's fantastic stuff, with no "random rolls" needed...just world building, my friends.

Anyway...

As I said, this isn't supposed to be a rant against a somewhat beloved pillar of the Old School gaming community (random tables); rather, I just wanted to state and stake my stance on the matter in definitive terms. And, yeah, I do want to "push back" a bit on the idea that using random tables to create "emergent gameplay" is something to be promulgated or encouraged. Those who rely on these random tables may infer that I am judging them or calling them "lazy" for doing so. Eh. Not really. What I AM saying is that when I use them, I'm being lazy...and that's short-changing myself.  Some might say that eliminating the random tables is akin to railroading or ruling based on fiat; I say that relying on randomness for creation is depriving me of my right and responsibility as the Dungeon Master of my campaign world. 

Just my thought of the day. Cheers!

: )