On the Psychology of DMing

DND, Roleplaying, et al. has a mantra:

"It [we] takes all kinds.

At least, such is the case of players. And perhaps, such is the case of DMs. But something unique happens. its the germ of an idea, a virus that spreads in your mind. In the lost moments between sleep and wakefulness, you muse upon what will happen next to the party of heroes...and what happenings they will next cause. When the campaign reaches a certain depth, its little microverse has all the truths of a waking dream: you both create and experience your reality at once. And it's a shared dream, not unlike something from a recent Major Motion Picture.

If you're like me, and you've broken though the fourth wall and realized that all stories are mechanical storytelling contraptions, you realize that the object is twofold:

• Fun. In a book, film, or any other creative medium, everyone there must both enjoy the moment at hand, and anticipate with excitement the next.
• Exposition. To be a good story, it has to awaken new ideas, or allow the participants to tell truths about what kinds of people they can be, and what sorts of things they think adventure really is. As the DM, it's your responsibility to create a world that, at the very least, gives reason for the players to think twice about who they are.

But here I want to change gears: I get tired. DND et al. forces a DM to create a million castles in the sand, all folded into his head. IRL dilemmas and delays can overwhelm the impetus of a game, and cause it to become the sort of Subconscious Hang-up that the protagonist of Inception so suffers.

Buried in my mind are the cities upon cities, decaying masterpieces of imagination, that so haunt the DiCaprio character. Every game that I've run, every time I've adopted a new setting, it's a dreamworld that gets tucked away in my subconscious. While it's only the year-long campaigns that literally have demons leaping about them, even the small games have poor lost souls inside.

Of course, I'm almost normal on the Autism-Asperger's-Etc. spectrum, and to me DND isn't nearly the obsession that consumes some folks. But don't you ever get weary of how unfulfilled most of your characters/plots/story arcs ultimately end?

Last year, I went to Pittsburgh, stood up for a few college kids getting shot at by police, and got the biggest legal shitbag imaginable thrown at me. That story arc is now about to conclude...and I've gotten a few EPs from it. It feels closed.

Now, I won't go into my IRL CG Wiz4 of Jesus character, his anarchist leanings, etc., as I find that the last thing people want from DND is something that resembles IRL. (speaking of which, where are the Gay NPCs guys? We've had female Everythings since 1e after all...)

...but do you ever think that you got into DND in the first place to feel like you were part of the big, important things that allegedly don't happen anymore? I know I did. I've met dozens of escapist players looking to pile up 100k of GP and learn 9th level spells...and as far as I'm concerned, they're not the sort of red blood cell that carries oxygen. It's the true dreamers, the ones that cry at the end (and the middle) of Les Miserables that made DND last 35 years. And to you types, I say,

Maybe, occasionally, we should wake up, not to the IRL world of Jobs, Kids, Girlfriend Aggro, etc., but to the world of an oppressed Palestine, of union busting at every Wal Mart, of the Taliban that exploded millenia-old masterpieces of Buddhist culture, of the still more fearsome hate-mongers that call themselves Terry Jones and Glenn Beck.

So here is my plea: For a gamers' delegation to something simple, something emblematic of the truth that there is good, evil, law, chaos, and neutral...and that we'd be better off with more of the neutral. What gathering could so epitomize a truth so complex, you ask? Why, look no further:

Golarion: an an Apology.

I've recently latched onto a PF campaign that has those critical elements: good scheduling (biweekly Sundays); good players (half newer, roleplaying types and half fatigued out of powergaming, but enthusiastic in teaching the rules to the newbs); and a good location (solid table, playing in a house with no kids/parents/dogs).

I laid it on thick with a mysterious doom plot revolving around a prophecy (HP4/5 analagous) that's not only dangerous but locked away. When some players started hitting 2nd level spells, and even making 5th level, I realized the campaign was going to go the distance, and then realized that I'd missed on setting exposition.

Setting exposition, from a player's perspective, comprises several things:

• "Those NPCs we met that were busy/bent upon doing X"
• "That asshole noble/police/merchant that wouldn't help us, even hindered us"
• "That one helpful NPC"
• "That one silly/hilarious/foil NPC"
• "That city that we went to with the Frakked up laws"
• "That place with the kewl architecture/setup/gimmick"

I had to hurry up and start dropping these things, or the PCs would be living in a cartoon world of 'us, the shop, and the badguize,' which is the sort of campaign you can get out of WoW or any cRPG. I quickly realized that to make up time, I would have to use a published setting to catch up. The more bookish players could help flesh things out, as one can often drop a noun with a Capitalized Letter and a bookish player will drop exposition like manna from heaven, relieving 'DM lecture syndrome,' one of the ways to ruin a game in the attempt to establish a sense of place.

In Eberron, the bullet points above are usually expressed though the PC's first visit to sharn, their interactions with the 'marked houses, a few setpiece encounters on railroad, and some mysterious goingson perpetrated by the shadow syndicates (the Dal Quor, Inspired, or Witches of Druuma). The whole thing reeks of design based on unmitigated fulfillment of each of the bullets above. (In hindsight we all see the heavyhanded marketing that WoTC/Hasbro was pulling on us; why did we fall for it again?) I wanted to get away from it, bad.

I wanted to get away from the overblown visuals/NPC orgs/everything that Eberron was; I also wanted to get away from the sense of drifting that FR can give you, as locations are interchangeable...let's be honest, can anyone really tell me what distinguishes the Dales from the Silver Marches other than that one is the child of Greenwood and the other of Salvatore? (both backwoodsy lands with loose city/feif states confederated, nourished by trade). For that matter, what's the difference between Cormyr and Tethyr? Between the Dragon's Reach and the Lake of Steam? FR is rich with cool places, but too many of those places are too similar to one another or too distant from the stage to be relevant (Moonshaes, U.East, Halruaa anyone?)...Most of the FR games I've played or ran were so frantic with travel that only one placename on the map gets enough facetime to have texture to PCs.

I turned to Golarion. I'll first cover what was holding me back, and then the cathartic 'Eureka!' moments that led me to commit to the setting. First, the holdbacks:

• It's got a 'balance of power/entente' kitch which is emphasized in PF Society events, but it's not the lynchpin of the setting, the way that Ex-Galifar is to Eberron, and more importantly, the Five powers are Very Different From One Another.
  
• In fact, the Very Different From One Another feel approached heights reminiscent of cartoony Mystara, with its patchwork, stitched-together feel. On first glance, countries look like 'flying saucer land,' 'devilworship land,' 'Egyptland,' etc.
• At times, it has a 'wheres the monsters?' feel that plagued overly political settings like Kalamar. The Goblinoid menace, and even the second 'D' of 'D&D' feels strangely absent.
  

But then I realized something, something that is the very core of what makes Golarion Tick. It's at once new while being evolutionary, not revolutionary. It builds upon the shoulders of other shared settings (GH, FR, Mystara ultimately each became the brainchildren of several individuals, though their birth may have been from one mind.) Paizo has struck the nail on the head, taking the best of what each setting has to offer, while giving us a land that's alive but not under such tension that every DM picking it up will unleash the next apocalypse upon it. Now, L&G's, for the beloved bullets:

• The borders also aren't stretched so taut that we lose the sense of wilderness, the way that one might on Khorvair (while the scale of the continent is vast, players have grown up in the era of passports and checkpoints, border fences and park rangers, and if you show them 'this line is the border between Nation X and Y, they'll imagine a militarized fence). Besides, up north things are much more loose, to the point that they could set Kingmaker in Brevoy, without it feeling overly "This Adventure Takes Place in the DM's Preserve Lands, the Only Place Unsettled/Unclaimed Land Exists." The fact that KM lives someplace between several other places, rather than in an awkward 'otherwhere' the way that FR's BorderKingdoms, Eberron's Lhazaar, or Mystara's Freeholds--speaks to the cinched feeling of Golarion.
• The Distant past feels intimately connected to the present. In FR, the ancient civs are there as 'those people that left a bunch of dungeons,' and yet did little to flavor the civs still presiding. In Eberron, the only thing really shaping Khorvair is Galifar. Golarion gives us a world where Crusadres killed the LichKing, then set up a country; a second Crusade vs. Demons, invades the Baltic States (yeah, caught that one guys...), Where Taldor colonized Cheliax, which rebelled, then ruled Andoran, which rebelled...
• 'That other wild/underdeveloped continent' isn't just close by, but has a sensation of relevance. Nex, Katapesh, Osirion, Radahoun, etc. are 'out there' the same way that the (Shining South, Unapproachable East, Jungles of Chult) or (Xen'Drik, Sarlona, Argonessen) are, but are actively pursued by the Old World in not just one, but several dimensions--Osirion has revolted from Qadiran rule; Sargava is the 'lost colony' of Cheliax; the Society plunders actively (Paizo teleports PFS parties south to Garund, even @ tier 1); Andoran is getting much of its cash from tomb raiding.
• It's morally ambiguous. And not in a realworld Neoliberalizm vs. the Treehugger Creed way. Slavery, and even Devilbinding, are not only commonplace but accepted in more than one place. Andoran is zealous about spreading democracy, perhaps in parody of Bush-era foreign policy. Razmiran is the ultimate Cult-of-Personality location. While there's always a 'bad guys,' Paizo goes out of its way to differentiate between 'these badguys are a bit misunderstood' and the really bad 'this land is ruled by shady sadist sexcults,' or sometimes 'These Crusaders just had a witch-hunt of epic scale.'
• Its demihumans are FLAVORFUL. Elves with their brightness-seeking, Gnomes with their Bleaching, and Dwarves with their Quest For Sky. All this hearkens back to JRR's nonhumans, who were different on a mythological scale. This doesn't go to the cartoon level of Eberrron's Necromantic elves, though. The different consciousness and view on existence is emphasized as profound, enough to remind anyone that you should simply play a human if you aren't up to it. Again, contrast to FR/Eberron, where you can simply label yourself a 'Whiteguy' Galifaran/Waterdhavian Elf/Dwarf/Gnome, loot the bonuses, and get away with it. Further, the distant past isn't bogged down with the usual 'we elves ruled the earth/All the Dwarfholds are abandoned' baggage that FR has...while the brighter days of the Dwarves and Elves have passed, Ancient history's outline can't be summarized as (first, there were Demihumans, then there were Humans).
  
• It's truly polytheist, with a few opportunities for a player to kitch up a salvific or Samsaric cleric if he'd like. Irori (Buddhism/Yogic Hinduism foil) and the Dawnflower (vaguely Abrahamic covenant/salvation faith) are sketched out enough to give player clerics without a PhD in comparative spirituality something to fight for, while the rest of the Gods are truly constructed as patheon members ("my god deserves honor and worship in all things relating to his domain," not "my god wishes their faith ruled all the earth and I am his crusader."). If I have any complaint, it's that whoever wrote the 'Gods&Magic' supplement imagined that each god had a 'holy book' that was instructional the way that one of the 'Paraphrased Modern Relevant'™ Bible versions attempt to be. But I can compromise...this dovetails nicely into my next point:
• Golarion is Digestible, without being monochromatic; Original, without Overexceptionality. The folks at Paizo set down to create a setting that had deep color. One that used kitchpoints from many settings without playing them up to the point of a feverpitch. Meanwihle, rather than simply being derivative, they created a setting that returned to the source material and sought to bring in JRR, HPLove, and even Vance, UKLeG, etc. with the fullness of their flavor that first lent D&D its sense of auteur those thirty years ago.

Folks, Golarion is where D&D has to go, if it stands to avoid becoming a mockery of itself and a dark echo of the MMORPGs/ConsoleRPGs that some believe it is competing with. If we really want to share in a world like it is the Bread and Wine of our shared imaginations (Blasphemy!), then we need to take what's best from fiction, what's best from the thirty years of P&PRPG literature, and Evolve. The mere fact that Golarion is built to expand, rather than simply stagnate & revise by timeline push...isn't a coincidence. Thank you, Mr. Mona, Thank you Paizo...We have many years ahead of us.

APPENDIX: Where things come from: a list of parentages for Golarion entities. Some of these Paizo is on record as saying, others not so much.

• The Inner Sea: The Mediterranean. A highway of commerce, culture, and war, with many disparate cultures somehow arranged around it. This is no mere Moonsea, No Dragon's Reach, this is
  
• Absalom: The city's parentage with Aroden closely mirrors the mythology of Rome, along with its 'eternal city' vibe. The 'commercial heartbeat/city @ the center of the world' is an obvious homage to Waterdeep and NYC. Together this is synthesized into something much deeper than 'Frisco/Seattle with a dungeon under it.' (Waterdeep/Sharn)
  
• Numeria: Blackmoor/Mystaran Blackmoor successor. All 'Saucers in Fantasy' references.
• Osirion: Egypt. This goes without saying, but its resurgence in the timeline draws parallels to Nasser, Cleo, and the Ptolemies, each a time when that ancient country glimmered with a new prospect of greatness.
• Irori: Buddhism. Enough said.
• Andoran/Galt: American Revolution:French Revolution is to Justice:Madness? The advent of the Alchemist class already has me stoked to create a Lavoisier NPC parallel.
• Taldor: Believe it or not, I'm going to drop this bombshell: China. The fact that the place is 4000 years old leaves us no other RW example of continuity of rule. I'm not saying that anything is culturally analagous, but consult the texture in your mind of ShiHuangdi's pyramid and the Terracotta men. Taldor's capital city, Oppara, is landmarked by legion-like assemblages of hero statues.
• Irrisen: Slavic folktales.

Etc...