Quick trivia for you. What, other than being fictional deities in Dungeons & Dragons, do Lolth, Tiamat, Vecna, Bahamut, and Asmodeus have in common?

Answer: None of them were deities when they were first introduced.

As D&D has progressed through the various editions, there’s been an ongoing tendency to transform important figures of the mythology/background into gods. And honestly, I think it’s an unfortunate tendency.

There are lots of gods in the various settings already. Many of them are interesting. We don’t need more of them–certainly not at the expense of existing characters. “Vecna, Most Dangerous Lich in History or Legend Who May or May Not Still Exist in Some Form” is, in my mind, far more interesting than “Vecna, Just Another Evil God.” Tiamat is far more interesting to me as the most bad-ass pinnacle of evil dragons, an ancient “mother of monsters” type akin to Typhon or Echidna from Greek myth. Lolth is much more interesting as a demon, with the drow a demon-worshiping race, than as a god. Etc.

It’s quite possible to have legendary creatures and villains who have just as much impact as the gods do on game history without insisting that they all be divine. I’d like to see not only new characters created in that vein, but I’d also like to see some or all of the aforementioned reverted. Variety–both in terms of backstory and in terms of the nature of these semi-mythical figures–is far more interesting, and makes for far story and adventure opportunities than Yet Another Evil Deity on the list.

Well. I am about to make a statement that I’m fairly positive none of you have ever been in the position to make.

I just wrenched my bad knee. (Not seriously, just somewhat painfully.) From slipping on a DVD.

In the shower. 

I admit I’m tempted to leave it without context, but I imagine most of you are wondering what the hell sort of narrative led to this even being possible. Well, my cat Leloo had a few vomiting episodes a few days ago. We later discovered that she’d yakked on a small stack of DVDs beside the TV. We figured the easiest way to clean them would be to let them soak for a while, and then rinse/scrub them off next time one of us was in the shower anyway.

And it was the easiest way. It worked beautifully. Up until the version of Death from the Final Destination movies took a test run at me.

Seriously, if I wrote this into a book, nobody would buy it…

So, I said I’d be doing a series of these. I figured I’d start small.

(Again, just to reiterate: These are not hints or clues as to what’s coming up in the next edition. I know no more than you do about it. I’m not involved in it. This is purely what I want to see, as a fan.)

One of the things I both loved and hated about 4E was the new cosmology. Taken by itself, I really like it. I think it’s a great planar structure for a D&D setting, and I had a lot of fun using it.

On the other hand, I hated the idea that every single setting had to be part of it.

Greyhawk? Forgotten Realms? Planescape? I want my Great Wheel (which I love just as much as I do the new cosmology, albeit for different reasons). Eberron? The unique Eberron cosmology in 3E was one of the coolest things about that setting; give it back!

I understand the marketing advantage of a single unified cosmology, in terms of keeping the audience for planar adventures/supplements as wide as possible. But I really feel like it does a disservice to the settings on a thematic and creative level–and since I’m just talking about I want, I get to throw out marketing considerations I don’t like.

So, what do I want to see, cosmology-wise, in the next edition? I want to see the core rules present the Great Wheel and the 4E cosmology. I want it to present them both as equally valid options (with emphasis on the fact that any other setup is also equally valid). If the goal of the next edition, as has been stated, is to be a toolbox, then that needs to include aspects of the example/default/implied setting. Don’t say “This is what the cosmology is.” Say “Here’s a couple of examples of what it could be.”

And then give Eberron back its own, separate cosmology, too.

Yes, this takes up extra word count. But it can also be used to serve another purpose: to illustrate the different ways of using alignment in D&D.

In 1E to 3E, alignment wasn’t just about how a character behaved. It was an actual universal force. Good, Evil, Law, Chaos–these were more than abstractions. There were planes and gods devoted to them. They could empower certain types of magic or damage. You could detect them with spells.

In 4E, with a very few exceptions, alignment has zero mechanical impact. You can’t detect if someone’s evil. A spell doesn’t do more damage against someone who’s good.

And once again, I want to see both options presented as equally valid. Sometimes I want to play in a setting where Good and Evil represent actually forces, clashing for the fate of the multiverse. In such settings, the Great Wheel–with its alignment-based planes–is a perfect fit. In other settings, I want to see alignment as purely a general indicator of behavior, with all sorts of shades of gray and no magic “Is he evil?” button. For those settings, something like the 4E cosmology might be a better fit.

The game needs to include and allow for both. Some people love alignment; some people hate it. It’s not so hardwired into the game that the choice must be binary, but it is important enough that people need advice and guidelines on both ways of running it.

It should be easy enough. Adventures and the like simply include a creature’s alignment, and how much that impacts the game is largely up to the DM. Maybe you need a few sentences of advice. “This adventure was written under the assumption that alignment is not detectable. If your campaign does allow the detection of alignments, we suggest you do X or Y to keep the plot from unraveling.” Again, a few extra words here and there–but extra words that would be worth it, I think, if the different ways of looking at alignment were both presented as equally valid, rather than one or the other being the assumed default.

If you’re a gamer of any sort, you’ve heard by now that WotC is working on a new edition of D&D intended to allow for a wide range of playstyles and experiences, and to appeal to fans of all editions. It’s a Herculean task, and I’ve no idea if they’ll be able to pull it off, but I appreciate the effort.

I’m going to start posting occasional “What I Want to See in D&D” blog entries. These aren’t hints or previews; I’m not involved in creating the new edition, and I have no more insight into what they’re doing than anyone else. And these aren’t things that I necessarily think would be popular, or would sell. This is purely about what I personally would do if I ruled the world, and if I had no real concerns.

Before I write up a new entry on something I want to see, however, I want to link you back to an ENWorld column I wrote almost a year ago. “Epic! Yes. Fail? Maybe” is a discussion on something where I think the game–in almost every edition–has fallen down a bit. Since this is something that I’d love to see fixed in the new edition, and since the idea of “changing play experience” is something I’ll be coming back to, I figured I’d start by pointing people back to that column.

The next entry in WiWtSiDnD will cover new stuff, but in the interim, I welcome thoughts, comments, and opinions on this column. (Feel free to comment here, as opposed to over there.)

I am not a sociologist.

Normally, this doesn’t really mean anything. I’m not a lot of things. I’m not a firefighter, or an accountant, or a Buddhist, or an anarchist, or a zucchini. Normally, these are all of about equal relevance.

In this case, however, the fact that I’m not a sociologist matters a little, since what I’m suggesting dips a toe into those waters. But I’m going to speculate anyway, and if I’m way off base, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

(It would, in fact, be the seventh. I have been wrong exactly seven times in my life. Or eight, if you count this assertion.)

Anyway, all of this is just me dithering aimlessly, so enough of that. It’s time to dither with purpose.

Trends and tastes in entertainment tend to rise and fall in cycles. Something’s popular for a while, falls out of popularity, the pendulum swings back and it comes back for a while, and so forth. Some details my change. Maybe sword-and-sorcery fantasy is popular during one surge, whereas sweeping epics are dominant in the next (Not that such things can’t both coexist, of course; I’m just talking trends being more or less common.) The details may change, but the core aspect of a genre/style/whatever—and the purpose it serves for its particular audience—returns.

My hypothesis, after giving it some thought, is this: The surge in popularity of steampunk over the last decade or so is an upswing in the same cycle that gave us the popularity of epic fantasy from the 70s to the 90s. Not similar. Not related. They are the same cycle and fill the same needs for the speculative fiction audience; only the cosmetic details have changed.

Yes, you now think I’m crazy. Steampunk and high fantasy are pretty far apart on the spec-fic continuum, and when most people do look for connections, they suggest a much closer link between steampunk and sci-fi than between it and fantasy (due, in part, to the reliance on technology).

And you’d be right, I am crazy. But not because of this.

(Before I go any further, let me be clear. I’m well aware of the fact that I’m oversimplifying the specific history/development of these genres. I know, for instance, that steampunk went through a number of iterations–some of which were a lot more “punk” and a lot less “steam”–than where it is now. But that’s not the point. My point is in discussing broad trends, and the genres as they finally wound up being defined, not the specific individual developmental steps they took to get there.)

Steampunk very strongly resembles the sci-fi of the Victorian age, yes. And I’d hazard a guess that many fans and writers of steampunk think of it as “retro-future sci-fi.” But again, those are the trappings, not the soul.

Let’s look at the core of epic fantasy. We have a historical period from the distant past on which the genre’s settings are based. In real-world history, that period—the Dark and Middle Ages—was a horrible time. It was violent, filthy, diseased, unenlightened, rife with social inequality. But epic fantasy romanticizes most of that away. Oh, those aspects still exist, but they’re present primarily to contract the good guys from the bad, or to give the heroes something to fight against. They certainly don’t exist as an ingrained, inextricable, and dominant part of daily life for our noble heroes.

To said romanticized Medieval-like setting, epic fantasy adds the existence of magic. The specific limits or cosmetics of said magics vary from fantasy to fantasy, but it’s always there. It builds an extra layer of wonder into the “cleaned up” period, adding a sense of lost knowledge and lost secrets that humanity can no longer access. It transforms what was, in reality, a pretty terrible time into an escape from the modern world—a place with its own dangers, absolutely, but where heroic deeds can change civilization and where the daily life of our heroes, at least when they aren’t engaged in such deeds, are much simpler than the lives we know.

Now, let’s look at the core of steampunk.

Uh-oh. See where I’m going with this?

The Industrial Revolution and the Victorian Age weren’t fun. They weren’t romantic, or glorious, or wondrous—at least not for the bulk of the citizens of Western civilization. It was rife with poverty, starvation, illness, and social injustice on the part of the poor; and militant colonialism and disregard for human welfare on the part of the powerful.

Speculative fiction has done the exact same thing: Taken a relatively unpleasant historical period and romanticized it, emphasizing the positive aspects and minimizing the negative. Once again, the period in question has become an escape—not a perfect one, by any means, but one of relative simplicity—from the modern world.

But there’s no magic, right? (Except for those few steampunk stories that deliberately combine steampunk and fantasy, but that’s the exception, not the rule.) So doesn’t that cause the theory to break down?

No, because there is magic in steampunk. We don’t call it magic, and it doesn’t look like magic. But it is. We call it clockwork. We call it steam power. We call it alchemy. But we’re still talking about wonders, powers, and effects that are absolutely impossible by any real-world technology. And I don’t just mean technology of the time; if that were the case, we’d be talking about a stronger resemblance to sci-fi. But much of steampunk technology is simply impossible by the use of technology, period. Mechanics and chemistry simply do not work that way. We go with it, because it’s part of the genre, and it’s easy to suspend disbelief because of the scientific trappings. In terms of the purposes it serves in the story, and in the setting, however, it’s exactly the same element as magic in epic fantasy.

The two peaks of this cycle developed in the same fashion. I’m not going as far back as mythology or any of that, because ultimately almost all storytelling can be traced to that. I’m talking about more modern influences.

In a modern sense, then, epic fantasy grew out of the early 1900s. The pulp sword-and-sorcery of Howard, Smith, etc. was part of that development. No, Tolkien and the other early epic fantasy writers likely weren’t influenced much, if at all, by Howard and that crowd. But I do believe that the existence of the earlier form of fantasy helped prime the audience to accept epic fantasy later on.) The early experiences and ideas of Tolkien, dating back to the first World War, fed into it as well. While there were a few earlier fantasies that are epic in nature, the formal birth of the epic fantasy traces to The Lord of the Rings, published in the 50s. (Yes, The Hobbit came first, but it was LotR that really defined and shaped the sub-genre.)

Epic fantasy slowly ramped up for about two decades, and then pretty much exploded in the 70s. By the 80s, epic fantasy was a juggernaut. Massive numbers of best-sellers, and the majority of the seminal epic series, come from that time. (The Riftwar, the Belgariad, Dragonlance, just to name a few.) I’m not getting into whether or not the epic fantasies of this time were the best, and of course they’re not the first, but they were certainly among the most influential.

Said dominance began to fade a bit in the 90s, as other sorts of spec-fic—fantasy and otherwise—took its place. Today, epic fantasy is certainly still going—witness George Martin—but without nearly the strength or popularity it had thirty years ago.

Okay, how about steampunk? Obviously, the aesthetic is drawn, in part, from the writing of Victorian-era authors. But that alone doesn’t define the genre. A few early works that can reasonably be considered precursors to steampunk came out in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. These would be analogous to the pre-Tolkien fantasies mentioned above. The genre was named in the early 80s, and began to really flourish in the late 80s and early 90s (with, just for instance, The Difference Engine). This, under my suggested framework, would be the equivalent of the publication of Lord of the Rings and the works immediately following.

And just as it took epic fantasy a couple of decades to ramp up to its peak of popularity from its “formal” birth, if we jump ahead twenty years from the early 80s, we find ourselves early in the twenty-first century where—oh, look, steampunk begins to really catch on!

I think that one could even argue—though I admit that this particular point may be a stretch—that both genres go back about as far from their originating points, in terms of cultural development, as one another. Here’s what I mean by that: Fantasy that first began to really blossom in the 50s looks back on the Dark/Middle ages, while steampunk, which really blossomed in the last decade, looks back to the 19th century. Obviously, in terms of elapsed time, these are very different durations; there’s much longer between the Middle Ages and the 20th century than between the Industrial Revolution and the 21st.

But culturally and technologically, that’s not as true. The past hundred years have seen a geometric acceleration in the advancement of technology and certain cultural ideas. I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to suggest that the degree of technological/cultural change between the Middle Ages and the first World War is compatible with the degree of technological/cultural between the Industrial Revolution and now. Again, however, I’m not a sociologist, and this particular argument requires knowledge greater than mine to support. I’m just throwing it out there because it’s interesting, and I think it’s accurate.

Leaving aside more questionable sociological assertions, the two sub-genres even share an element of play in the growth of their popularity. For epic fantasy, it was Dungeons & Dragons. That game began as a niche-within-a-niche, often looked at askance even by other fans of fantasy—to say nothing of people outside the audience—which managed to help spread the influence of its inspirational sources as it gained wider acceptance.

(And yes, the original D&D was inspired less by epic fantasy such as Tolkien than by grimmer fare such as Elric, but it very swiftly shifted to a primarily epic identity.)

Steampunk has no widespread game through which it spread. (Although several steampunk role-playing games, such as Space: 1889, do exist, the lot of them together never came anywhere near to even a fraction of D&D’s popularity.) What steampunk does have, however, is cosplay. It has become its own fashion, with gatherings, events, conventions, and even establishments devoted to it. It may involve costumes and large gatherings rather than small groups of friends rolling dice, but in the end, it’s all role-play.

What’s the point to all this? Well, mostly I just find it an engrossing topic to explore. I’m not claiming that steampunk and fantasy share the exact same influences by any means; that’d be foolish. I just think it’s a fascinating notion that epic fantasy and steampunk are basically the same genre trend in different clothes; that they developed the same way, and fill the same cultural niche, because they are, at their core, two manifestations of the same thing.

Several recent online articles and conversations have once again got people buzzing about the various editions of D&D, where they went right, where they went wrong (more, in most conversations, the latter than the former), and where they need to go from here.

The problem, ultimately, is that–at least as I see it–tabletop RPGs as a game are in diametric conflict with tabletop RPGs as a business.

Here’s what I mean. No single game is going to satisfy everyone; that’s simply a given. Some player prefer a vast array of strict, specific rules, with every possible corner case or power having its own distinct mechanics. Some players prefer an almost completely freeform game, where the rules are absolutely minimalist and the lion’s share of the power resides in the DM/GM/Storyteller/Referee/whatever. Most players fall somewhere on the continuum between the two extremes.

So, essentially, if you want to appeal to the widest number of players, you have three basic options.

1) Create a game that’s so flexible and so chock full of optional rules and systems that it is, in essence, multiple games under the same umbrella title. The problem there is that your product identity becomes diluted, and you’re printing books that you know are only going to be purchased by a specific minority niche of your audience.

2) Take it a step further and literally publish multiple games (such as the old divide between Basic D&D and Advanced D&D). Except that, once again, you’re splitting resources between two markets that only marginally overlap. Not cost-effective.

3) You create a game with the broadest and most flexible rules possible. It has hard systems in place, and specific rules, but they’re very general in nature. Rather than provide rules for 30 different sorts of acrobatic stunts, you provide a single basic type of roll for such things, designed so that it’s easily extrapolated to more specific uses.

I’m personally a fan of the last option. I want a game–a Dungeons & Dragons–in which the rules are clear, easy to build on, easy to extrapolate, but very broad and flexible in scope. I won’t claim to know what a “majority” of fans want, but I do know that I’m not alone in that desire. And while it won’t please everyone, I believe it captures a wider swathe of the spectrum than either of the two extremes (rules-light and rules-heavy).

But here’s where we run into problems. RPGs live and die on subsidiary sales. If you’re the company producing them, you don’t want people to just buy the core book (or the core three books, in the case of most editions of D&D), and be able to extrapolate everything else they’ll ever need. You want people buying supplements.

You can publish adventures, but those only appeal to a small portion of the market–people who are not only running games, as opposed to playing in them, but who don’t prefer creating their own adventures. Campaign settings run into the same problem.

So what sorts of supplements can you publish that’ll appeal to the most people? Books with new mechanical options. New powers. New classes. New races. New sub-systems.

And that’s fine, to a point. But…

A) If the core rules are too easily extrapolated beyond their initial scope, people don’t need to buy new mechanics. They can make them up easily, or even on the fly.

B) The more rules you put out, the more you restrict existing rules. If, for instance, you put out a sub-system focused on acrobatic stunts in combat, then the implication becomes that such stunts cannot be performed–or at least not well–without that sub-system. Suddenly, the more general systems from the core rules cannot accomplish what, until the sub-system was released, people were using them to accomplish. (Or at least, that’ll be the perception.)

Bottom line, flexibility and openness is best for game play; but specificity and granularity are better for a publisher.

The solution? I have no idea. If I did, I’d be selling it to WotC and/or Paizo in exchange for stock and a wad of cash. But I think that, until and unless we can solve that basic conflict at the core of it all, we’re going to continue to see edition wars, splintered audiences, and confusion moving forward.

A few days ago, I finished reading a novel.

(Ooh! Alert the media!)

(Shut up. I haven’t gotten to the point, yet.)

I’m not going to identify the novel or the author. What I will say is that this was a self-published novel on Kindle, written by someone who has published multiple books with major publishers in the past, and whose past books I very much enjoyed.

And I really enjoyed this book. It is, in fact, one of his best. In terms of actual content, anyway.

Formatting-wise, though? Error-wise? A disaster of brobdingnagian proportions.

Entire paragraphs were improperly centered/indented, on an average of more often than once every ten pages. (Well, “screens.”) Typos–of either the “this is spelled right but it’s the wrong word” or of the “there’s a word obviously missing here”–were as copious as gratuitous topless shots in a horror movie remake.

And this is not normal for the author in question, based on his past works. All I can figure is that, since the book was self-published, he didn’t employ an editor.

I’m sorry, guys, but that is not acceptable. Sure, things like typos and formatting don’t matter to a lot of readers–but to a lot of us, they do. No, this one badly edited book won’t keep me from buying future books of his. But if the trend continues? Yeah, it could eventually reach the point where I’d stop.

Self-publishing is in a transition period right now. It’s becoming ever more common. Lots of professional writers are choosing to go that route. But it’s still also looked down upon by a large portion of the market.

If self-publishers want that to stop, if they want the same respect as authors who go through a publisher, they must–must–come across as just as professional. And that means that a self-published novel must go through all the same quality assurance steps as traditionally published novels.

Not “some.” All.

You need editors. Yes, plural. A content editor and a proofreader/copy editor. They’re not the same thing. You need professional cover art. You need decent layout. And yes, that means sinking some funds into the book and paying for all of this.

I don’t care if you’ve been writing for 50 years. I don’t care if you’re a prodigy. I don’t care if you’re a Rowling, or a Martin, or a King. I don’t care if you’re Tolkien or Howard returned from the grave. (Well, actually, I do–a lot–but for different reasons.) No matter who you are, you are not an exception.

Your work needs editing. Period. So does mine. So does everyone else’s. It’s just part of the process, and it’s neither optional nor negotiable.

You want to be a pro? You want people to treat you as a pro, and the burgeoning field of modern self-publishing as a professional one? Act it. Be meticulous. Be willing to shell out some dollars at the start. And get it right.

So, George and I are leaving Kerby Lane Cafe after a late dinner. We get to her car, and George presses the button on the remote.

The car fails to respond.

The battery in the remote’s working; the little light blinks when you push the button. The alarm is working; the light inside the car is blinking. They’ve simply stopped communicating.

Sure, we can just unlock the door with the key–but the remote is the only way to disarm the alarm.

So, grumbling, we go back inside and call AAA. After a while, the guy shows up.

After futzing with it for a while (and deafening us with the alarm), all he can do is disable the alarm completely. Okay, fine. We’ll do without it for a while. It takes him a while to find the right fuse.

He pulls it out and gives it to George. He opens and closes the door multiple times, locks and unlocks it multiple times, to make sure the alarm is well and truly off. It is.

He starts to leave, we get in the car, George starts the ignition. The alarm goes off.

We turn the car off. He backs his truck back up to come look. George starts the ignition, so he can see that the alarm is still going off when we start the car.

Except this time, the alarm doesn’t go off.

Hovering in a cloud of “What the hell?” George and I drive home. We get out of the car. We close the door.

We hear the beep of the alarm arming itself.

The plan is for George to go straight to Best Buy (their auto electronics department) in the morning. In the interim, the questions are:

A) What happened to the alarm?

B) What the hell fuse did the guy pull out?!?! O.o

I mean, it did stop the alarm from going off. Except for when it didn’t. At this point, our best theory is that the damn thing is healing…

Rumor after rumor suggests that Khan will be the villain of the next Star Trek movie.

DO. NOT. WANT.

Star Trek II is still the strongest of the original series of movies. There’s zero reason to revisit it. More to the point, the entire advantage of this new “alternate timeline” is so that we can see new stories with these new actors playing the original cast. That’s new stories. What’s the point of doing this if you’re just going to retell the same stories we’ve already seen, just with a few different twists?

…one of the most important events in my life occurred.

This may come as a surprise, since I was still several months away from being born on this day thirty-eight years ago. But then, we’re married and this is a community property state, so half of my life is hers, and half of her life is mine.

Happy birthday, George. I love you.