In Which I Tackle The Subject of Activism

Nation, you know I don't like social activism, and you know I do a crappy Stephen Colbert, especially in text where you can't even hear my lame attempt at a vocal impersonation. It's not that I'm necessarily opposed to the ideas forwarded by activists, it's more that I find most activism to be short-sighted and reactionary rather than constructive.

I'm not swayed by large groups of people making a public display of anger; I am frightened and disgusted. This applies as much to armed-to-the-teeth Tea Partiers as it does to people marching for amnesty for illegal immigrants. Well, maybe that's not true. The Tea Partiers who carry guns around in public *really* frighten me. At any rate, large groups of people minimizing a complex issue down to a single shouted, repeated slogan fucking scare me, so much so that I honestly can't even register their message most of the time. The diffusion of individual consciousness and responsibility and even identity into a mob scares me more than anything else. ANYTHING ELSE. Which is not to say that, given our heads, I think we tend to use them very wisely all that often. But an emotionally-charged humanity given license by what sociologists call "diffusion of responsibility" to act in ways that, individually, they never could? No thank you. No thank you at all. All ad Hitlerium fallacies aside, this is the primary component of Nazism, people, and of all other large-scale evils ever perpetrated in the course of human events. And of sports spectatorship, which also causes me to cringe and recoil in horror.

(I am so frightened by this tendency to de-individualization, which also causes those within the mob to de-individualize those *outside* of their group into conveniently targeted groups, that a major component of my life's work is striking back against it, and individualizing those persons who are all too often seen only as members of antagonistic "other" groups or urging conscience to those within a de-individualized group. This drive towards individualization is at the core of a good deal of my writing. I believe, rightly or wrongly but of course I think it's rightly otherwise I wouldn't think this, that the acceptance of individual responsibility and the refusal to generalize outgroups into one-note "others" are the solutions to a great many of the problems that we have created for ourselves.).

So, in order for me to be swayed, I need to be presented with a careful, rational argument replete with evidence and largely free of ad hominem demonizations or blatant emotional appeals. I'm still waiting for such an argument that will win me over to a free market approach to economics--I believe such an argument is possible in theory, although I definitely have yet to see it in practice. The day a campus evangelist can provide me with such an argument is the day I commit to Christianity (or Hare Krishnism, as the case may be). But I'm not holding my breath.

Let's be honest, these kinds of arguments are pretty hard to come by most of the time, especially in the public arena, especially in an age where media attention is all and stunts and stagecraft trump careful and considerate every time.

Which is why I was so incredibly charmed by this bridge:
http://www.bladediary.com/astoria-scum-river-bridge/
Make sure you click through to get the other photo blogs to be able to read the full inscription on the plaque and the local government's response.

Now this bridge, to me, is an activist gesture I can get behind one-hundred percent. I might even hyperbolically inflate that number over one-hundred, even though I know that such makes no mathematical sense, for the purposes of dramatic emphasis. For shits and giggles, let's say I can get behind this gesture one-hundred and *seventeen* percent, with the implication that this bridge mobilizes seventeen percent of me that I didn't even know I had or that is otherwise normally unavailable to me and puts that seventeen percent into effect.

Permit me to break down for you why it is that I think this bridge is awesome.

1. It is Useful: The bridge addresses a manifest public need, albeit a relatively small one, and offers a resolution for that need. Stepping in the Scum River was probably an inconvenience at best, slightly hazardous at worst when there were icy conditions. The consequences of not addressing this need were probably negligible in absolute terms--which is most likely why the local government never felt compelled to do anything about it, assuming it was even aware of the problem. Nathless, the presence of the bridge is of benefit to all who might walk that way, making the route safer and more pleasant. If the bridge is a gesture of protest designed to catalyze action more than be a solution in itself, it is still, at present, an improvement over what had existed previously.

2. It is Positive: The bridge does not fling blame. The bridge does not go on the attack. The bridge does not heap odium upon those whose oversights and failures have generated the Scum River problem in the first place. Instead, the bridge just works to resolve the issue. Of course, there is the implied critique of the city government and the corporation (Amtrak) for not being responsive to the needs of the public, but the critique is left at its implication. By taking this approach, the bridge has actually manged to engage with an individual in power, earning "a commendation...[and] a pledge to work with Amtrak to re-route Astoria Scum River off the sidewalk" from a city council member. Instead of causing those at fault to become defensive, the bridge inspires those persons to positive action.

3. It is Free: The bridge is made out of refuse, constructed at no cost to taxpayers or to anybody else, even its creators. One of the awfulest things about living in a capitalist society that inculcates one with the belief that everything has its price is the corresponding tendency to believe that that which has no monetary value is that which has no worth. We feel disempowered to deal with problems on account of the solutions being cost-prohibitive. Or, Hell, I don't know if I'm speaking for anybody else here, but I know I sure as Hell feel that way about a lot of things. This bridge, though, shows that positive outcomes are possible with the use of found materials and individual effort. It is a triumph of personal creativity over a depersonalized and exclusivistic economy. This is, again, a potent critique of those powers with the resources to do something in the traditional, cost-intensive capitalistic mode about the problem but that opted to do nothing.

And, clearly, like any good protest these days, it is media savvy. I think Boing-Boing has picked up on it now. But whatever. I couldn't care less about that crap. Even if the city councilman hadn't been guilted (maybe inspired?) into responding to it, it would still be sufficient in itself, exclusive of any external attention.

Now, just about the only *possible* criticism I can conceive of against this bridge is that, being constructed by two individuals who assumingly are not licensed contractors, the bridge is not built in accordance with state and local safety codes. The _O.C. Register_ loves to cite such codes as a corrupt Statist conspiracy to keep the working man down and to keep slick cronyism in place, but I think they're a good portion of the reason why the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake killed about 2,500 people and the 1989 Bay Area Earthquake killed only 57. Oh, I know there was a difference in magnitude and in distance from the epicenters for the two quakes. But the quake that struck Haiti a couple of weeks ago was about the same size as the Bay Area Quake, and that one caused 200,000 fatalities...I think that this ends up being a pretty convincing argument in favor of rigorously engineered construction. If the artists had waited for a bridge to be constructed in accordance with code, though, they and everybody else who walked that way would still be waiting for any kind of solution to the problem. For the end user, the fact that this bridge wasn't pumped out be a large, faceless organization and was instead built by individuals would be enough for my own mother, who literally lives in a constant fantasy of nearly everything that is not compulsory being prohibited by law, to avoid the bridge. I don't know how many people would share her thoroughly oppressed opinion. Too, there is the fact that the bridge has steps rather than ramps, which makes it wheelchair inaccessible. I expect that wouldn't have happened if the bridge had been built according to code.

But all of this is circumvented if one simply walks (or wheels) around the bridge. And then one is in exactly the same situation one was in before the installation of the bridge--i.e., walking through iced-over scum. Participation in the bridge is non-compulsory. One loses nothing by the bridge being there except for perhaps half a second of effort required to step slightly to the side, or some amount of resentment if one is in a wheelchair and cannot enjoy this amenity. But I'd hope that people in wheelchairs wouldn't be too bitter against the bridge for all that, and would look forward to the now-hopefully-imminent day when Amtrak and the city of New York effect a permanent solution to Scum River.

To sum up, if more gestures of protest were like this bridge, I would be a fan of more gestures of protest. I wouldn't expect everybody who has to confront some kind of public problem to deal with that problem with this same level of creativity, unambiguous and (relatively) non-exclusive utility, and freedom from resentment and malice. I think it's hard to channel these qualities, especially when the public problems start to pile up or are more life-threatening in nature, and especially when we get into groups, which necessarily dampen these qualities. Just the same, I think this bridge provides a model for positive and meaningful activism that could serve as a good example for us all when we think about how we are going to interact with the world beyond our doorsteps.

Erotic Fail

I was walking away from a party with this woman I've known for some time now and whom I consider to be reasonably attractive, physically and mentally (and if you think I'm going to tell you her name, gentle reader, I am afraid you are gravely mistaken). We walked into this large sitting room, with a leather couch on side of the room and picture windows that admitted a view of the sun setting over the harbor on the other. The dissipating sun infused the water with orange light and silhouetted the masts of the yachts.

We sat on the couch, I in the middle and she at my left side. We smiled at each other. Both of us were feeling good. The small contacts between our bodies were electric hot. I felt a flutter of emotions in my chest. One these emotions was guilt at cheating on my girlfriend, but that got drowned out by a rush of other feelings.

Grinning, she knelt on the couch and turned her backside towards me. She hiked up her pleated black skirt, exposing her well-shaped ass and a blue thong. She told me to kiss her butt, which I did, happily and repeatedly. Things progressed from there, with us shedding our clothing and playing with each other and feeling very good.

(For the record, gentle reader, I will tell you that this is quite honestly how I prefer my sex: friendly and happy and good-natured. Lame, I know. I should probably, for dramatic effect, favor some sort of violent fetish or sleazy kink, but that's just not how I roll. With all the other things I could choose to focus on, I find nothing so erotic as a woman's broad and genuine smile, though a playful sly smirk is quite good, too.).

After an extended period of mutually enjoyable foreplay, she was lying nude under me as I knelt over her with only my underwear remaining on. I could feel the warmth emanating from her sex. Our bodies were moving towards each other, independent of any thought. She told me to take off my underwear, which I did. Quickly. I turned back to her, eager and ready. God, was I ready.

And then my mom walked into the room. Adam and Eve ashamed all over again, we quickly fell back on the couch and pulled a comforter up over our nakedness (Where did this comforter come from?). My mother seemed oblivious to our in flagrante delicto condition. She chattered on at me, as she is wont to do. I think I managed to mumble out some curt responses intended to make her go away, which she did not.

The woman giggled next to me. I gave her a smile that was the barest cover for one of the most colossal disappointments in living memory.

And then, in that most awful and inexcusably cliche of endings, I woke up.

Now, gentle reader, you must understand that my usual excursions into dreamland involve people hacking off my toes with axes, or my father crouching over me and eating the heart out of my body with my blood running down his jaws. A disproportionate number of these dreams leave me mutilated or violently murdered, which leaves me bolting up at night, heart hammering and out of breath and covered in sweat. The last erotic dream I can remember having had me watching as grotesquely rotted corpse-women proceeded to have lesbian sex with each other. So to have an honest-to-goodness wish fulfillment dream is damn rare for me. And I finally get one, and what happens? My mom bursts into the room. I think I would've preferred another screaming nightmare.

My unconscious hates me. Or maybe my unconscious is very committed to fidelity and honesty in relationships, in which case I think there are far superior ways in which it might make its argument that don't involve offering me the perfect temptation and then thwarting my desires by means of the most embarrassing of all possible extrinsic intrusions. Which is all dumb anyway, because I'm quite certain that my conscious mind would never allow me to be in such a situation in the first place, circumstances permitting, which I don't think they would ever be. Or maybe my id is the bitch of my superego, even in dreams.

I guess I should just be happy that this woman didn't turn into a feculent living corpse or a twisted sadistic demoness while I was inside of her, as dream women have done to me in the past.

I'm going to go with the conclusion that my unconscious hates me. Really, really hates me.

In Which I Get Het Up

My roommate is moving to North Carolina. He says there's not much to do in his new town. I suggested he learn to fish, which of course he refused: he's extremely averse to animal cruelty, and has told me on multiple occasions that he would defend his pets with physical violence against anybody who would maltreat them. He also, with much attendant stink and greasy mess, cooks fish every week in the skillet.

I have a lot of contempt for this particular kind of hypocritical cowardice, which I find to be so very common. Few things bother me so much as that person who says "I don't want to hear about it--I'd prefer to stay ignorant [as to the actual ramifications of my actions]." If people make the decision to eat flesh, they shouldn't live in denial as to the costs and consequences of that decision. The fantasy that the processed product wrapped in hygienic plastic and placed on a Styrofoam tray--all of which is calculated to encourage this distance from the actual acts of killing and butchering--can somehow be divorced from the suffering of a living creature is self-serving and delusional.

My roommate takes a womanish approach to violence towards animals, in that he's the only man I've known to employ this particular disassociation. I've observed it in many women, though, who express great fondness for animals--even and sometimes especially chickens, cows, and pigs--and who are repulsed by the concept of killing animals but who nevertheless eat meat. The more common masculine approach that I've observed is to revel in the irony of eating flesh--to acknowledge that there is pain involved, but to laugh it off. This defense comes closer to admitting to the reality that eating meat engenders pain, but then retreats all the farther from that reality for it.

I believe I have heard Ted Nugent posit that all people should be compelled to kill and butcher an animal, so as to be aware of the process. God help me, but I think I agree with him. Not in any other regard, mind you, but I do think it is perverse and quite possibly psychotic for people to claim to love and empathize with animals one minute and sink their teeth into a steak the next.

For, in the end, I have a lot of contempt for a civilization that esteems it progress that the average individual be removed from violence, but that perpetrates violence on a scale that beggars the efforts of all previous civilizations, and is able to effect this violence largely by keeping it out of sight and out of mind.
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." It's so damn true.

And I wonder if we had to kill and skin and gut and butcher our own meat if we would opt to eat so very much as we do. (Personally, I'd have zero problems killing and gutting an animal--I'm a vegetarian for other reasons, in that I could not accept the environmental costs of the production of meat). I'm reminded of 9/11, in which so many people were shocked that that kind of violence could be visited upon American soil, as if Americans hadn't been going into other countries and taking their resources without effecting an equitable distribution of compensation and flooding them with an American material culture to supplant their own and as if these actions would not make those people really mad at us. But if we looked really long and hard at where and how we got our oil and how we dealt with the Arab world, I don't think it would've come as much of a surprise, and I wonder if we'd allowed ourselves to contemplate the real costs of our energy in a serious way if we might not have altered our course prior to 9/11. Just as if I wonder if we were to throw out the laptops that allow us to push a button that launches a cruise missile or an unmanned drone to blow up a target fifty miles away if we'd have as much war as we do now.

We look at immediate, intimate, interpersonal violence and say it is diseased and dangerous. I look at dispassionate, depersonalized, formatted violence and say it is far more so. We outsource and abstract the actual costs of things, but how long can such a system persist that is so ignorant of the sources of its own success? And even if it could persist into perpetuity, what would be the real cost, the real ethical and human cost, of this denial of cost? And if we were to examine the consequences of our actions and choose to go on in the same old way, would we not then be callous? Yes--but give me an honest, callous cruelty over a cruelty that affects the image of innocence any day.

Thoughs on the Holiday Special

“But Grandpa Itchy, you're a Wookie! Why, when given the option to visualize any fantasy you want, are you dreaming about a human female?”
“Hush, Grandson Lumpy. You'll understand when you're older.”
“But Grandpa Itchy, what's up with your ridiculous underbite?”
“Hush, Grandson Lumpy. You'll understand when you're older.”
“But Grandpa Itchy, why do we have to dress up in red robes and walk into the sun? And why is our most sacred Wookie Life Day ceremony hijacked by a bunch of humans, including a singing Princess Leia? And why are our names so stupid? And why do we have five image projectors in our living room? And why is my attention span so short that I can watch a cartoon and be happy when there are Storm Troopers invading my house and I don't know if my father is alive or dead? And why do we grunt and growl at each other for minutes a stretch with no subtitles? And why does an 'unedited' video from Tatooine have cuts and changes in camera angles, and why would the Empire broadcast some lame-ass cabaret song that rhymes 'rhyme' with 'time' and that is critical of the Empire in an attempt to boost morale? And why would anybody think that Harvey Korman's physical comedy is funny?"
“Hush, Grandson Lumpy. You'll understand when you're older. Or maybe you won't.”
“But Grandpa Itchy, why does participating in our wookie lifeday ceremony make me want to kill myself?”
“Hush, Grandson Lumpy. Just hush. Eat your Wookie-Ookies.”

Duerminatrix

She slept in a nest of loaded guns: sawed-down shotguns with sanded-down triggers. The walnut stocks were stacked and threaded thickly together. Each night she would insinuate herself, at the rate of one inch of flesh per minute, into the tangle of wood and high-speed steel, cobalt steel, Parkerized steel, and bluing finish. And, after an hour of careful contortion, she would sleep naked among the a-wake triggers, neither shifting nor tossing nor deeply breathing nor dreaming for fear that she would jostle the guns in the slightest.
I questioned her, asked why she did not sleep in a bed of synthetics and feathers or at the very least on the naked floor. She stared at me quizzically, jaw agape and teeth naked. She slept in a bed of loaded guns; it had never occurred to her to do other.

A Fire on One End and a Fool on T'other

It's been twenty-one days since I last smoked a cigarette. This is less of an accomplishment than it might sound; it's relatively easy for me to go a month or more without smoking. I was up to five or six weeks back in February before I un-quit again. I'm sure there have been spaces of six months or a year since that I have gone without smoking. Everything in moderation, including moderation itself; I quit smoking, and then I quit quitting.

It's not as if I can't see the benefits of being a non-smoker. When I smoke, I tend to be more nervous. Smoking raises my blood pressure, which is already too high as it is. When I smoke, there is this feathery feeling in my lungs that comes whenever I breathe hard, and while I know it's not lung cancer, it's always difficult to convince myself that it's not. Concordant with this is my even-more reduced capacity for exercise such that I am incapable of walking up a single hill without wheezing. And I swear, although I've never heard of this being a normal side-effect of smoking, that smoking contributes to my migraine headaches. I bet I could accept all the other consequences, aside from this one, because if smoking does cause me to have headaches--and it definitely seems to me that I get a lot more migraines when I smoke than when I don't--it would be downright idiotic for me to voluntarily inflict that kind of torment on myself.

But it's not as if I can't see the benefits of being a non-non-smoker, either. I don't get pronounced withdrawal symptoms when I don't smoke. Even when I do smoke, I rarely have more than three to five cigarettes a day, which doesn't seem to be enough to cause me to physically addicted to nicotine. No; the withdrawal is mental more than anything else. When I smoke, I have a need that must be satisfied every few hours. I can satisfy that need, and then I'm good for a while again. I think it's the regularity and ease of satisfaction of this need that attracts me most to smoking--I should wish that all of my needs should be so scheduled and so simply met. And when meeting this one need, it's possible to ignore other needs--like my needs for companionship, comfort, reassurance, and touch. Those things, in my experience, are very hard to get. A pack of my preferred brand of cigarettes, on the other hand, is available at most gas stations and grocery stores for about five dollars.

Given my very moderate tobacco use, and given that brief, dizzying rush of stimulants to the brain that allows me to forget, for thirty seconds, whatever else might be bothering me, it's been difficult for me to convince myself that smoking is really harmful to me. I *know* that it is, but it's difficult to do the assessment and find that smoking is more of a drawback than a benefit.

Do you know, gentle reader, what the best part of quitting smoking is? It is, most assuredly, that first cigarette after you unquit again. True, the experience is tainted by guilt, but the physiological sensation of those pathways in the brain that have gone extinct coming crackling back to life in a minute of intense sensation not unlike orgasm--it almost makes it worth it. Repetition deadens the sensation as the brain becomes accustomed to nicotene, but if one can leave off the chase for the dragon for a few days or a week or a month or a year and then resume the chase, it's as if you've got the dragon by the tail all over again. After a day or three of repeated exposure, though, the experience becomes mere mechanics--no real rush, just a feeling of irritability and dullness without the drug.

And that small, stupid, completely legal high is only a single smoke away. And it's sad that'd I'd throw away three weeks of sobriety--or better to call it three weeks of relative calm, with clothes that did not stink and a tongue that did not taste of tar and stale ash--for a minute of craving satisfied. But I would.

I guess I'm waiting for some definitive, conclusive experience to forever purge me of the desire to smoke--because that desire still persists, even if I do my best to deny it satiety. I don't know if it's possible to hit that fabled "rock bottom" with respect to cigarettes, though. In faith, there have been moments when I felt the muscles in my neck constrict and red pain seared through my skull like some breed of contained organic lightning, and in these moments I swore "Never again." There have been a number of such moments. And, with the possible exception of the most recent iteration, I have broken that vow every time. I am apparently very bad at being operantly conditioned. (It should be noted, though, that it only required three or four such comparable incidents to forever purge me of the desire for being very drunk). Will this time be the last time I need to quit? Hell if I know. I think maybe keeping track of the individual days as they pass by might be helpful; it's harder to throw away twenty-one days of progress than it is to throw away some while of progress, and it's easier to congratulate oneself on resisting that temptation that comes multiple times a day if one reminds oneself that one has been clean for twenty-one days, rather than clean for a good while now. Ticking off that calendar in my head does seem to have both a positive and negative reinforcing effect.

Nietzsche says something about resisting temptation that I wish I could find now, but I can't. But I remember the essence of the quote being something like "There are two ways to conquer temtpation: the first is through regular indulgence, and the second is through surfeit." Oh, Hell, I don't know if Neitzsche said that, but it sounds like him. Anyway. I wonder if the means for conquering my addiction to smoking would not be to smoke so much as to make myself so absolutely sick that I can never ever want to smoke again, or to accept that occasional indulgences are less costly than the stress of spending a significant portion of my day thinking about not smoking. Or else, if there is some switch I switch I can find and then flick that will make me want to smoke no more forever. Until then, instead of enjoying the satiety of a cigarette, I content myself with the much colder comfort that it's been twenty-one days since I last lit up.

Tomorrow will be twenty-two.

The Dungeon Master's Manifesto

I've been playing role-playing games for a number of years now. I think it's safe to say that a majority of the difficulties I've encountered in the course of my RPG career have not been with the game systems themselves, but with the other people playing them. That pen and paper RPGs are a social activity is one of their primary draws, insofar as I am concerned, but it's also one of their primary drawbacks, because it's hard to deal with other people sometimes.

It is sufficiently difficult to gather a group of people to want the same thing--like, say, participation in a D&D campaign. It can be nearly impossible to get a group of people who all want the same thing at the same time and for the same reasons. One person wants to be the center of an elaborate interpersonal drama, another person wants to have the most powerful character he can possibly have, another person wants to crack jokes and pull pranks, another person wants the freedom to do whatever he wants, another person wants to feel important and responsible within the structures of the game world, and so on. It is possible to accommodate all of these desires within the medium of a D&D game. It's possible, but it's not always easy, and it's certainly not possible to accommodate all of the differing desires of each of the players at all times.

Let me take it out of the RPG ghetto. Gentle reader, have you ever seen a creative writing workshop? In one of these things, you'd think that all of the persons involved would have a similar frame of reference. Here are people who are spending time and money in the pursuit of an activity that the vast majority of humanity doesn't give half a shit about. Here are people who have taken time away from reality television and Twitter and Internet porn to write stories--how bizarre is that! You'd think, then, that these people would be very supportive and understanding, and would be in agreement as often as not. You'd think that, gentle reader, but then you'd be mistaken. Because creative writing workshops are fractious things. I won't say that friendliness and supportiveness and solidarity and encouragement are impossible in such a setting. Certainly not. But equally possible are rivalries, insoluble debates over subjective points of style, and competing and conflicting notions as to what "reality" or "realistic human behavior" are or are not. Ask twenty writers what "literature" is, and you're likely to get twenty different answers.

Okay, creative writing workshops are kind of a ghetto, too. So let's put this in an even better and broader context. You have a group of friends, right? These are people you like and with whom you get along, and you have already made the effort to befriend them out of all the other people in the world whom you could potentially befriend. How many of those friends are going to want to go and see a particular movie with you? And if you do find some other friends to see that movie, is it likely that you're all going to be in agreement as to whether the movie was good or not? And even if you do all like the movie, do you think that everybody is going to like the movie for the same reasons? Or is it more likely that one friend will focus on character and dialogue, while another concentrates on the hotness of the lead actress, and another friend comments on the special effects, and so on? The disparity of opinions doesn't mean that people can't enjoy the movie for different reasons, but I think it's unrealistic to expect a group of adults with distinct personalities and backgrounds to all want the same things in the same way, even if that group does share a core set of values.

All this is to say that coordinating a group effort towards the acheivement of a common goal isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world. Especially if the group is composed of those persons possessed of legendarily poor social skills known as "gamers." Lord knows I don't prove the exception to that particular stereotype. I think gamers are often people who have difficulty expressing their desires and finding positive channels for fulfilling those desires--I think a goodly portion of the attractiveness of games is that they can provide these things. If the gentle reader has spent any time at all engaged in online gaming, though, he will know that even the best-intentioned and most friendly game can degrade into verbal abuse and acts of virtual corpse rape.

I think, in some ways, the nature of RPGs complicates this problem. RPGs offer empowerment and wish fulfillment. RPGs offer a person a chance to feel significant, to go above and beyond the normal restrictions of reality, to express his will upon the world in a meaningful way. RPGs can make people feel like heroes, or main characters, when all too often in life we feel like supporting cast or expendable extras. This encourages a mode of thinking that is very different from the kind of approach one would take to day-to-day tedium, bound up as it is by the presence of tradition and custom and law and expectation and very real and very serious consequences for violating these things in order to act in ways that would be consistent with our imagined fantasies. This freedom to pursue one's own desires in spite of consequences lends itself to a feeling of entitlement that can then conflict with the interests of the rest of the group. If everybody wants to pursue the same form of empowerment, or to find his own particular motivation for pursuing that collective goal of empowerment, all is well and good. But let me assure you, gentle reader, such synchronicity is not always the case.

I think, in some ways, the nature of RPGs as a fun activity complicates the problem, too. In the course of one's occupation, one most likely accepts that there are certain things one has to do and certain people one has to deal with, not all of which or whom are pleasant, and one puts one's head down and accepts the unpleasant necessities for the sake of the greater goal (personal fulfillment, a paycheck, whatever). If the unpleasantries become excessive, some people will leave their jobs and look for a better one; others never will. An activity for pleasure, on the other hand, comes with an attendantly lower threshhold for compromise or temporary unpleasantness in the pursuit of a long-term happiness. Assuming you didn't like that movie that you wound up going to with your friends, is it possible that you and your friends would walk out before the movie was finished? Would you do the same in a boring business meeting?
In a meeting room full of your co-workers, it's unlikely that a disagreement is going to make you so inflamed that you feel inclined to stand up and start shouting at people. It's a lot easier to get more dramatic when you're around friends and loved ones and the defenses are down and the discipline is off and you expect to have a good time be validated and will feel cheated if you don't.

Thinking about all of these things, I felt compelled to write out my feelings about my upcoming position as the DM of a newly-formed D&D group. The breakdown of my previous group and my relationship with Bonny have taught me that there are some things that are necessary for the health of any relationship, whether that relationship be between friends and activity partners or lovers. At the present time, I think these are the most essential elements of a successful relationship:

1. That the persons involved take responsibility for their own wants, and that they express their expectations as clearly as possible.
2. That the persons involved take responsibility for their own actions, and for the consequences of those actions.
3. That the persons involved be reasonably forgiving of mistakes, lapses in judgment, or moments of strong emotion.
4. That the persons involved make some compromises and small sacrifices for the sake of the continuation of the relationship, and also that these compromises be spread among the persons involved as equitably as possible. In tandem with this is that one person understand that other persons can't meet all of his wants at all times.
5. That the persons involved agree to handle disagreements in a productive manner, owning their own ideas and feelings rather than blaming others for not thinking or feeling the same way, and accepting that disagreements are inevitable in any relationship and that they don't necessarily need to devolve into rage and personal attacks. That the persons involved agree that there is rarely only one feasible approach to a problem, and that multiple methods might have merit, and that even absolute notions such as "right" and "wrong" or "realistic" and "unrealistic" vary from one person to the next and should not be closed to discussion.
6. That the persons involved agree that such behaviors as are manipulative, deceitful, obsessive, controlling, or physically or emotionally hostile are undesirable and unacceptable.
8. That while one of the persons involved is responsible for his own actions and wants and feelings, he is not responsible for the actions and wants and feelings of anybody else. That mature adults will desire neither to control others nor be controlled by them.
9. That no one person, even a person in a leadership position, is completely responsible for the the success or failure of a collaborative effort, such as a relationship.

I think that about sums it up. I wrote these expressions out in a document in the hope that I can clearly communicate my own expectations for my new group and to let them know what they can expect from me. My hope is to avoid the problem that occurred with the last group when, after being dissatisfied with the course of events for over a year, the players all decided to express all their dissatisfaction at once, and a group that had been cohesive for years fell to pieces. Do I think they should have expressed their likes and dislikes sooner and in less critical fashion? Yes, I do. Do I think I should have made a greater effort to be approachable and to be more clear about my own expectations and to be open to their ideas before things reached critical mass? Yes, I do. Do I think anybody is really at fault in this situation? No, I don't. But I would like to avoid, if at all possible, the kinds of communication failures that rent my last group with this new one, and I was hoping by being clear and explicit in the expression of my expectations that I might manage to do so.

Then again, it might seem weird to have a relative stranger hand you a seven page document at the game session, detailing all this stuff about relationships and communication, the discussion of which holds very little appeal for most men.

Then again, a lot of what I'm saying in this document is fairly close to the advice given by the Dungeon Master's guide with respect to group management. And I've already seen the potential for cohesion-sabotaging arguments just in our initial emails and forum posts, and I think it would be a good idea to provide some channels for argument resolution from the get-go. And I might save myself a lot of time and stress if I can identify my dealbreakers from the start, so that anybody who knows he can't accept my conditions for friendship and for collaboration in an interactive fiction project will move along presently.

Is this the right thing to do? Hell, I don't know. I know it's a bit extra-ordinary. But then, what I'm trying to do is deal with the problems that have ordinarily prevented me from deriving full enjoyment from a D&D group.

So, gentle reader, if you've been patient enough to read this far, I encourage you to read on to the end, and tell me what you think. D&D nerd or no, I expect that you will have some experience with human relationships, and will be able to give me some feedback as to whether it would be smart or suicidally stupid to give this list out next Monday. A lot of this might seem repetitive, given that the gentle reader has already read the condensed list, but perhaps not.

How I Roll: Some Things You Might Want to Understand About My Interpretation of What It Means to Be a DM

I do not design or run encounters out of malice. I don't punish characters in order to punish players. I will never design an encounter with the desire for or expectation of the failure of the party. I design encounters and challenges in the hopes that each will be overcome, and that the characters will show their worth in the overcoming of the challenge. Contrary to what you might believe about Dungeon Masters, I take little delight from frustrating, humiliating, or punishing PCs.

I do not see myself as being in a competition with the PCs, and I hope that the PCs don't see themselves as being in competition with me. If anything, I want to see your character succeed as much as you do. That's not to say that there won't be times that I won't be at least a little pleased if the monsters that I have selected are doing well in a combat. I might also be pleased if a villain should get away with some form of evil, if only to make the final reckoning between that villain and the party that much more satisfying. If the PCs should out-and-out lose an encounter, though, I don't count this as any kind of victory. If anything, I'll have wished that I toned down the difficulty. I enjoy giving the PCs a worthy challenge; I don't enjoy seeing them defeated. If I wanted to get involved in an arms race with the players, I'd just have four Demogorgons port in from out of nowhere and kick everybody's ass. But that'd be a stupid abuse of my authority and my responsibility, don't you think?

I believe that the challenge rating of D&D encounters isn't always 100% reliable. Some above-level encounters will end up being a breeze, while the goblin minions that were supposed to be easy can wind up wiping the party. Even the best-balanced encounter can get screwy based on a few rolls of the dice. I hope that we can all take this variability in stride.

While some of the characters in the game world might have telepathic powers, I do not. If you want something from me, you need to ask me. More likely than not, I'll be happy to give it to you, whatever it is. If you do not ask me for something, then I hope you won't be surprised or resentful if I don't anticipate your wishes.

I believe that people play RPGs for a number of different reasons. Even within such a outside-the-curve and self-selected group of people as D&D players, most likely there will be some individuals who prioritize combat mechanics, who prioritize the social experience of gaming, who prioritize roleplaying, who prefer to be passive participants, who prefer to be leaders, and so on. I don't feel that any one approach is necessarily superior to another. I will try to offer experiences that appeal to the variety of players in the group. This does not mean I can appeal to all of these varied interests at all times.

I will do my best to give each character a chance to shine. I will appreciate the patience of the other players when it is not their particular moment.

Charm spells aside (and those rarely used for this very reason), I will not force a character (or a player) to do something he does not want to do. I will respect your right to decide your own character's actions within reasonable limits.

While I respect your ability to choose your characters' actions, I hope you can respect my ability to decide the consequences of how those actions affect the game world. That is to say, if Jimmee the Halfling Rogue decides to cut the throat of a sleeping townsperson, then I hope that Jimmee's player won't be shocked or hold it against me if the town guards come after Jimmee. This also means that rolling a 20 doesn't automatically mean that a character gets what he wants; Gruumsh is not going to be persuaded to change his alignment to lawful good no matter what result you get on your diplomacy check.

I do want to give players what they want, so long as what a player wants doesn't conflict with my own wants or the wants of another player or the integrity of the game. I'd much rather empower than disempower a character or a player. I see my role as DM as being to help people have a good time, not to prevent them from doing so.

I will never inflict a permanent, incurable, disabling condition on your character (unless, for some weird reason, you want me to). I will never say that your fighter's sword arm has been disintegrated, or that your wizard has taken a blow to the head that has rendered him incapable of ever casting spells again. I won't cripple your character's capability to perform his primary function in the group.

I don't believe that rules discussions should derail a play session. If there is a rules dispute that can be resolved in a minute or less, we can resolve it on the spot. If there is a rules dispute that's going to take any longer than that to resolve, we can note it and come back to it later, preferably in email.

I don't feel that “griefing” (e.g., stealing from or killing another PC) can be justified by any assertion of the rules or role-playing or humorousness. If that's what your character would do, then you need to make a different character. Acts of comic mischief are fine. Disagreements and rivalries between characters are fine, and are even beneficial for the game on occasion, so long as the tone does not become hurtful to the players. Characters causing serious harm to one another is never good for anyone involved.

I will do my best to be approachable, and to give due consideration to any arguments you might have. I will do my best to be adaptable. This being said, I reserve the right to adhere to the rules as written (or, at least, my interpretation of them) if I feel that such an adherence is in everybody's best interests.

I view D&D as a cooperative and collaborative effort. I truly value players' input, and I do my best to give players what they want so that we can all pitch in to tell the most exciting, most entertaining, and most satisfying group story we can. I strive to be democratic and reasonable in my leadership of the group rather than dictatorial and arbitrary. The reverse of this is that if something goes wrong in the game, I will not very much enjoy if people go out of their way to dump blame on me. I view the relationship between the DM and the players as reciprocal. I very much believe that the players need to take responsibility for the fun of the game, too. I think that players need to take responsibility for improving a situation rather than resorting to bitterness, anger, or resentment. We're all adults here; let's try to work things out.

I believe there will be points in the campaign—in any campaign—where I will not be able to reach a mutually desirable agreement with one of the players. In such cases, if we cannot achieve a compromise, I hope that we will be able to accept the disagreement and move on for the sake of the flow of the game.

My first priority in being a DM is to be respectful and considerate, in language and in action, of the players. My second priority is to be fair and to maintain game balance. My third priority is the general good and cohesion of the group. My fourth priority is satisfying the requests of individual players. My fifth priority is adherence to notions of realism. All of these priorities descend from the first priority. If you come to me with a claim from a lower priority, don't be surprised if I reject it in favor of a higher priority. You say you want your level 1 character to have a level 30 magic item (#4), I'll most likely disagree on the bases of game integrity and unfairness to the other players (#2 and #3).

Claims about the “realisticness” of certain rules aren't going to carry a lot of weight with me; we are playing a fantasy role-playing game, not engaging in scientifically-accurate modeling of sociology, psychology, geology, biology, physics, or history. I believe that people's notions of what is realistic and unrealistic are highly variable.

I try to give considerations of realism credence within the game, but I'd rather not have the game overtaken by them.

I'm not going to accept disrespect or rudeness to or from another player under any circumstances, and I wouldn't expect you to accept it from me, either.

I view adventuring as a hazardous occupation. I think that a lot of the excitement in D&D comes from overcoming danger and peril (without ever actually being endangered or imperiled). While I bust my ass to ensure that the dangers and perils that the party has to face are appropriate for the party's abilities, there might be times when the party has to retreat. There might be times when a particular objective lies outside of the party's abilities. There might very well be times when the party is captured. There will be times when a character dies, maybe even the whole party (but hopefully not). I am not inclined to make the monsters pull their punches in order to ensure that nobody ever dies, and I don't think, in the long run, that such patronizing behavior would be very satisfying for anybody. I am more inclined to make monsters act in a way that makes good use of their abilities, and is consistent with their intelligence, their attitudes, and their desire for self-preservation. I will avoid last-second miraculous interventions in combat if I can help it; I respect the players enough that I'd rather have them solve their own problems than see them coddled by dei ex machinae. That being said, if a character does die, it is not necessarily the end for that character. Unless there are very obvious reasons otherwise, resurrection should always be an option, and if there are obvious reasons otherwise it's usually not anything that a little side-quest can't cure. Coming back from the dead in 4th Edition involves the payment of a relatively small amount of gold and a -1 penalty to a character's rolls for three milestones (which probably equates to six combats). This is a pretty mild penalty, and is significant without really being crippling (as opposed to, say, the old skool method of permanent level loss). I don't see it as unfair or cruel or even all that unusual that a PC should die from time to time. Consequently, I don't want to make character death unduly punishing. If the player decides that his old character is all-the-way dead and won't be returning—and the player should always be the one who has final say over this—the new replacement character will enter the group at the first possible convenience with gear and experience that are equivalent to that possessed by the rest of the group. I know character death can be stressful; people get attached to their characters, and character deaths can cause some anger or sadness. Character death shouldn't be deeply traumatic, causing rage or serious depression, and if it is traumatizing for you then maybe there are other, better games for you than D&D. I'd like to cultivate an attitude where death in the face of fantastic peril is a heroic thing to be admired rather than begrudged.

I am very willing to make aesthetical changes to the game for the sake of flavor. I reserve the right to say that the giant scorpion isn't a giant scorpion at all but is instead a giant cockroach with a nasty rancid bite instead of a poisonous sting. If you want to say that your scale armor is composed of the overlapping shoulder blades of werewolves instead of metal scales, that's fine, too, although it would be rather silly. I regard appearances as mutable. I regard actual game mechanics as far less so, and not really things to be modified or forsaken for the sake of flavor, but again I will try to be adaptable.

I reserve the right to say yes or no to any material that lies outside of the core books. You can make a case for including something found in a third-party supplement or an obscure splat book, but let's please be reasonable about this. Just because some fly-by-night publisher or fan-run website publishes a feat that gives a character +5 to hit and damage with all swords doesn't mean that including such a feat in the game is a good idea. If the new material is so awesome that every single character would want it, then chances are, it's over-powered and broken.

I think that rules exist in a game for a reason. I think that the rules provide a consistent mechanism by which imaginary characters can interact with impossible things and have it all make sense. However, if there's a good reason for changing or eliminating a rule, then I think that the rule should be changed or eliminated.

I come to a D&D session in order to play D&D, not to watch other people use their laptops to play World of Warcraft all night except for those few seconds when they are called upon to toss a d20. Laptops can be fine for finding a rule now and again. I don't think they belong at the game table for extended periods. D&D is a team effort, and I believe that the effort will be more successful if everyone involved makes the attempt to be as engaged as possible.

I am only human, and I will make mistakes. I will misremember rules. I may get impatient or irritable from time to time. I hope you will be able to forgive me when these things happen, even as I should forgive you.

As much as I think there are different playing styles, I think there are different DMing styles, too. I acknowledge that I am not the right DM for all possible players. If you acknowledge that I'm not the right DM for you, then I'll wish you luck in finding a new game and we'll both move on.