The Tao of D&D

"What business are you in, Jack?  Just tell me what business you're in."

Keeping with Friday's post about management and dungeon mastering, if you want to be a DM, you've got to ask yourself the same question.  Are you in the game business, or are you in the service business?  Which is it?  In the past, I've written posts that talked about how we've got to serve your players; I've also written posts that call for those players subjecting themselves to the rules, with us as gatekeepers.  This should help the reader understand that this isn't a simple question.  I believe that at times, a DM needs to provide things in setting and opportunities that definitely make D&D look like a service-driven operation.  I also believe than when a player character dies, that's how it has to go, no matter what I or the players might like about it.

When I was young and new to restaurants, I remember a kitchen manager that rode me and everyone else like we were cattle.  After a couple of months I found my dignity and confronted him about it, asking him to treat me with more respect than he had been.  His answer stuck; I can still see him, and the store room around him, as he chose to create a permanent memory in my retinas.  "You think I can't replace you just like that?" he asked.  "You think you're special?"

I told him to replace me, quitting on the spot.  He and his restaurant was as replaceable for me as I was for him; I had employment elsewhere within the week.  This story, however, means to address those DMs who treat their players just like that manager treated me (and everyone else).  There's a limit to how hard you can be.  A DM has to draw a line, yes.  Many players are even replaceable, as it happens.  But treating them like they're replaceable, guarantees you'll only find that kind.  Devoted, clever, enthusiastic players can't be replaced, and as it happens not all players of that calibre start out that way.  Many players need time to find themselves, to gain trust, to discover the game and so on, meaning that a DM's got to keep both eyes open and watch for ways to bring players like that out.  We devote ourselves, therefore, to enduring some of their more frustrating qualities, giving ground and sacrificing our time, until we know for sure, one way or the other.  Comes a time, after months, we become sure they're not going to get better.  We're tired of waiting.  Whereupon we cut them free.  But we give them every chance, first, to change.

This doesn't mean getting them to like our game system, our world or our campaign.  Like has nothing to do with it.  This is training, not pandering.  Whatever that kitchen manager's attitude, I'm sure now that he was trying to hammer me into the employee he wanted.  He thought smacking down my attitude, as he saw it, was the way to make me fall in line.  Working in a kitchen is literally described as "working on the line."  Everyone's got to toe that line, and work together, taking orders and churning out the food.  Sorry to call it "churning," but a single cook will cook and plate 60 lbs. of food an hour and that's what it feels like.  A single server will carry three times that, in food and plates.  Despite that, the food's got to be golden, every ounce of it.  When it's not, the server gets it, the management gets it and the cooks get it; and it's not golden consistently, there's no restaurant at all.  So shutting down a cook or a server matters; it's got to be done, because when that ticker starts clicking, punching out 18 dishes a minute, communication without attitude is critical.  Putting the tables together means multiple people working together to get pasta, meats, salads and sides on the plates at the same time to go out together.  There's no time for attitude.

That's what that kitchen manager thought he was getting from me: attitude.  What I wanted from him was respect.  His error wasn't telling me what to do, or even shouting at me to get it done.  When a kitchen crashes — when the orders come in so much faster than the food goes out that everyone, lead hand and expediter, gets pushed past their limit — then the kitchen is a warzone.  There's hot oil, there's fire, the floor's a skating rink, there are long sharp knives in everyone's hand and we're all moving very, very fast.  Screaming for the potatoes that are lagging on a "six-top" (a table with six clients) and keeping it from going out, is par.  Hard words in harsh tones happen.  "The heat" in the kitchen you get out of if you can't handle it isn't the food, the fire or the hot surfaces.

The kitchen manager's error came when the shit backed off, giving time for people to settle.  In a good kitchen, there are jokes; there are apologies; everyone pitches in and cleans the food that's been falling like rain.  In a good kitchen, the manager is there, cleaning up with the crew, making jokes, cooling everyone's temper.  Fred never did that.  When the pressure let off, he would leave.  Just leave.  Most likely, inside, he was shaking.  The comfort of his office, door closed; the comfort of having an office to escape into; hell, he might have had a bottle in a drawer.  Who knows?

I'm saying that DMs, when the pressure builds, can yell at their players.  They can make demands.  They can tell Jerry to "Shut the fuck up!"  Players can go at each other, too, and sometimes it's a good idea to let them.  What we can't do is pretend those moments didn't happen.  We're responsible for those things happening; and we're responsible for smoothing those moments out again.  DMing is running the game, and it's running the people ... and it's running the aftercare as well.  It's giving the players what they want, what they need ... and those things they don't think they want or need, too.

To do that, as a DM, we have to look past things like a kitchen manager saying a shitty thing.  We're got to pull those moments apart and see them empathically, through their eyes.  People do and say things that are the wrong things to say, but they also do them for reasons.  Managing people, leading them, requires a set of skills that will lets us, as leaders, see things from their point of view and not our own.  We have to want to do that.

It doesn't come naturally.  It takes wisdom.  It takes experience with the game and with players.  It takes admitting that when things went sideways, we were to blame also.  What Fred said to me that day, I was part of that.  I didn't see that at the time, but I was young and only saw things from my perspective.

Slowly, I changed.  I am changing.  Making the business I'm in, running as a DM, says I must.

In consideration of Zarious' thoughts from DMs Eat Last, it wouldn't hurt to delve into comparisons between business management and acting as a dungeon master.  Where are the similarities, for example, and does the proposal that getting a job as a manager/supervisor in a fast food/retail/service business hold water as a means of gaining experience in being a DM?

I can attest that it does, in part, though not as much as the reader might imagine.  Any negotiation between one person and another will convey this kind of experience; learning how to handle a customer screaming at us through a plexiglass window as we politely derail their demands will help in managing an irate player who's extremely disappointed at not getting the magic item they want or having their character killed.  Unfortunately, however, most manager jobs are not really about "managing;"  managers are very often little more than stooges who must adhere to policy being pushed down on them from above, giving them little to no latitude, even in what they're allowed to tell the staff or dispense consequences for employees who show up late or goof off when they should be working.  A low middle manager in a service job will usually be a special kind of hell, particular in retail, where the responsibilities are increased but the pay isn't.  Remembering that all those "responsibilities" equate to being responsible about acting as a good, obedient slave to managers higher up.  Most managers burn up under the stress; those who stay do so in hopes of climbing the ladder, which they may never succeed in doing.

Dungeon mastering is nothing like this.  For one thing, ALL the policies are there to be set by the DM, not by someone higher up some ladder.  Additionally, a DM is not in the position of doling out paycheques to players, who must show "productivity" in their weekly efforts around the gaming table.  Imagine how it might change the dynamic to explain to your players that you'll be paying them $15 an hour, starting at 7 p.m. and ending at 11; that they're expected to be on time or the first hour will be docked; that no, they cannot leave early; that they must play well enough to achieve certain goals in that time, or else they'll be fired and their position will be given to someone else.  Imagine saying as a DM, "I have plenty of players in line who would love to get $60 a shift to come and play this game; tell me why I should continue to let you participate in this game, instead of one of them?"

I've had periods in my life when I could afford $240 a week; and I know there are plenty of DMs out there making that much and a lot more, so this is in the realm of possibility.  Consider, however, how this shatters the dynamic.  The players are forced to play for the DM in compensation for their wages — even if the DM doesn't make it clear in what way.  The implication is there.  In return, the DM is more likely to feel they owe little or nothing to the players: "We're paying them, aren't we?"  Money has a way of making people feel they're doing enough ... and with some people, giving money alleviates any responsibility they have to be polite or considerate to the person being paid.  Thus the irate customer screaming at the manager (or employee), the moody diner growling at servers, the drunk who tells the bouncer to fuck off, since he's paid for his beer, and so on.  If I'm paying you — or I'm the jack-off filling out forms so my bosses can pay you — then you should do your job.  For a lot of people, including workers, who say in return, "I'm doing my job, fucking pay me," the presence of money gets in the way of seeing others as people.

Without money passing between the DM and the player, the dynamic is different.  My responsibility to the players as a DM, vs. their responsibility to me as players, is hard to define, mostly because we participate in very few daily activities where authority & subordination isn't defined by money.  Hell, look at the word "subordinate" in that description.  I looked around for an antonym to authority and they're all denigrating: junior, apprentice, sophomore, pupil ... and none describe a role-player in the least way.  A player isn't subordinate to the DM ... and yet the DM is very definitely an authority that "runs" and "manages" the game.  I find it extremely telling that we have no trouble at all in ascribing the right English terms to what a DM does, but we bristle instantly if we try to apply any comparative reverse terms to the player.  That alone should be telling us something.

Still, while I direct the game, this gives me zero authority to tell the players what to do, according to the dynamic.  I can tell them what they face; I can veto their actions within a certain scope; I can hold them accountable to the game's rules; I can dictate how they address me or each other, and maintain order at the table; and I can close the game down with a fingersnap.  But apart from the power to govern the legitimacy of the game or enable its existence, everyone understands that the line of my power stops dead where it comes to telling players exactly what they must do.  On that matter, I can only advise.

Whereas a store manager spends all day long giving the employees their marching orders.  And the employees, unlike players, do it in recognition that this is the manager's privilege.  Nor can we ascribe this acceptance to the matter of earnings.  In many career-level professions, the manager's right to dictate remains in place, even though the employee might rate their income as fourth or fifth on the list of priorities.  Higher ranked concerns would include a feeling of doing something important, knowing that one is helping people, the opportunity to do interesting or exciting work, the work culture and the presence of friends with whom we share values, etcetera.  In those cases, we do what our manager says because, unlike the jerk-off 19-y.o. shift manager at a McDonalds, these managers and their experience deserve our respect; we want to obey them; we know they know best.  It's a working environment that many, many people never experience in their entire lives; and others experience every day without fail.

So where is the relationship between business manager and DM?  What do they have in common?

As a DM, I can get away with pretty near murder if my players respect me on the same level as those career-level employees respect their superiors.  My latitude in dictating what a player can or can't do is vastly greater when I act brilliantly in front of them, regularly.  Whereas lesser skilled DMs, with less to offer, and less ability to regulate the game, will be far more limited in their power than I am.  Not only this, however.  It is also the case in career-driven professions that the managers also respect the capabilities and predispositions of their teams — and they make decisions that directly play into the strengths of those strengths.  Such managers do not have the cookie-cutter mentality of a McDonald's manager-drone, who couldn't care a whit about the lives of worker-drones further down the chain.

Sit down with a career professional for a beer as one of their team and the conversation revolves around our lives, our interests, our choices and what's going on with our families.  Everyone wants to know what's happening with everyone else in the here and now, because those stresses will directly affect the stresses of the work.  Sit down with a service-level manager and the conversation revolves around movies, stuff on the internet, who's fucking who ... and eventually everything descends into pissing contests and trashing people who aren't present.  People don't talk about their lives because they don't have lives; they have this shitty job they do most of the time, except when they go to their other shitty job.  I've worked at length in both environments.

The players around my gaming table are easier to manage because of who they are.  They don't feel a need to prove themselves or gratuitiously abuse others in order to feel better.  Those people do not last long around me, because, like an employer, I judge them on their ability to perform, even though I don't pay them.  Reading about other DMs, who describe the players in their campaigns, it's clear to me they have next to zero standards.

If you manage an establishment that has one capable worker and four incapable ones, you might imagine the one will improve the quality of the other four.  I've certainly worked in service industry jobs where the manager imagined that.  Instead what happens is the one capable employee quits, because he or she is sick of working there.  Capable employees can always find work; they can choose where they want to work.  It is up to the manager to rid the business of every incapable employee until everyone's capable.  Then all the capable people stay, often for years, because they like it there.

Unfortunately for managers, however, is that capable people also want more money.  And as I said, low-level managers haven't any power to give wage increases.  As well, capable employees are hard to find.  So eventually they drift away, until they're replaced, and the business goes under.  Seen it many times.

A DM, however, can always afford the best players.  A DM can also improve the working environment, getting rid of the incapable players so the best players will stay.  Furthermore, since the DM sets all the policies of the game dynamic, those policies can be made not to serve profitability, but mutual respect and mutual compensation.  This changes all the rules related to how a DM, an authority, speaks to those over which the DM has charge.

The quote at the top of DMs Eat Last stated, "If you decide to look after the person to the left of you and look after the person to the right of you, you have become a leader."  It remains very clear that many cannot reconcile this definition in their heads.  We continue to think that a leader is the guy with the flag; that a leader is the one shouting "follow me!"

Let's take a moment and examine that metaphor.  The flag-bearer in an army wasn't armed.  We don't have flag-bearers and when we did they were always men (French portraiture of the Revolution notwithstanding), so I'm going to use the pronoun, "he."  He might have had a weapon, but he couldn't use it because he had the flag in his hand. These were great big things, that needed two hands to hold and a great deal of strength.  And because an army was trained to follow the flag, he had to go first, ahead of others.  This did not make "him" a leader, because people weren't following him, they were following the flag.  He didn't give orders or make decisions, because he went where the general told him to go — and if he didn't, he'd be shot forthwith by the nearest officer.  Thus, the most reliable men were typically chosen for this role; the bravest, it was observed, since they had to go unarmed and NOT run away when the bullets began to fly.

If the flag-bearer was killed, it was hoped that the army moving forward and shooting their weapons wouldn't notice by that point ... because once melee is engaged, no one has time to see what the flag-bearer's doing.  Still, Hollywood, dating back to silent film in the 1910s, LOVED the idea that once the flag was dropped, surely someone else would dive in and rescue the flag ... and there were cases dating to the Civil War (and probably the Crimean and Napoleanic Wars as well, though I don't know those as well) where a retreating army was perhaps turned around, as depicted in Roland Emmerson's The Patriot, by seeing the flag instead rushing towards the enemy.  However, even in such cases, it was not the man running the flag who was being followed.  It was the FLAG.

So let's understand this metaphor.  If, as a would-be leader, I pick up a flag, it better be the right flag.  No one in Napoleon's army is going to follow a flag unless it's the FRENCH flag.  99 times out of hundred, when some dumbfuck leader thinks they're picking up a "flag," they're fighting for a cause no one believes in, no one cares about and most have never heard of.  That alone is an act of sheer stupidity.

IF, picking up said worthless flag, the leader then shouts, "Follow me!" it's no wonder he looks like a flaming idiot.  He's carrying the wrong flag.

On the other hand, if you're part of an army, and they already have a flag, and that flag exists in the service of a general who HAS authority, and you run off with it, then maybe, yes, you'll get followed; but you better run in the right direction, or else count on an officer to shoot you in the back.  The only way to lead anyone with a flag is to run that flag in the direction you're told.  That's the only circumstance that the words "Follow me!" have any relevance of any kind.

Leadership is not about being followed.  It's about encouraging people to follow a flag they've given reason to care about.  The first part of that equation is easy once you've accomplished the second part.  But you must accomplish the second part first.

The way you do that is by divising a flag that promises to look after the person on the left of you and the person on the right of you.  That requires you learn something about these people.  That you learn what they seek.  That you're capable of providing that which they seek ... or at the very least, enabling them to believe that what they seek can be accomplished through your plans and experience.  That won't happen until those people believe that you know more than they know; and to convince them, you have to actually know more than they know.  You can't fake it.  They'll know.

A truly great leader understands what others seek before those others know.  I'm not talking about selling them a grift, which is inventing bullshit and then ultimately disappointing the rubes.  No, I mean, understanding others so well, by listening to them, and having the capacity to understand them, to see a solution to their problems that they haven't the capacity to see.  And then providing that solution, free of charge, for the good of all.

Hm.  I've just seen what's fundamentally wrong with Ayn Rand's objectivism.

Most aren't great leaders.  Most don't even want to be.  But I think that anyone who sits down to write a blog and offer advice and solutions about how to play or manage players, that they should probably have "what others seek" at the forefront of their minds.  Likewise, when DMs run a game, deciding why the players are there, and recognizing that they have their own reasons, which are certain to be different from the DMs reasons, should factor greatly into how a DM runs a game.

It's something like how you would act as a store manager if you assumed that, at their core, everyone wanted to be there for some other reason than "wanting the money" or acting "in the best interest of the company."  Specifically, figuring out how an employee might want to keep working for a reason that was in their own interest, that wasn't about money ...

And then enabling that.

"Leadership is not a rank.  Leadership is not a position.  Leadership is a decision.  Leadership is a choice.  It has nothing to do with your position in the organisation.  If you decide to look after the person to the left of you and look after the person to the right of you, you have become a leader."

Simon Sinek, Why Leaders Eat Last

It is your willingness to stand between another person and enable the things they want, to protect them, to give up your immediate needs so they can get theirs, which makes you a leader.  If you approach DMing from the perspective that you're "giving" something to your players, you're NOT a leader.  If you're trying to make them like you, you're not a leader.  

If you're clearing the road, so that others can get something they want for themselves, without your deciding what that is, and then letting them have it, even if you hate that thing ... and IF you're doing that in a way that lets multiple people do it, then you're a leader.  If you're concerned that your game isn't turning out as you like, or as it "should," because the players can't see your vision, then that is an example of your eating first.  You may not be able to see how that's so, or what's wrong, or what connection I'm making, but if you're describing your game from YOUR POINT OF VIEW, then you're not a leader.

You can go through the millions of words on this blog and you'll have trouble finding an example of my wanting something from a game adventure I'm running.  I've spent time explaining what I'm doing at specific points of play; or what I expect to happen; or my motivations for arranging the circumstances thusly ... but those things are not "wanting" a specific result.  I predict; I organize; I inspire.  But I don't don't talk about want.

My game turns out the way I like because I don't want any specific result.  The players can see my vision because my vision isn't about what they do, or why they do it.  My vision is a flexible game world, not "my" game world.  I love throwing dice and seeing what happens — better than getting any  specific result.  I'm not leading the players to a specific place.  I'm leading the players to where they want to go; and I'm doing it without asking them constantly, or usually at all.  Am I reading minds?  No, I'm listening.  I'm watching.  I'm paying attention and setting my needs, my hunger, aside.

Mind, a DM does not run one person; we run multiple persons.  This means that not only must I ensure that Josie or David or Paul get that thing they want, but that everyone gets that thing.  And here again, let me repeat: getting Josie what she wants is not the same as giving it to her.  If she doesn't get that thing herself, without my greasy fingerprints all over it, then it's not an achievement in Josie's eyes ... and therefore it is not an achievement at all!  Players who want to be given things have no interest in playing a game; they have no interest in earning things and they have no business sitting at my table.  But players who want things, who want to earn them, who want to overcome obstacles to get them because they want achievement over the thing itself, must be allowed to run in a setting that works that way.

If what Josie wants conflicts with what David or Paul wants, that's a problem.  But it is not my problem.  It is their problem.  They have to work out that conflict.  They have to decide.  But while they're negotiating and deciding, they have to feel heard; they have to feel protected; they have to feel that their voice is as legitimate as any other voice around the table.  That's my role.  To manage the table; to manage their conflicts.  To provide structures and impose those structures so that players cannot bully players, co-opt the game or disrupt play.  That requires rules: not just game rules, but rules of behaviour, rules dictating what's permitted and what's not.

Compelling people to adhere to rules requires making them obey.  This is where I left the last post.

Running the game is a complex process and I cannot have everyone rolling their dice at the same time; doing so allows little to no oversight, makes confusion and feeds conflict.  And so, I order players to wait; to let each player roll their dice and take their turn, until I say it's the next person's turn.  I run a tight ship.  No one rolls a die until I give my permission; no one rolls a character until I say it's time; and when the game's tension rises in a combat or when a player is thinking through a problem, no one is allowed to speak or break that tension.  And believe me, you don't want to ignore that, because I am going to get in your face and you are not going to like that.

But what you will like, is that when you're solving a problem, everyone else is shutting the fuck up.  Including me.

I can't build tension or emotional investment when some player is constantly derailing the game or deliberately breaking that tension.  Most of the time, people spontaneously break tension with a stupid comment because they can't TAKE tension; they can feel themselves tightening up; they can feel the room's stress building ... and getting jittery or twitchy, they've got to say something, to relieve their discomfort.  In consequence, they wreck any stimulation or thrill that might be gained from having to manage a complex, engrossing situation.  It's selfish, it's weak and it breaks the social convention surrounding my table.  My other players don't want their wave crashed; they want their heart rates quickened.  They want the tangible nightmare fuel of thinking their characters might die.

Some weaselly readers right now are furious at this idea of being forced to respect other players and their needs.  They hate that their perfect right to free will, regardless of the needs of others, is being collared by a self-righteous DM who pretends to maintain the privilege of the majority against the self-righteous individual.  Their arsenal of petulant sanctimonious politically-correct self-serving talking points are rallied, against my daring to defend a host than the one.  I'm a tyrant; I'm a puffed up twerp, a tin-pot generalissimo, an outrageous charlatan!  "I will never play in his world!" they will cry, and spread the word that because they wouldn't, no one should, etcetera, blah blah blah, yada ... yada.

Such "individualists" are not to be tolerated.  They are to be beaten to the line, then made to stand on it, or turfed.  I don't want one individualist in my game, lording it over the others, I want seven respectful individuals, who don't seek to rally heaven and hell to defend their cause.  They give respect, they admonish others who don't (know I have their backs) and they take up the effort to lead themselves.  If a player isn't good at record-keeping, they'll take over that duty without hesitation.  If another can't seem to tell a d8 from a d10, they'll helpfully sit next to the player and patiently point, running after running, without judgment.  They'll volunteer to be treasurer and they'll keep the books faithfully; they'll volunteer for quartermaster; they'll share out more treasure than they'll take.  They'll take point, not just to get to the treasure first, but to sacrifice their own hit points for the greater good.  I have players who have nerve, who can take the strain, who don't need to "break the tension" with a stupid joke that isn't wanted.

I have this because I don't care that I'm liked.  I'll get in the misbehaver's face because I'm not emotionally invested in surviving what's coming up.  I have no reputation to maintain, except that I can be counted on to get in your face if you act like an ass.  What's more, while my suddenly whirling on you to smack you down is a surprise to you, I've been expecting this moment.  Your dialogue has been spewing out "selfish prick" from the moment you sat down to play.  Nor am I the only one to see it.  My other players have been waiting for me to slap you down; they'd have slapped you down before this, but they know I'm the leader, and that when I do it, it will have more authority behind it, it will be harsher, my words will cut closer to the bone and they'll have the benefit of being the audience and not the perpetrator.  If I do the work, the players get to enjoy the show; and you, getting read the Riot Act — you're the Punch to my Judy.  I hope you enjoy it.

Truth is, if you are a good guy, it will take two words, said sharply in an ordinary tone, to set you right.  "Stop it."  That's all.  See this line?  Stop on it.  Do that, and we'll get along fine.  I'll let you know when you go over.  Pay attention to the game, act as the other Romans around you act, rub blue mud into your naval when you see them doing it, and you'll be fine with them, too.  But get into your head that the game is in seeing how far you can step across that line, or how often, then you and I are going to have words.  A lot of words.  And because we're playing in my house, you're gonna lose.  I've never had to call the cops on a player yet, but if I have to ...

Obedience is not control.  I don't want to control you.  I want to stop you from controlling others.  I want you to respect the line.  When you respect the line, you'll respect your fellow players.  When you respect your fellow players, I'll respect you.  There are no leashes, no collars.  Just the simple principle that a group activity requires a group respect.

I don't ask for tolerance.  Tolerance is bullshit.  You can fucking hate anyone at my table you want to hate, including me.  But you better hate me with etiquette.  You understand?