D&D grows up: a personal interpretation of OOTS

[veti]

Who here remembers the first time they played D&D?

Me, I was 13 when my brother brought AD&D home from university. I rolled up a whole party and went orc-bashing. Neither one of us knew or cared what my PCs were doing in the dungeon - suddenly we were just there, heading down a corridor in marching order, opening doors, killing, looting and looking for a place to rest. It was as meaningless as Space Invaders (Pac-Man had yet to be invented), and just as addictive.

Back at the beginning of OOTS, it was far from clear that there was any such thing as "plot" or "story". The first hint (strip 13) has a deeply unconvincing, bolted-on feel. We all know that, in reality, the adventurers are dungeon-crawling because that's the name of the game, that's what the players came to do, and any justification is never going to be more than an excuse - so let's get back to killing the green-skinned people and taking their stuff. When the others frown at Belkar, it's not because he's particularly evil and cynical; it's because he's breaking character and speaking as a player.

Strip 60 shows that there is, in fact, a story (:haley: "That's a lot more planning than I thought this strip had"), and strip 122 shows that there's actually a world here, not just a dungeon. Like our heroes, I too played D&D for a long time before it dawned on me that there was more to it than just a dungeon. Granted, "the world" at this point is basically a shopping mall, where the adventurers go to tot up their XP and collect a new plot hook; still, it opens up the possibility of background - civilians, activity that's not directly related to the PCs.

Strips 122 to 199 mark this "coming of age" of D&D. It's the transition from a string of loosely-connected scenarios, to a campaign - a world setting, where events and actions can have "meaning" beyond the XP and GP they net you.

At university I played with an anarchic bunch of misfits, who were trenchantly resistant to anything that smacked of "railroading". They loved nothing more than to spend an entire session (and we're talking long sessions here, 8 hours being considered a bare minimum) arguing, fighting, nursing grudges and plotting revenge purely on one another. Plot hooks were routinely bypassed or trashed, quests forgotten, and if the DM wanted to get us back "on plot" he had to get very heavy-handed. As in, for instance, sending an outrageously high-level character to, figuratively at least, beat us up and drag us off and hold us down while the next plot hook was forcibly inserted in the party's collective mouth. If you see what I mean.

Finding out that some random act of pure goodnatured chaos in the past had been a major crime, and being sentenced to "community service" that just happened to take the form of "getting the hell on with the plot" - these things were not unusual for us.

But despite this railroading, from strip 200 onwards the plot is increasingly driven by party and character dynamics. V's arrogance and trigger-happiness, her feud with Belkar, Haley's feelings for Elan and for loot, Roy's search for love and his sense of responsibility - these things become steadily more important. We see the players' personalities intruding more and more into the characters - mis-roleplaying the way it should be done: not for crass advantage within the game, but just for the fun of it.

At the same time, things get more serious. The bad guys start to directly threaten innocents - first Elan, then Julia, then Azure City. One day the players find that their quest is no longer driven by Roy's private obsession - it's the fate of a whole nation, and indeed the entire world.

The character who best sums up the development is Elan. At first he plays purely for fun - to inject a bit of benign chaos into the party, culminating in blowing up the dungeon for no better reason than that the switch was there. His kidnapping by bandits is the DM's first attempt to make him take the action a little more seriously, but he heroically maintains his sunny chaos. His turning point is the trial (:elan: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Roy being really pissed..."). A little while later comes his moment of glory in Cliffport, and the DM all but forces him to take a level in badass. From that point onwards, we see him trying to be helpful and take responsibility. The character may still have the self-discipline of a kitten on cocaine; but the player has started to take the game seriously.

That's how I see the OOTS parallelling my own experience with D&D. I don't know how typical it is (although at times it's as if the Giant had been a member of my old group). Obviously it's a personal interpretation, so feel free to argue the hell out of it (like I could stop you anyway).

[Darakonis]

Wow. Well done. That's pretty close to my own D&D experience.

Peace,
-Darakonis

[Dvandemon]

I applaud your very well thought out interpretation of OoTS

[TheWerdna]

Wow... that was a very indepth analysis. Made me think about how much OotS is like my experiences with D&D.

[Kumo]

Wow... just... wow... i'm in awe... :smalleek:

And here i was thinking that same process was like the rough drafts of a book.

[derfenrirwolv]

Definitely. I can remember the first time i DM'd, taking over from a DM that liked to do lots of unintelligent undead. I had orcs and kobolds living in a fairly large society with the nearby human town acting as a front in order to keep from getting overrun.

[Kranden]

A well written thought out post.

A nice little reprieve from the 'Hilgya is the empress of blood" crowd.

[MonkeyBusiness]

What an interesting and insightful post! I had fun reading that.

I like to think back on how I approached D&D when I first played as a kid of 12... Good old "Keep on the Borderlands"! :smallcool: It was exhilarating to actually be the hero of a story! It gave me a sense of independence and strength. At twelve it was one of the few ways I had (besides reading and going on long walks in the woods behind the house) to escape the pre-teen anxiety we all go through and the special hell that was my particular childhood. Just remembering those early games makes me feel happy, they were such fun!

I agree that there was a sort of for-the-fun-of-it innocent feel to the comic in the early days of OOTS that reminds me of my own early days playing D&D. My understanding is that The Giant didn't originally sit down with the intention to write an Epic Stick Figure Comic Saga ... he wrote #1 to laugh about the puzzlement of having to switch to 3.5 mid-game. But little stick figures turned out to be kind of fun, so he kept going.

I play with more seriousness and awareness now than I did when I was twelve, but I've never lost that amazing sense of joy.

MBiz

[veti]

Thank y'all for the kind remarks. I'd like to see some more serious discussion of OOTS as a work of fiction, rather than the endless plot speculation and rules geekery, so I thought I'd try to set the ball rolling.

This train of thought - that the OOTS parallels my own growing-up with D&D - emerged from taking part in some of the eternal 'alignment' threads on this board. It seemed to me, and it still seems, that the 'alignment' question has become steadily more complicated as time goes by. Back in the Dungeon of Dorukan it didn't matter a jot - it was the stuff of jokes, as in strip 11 (Belkar is evil? Hey, that's handy!), strip 75 (the chaotic characters blame the lawful ones for forgetting about Durkon), strip 93 (goblin teenage rebellion).

When our heroes emerge from the dungeon, alignment immediately takes a more sinister turn (when Belkar tries to kill Elan). With Miko's appearance, the Giant makes it clear that 'alignment' is not just a source of jokes, it's something he's interested in exploring in considerable depth. And that's why pretty much every "alignment" thread runs to ten pages.

Again, this is a development I feel I've lived through. When my first party barged through that first dungeon, their alignments - generated by rolling a d10 - made only marginal, occasional differences. As a kid, "good" and "evil" worked just fine as labels, and "objective morality" was an appealing sword for cutting through the Gordian knot of what it really meant. As a student, things started to get more complicated - good characters would sometimes find themselves on opposing sides, and co-operating with evil often seemed the right thing to do.

As adults, we start to look for real objective measures of what values we consider "good", and it's astonishingly hard to define them. The 3/3.5e materials try, but frankly I've always thought them incredibly half-assed - and the more supplementary materials get released to try to clarify things, the muddier and more arbitrary it all gets. I love the way OOTS has conveyed this growing complication, but still refuses to take the easy option of scrapping "alignment" completely.

[Kareasint]

I actually still have the full Basic set as well as the First edition rules. My first serious group was in College. There were two people in the group that were highly intelligent and they spent most gaming sessions arguing over the rules (one as the DM and one as the player trying to get away with something). Still, the campaigns worked because the DM was very good. On occasion, the two would trade places.

One of the first games that I was involved with in this group involved evil PCs. This can present more of a challenge to some players since they have little or no reference as to what the characters should be doing. The group that I was with did not have this problem. Most of us were lawful evil. The campaign was set inside a very large city. The group set out to set up an operation that was legitimate and stayed within the laws of the city. Still, we had grand plans for how we were going to continually increase our holdings.

In later years, another person took over. One thing that always happened at the start was that we came to a crossroad intersection from the south with a sign pointing to two different cities (east and west). We went north through the wilderness.

When I first saw the OOTS, I saw a little of my old group there. The names of the characters (Roy, Durkon, Haley, Elan, V and Belkar) disappeared and I saw old characters from different campaign worlds in their place. In some ways, our group does not play as much any more. OOTS is the group that I get to watch and wonder how I would handle each character in different situations. Looking forward to seeing how the story plays out.

[Darcy]

That's pretty cool, especially because it works on quite a few levels- characters in the comic, the comic itself, a player, their PC, perhaps the game itself. Neat.

[whitelaughter]

[nods]
Another consideration is that the world has been growing up with the players. Palaidins slaughtering goblins indiscriminately in SoD, or grumbling about having to be moral in Origins, have been replaced by the likes of Hinjo, Ochul and Lien: the prequels describe D&D from back in the days when GG was writing articles defending Paladins slaughtering infants, and when selling captives was normal, while the current day characters are well, current day - when the average gamer isn't venting teenage frustrations.

[Cleverdan22]

I really enjoy that first post, OP, and it's got me thinking about my first time playing DnD now.

I remember very distinctly, as it was just about a year ago, now, at the beginning of summer. My friends and I had decided to play, but none of us had before. I had the player's handbook and the DM guide for several years before this, so it was kind of decided that I would be the DM. I found a cool adventure online, (The Black Knight/Night/Rain/Something-or-other) they made their characters, and pretty soon we were under way. It took a while for all of us to get a grasp on the rules, but it also gave us a funny adventure story. The very first fight our adventurers got into started with the barbarian getting a crit and straight up slicing a goblin in half. The very first attack of our very first adventure.

[Elfin]

Great post. I'd never thought of it this way, but now it makes perfect sense.

[Gagundathar]

Nice analysis, veti!
The maturation process works in many ways.

The discussion about alignment has actual real-world worth.
Anytime you question your motives (or that of your PC which is, after all, in a sense you) you gain important insights.

[Snake-Aes]

Complicating is easy. And sometimes it's a good thing. What you guys described there is our own personal Cerebus Syndrome, for those whose life has already been ruined. Exploring new reaches does that :D

[veti]

Yes, complicating is easy. But it's not so easy to do it in a way that parallels a certain aspect of Real Life so exactly. I think that's a considerable feat, one that deserves recognition. Hence this thread.

What particularly strikes me, as Darcy and others have pointed out, is how it works on many different levels simultaneously. It's not just the game: it's also my life, my experience as a player, the rules of the game, the D&D fan community, and even Western society itself - all of these things have evolved in parallel, and the strip has reflected that evolution in a very clever way.

[Szilard]

OotS is actually one of the main reasons I'm trying to inject some plot at all into my group. I'm the DM, and so far all my campaigns have not gotten past one dungeon crawl, even though I loosly map out an entire continent. OotS shows that in any DnD game there's more than just a dungeon, and that is why I strive to get my PCs out of their first dungeon and into the world.

[Herald Alberich]

OotS is actually one of the main reasons I'm trying to inject some plot at all into my group. I'm the DM, and so far all my campaigns have not gotten past one dungeon crawl, even though I loosly map out an entire continent. OotS shows that in any DnD game there's more than just a dungeon, and that is why I strive to get my PCs out of their first dungeon and into the world.

Have you considered starting out in the world? Maybe next time, I dunno, have some noble assign them their first mission, but take some time to explore the castle and talk to NPCs to seed some political intrigue before heading out.

[veti]

Have you considered starting out in the world?

Good suggestion. Other options:
Start in a dungeon, but a very small one. I recall one campaign where we started out with an assignment to clean a sewer; no sooner had we dispatched a few rats and disposed of a blockage, than we were hauled out and sent off on an outdoor assignment.
Don't have any dungeon at all. You'd be amazed how many people live their whole lives without ever even seeing a dungeon. If the players are looking for one, act puzzled, as if you can't understand their interest.

[dehro]

insightful, and possibly true... it's intriguing how this can apply to both players and DM...as in masters relying initially on the small map with practically no plot behind it..and then gaining confidence with the different levels of intricacy that one learns to apply to one's "storytelling"

[Morgan Wick]

Y'all are complimenting him for his reflection of D&D. I'm going to analyze this from an OOTS perspective.


Back at the beginning of OOTS, it was far from clear that there was any such thing as "plot" or "story". The first hint (strip 13) has a deeply unconvincing, bolted-on feel. We all know that, in reality, the adventurers are dungeon-crawling because that's the name of the game, that's what the players came to do, and any justification is never going to be more than an excuse - so let's get back to killing the green-skinned people and taking their stuff. When the others frown at Belkar, it's not because he's particularly evil and cynical; it's because he's breaking character and speaking as a player.

Then the DM feels the need to actually show Xykon plotting (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0023.html). Then the party starts getting involved in a lengthy sidequest with their own evil opposites, during which...


Strip 60 shows that there is, in fact, a story (:haley: "That's a lot more planning than I thought this strip had"), and the party eventually defeats the villain and find themselves without a quest anymore, out of a dungeon (said dungeon being destroyed) and left to wander the outside world.
Like our heroes, I too played D&D for a long time before it dawned on me that there was more to it than just a dungeon. Granted, "the world" at this point is basically a shopping mall, where the adventurers go to tot up their XP and collect a new plot hook; still, it opens up the possibility of background - civilians, activity that's not directly related to the PCs.

Strips 122 to 199 mark this "coming of age" of D&D. It's the transition from a string of loosely-connected scenarios, to a campaign - a world setting, where events and actions can have "meaning" beyond the XP and GP they net you.

By putting the end of this span at 199, you're saying that OOTS' Cerebus Syndrome, at least the end of it, can be dated to the arrival of Miko, as far as the OOTS themselves are concerned, because as you elaborate below, it marks the point where the OOTS are being led by the plot:


At university I played with an anarchic bunch of misfits, who were trenchantly resistant to anything that smacked of "railroading". They loved nothing more than to spend an entire session (and we're talking long sessions here, 8 hours being considered a bare minimum) arguing, fighting, nursing grudges and plotting revenge purely on one another. Plot hooks were routinely bypassed or trashed, quests forgotten, and if the DM wanted to get us back "on plot" he had to get very heavy-handed. As in, for instance, sending an outrageously high-level character to, figuratively at least, beat us up and drag us off and hold us down while the next plot hook was forcibly inserted in the party's collective mouth. If you see what I mean.

Finding out that some random act of pure goodnatured chaos in the past had been a major crime, and being sentenced to "community service" that just happened to take the form of "getting the hell on with the plot" - these things were not unusual for us.

This is the best argument for putting OOTS' Cerebus Syndrome this late that I've ever seen. I'm not a D&D player, but I can totally buy the notion that OOTS up until at least the Crayons of Time is surprisingly typical of the arc of a campaign. Now to start nitpicking, and showing how you undermine your own dividing line...


But despite this railroading, from strip 200 onwards the plot is increasingly driven by party and character dynamics. V's arrogance and trigger-happiness, her feud with Belkar, Haley's feelings for Elan and for loot, Roy's search for love and his sense of responsibility - these things become steadily more important. We see the players' personalities intruding more and more into the characters - mis-roleplaying the way it should be done: not for crass advantage within the game, but just for the fun of it.

These things have become steadily more important over the course of the entire second book. By this logic, OOTS' Cerebus Syndrome can be back-dated to Haley's letter from Lord Tyrinar (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0131.html), where Haley's love of loot started getting de-Flanderized, and maybe even during the battle in Xykon's lair, specifically this: (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0107.html)

:belkar:: It's all your fault. Stupid d4 Hit Dice.
:vaarsuvius:: Excuse me?
:belkar:: You heard me, Ears.
:vaarsuvius:: Well, I'm terribly sorry I spent my extensive lifespan unlocking the means to unravel the universe and reshape it according to my will rather than, say, jogging. It has a tendency to leave one relatively fragile.
:belkar:: Exactly! If you had gotten more fresh air as a kid, I'd be out there kicking ass right now.
:vaarsuvius:: My deepest apologies. Now if you don't mind, I am somewhat preoccupied telling the laws of physics to shut up and sit down.
:belkar:: Fine! I'll just stand over here and protect your sorry elven butt. Pointy-haired, purple-eared, ambiguously-gendered pain in my ass.
Come to think of it, this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0109.html) during the same battle is Haley/Elan squee fodder... and Roy's growing sense of responsibility becomes a factor starting with the last Eugene dream (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0078.html) (which also fills out the plot) and becomes acute when he lets Elan go to the bandits... you yourself later point out the changing role of alignment when Belkar tries to kill Elan (still something of a joke, if a grim one - Roy's abandonment of Elan is also a pre-Miko exploration of alignment). I'd say this is an argument for my Cerebus Syndrome dividing line of #43, the start of the Linear Guild arc, which not only exposes the actual background planning to the world, but also introduces elements of later arcs (Celia, Banjo) and starts the process of the players' (if there were players) "personalities intruding more and more into the characters", which admittedly gets more acute in the second book, but still, well before Miko shows up.


At the same time, things get more serious. The bad guys start to directly threaten innocents - first Elan, then Julia, then Azure City. One day the players find that their quest is no longer driven by Roy's private obsession - it's the fate of a whole nation, and indeed the entire world.

Yeah, bad guys have never threatened innocents before either (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0053.html). (And what do you mean by Elan? The bandits who came along before Miko?)


The character who best sums up the development is Elan. At first he plays purely for fun - to inject a bit of benign chaos into the party, culminating in blowing up the dungeon for no better reason than that the switch was there. His kidnapping by bandits is the DM's first attempt to make him take the action a little more seriously, but he heroically maintains his sunny chaos. His turning point is the trial (:elan: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Roy being really pissed...").

An odd choice of line, and one that came shortly after Miko was introduced (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0203.html).


A little while later comes his moment of glory in Cliffport, and the DM all but forces him to take a level in badass. From that point onwards, we see him trying to be helpful and take responsibility. The character may still have the self-discipline of a kitten on cocaine; but the player has started to take the game seriously.

So Elan's player is like Belkar? I'd say there's also some development as early as his realization of how mean Miko is (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0231.html).

Incidentially, given your later alignment remarks, I wonder how the prequels fit into this. Speaking of which...


[nods]
Another consideration is that the world has been growing up with the players. Palaidins slaughtering goblins indiscriminately in SoD, or grumbling about having to be moral in Origins, have been replaced by the likes of Hinjo, Ochul and Lien: the prequels describe D&D from back in the days when GG was writing articles defending Paladins slaughtering infants, and when selling captives was normal, while the current day characters are well, current day - when the average gamer isn't venting teenage frustrations.

Publication order and Miko throw a wrench into this. I get the sense we're supposed to hold both views of paladins simultaneously. But if Soon was as Miko-like as Girard's grudge suggests, I'd be happy to withdraw my position, especially if Rich was at least planning on a Sapphire Guard prequel before his illness (or will still do one).

[Kumo]

Publication order and Miko throw a wrench into this. I get the sense we're supposed to hold both views of paladins simultaneously. But if Soon was as Miko-like as Girard's grudge suggests, I'd be happy to withdraw my position, especially if Rich was at least planning on a Sapphire Guard prequel before his illness (or will still do one).

Girard has quote "never trusted authority figures, be they kings, presidents or party leaders" and so his interpretation of Soon has very little bearing on what Soon's personality could be. Heck, from the way Soon's ghost conducted itself to Miko, he was closer to O'Chul or Hinjo. Albeit a constantly ticked off O'Chul/Hinjo. Obviously Soon's attitude wasn't exactly a big eye opening revelation about how some paladins aren't jackasses for him but that doesn't mean Soon was as bad as Miko.

While you would have a point if these books were presented in chronological order, they are not. The prequels take place under 3.0 rules, so the idea that character roles, choices etc etc have also been deliberately rewound is not all that odd. The reasons, of course, are up for debate. (i used to think they were just representations of what happens when DnD players inject their personalities way too much)

[veti]

This is the best argument for putting OOTS' Cerebus Syndrome this late that I've ever seen. I'm not a D&D player, but I can totally buy the notion that OOTS up until at least the Crayons of Time is surprisingly typical of the arc of a campaign. Now to start nitpicking, and showing how you undermine your own dividing line...

Okay: you're using the language of TV Tropes, which I was trying to avoid... I think a label like 'Cerebus syndrome' means implicitly comparing/measuring OOTS with a lot of other works. And while that comparison is valid in some ways, I think it sells us short in others.

To put it another way: I think different instances of 'Cerebus syndrome' may have very little in common, and using a single term to describe them all is misleading.


These things have become steadily more important over the course of the entire second book. By this logic, OOTS' Cerebus Syndrome can be back-dated to Haley's letter from Lord Tyrinar (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0131.html), where Haley's love of loot started getting de-Flanderized, and maybe even during the battle in Xykon's lair, specifically this: (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0107.html)

Yes, all those germs are there in the early stages. Once Haley's feelings for Elan have become a plot point, you can retrospectively trace them back and see signs of them as early as this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0088.html), or even this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0017.html) or this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0008.html). But they're not plot points at that stage - they're just... atmosphere.


I'd say this is an argument for my Cerebus Syndrome dividing line of #43, the start of the Linear Guild arc, which not only exposes the actual background planning to the world, but also introduces elements of later arcs (Celia, Banjo) and starts the process of the players' (if there were players) "personalities intruding more and more into the characters", which admittedly gets more acute in the second book, but still, well before Miko shows up.

Well, "growing up" is a long process - I don't think there is such a thing as a clear dividing line. There are moments that can be identified as important, and I've made my pick of those, but I'd be open to including others.

The introduction of the LG is certainly a change, of sorts, but at that stage (my perception is) we're still in an essentially meaningless dungeon crawl with no context. All the LG shows is that the DM is having fun with the party, as well as with us (the audience), by giving them a challenge that's specifically tailored to them.

You mention Celia and Banjo. I think there's a big difference between those two: Celia is an NPC, introduced by the DM, whereas Banjo is a piece of equipment, introduced by a player. This is reflected in how they get 'promoted' to take centre stage later on - Celia enters and leaves, more or less, under her own steam, as fate (a.k.a. "the DM") decrees, but Banjo is basically an accessory to Elan.

The point about "players intruding into the characters" - not a very good phrase, I thought, but I still can't really improve on it - is that it starts off low-key, with throwaway lines and gags, and gradually amplifies until these PC traits become the focus of whole strips and subplots. That's what I mean by 'driving the plot'.

[Maximum Zersk]

*slow clap*

Very good, very well done. Unfortunately, I have never been given the chance to play D&D in my life. But still, as said before, this is a refreshing change from all the speculation threads and such. I hope we get more of them.