Jeffro's Space Gaming Blog
Microgames, Monster Games, and Role Playing Games
Lewis Pulsipher on the Rpg Anti-Game circa 1981
The July 1981 issue of Space Gamer has a fascinating article from Lewis Pulsipher which details probably the greatest “DM Don’t” of all time:
When designing a place of adventure some DMs try to anticipate what players will do when they reach an area. Quite often they fail; the players have some magic item or devise some strategy the DM didn’t consider. The DM has already made one mistake by anticipating, but now he may make a worse one by changing the situation to block the players once more, forcing them to do what he intended in the first place. Not only is this unfair, it implies a general attitude which is very “anti-game.” The DM apparently is more interested in offering a certain level of resistance to the players no matter how well they play, so that even the most brilliant party is destined to lose characters because the DM will make sure they do. It also implies that the DM intends to control the course of the game rather than give the players a chance to do so. A better attitude is to set up situations which seem believable — something which might actually happen given the D&D world parameters rather than something contrived to present specific problems to specific parties — and assume that the players will get through without casualties. You can’t go wrong then, and there’s no temptation to manipulate a situation. Of course, this doesn’t mean they will actually do so well, it’s just wise to assume that they might.
Note the use of the term “anti-game” there. I had thought that I had coined it myself in the pages of How to Win at D&D, but here it is right inside the pages of my favorite magazine. Even better, it’s penned not only by someone that is not only a dear friend but also by someone who has become my greatest nemesis within the rpg space!
There is a very big difference between the contexts in which Lew and me are addressing this subject. When Lew was writing, The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide was both relatively fresh and also generally regarded as being the last word on the nature of the game. The “anti-game” approach to dungeon mastering was framed as being a particularly irritating and subpar approach to refereeing. What Lew could not anticipate was that nearly every game module TSR was about to begin putting out would embrace this ridiculous approach to adventure design, an entire generation would come up presuming that this was the right way to play, and then forty years would pass in which time people would ultimately forget that D&D was ever intended to be a game in the first place.
By the time I weighed in on the matter, it was no longer possible for about 90% or more of Dungeon Masters to even imagine that the game could be played any other way.
Jeffro's Space Gaming Blog 
Yup, it’s so black and white thinking too. It’s either a totally directionless sandbox or it’s basically a railroad in their mind. The sheer cope in the comments of the linked video is quite telling. People arguing that random tables for populating something like an Appendix A dungeon is equivalent to completely preset encounters because “You cannot get any combination that isn’t on the list.”
Another variant of this is “What if I roll an ancient black dragon as a random encounter against a low level party?” I don’t know any random table that has such, and there’s so many other assumptions there, such as “why would it even care about a low level party?” and “Every encounter = combat.” Disposition tables exist!
There’s also some comments about how Sandbox players don’t think about how a dungeon fits together. This is ridiculous as part of the pleasure for both me and other GMs I know is working that out. I’ve run large dungeons where there is a war happening inside the dungeon, and the players can exploit it, pick sides, etc. Are these people so creative they can’t think of a suitable idea?
But in the end, yes. So many DMs think they need to offer a certain level of resistance. They never let the party truly win. From fudging HP numbers so their “cool boss” lasts longer, to conjuring up more reinforcements on the spot. You can even see this in video games where developers recoil at the idea of skilled players regularly winning high difficulty levels and thus turn the game into a slog; Helldivers 2 is a prime example of it, where the developers ramped up the difficulty (enemy spawns, detection, patrols,) scale in higher mission levels, and nerfed weapons so it went from a tough, difficult expedition that required careful thought and execution against a large range of threats (while low level has less threat variety)… To a slog where the player is constantly being hammered by endless waves of top level foes. it’s still doable, but it was no longer possible to do well.
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Jeffro,
I know this doesn’t directly relate to this specific article, but have you ever read Lew Pulsipher’s series on D&D Campaigns from the early White Dwarf issues (starts in issue 1 runs through issue 5)? I was browsing through one of them tonight and saw this quote on timekeeping:
“Time-Keeping
A time record is necessary to regulate activities which are
alternatives to adventuring that require large amounts of time.
The easiest way to keep track of game time is to count one real
week equal to one game week, regardless of what adventures go
on during the week. (I’ve tried different methods, but weeks-
long wilderness adventures have always thrown them out of
kilter.) If a character goes on no adventure during the week he
can spend the time learning a language (assuming someone1
thing is available to teach it) or attending to his magic. This also
makes it easy to keep an account of living expenses as per
Volume 3 – I interpret it as 5% of experience points worth of
gold every five weeks.”
It sounds like exactly what the Bros are advocating, strict time keeping allowing for opportunities for PCs to make good use of downtime as a resource
That is a banger pull-quote, thank you!