DUNGEONS & DRAGONS AND TRAINING: CAN WE PLEASE PLAY ALREADY?!

Been receiving more requests for more Dungeons and Dragons based posts, which shows that my demographic is just as nerdy as I am, but I’m always happy to indulge on that.  Amazingly, the parallels between training and DnD tend to be pretty exhaustive, and in turn, the frustrations I run into one are the same frustrations I run into with the other.  Specifically, in both arenas, I observe people that are interested in doing all of the things involved in the activity EXCEPT the actual activity.  People that love to read, research, contemplate, theorize, daydream, etc etc, but when the time comes to actually execute, they are found to be lacking.  At one point, the character is built, the spells are selected, the treasure is built; it’s time to play the game!

Remember to pick the barbarian

Let me spend this post constantly re-explaining my own analogy, so you too can share my frustration.  Character sheet construction is the programming portion of training, and in turn, you can observe the difficulties people encounter in both.  Some folks legitimately never make it out of here.  There are so many races to choose to be (human?  Boring!  Gnomes?  Too short), so many classes to pick, god help you if you picked a magic using class, because now you have to pick what spells to learn, there’s skills to be selected, etc etc.  How will I know if I picked the “right” choice?  Folks, it’s a goddamn game; the point is to have fun.  Pick what looks like it will be the most fun! 

…but instead, you’re going to be a min/maxing munchkin.  And for those that don’t understand the derogatory terminology of the nerd world, this is an accusation of only being concerned with making the most powerful character possible by maximizing advantages and minimizing disadvantages, and, when possible, cheating.  These are folks who don’t understand that the game is just organized make believe, and instead can ONLY have fun if they are the most powerful character to have ever existed, solution to every problem, and center of attention in every and all setting.  Here’s a secret; no one likes to play with that person.  Instead, make a character that looks like it will be fun to play, flaws and all, and when they inevitably die or the game ends and you start a new one, pick a DIFFERENT character and play THAT one and have fun with them.  …do I need to explain how that metaphor relates to training programs, or do you get it? 

Maybe this will help

Let’s say you somehow made it through character creation and didn’t become that guy who has 1,400 characters built and never actually played a game before; well now it’s time to actually go adventuring with your party.  Everyone wants to engage in an epic, slay a dragon, buy/discover the greatest magical gear, affect major world change in the game, etc etc.  However, you have to understand that those things make up about 1% of the adventure.  Why?  Because, otherwise, it wouldn’t be an adventure.  You need the mundane to make the amazing and wonderful seem amazing and wonderful, for without that contrast the wonderment BECOMES the mundane.  This means that, to get to your high level epic conclusion, you’re gonna have to do some low level adventuring.

Clearing out kobold holds, running fetch quests for minor lords, spending time simply BEING level 1 and pretty much worthless; THIS is the game.  THIS is what you spent all that time making a character for.  THIS is what you set aside time for in your day, time you could spend doing anything else; to play organized make believe with your friends and do some low level adventuring.  THIS is your accumulation phase on training; the time where you just clock in, do the work, get in that volume, and go home.  Yup; it can be pretty boring compared to setting constant PRs, peaking and intensifying, getting overly amped, mugging for Instagram, but guess what; that’s all high level stuff. 

And if you try to just jump right into that stuff without doing some low level adventuring first, you’re going to get stomped.  Hard.  And if you’re that guy who never shows up for a regular gaming session and only comes for the boss fight, you’re going to be low leveled, underequipped, and you’re not going to have any idea what’s going on in the story.  You skipped all that “boring” stuff because you just wanted to have fun, and now you’re the one guy at the table not having fun because you suck at the game and don’t know what’s going on.  And meanwhile, the whole party has to carry you to the end.

How you look to the rest of your party

Because I swear, some of you folks, no matter how much you swear that you LIVE for this stuff, no matter how much you are begging someone to run a game so you can play, no matter how many books you buy and dungeon maps you draw, you don’t actually want to PLAY the game.  You just wanna build characters and buy magical gear with pretend gold, but once it comes time to actually sit at the table, eat the pizza, drink the mountain dew and roll the dice, you’re either physically absent or mentally checked out.  You love everything about the game EXCEPT the game.

Why do you think I always play the barbarian?  Why am I always the same character?  Because I don’t need to spend 400 hours building a character to play and have fun; I make my fun happen in the GAME.  The character building, the gear buying, the leveling up, etc etc, all of it is there to support the GAME.  And if the only way you can have fun is to do the high level stuff, that’s still fine, but you gotta recognize that you need to EARN those levels before you can play that game.  Either way, no one is getting any better without spending time on the actual adventure.

This is what happens when you skip the kobolds and jump right to the dragon

So go build A character and get it over with, start adventuring, do it for a WHILE, go get your high level quest knocked out if that’s what gets you going, and then get back on the adventure.  Your friends at the table will appreciate you more for it, and you’ll actually get pretty strong too.