Play Your Role or Die
The Appendix N entry that explains what D&D is.
Terrible people complain about the classes in AD&D. Worse people prefer OD&D because they don’t like thieves. This isn’t an apologia for the objectively important thief class, but there is an important reason for thief to be a class of its own — character grading. This oft neglected rule is key to roleplaying, character advancement, and the very schema of D&D. The illiterate and brain-dead hate this rule. Would you look at that — it comes directly out of Appendix N.
“The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt;”
REH, Lieber, Vance, HPL, and Merritt are all solid authors of vivid worlds with undeniable influence on AD&D. However, this list is not in alphabetical order. It stands to reason de Camp & Pratt were listed first on purpose, and their Harold Shea series is likewise listed above. After reading the first entry, I realized that this is a foundational series for the entire game both in the rules and at a paradigmatic level, if you have the eyes to see.
The Roaring Trumpet
After interacting with schizos and paranoiacs, psychologist Harold Shea and his colleagues make a major scientific breakthrough: there are infinite parallel worlds, and these people are plagued by a partial and involuntary shift between them.
Not only can these lines be crossed completely, it is theorized, but by adopting the correct mental framework, one could conceivably shift into the worlds of fiction! A bored and adventurous man, Shea jumps the gun on the experiments and shifts himself into one of these alternate worlds — arriving unintentionally in the world of Norse myth.
Shortly after arriving, Shea is ensnared in the build up to Ragnarok. He joins Loki, Thor, and their human servant under the pretense of being a warlock, with confidence that the modern tools he brought with him will be sufficiently magical to protect him from the fact that he doesn’t know any magic. It goes poorly for him.
The central theme of this story is that these parallel worlds are governed by their own laws — Shea’s matches don’t light, his bullets don’t fire, his stainless steel rusts. His attempts to circumvent the logic of this new world with his modern tools are fruitless; what worked according to the laws of our world was folly here.
The climax of the story happens when Harold is trapped with a virtually powerless Heimdall in the prison of the fire giants. The stakes are impossibly high: Ragnarok is at hand and only he can save Heimdall in time to warn the others. He hatches a brilliant plot to win their freedom through deception: The troll guard is sensitive about the size of his nose and he will “cast” a spell to shrink it.
At the outset, Harold enlists the aid of the other prisoners to act as though his “spell” worked. He remembers some hocus pocus stuff that was discussed earlier in the piece about laws of magic, and judges them to be critical in the selling of his deception.
When his bogus spell is completed, the troll’s nose is actually smaller! His ritual worked! By conforming his actions to the laws that govern this world Harold was able to utilize them. In other words, he advanced in capability by conforming his actions to the expectations of the world he found himself in.
Each class in the game of AD&D represents a different archetype from Appendix N, a different way to interact with the game world, and a different set of inbuilt laws which judge your conformity to that archetype. As Jeffro and Bdubs have pointed out before, D&D requires you to play an appendix N role, have appendix N motivations, and take appendix N actions. This is as true for 1st level characters hoping to advance in power as it is for name level characters looking to keep it, and soon even for the gods.
When playing D&D, we aren’t merely playing a game, as monopoly players, chess players, or wargamers do. Like Harold Shea, real D&D players are psychologically shifting themselves into other worlds—composites of REH, Leiber, Merritt, and the rest of the Appendix N authors—and interacting with these worlds on alien terms. These worlds are governed by laws different than our own: the game of AD&D as a whole but more specifically the appendix N oriented grading rules.
You are entering into a world of fantasy as an ignorant interloper. Your ill conceived notions about what should or shouldn’t be in D&D based on realism or theorycrafting are the schizophrenic ramblings of a partial or involuntary shift. It’s not enough to play by the rules; in a certain sense you have to play to type too. Your personas in the fictional world are bound by laws unknown to you in the real one.
A complete shift requires you to be immersed in the fiction of Appendix N; not just Conan, not just Tolkien. You have to think as though you are a character in the fictional storyworld, bound by its radically different laws, and act accordingly. The hobby has enough schizos — a result of losing the literary history of Dungeons and Dragons.
It’s time we fix that.