The Common Bulwark of Folk D&D
"Everyone plays the game wrong", a hidden bulwark for Folk Gaming
Those that follow my videos and clubhouse gameplay know that as a gamer, I’m an advocate of systems matter as well as using the rules of the game.
From this, you might imagine I would be bothered by what is likely the predominant form of Dungeons and Dragons table play which is often derisively called “calvin-ball”. That is, the group does a kind of free form adult make-believe, haphazardly-sometimes applying rules.
For those of us in D&D blogs, YouTube videos, conventions and purchasing boutique mad-genius pdfs on itch.io you can begin to get the impression that all of these ideas and acronyms we discuss are the most important thing in RPGs. In a way they can be in the sense of an adoption curve. In the real world of the majority of D&D tables, I don’t think they matter at all. I suspect most people who play D&D regularly don’t know what “OSR” or “PBTA” are nor Hickman, Ron Edwards, Gygax or Chris McDowall.
In this recent article by Troy Press the blog author hosted a omnibus survey of 1,253 U.S. adults recruited from online panels, of whom several played D&D and questions were asked about how they viewed the rules of the game.
The results are quite predictable, and of these participants it’s worth noting they are passionate enough about the game to be found for an online survey panel. It’s likely that things such as the Orr Report are of those passionate enough to be playing on a virtual tabletop, and Wizards of the Coast own survey data likely has the same major sampling bias.
That is to say, these are some of the most passionate tabletop gamers and don’t even represent the majority who simply play with their friends offline.
The results indicate that most people simply don’t know the rules of the game at all, itt is a freeform, imaginative experience.
I have often argued this is the reality of most D&D play. I have some new evidence that strengthens the claim that 90% of tables simply “make it up” and don’t use the rules, and that further, this is an inherent quality to D&D itself which arises naturally in play.
First, an experiment with my Daughter which you can see parts of here and here. My Daughter was 2 when she started and is no 4. She has had absolutely no exposure to D&D culture whatsoever. A true “tabula rasa” experiment, if you will. Furthermore, I stress very generic terms when I talk about the game rather than complex ones and acronyms. I say things like “the adventure game” and “the game board” etc.
Despite this I noticed something very interesting. My Daughter naturally started playing in a style resembling what others do in D&D culture. With no exposure to it at all, she naturally just began calling the game “D&D” and talking about her Character and so on.
I began playing with my nephew who is 10, he played for the first time when he was 8. He is obsessed with D&D now. I have several times had him play the Dungeon Master. He confidently, and without asking or checking, has DM’d without using the rules of the game at all every time. He is mostly interested in cool monsters and absurd rube-goldberg machine traps.
What about adults though?
I want to point out this the fan zine “Alarums and Excursions” which famously received a reply from Gary Gygax himself, where Gary describes folk D&D as inherent to D&D.
Going back to my own attitude on “just make it up” or “calvin ball”, you might find me decrying such an approach among the online ivory tower in videos such as my conversation with Dunder Moose or Bradford C. Walker . Here and here.
I myself am very, very deep in the rabbit hole of resurrecting the wargame clubhouses of Bath, Wesley and Arneson. For me, the rules matter a great deal, and are in no way in conflict with their open system (which is still most of it) and the exercise of abductive reasoning from good pulp fantasy literature and imagination. Clubhouses and Braunsteins cannot work without using a rulebook.
At the same time, I acknowledge that D&D as we know it today has inherent in it, a quality to call forth children’s play in the style of “cops and robbers” and still be a “fourth category of game” as Rob Kuntz calls it.
In issue 1 of Alarums and Excursions, the form of modern conventional table play is obvious, and it arose when people got the rules and just did what came naturally to them. (See below.)
The play examples in Alarums and Excursions are all about play acting and dungeon adventures. There is hardly any mention at all of wargaming, which wasn’t understood by many of the people that got the books.
This “folk” form of D&D, which would become current conventional orthodoxy upon which the brand is built, would eventually cement as the “true” way to play, described in the Basic Line of D&D, and in most supplements that were published after 1983.
The point is this “elusive shift” happened immediately, with most adults willing to enter the seance of imagination from the books, and the maintenance of a wargame required conscience thought and training, and an understanding of many things most people don’t understand either today, or then.
Years ago, my friend Jake, a co-founder of Mythic Mountains Folk Gaming Club sent me this story of when he tried moving away from the elite-online, zine-reading, itch.io pdf buying class of D&D gamer and tried to find people to play with in person.
I share it with his permission.
The address was In a sketchy neighborhood, I was a little nervous about playing with strangers. My spidey sense was tingling. Well, turns out it was for good reasons. I am certain it was a trap house.
I had to step over a mattress to enter the hallway, at the end of the hallway was a koi pond. A small zen garden and then a second koi pond that was drained. A massive fireplace backdropped and littered with empty beer cans, musical instruments, cigarette butts, tortilla chips and little green army men. There was a card table set up down in the drained koi pond where five dudes sat with dice, minis and each one had their own bong.
There was a faint sound of children crying somewhere upstairs, and sizzling burgers on a grill in the distance but it was subtle compared to the pungent fumes of weed. I was offered ziplock bags full of jerky and glass jars of “homemade nuka-cola” at my arrival. A full grown iguana chased a long haired cat out of the room.
Then the game began… 5e, Level 4. typical 5e everyone is a weirdo character, frogman monk, centaur monk, and plasma-slime monk. So I decide I’ll roll up a Dragonborn monk. We were instructed to stop the ritual, Druids in the woods. Easy or so I thought…
The DM explains, using expo markers, that these Druids are 500 feet away, at the top of a hill and asks what do you do? I say I run, dash. Monk 80ft. He calls for an athletics check, i roll a 24.
Every other player decides to pass their turn (I think they were all too high to actually have a genuine thought).
The DM describes how the ground was shaking and lights began to emit from the Druids. What do you do? I run again! Dash, 80ft. He calls for another athletics check. I roll an 18. Every other player passes… the DM plays a chant over the speakers and says tree blights creep up from the ground and start dancing. What do I do? I ask if I could throw a dart at the Druids
Trying to interrupt them. He says they’re so far away I’ll miss no matter what. Sure ok. Then I’ll run. One player decides he’ll start running. The DM says he’s struck by lightning and takes 47 damage. Which kills his character.
Lol so the player just stands up and says “well ima get another drink then” and leaves the table. The other players pass. saying “we’ll die if we move. Just let the new guy do this I guess.”
So the DM describes how the tree blights catch fire, the Druids catch fire and the chanting is getting louder, what do you do?
I think, as a monk, I don’t have any ranged options, I can tell I’m running out of time but I am fast, so I’ll dash again, maybe next turn do something interesting.
So at this point I’ve ran three consecutive turns basically only halfway there.
The player whose character just got nuked by lightning comes back. The DM says “Oh it’s your turn.” To which the player says “didn’t I just die?” Then looks at us as if we healed him or something. And the DM says “No I jumped the gun on that you’re fine. What do you do?”
The player says “I’ll spend all my ki points to cast silence on the Druids.”
(Remember he’s alll the way back at the beginning) and the DM says “wow that will work, amazing, how many are affected?”
After a bit of debate they decide half the Druids are silenced. Then the DM describes how they all turn into ash as the ritual was completed and we lost. Game over. (This was a 4 hour game btw) I probably won’t go back.
I’m unsure if this was actually meant to be a game or if these guys just like to get high together rolling occasional dice. But I don’t understand what I was supposed to do. The only player that tried besides me had an awful time too, why did I have to roll athletics? Was I dodging lightning also?
The atmosphere was so surreal. But the game reflected it in a crazy way.
The truth is that Gary was right. There is an immune system which defends itself against the predation of the brand. That is, they can’t tell people what to do anyway.
Only those ideas and games which produce enough fun, and which can be remembered, will matter ultimately. For me the rules matter, but not necessarily the ones Wizards of the Coast needs to sell or make money from.
"Folk D&D" is not a bulwark against the "predation of the brand" as you put it. The weirdly self-evident kid/druggie derived game that people frequently spontaneously invent on their own is the lynchpin that *enables* the predation of the brand.
Meanwhile, Gary Gygax's remarks in Alarums and Excursions issue #2 is not an endorsement of what we call "folk D&D'. When he says the word "campaign" repeatedly there, he means something entirely different from what folk D&D players would imagine he means. It is dishonest to impute their definitions upon Gygax's statements when he clearly could not yet grasp that these people were going to take his magnanimous-sounding permissiveness and use it to redefine D&D into a nongame. Not just for their own individual tables, but for everyone.
“Erase tableau” Were you trying to say tabula rasa?