(TFT) If I may

[David Michael Grouchy II <david_michael_grouchy_ii@hotmail.com>]

     TFT in online culture
The world of Cidri and the post AD&D game systems

     After the great philosophical works of E. Gary Gygax fantasy game design
became separated from GM opinion and the various generas were divided up: this
was specialization.

     The conditions in which culture developed in the age of online news
groups must be seen in relation to the fundamentalist persecutions and satanic
accusations of the mainstream when role playing games came to light. The games
were miss understood and treated with fear and suspicion, many being driven
underground. After the struggles to establish a regular game a few hit games
were released. Tecumel, Gamma World, Tunnels and Trolls strode large in the
room and our hobby underwent a transformation. When the large distributors got
a hold of the games they were redesigned and targeted to younger kids, with
all the advantages and disadvantages that means.

     The AD&D newsgroups of compuserve, delphi, and prodigy were great places
to find experts of any game system, new monsters for any gener'a, and
adventure materials both inspired and exhaustive. In these surroundings many
new games were designed and countless campaigns launched for the real life
friends back home. Thus the specialize genera's were developed that had mostly
broken the links with games proscribing GM opinion ala Gygax. This separation
at first favored the development of these specialized genera's giving GMs a
feeling of freedom from wearisome dogma. But with the genera actively divorced
from living contact with the GM's campaign the fundamental problems of being a
player, when does my character get to think and act, the sources of
specialized genera began to dry up, intuition to wither, and before long
decadence appeared. The first signs of decadence in the newsgroup period, for
instance, can be seen in the indifference with which self styled Evil players
met new members of the game and would kill them on a whim. And the brilliant
heuristic infinitesimal personality method of champions that didn't use fiat
alignments was ignored.

     There were intellectual and material reasons for this decline of Genera
into nothing more than an alignment system. Real life gaming culture developed
within the circle of a small group of friends who were discreet and didn't
publicize their hobby to the world at large, each groups' Genera traditions
were highly specialized and in these campaigns the individual predominated. In
the online newsgroup world however we find the same crowd producing mixed
marriages of ill-digested ideas. In gaming magazines the situation of Genera
was no better.
Just when idea of having fun playing a game with your friends vanished the
''neutral'' players, less interested in GM opinion than their predecessors,
arose speaking of ''what _my_ character'' would do.

     Druids, Monks, and Archers, although their moralities differed so widely,
all aspired to find an individual ethic for the truly neutral citizen of the
gaming world, to whom they taught that the GM knows nothing and that it is his
job to learn what _my_ character thinks is right and that through this view
even if the GM kills your character one can keep the moral high ground. These
views influenced the logic of the rules lawyers and the methodologies of the
campaign wreckers greatly.
The Melee game system was published by Metagamming in 1980 and it showed that
killing your fellow players was pleasurable, but pleasure understood in a high
sense. Although Melee partly carried the neutral perspective of the GM free
gaming environment, it held that things must be fair. Characters can be
stronger than another but their total starting attributes should be equal,
monsters should use the same attack matrix as the player characters to the
point that any player could play a monster and feel zero shift in the rules,
that no matter what side of the table one sat on the rules should be the same;
ultimate free will, no secret rules in a GM's black binder.

     This egalitarian view of NPC's compared to the rules governing players
made barely any dent on the world of AD&D, if any at all. It was the release
of the magic Item construction tables in ''Advanced Wizard'' that demonstrated
the ratios between an open game, where all the rules are in evidence to all
players, and GM secrets where even published Artifacts have no apparent method
of construction, other than being pulled from the GM's whim. To Steve Jackson
we owe the science of equal magic items for equal work, be it due to player
character effort or pet super monster of the GM alike.
''In The Labyrinth's'' treatment of this genera of demystified magic, which
personally I find wonderfully delicate, is reflected best as a ratio of weeks
risk too a weeks pay, or profit; all the same we find this gem from the
beginning of ''Advanced Wizard.''

     ''On Cidri, magic is considered an honest trade -''

     This tells us that magic items will be bought, and sold. That you can
claim you are true to your alignment, or your character's story all day long,
but the +1 ring of DX is still valued at two thousand dollars. The
profoundness of this is evident in the fact that all other game systems have
since followed suit. AD&D has taken the longest to reform itself, but I
understand now that there is even a method for players to build artifacts. The
course correction is complete.

     David Michael Grouchy II
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