So, Dungeons and Dragons, huh?

Here's what they say to me, when I do my usual riff on what a crappy, crappy 'roleplaying system' Dungeons and Dragons is:

Doc, you admit you haven't played D&D since the early 80s. The game has changed since then to the point where it is nearly unrecognizable. The current version of D&D is so much more advanced and sophisticated over what you remember it being that your opinion is no longer even remotely informed. If you'd sit down and play D&D by the current rules, you'd realize it's come a long, long way and you can actually do real roleplaying with it now.

And then I'll say, “hrm, does the All New, All Different D&D still have armor class?”

And they'll heem, and they'll haw, and they'll glance away, and they'll stir the ground with their foot, and they'll get that “Oliver's Army” look on their faces – you know, 'and I would rather be anywhere else than here today'.. but then, they'll admit, grudgingly, because they all know armor class is a truly retarded thing... Er, yeah, it still has armor class. But...

And I'll jump back in: “Does it still have hit points?”

And they'll roll their eyes and admit, yeah, it still has hitpoints, but...

“Alignment?” I'll inquire brightly. “Character class? A magic system where the mages forget their spells and have to rememorize them as soon as they cast them?”

And they'll nod their heads guiltily to each. Because they know this is stupid, they know this isn't remotely how things should reasonably work, I mean, seriously, how in the fuck can you possibly sensibly explain a magic system where you memorize a spell, cast it, and then forget about it and have to re-memorize it? How can that possibly make any sense? And real people don't have alignments or character classes, real people are much more complex and nuanced than that, and they know this as well, just like we all do, and it is only among their fellow D&D nerds that they can forget all this. Whenever they speak to an actual grown up RPG geek with sane expectations from a gaming system, they will inevitably be forced to re-confront once again what a fucking retarded series of abstract dumbass absurd oversimplifications D&D is entirely comprised of.

Just a couple of random examples out of those I listed above, for my more blessed audience members who have never played D&D, so you get a clue what I'm talking about here:

Armor Class - In D&D, if your character wears armor, they become harder to hit. The more armor they wear, the harder to hit they become. So if a character is wearing no armor, an enemy may only need to roll a 7 to hit them on a certain die, but if the same character is wearing full plate, then that same enemy will need to roll an 11 to hit them.

This is simple and convenient and easy to apply, but it in no way reflects the actual physical reality of donning heavy, bulky ablative coverings to deflect and/or absorb some of the damage bad people are trying to do to your sacred bod with various force-applying instruments. In anything remotely approaching real life, even a simpleton understands that armor does not make it harder for an enemy to strike you. It does, in fact, make it easier for them to hit you, by making you haul more weight around which slows your movements and causes you to become tired more quickly.

In reality, many people accept the trade off of being slowed down and tired out by, say, head to toe kevlar, by the reassurance that when bad people try to damage them with fists or boots or various unpleasant devices designed to do harm, the head to foot kevlar will reduce the damage that is done to them.

But it's easier and more convenient to simply combine all this into one table with one dice roll. I get that. But 'easier and more convenient' are the enemies of real roleplaying beyond the most rudimentary level. Real roleplaying with depth and nuance requires that one play something like three dimensional characters; those characters need to be defined in ways that are not abstracted for the sake of game convenience, so you need a system whereby combat works the way we all know it actually works. Instead of having one roll, you need at least two -- one where somebody tries to hit someone else, and armor actually makes it easier for that to happen, because the person wearing armor is slowed down by its bulk and weight, and then, if that roll succeeds, another in which damage is inflicted, and the armor modifies that damage.

And it's twice as many rolls. But if you don't do it this way, then you're not roleplaying, you're just fantasy adventure gaming.

Everything about D&D is designed to simply and conveniently boil down various complex and nuanced aspects of characterization, the acquisition and use of skills, and the way physical damage effects people. The magic system is not designed to seem believable, it is meant to be 'balanced'. And I haven't even mentioned 'experience points', which are these wonderful things that descend from the sky whenever a player character accomplishes a particular task, which can be spent on improving the character's skills... or re-memorizing the spells that they've already learned once, and having cast, have now forgotten.

Nor have I mentioned the fact that even in 'modern' D&D, which is so much more complex and nuanced and credible, one often still finds 'cure light wound' and 'cure serious wound' potions lying around the landscape, just because these things make it easier for the player characters to survive fights. In any kind of sensible reality, magic potions that instantly heal various traumatic injuries would have to be insanely valuable and expensive, and you'd think they'd be somewhat difficult to manufacture, too... but, nope, there they are, just lying around everywhere on the other side of the place where the orcs are lying in wait to ambush the party.

Usually when I get into these debates, my closer is a simple one: “Can you tell me,” I will ask whoever it is I am having this discussion with, “what a Magic Missile is?”

A Magic Missile is a first level offensive spell. It exists for no other reason than to allow a mage, who has no fighting skills because that's how the idiotic character class system works, be able to maybe do something effective in a combat. Once only, because of course as soon as he casts the stupid thing, he forgets the spell and has to spend Experience Points re-memorizing it. But, still. It lets him do something in combat, once.

It's the most common thing in the world in any D&D game, and yet I have never in my life met a D&D player who can actually tell me what a Magic Missile is. Is it electricity? Some kind of fireball? Pure force? Some kind of focused particle beam? Nobody knows. Press a D&D player for an answer and they'll haul out the Player's Handbook and read you the definition – the difficulty of targeting the spell, how many of what kind of dice of damage it does, etc. But they can't tell you what it is.With the mainstreaming of geek culture that has occurred over the last 20 years or so, there are probably millions of people out there who now enjoy D&D, to some extent or another. None of these people are bothered by how absurd and stupid it is.

Call me crazy, I guess.