What I Owe the Satanic Panic...

Back in 81-82’ I was a D&D-obsessed youth.  But I was also fourteen/fifteen years old and stumbling headlong into my adolescence, which meant a tendency to rebel and question authority.  Now understand that I was a relatively obedient kid surrounded by family, friends, and neighbors who really did have my best interests at heart.  I didn’t do drugs or get a tattoo someplace unmentionable.  But I did start to ask more questions and question everything, especially when I sniffed hypocrisy or straight-up ignorance...

And one discovery I made was that, apparently, everything I liked was Satanic, from my enthusiastic taste in music (metal) to my love a certain fantasy game (D&D).  It was the 80s in the south.  Evangelicals were already a force to be reckoned with, and hysterical moral panics found fertile ground to root and grow.  D&D, with its magic spells and pagan gods, was wide open for outrage.  It rubbed against Biblical prohibitions against sorcery (although I had/have many Christian friends who see no problem) and, clearly, it took young people to a place their parents couldn’t follow and didn’t bother to.  It was easier to attack than to listen and learn.  Luckily, I had open, understanding parents who supported my hobby and even sat in on a few sessions just to see what this gaming thing was all about.

Cool.  But this didn’t stop me from seeing the hysteria around me though, and one bit that stuck in my mind was a newspaper article about the evils of D&D.  It was loaded with uninformed nonsense, but what really stood out to me was the idea that the game taught its players actual spells.  It certainly looked sensational in print even if it was totally divorced from reality.  Sure, the Player’s Handbook told me that certain spells required a verbal and/or somatic component.  But it never said what those components were.  The rules were more forthcoming with material components, but still.  Now, to be clear, I don’t believe in magic and the supernatural.  Mind you, I don’t claim these things don’t exist either, but only withhold belief in the absence of reliable evidence, for which I see none.  If working magic existed in the world, evil, unscrupulous people would certainly have exploited it, and history would have been a mosaic of powerful magicians transforming world events... 

All that aside, there was simply no way to cast a working spell from the information given, mainly because it was geared towards gameplay only.  It was enough to know that you needed to speak and, therefore, couldn’t cast certain spells if gagged and/or silenced.  This  should have been obvious to anyone actually looking through the books, and that’s what really got me.  The evidence, indeed, the truth was right there in the rulebooks.  But these hysterical adults couldn’t be bothered to verify anything.  And many of the adults I could trust in most other areas couldn’t be trusted here, which was a revelation.

Now I somehow understood that forty years of experience usually trumped my fifteen summers of existence.  But as I entered adolescence, it was more than just thoughtless and childish rebellion.  I discovered that the well-meaning adult figures in my life could still be wrong.  They could fall prey to faulty logic and dispense terrible advice, even with the best of intentions, which was usually the case in my world.  Fortunately, the wiser adults in my life had more perspective.  Sadly, more than a few (typically, neighbors and the parents of friends) jumped on the panic bandwagon and gave a master's course in how not to think or evaluate information.  And you know what?  I'm grateful for all of it!  D&D taught me to communicate and strategize, and the Satanic Panic taught me (showed me, really) that it was time to become a critical-thinking adult.  We're all shaped by childhood experiences, and when that childhood is full of D&D, gaming itself becomes the formative thing... 

Age and the Elven Character...

It was a hundred years ago that the Lich-King Agrilad was laid to rest in a barrow near Oxton.  This is ancient history, especially for a party of upstart adventurers barely out of their teens, lost even to their great-great grandparents; and if they’re wise, they’ll consult a sage or at least an old-timer in town before setting out.  But wait a minute.  Elandil, the party’s lone elf, is an impressive two-hundred years old.  He actually remembers the event.  Moreover, he was old enough to know, and really understand, what it all meant...

But what does it mean to have such antiquity in a low-level party?  Elves are immortal or nearly so, and even dwarves, abbreviated against to their pointy-eared friends, lead very long lives, at least by human standards.  How do we handle this in a game where knowledge is quite literally power?  Treat it as another racial ability?  We could do that.  

The question takes on new meaning when we look at the starting age tables in the original Dungeon Master’s Guide.  Here we learn that a newly minted elf is somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred years or more!  What do we make of this?  Do elves age more slowly, remaining as children at a time when human lives are long-finished?  And assuming time is experienced the same way for both races (which isn’t necessarily so), plenty of knowledge and experience is gained in those decades.  The youngling elf can’t help but possess insight beyond anything their round-eared friends could ever aspire to unless they somehow learn and grow differently, remaining in a Peter Pan-like state of prolonged immaturity.  Of course, this assumes that elves aren't waiting longer to leave home and go on adventures, which is possible.  But the result is still more knowledge...   

Elves, with their longer lifespans, risk being
inaccessible as player characters unless steps are taken... 

And who knows?  Maybe they do.  But it seems odd for a race otherwise known for their intelligence and wisdom.  And children are constantly learning and applying knowledge gained in mere years of their short lives.  Of course, this is only a problem if the referee has a problem with first level characters possessing extra knowledge, at least as far as history is concerned.  But there’s a way out.  One need only imagine that elves grow much like humans except that once they reach their thirties (or maybe their early forties) they just stop.  I mean, they live on barring accident or injury and enjoy the seemingly endless summer of elven longevity envied by mere mortals.  But they no longer age physically.  This is the approach I prefer because it makes that elven teenager a greenhorn; a kid with no more experience than their adventuring companions.  And no more than the players themselves.

In other words, that first-level elf is sixteen years old (or whatever), just like their human peers, except, of course, that the elf can look forward to centuries of vitality and life.  I’ve long opposed the notion of elves as humans with pointy ears, perhaps as much as I dislike the donkey eared internet variety.  Elves aren’t, in fact, human, and as they age, the differences only grow; a fact which makes non-player elves valuable sources of insight.  Why consult a human sage when there’s an elven settlement nearby, especially when your typical adult remembers the Renaissance (for instance) like we remember high school?  But this assumes they’re even accessible.  As a rule, I eschew the idea of an Iron-Age Star Trek with its elven shopkeepers.  Most humans should have never seen an elf, for elves have their own concerns and change with time beyond the openness of their youth...

And maybe this reclusiveness only increases with age until, at last, they succumb to that undeniable urge to leave our mortal realm for far-flung shores, doubtless to remember (perhaps with fondness) their adventures with those quaint, round-eared humans.  Fantasy games thrive on the notion of antiquity, and elves can serve as a link to the campaign's distant past and help to explore issues of mortality which impact us in this all-too-real life! 

Checking Our Alignment(s)...

Chaotic good?  Neutral evil?  We shall know them by their alignments, except that some players aren't too keen on the concept.  It's irrelevant, they say.  Their characters will develop through play and do what they're gonna do, so formalizing it is pointless...  

Sure, makes sense.  And the fact is, most of us like to think that what we do is good or, for the more philosophically obsessed among us, at least justified.  Few (if any) of us cackle maniacally while twirling our mustaches.  Evil is something others call us when we fail to live up to their expectations, although in ten thousand years of human history, we've come to a reasonable consensus of what might count as evil.  I align with Sam Harris and view morality as an issue of well-being.  Rape and murder violate the well-being of others and, rightly so, qualify as "evil" is many (hopefully) contemporary moral systems.    

So we can jettison alignment and let the water find its depth. And for that matter, let whatever fictional societies may exist in a campaign weigh in on what a character's behavior maps to, complete with pitchforks and/or angry mobs.  It's the realistic approach.

But then, dragons and elves aren't realistic either, and we miss opportunities...

First and foremost, fantasy is a genre predisposed to view good and evil as bona fide manifestations in the universe.  Good and evil aren't just choices.  They're actual forces no less real than gravity in the scheme of things.  Alignment becomes an actual thing.

Moreover, while the gods might have chosen good or evil, their respective servitors may or may not enjoy such liberties, although good-aligned deities are more likely to value individual liberty in their followers.  Evil creatures, in particular, tend more towards a selfish, slavish devotion to their masters, whether under the usual pain of death or because they're literally manifestations of evil who can be no other way.  And perhaps the mortal races are unique in actually having a choice, making this approach far from unenlightened.  Hmmm...

I say this because there's a small wine and cheese segment* of the hobby that assures me I'm an unenlightened philistine for liking both alignments and archetypes!

Finally, if good and evil are palpable things, then certain spells (and magic items) will absolutely channel their power to great consequence in a campaign.  And if we imagine the characters as among the few true "free agents" in the cosmos, it opens the door to many intriguing ideas.  That Staff of Corruption is literally corrupt.  And the players may approach something close to Moorcockian tragedy while binding (or enslaving) themselves to one side of an everlasting struggle.  Cogs in the wheel.  Champions, slaves, and probably both...

And now, at last, we understand the situation poor Elric found himself mired in!

Of course, this doesn't apply universally.  Pits & Perils and Opherian Scrolls (Blood of Pangea) are the only two of our own titles to address this.  But given how modern games are more than happy to mechanize every other social interaction, the aversion to any sort of alignment system seems particularly strange.  Especially in a fantasy game where the idea is seemingly right at home.  To them I say, alignment is the ultimate social mechanic...

*Not everyone who eschews alignment is part of this set, and we mean no offense here!