The Les Miserables Philosophy of Tabletop Gaming

It is an age old tale of the line drawn between right and wrong and the gray areas in between, if they exist at all. I'm talking about the struggle between players and Game Masters, of course.  Although the analogy fits for Les Miserables as well.  There are as many types of Game Masters, Dungeon Masters, and Story Tellers as there are characters in everyone's favorite French Revolution masterpiece.  Perhaps you know someone who fits these descriptions, or even see yourself in them.  If not, then maybe you'll want to go out and watch a Broadway play or read a classic novel after reading this.  Or maybe you'll just want to go steal a loaf of bread.

1.  The Jean Valjean-The Jean Valjean school of GMing is probably the most popular.  This game master has good intentions.  He knows the rules and sets out to follow them staunchly. However, he has a soft heart.  He can't say no to a sultry little elf who doesn't quite have the comeliness to seduce an ancient map from a dungeon sentry.  He will bend the rules here and there and sees no wrong in it.  He is also the story teller who will let the party take a little bit longer to lose all their SAN than the numbers show.  This type of game mastering can be fun and help a blundering party of poor dice rollers play a little bit longer before they're eaten by a giant bugbear.  However, hidden within his group may be the NEXT type of gamer who will toss his pack to the ground and disrupt the fun for everyone.

2.  The Javert-The Javert philosophy of dungeon mastering is the bane of existence for the Jean Valjeans.  Javerts, the 2nd most common game master, is also known as the Rules Lawyer.  He does not bend.  He has every Dungeon Master handbook that has come onto the market since 1982 and he can flip to the page that correspond to any argument you may try to bring up.  He has every Vampire the Masquerade clanbook since 1st Edition and do NOT bring up the new stuff to him.  He is a purist and you will not get him to allow your Assamite to know three dots of Vicissitude no matter how you try to justify it! He follows your cultist through time and space and if you so much as THINK of stealing a loaf of bread, he is on you like a Tzimisce at a Sabbat Ball.

3.  The Fantine-Yes, this is the girl GM, of which I've been, although I've been more of a Javert than a Fantine.  She may be cute, but  mostly she is a GIRL who is GAMING! and we know where that might lead.  You've come down off the high of defeating a cave of giant spiders.  Everyone's laughing, sharing stories, pointing out war wounds.  And then the dreaded words..."I'd like to run the next campaign." Several pairs of male eyes dart together, rolling mental dice to figure out how to get out of this.  The group loses 4 points of SAN. There's a trapdoor in the corner through which they could escape, but who knows where it might lead.  There is the slim chance that Fantine might wear that nearly see-through top to one of the gaming sessions.  And if you say "No" she might whine like she did to Jean Valjean that time when she wanted him to go to the innkeeper and take her little snotty nosed brat and raise it.

4.  The Marius Pontmercy-Marius is perhaps more of a bane to the existence of gamers than Fantine.  Marius is head over heels with Fantine (or the other girl in the group who plays but has no designs on being a GM).  When thieves ransack the campsite in the night, any female in the group miraculously has nothing of her own stolen.  When a superhero group of Champions is fighting a rampaging robot taller than the tallest city skyscraper, the girl always saves the day.  And in the end, there is Marius with his eyes glittering behind his glasses, drool on his bottom lip, hoping that THIS time she'll realize he did this all for HER! Luckily, there is usually a stalwart Javert in the group who can squelch this lovelorn young man faster than you can say 24601.

5.  The M. Thenardier and Grp-Yes.  Them.  Fortunately, this pack usually lurks in larger gaming groups.  Unfortunately, this makes them harder to weed out.  M. Thenardier has a bit of all of the above in him and appears at first to be jolly, goofy, everybody's bosom friend. But, behind every M. Thenardier is his Mme. Thenardier, who may or may not be female.  Mme. Thenardier floats amongst the gamers, laughs and talks and befriends them while M. Thenardier is doing his Game Mastering.  When everyone breaks for the bathroom, M. and Mme. Thenardier go to get more chips from the kitchen, at which time Mme. Thenardier drops all the secret plans and plots of the unsuspecting gamers right into the lap of M. Thenardier who is quick to devise ways to destroy players' hopes of having a favorable outcome.  But he cannot do this alone.  And he won't have to.  For, lurking in the depths of the gaming group, is a sweet little scamp known as Gavroche.  He probably knew the Thenardiers from before, in the last group they were kicked out of.  He is their henchman.  He takes the evil plans of the M. Thenardier and uses them to guide the group into the wicked clutches of the game master.  How? Because Gavroche and Mme. seem to always roll the best dice, always have the best powers, and have lady luck at their sides.  Before long, Fantine is stamping all over the heart of poor little Marius. Javert has Jean Valjean against the wall at the end of his blade.  And the character sheets are trampled like so much ticker tape in the dust of their feet.

So, about now that much hated Javert in your group is looking PR-ETTY good, eh? Turn your rules lawyer loose on occasion.  He'll sniff out those Thenardiers and break the will of the annoying Fantines.  I like to think that he brings balance to the force.

Pulp Fiction Unpacked! Part 1

And I don’t mean the movie Pulp Fiction. If you need someone to explain that to you, then you may be of too sensitive a constitution to get into the deep end of the pulp pool!


I mean the genre that created genres, defined men, and gave evil a face.

Emerging from the frivolous dime novels of the last half of the 18th century, pulp magazines opened the wide world to the average Joe.

History
There assuredly are factors that contribute to the popularity of the pulp magazines in their hay day that go beyond the inexpensive cover price. For one thing, in the years following the civil war, elementary and secondary school enrollment for African Americans increased dramatically. By 1880, around 35% of black youth were registered in school, compared with 10% in 1870. Even into the 1920s the school enrollment rate was at its highest for all races of children in America. Government attention was also focused on education, with the first annual report of the Office of Education in 1869. The report focused on informing congress yearly the condition and progress of American education. During the 1940s, an increase in higher education began to push others to continue at least through high school when the trend had been a completion of education in the 8th grade.

So it’s easy to see that the whole attitude of the country toward literacy and education of all people had taken a swift kick in the pants.

In 1870, 20% of Americans age 14 and over were illiterate. By 1920, the number had dropped to 6%. And with this new voracious appetite for knowledge came what I’d like to think was dissatisfaction with their mundane existence. After all, dissatisfaction is from whence comes the best invention.

The pulp business

The new educated masses had jobs which meant they wanted things. They were tied down to what they now realized were boring existences. Enter the story writer. Of course, no one could afford a $12 paperback in those times, so crafty publishers took the cheapest bits of paper leftovers, paid writers barely enough to keep themselves in typewriter ink, and the pulp magazine was born.

The new bourgeois of literacy, with ten cents to spare, converged on the magazine racks with a vengeance. Big bosomed damsels, square-jawed gangsters, grinning heroes, mammoth-sized tigers, and haberdashered aliens. Inside those colorful covers were three or four tickets to other worlds.

Whatever your taste, the pulp publishers would pay someone peanuts to write to you. There were military adventures, sexy trysts, mysticism from the dark continent. And thanks to the pulp era, the science fiction and hard-boiled detective genres facilitated the births of generations of geeks!

H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard and the Weird Tales magazine brought unknowable creatures to life. Robert Heinlein, Issac Asimov, and L. Ron Hubbard ushered in an era of exploration beyond our Earthly shores. While back in deepest Africa, Tarzan was being adopted by apes.

And if you think that Trekkies invented the fan convention, think again! Long before mere humans were learning proper Klingon, pulp fans in the 1960s were organizing conventions.

The end?

World War II brought not only fear of real world terrors, but rationings of everything, including paper. Thus began the demise of the pulp genre. But was it the end?

From the murky depths of the Internet, a rise in the popularity of pulp has been seen. Despite the encroaching terror of the viral video, the Kryptonite of Tila Tequila, and the staggering atrocities of bulletin boards, real heroes reemerge in the form of Dashiell Hammett on ebook, and reprinting of 1930s magazines so that all may acquire the knowledge that Doc Savage was the first man to have a Fortress of Solitude!

Has pulp fiction seen it’s end?

I think not, Drummond. I believe that we shall meet again!

...end of part one.  Tune in next time for Pulp Heroes...EXPLAINED!