(Very early 1973, 1st level of my Castle El Raja Key) -- In November of 1972 four stalwarts of the LGTSA (Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association; of which I was then its current president)--namely Gary Gygax, myself, Ernie Gygax and my brother Terry Kuntz--experienced our first, and also comprehensive, RPG adventure via Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor setting. During it we also experienced the various levels of DM interactive strategies that Arneson could and did wield.
A very important one that both Gary and I learned from Arneson and were to forward on our own during the play-tests of D&D (in both Castle Greyhawk and Castle El Raja Key and their shared environs used by Gary and myself) was what I refer to as “Immersion”. In other words, the ability through the DM’s properly deployed and timed descriptions in interaction with the players to excite the latter’s emotive states via the imaginative impressions made upon them during such interactions.
I have written and been interviewed about this in the past (most recently for the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary). In essence Arneson had us scared to death (and running) during the latter part of the adventure into Blackmoor.
Now let us skip forward a few more years of Gary and I DMing players and DMing each other and while considering what we had learned and knew between us (all of the DM secrets shared between us); and then place my PC, Robilar, in front of the primal Tomb of Horrors via an invite by Gary for me to “play-test a new level” he’d just finished... There should be no wonder whatsoever why I was so cautious then, for the proof of Gary’s “design” was in how he initially described that foreboding place to me. Anxiety. It was a staple for both of us, but you could not relieve such a tension unless you faced your building fears...
Several years before that ToH play-test, in a mind far, far removed in conceptual time, I had affected Gary’s perceptions and worked in this same doubt and anxiety. This was during Gary’s earliest forays into Castle El Raja Key with his PCs Yrag and Mordenkainen.
The interchange between EGG as player and myself as DM went like this as he entered a four-way:
This was a magical noise activated by entering the four-way. In each case its origin and exit points were determined by separate d4 rolls. This may seem a simple, “Heh, gotcha,” but thereʼs much more beneath the surface. First, note Garyʼs anxiety factor is on the rise. The real is substituted for by the imagined in this instance. Are the next footsteps he hears, perhaps hours later and at a different point in the adventure, then real or a hoax? And... If one encounters these future footsteps and we describe them with the same cadence and tone as at the four-way, what are the possible mental affects on a player experiencing this combination?
Also compare: If it had instead been an encounter with goblins, for instance, this “physical” encounter would not have fashioned itself as anxiety in fantasy immersion terms but primarily in game terms only, and then only briefly as the mind moved to focus on the combat and statistics side through immediate evaluation of circumstances. In the former instance evaluation occurred after anxiety and doubt had been fully achieved. The repetition of the footsteps continued to grow anxiety and doubt because Gary could not relieve these by identifying the source and thereafter dispensing with it through combat. The initial anxiety is removed at the end, but a greater doubt (and respect) for the environment now exists.
Where does this early immersive aspect that both of us utilized as DMs derive from? Well it starts many places in life, when one is spooked as a child by “those shadows in the room,” or when one is reading a scary bit in a story, or when being affected by scenes from a movie. Both Gary and I were big Alfred Hitchcock fans and Hitchcock was the master of suspense and, due to that, of anxiety.
Both Gary and I immediately recognized, and separated, the game parts from the immersive world, the latter which we concentrated on. Itʼs Fantasy after all; and one doesn’t summon fantastic moods by having PCs strolling down dungeon corridors as if they are doing a Sunday walk in the park. This idea had been re-initiated when this new, immersive medium had been made known to us by Arneson in 1972. It was just a matter of using staged, verbal elements (as in film or story) for making striking (and well-timed) visual impressions upon the playersʼ minds. Gary and I never let up on our players in this regard; and that included when DMing one another.
This particular encounter occurred very early in the 1st level of my castle. From that point forward Garyʼs usual daredevil approach became much more restrained. I had earned a respect (for me and the environ) by placing doubt in his mind: not everything could be assumed to be what it first appeared to be. So the Gygax and Kuntz credo was: Always keep your players guessing; and the best way that is accomplished is to always keep them at the edge of doubt through rising and falling anxiety.
Consider my last (for now) commentary on this strategy that Gary and I held as a sacred rule of thumb (all of which I fully expand upon in forthcoming works):
Imagine: You’re in this foreign environment with decrepit rooms, cobwebbed walls and uneven and stained floors, and wherein the smell of decay and other foreign scents are constantly assailing you; where noises are at times close and closing or far-away and receding, with both instances offset by periods of eerie silence; then a pitter patter of something scurrying; then a wretched squeal, more silence, and then a gust of wind filled with the stench of ages that blows out your torch... And so it goes. We can either work particles such as these into the adventure and achieve immersion or ignore them as inconsequential and continue in game mode to the “next door or room.” One route leads to Fantasy plus a die roll, while the other leads only to the latter.
Image and Text Copyright 2019, Robert J. Kuntz.
A very important one that both Gary and I learned from Arneson and were to forward on our own during the play-tests of D&D (in both Castle Greyhawk and Castle El Raja Key and their shared environs used by Gary and myself) was what I refer to as “Immersion”. In other words, the ability through the DM’s properly deployed and timed descriptions in interaction with the players to excite the latter’s emotive states via the imaginative impressions made upon them during such interactions.
I have written and been interviewed about this in the past (most recently for the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary). In essence Arneson had us scared to death (and running) during the latter part of the adventure into Blackmoor.
Now let us skip forward a few more years of Gary and I DMing players and DMing each other and while considering what we had learned and knew between us (all of the DM secrets shared between us); and then place my PC, Robilar, in front of the primal Tomb of Horrors via an invite by Gary for me to “play-test a new level” he’d just finished... There should be no wonder whatsoever why I was so cautious then, for the proof of Gary’s “design” was in how he initially described that foreboding place to me. Anxiety. It was a staple for both of us, but you could not relieve such a tension unless you faced your building fears...
Several years before that ToH play-test, in a mind far, far removed in conceptual time, I had affected Gary’s perceptions and worked in this same doubt and anxiety. This was during Gary’s earliest forays into Castle El Raja Key with his PCs Yrag and Mordenkainen.
The interchange between EGG as player and myself as DM went like this as he entered a four-way:
R: “You hear footsteps to the east.”
G: “We beat it north and stop to listen...”
R: “The footsteps recede to the south.”
G: “Huh? We go back to the four-way...”
R: “You hear footsteps to the west.”
G: “We run back north and stop to listen.”
R: “The footsteps move off to the east.”
G: “Heh? We go back to the four-way...”
R: “You hear footsteps to the south.”
G: “We run north and prepare for battle...”
R: “The footsteps enter the four-way and proceed north, right towards your position.”
G: “What do we see?”
R: “Nothing...”
This was a magical noise activated by entering the four-way. In each case its origin and exit points were determined by separate d4 rolls. This may seem a simple, “Heh, gotcha,” but thereʼs much more beneath the surface. First, note Garyʼs anxiety factor is on the rise. The real is substituted for by the imagined in this instance. Are the next footsteps he hears, perhaps hours later and at a different point in the adventure, then real or a hoax? And... If one encounters these future footsteps and we describe them with the same cadence and tone as at the four-way, what are the possible mental affects on a player experiencing this combination?
Also compare: If it had instead been an encounter with goblins, for instance, this “physical” encounter would not have fashioned itself as anxiety in fantasy immersion terms but primarily in game terms only, and then only briefly as the mind moved to focus on the combat and statistics side through immediate evaluation of circumstances. In the former instance evaluation occurred after anxiety and doubt had been fully achieved. The repetition of the footsteps continued to grow anxiety and doubt because Gary could not relieve these by identifying the source and thereafter dispensing with it through combat. The initial anxiety is removed at the end, but a greater doubt (and respect) for the environment now exists.
Where does this early immersive aspect that both of us utilized as DMs derive from? Well it starts many places in life, when one is spooked as a child by “those shadows in the room,” or when one is reading a scary bit in a story, or when being affected by scenes from a movie. Both Gary and I were big Alfred Hitchcock fans and Hitchcock was the master of suspense and, due to that, of anxiety.
Both Gary and I immediately recognized, and separated, the game parts from the immersive world, the latter which we concentrated on. Itʼs Fantasy after all; and one doesn’t summon fantastic moods by having PCs strolling down dungeon corridors as if they are doing a Sunday walk in the park. This idea had been re-initiated when this new, immersive medium had been made known to us by Arneson in 1972. It was just a matter of using staged, verbal elements (as in film or story) for making striking (and well-timed) visual impressions upon the playersʼ minds. Gary and I never let up on our players in this regard; and that included when DMing one another.
This particular encounter occurred very early in the 1st level of my castle. From that point forward Garyʼs usual daredevil approach became much more restrained. I had earned a respect (for me and the environ) by placing doubt in his mind: not everything could be assumed to be what it first appeared to be. So the Gygax and Kuntz credo was: Always keep your players guessing; and the best way that is accomplished is to always keep them at the edge of doubt through rising and falling anxiety.
Consider my last (for now) commentary on this strategy that Gary and I held as a sacred rule of thumb (all of which I fully expand upon in forthcoming works):
Imagine: You’re in this foreign environment with decrepit rooms, cobwebbed walls and uneven and stained floors, and wherein the smell of decay and other foreign scents are constantly assailing you; where noises are at times close and closing or far-away and receding, with both instances offset by periods of eerie silence; then a pitter patter of something scurrying; then a wretched squeal, more silence, and then a gust of wind filled with the stench of ages that blows out your torch... And so it goes. We can either work particles such as these into the adventure and achieve immersion or ignore them as inconsequential and continue in game mode to the “next door or room.” One route leads to Fantasy plus a die roll, while the other leads only to the latter.
Image and Text Copyright 2019, Robert J. Kuntz.
I really believe that the difference then<>now is the fall of the dungeon crawl due to the rise of the mission adventure and the given that such latter modules, paid and bought for, were to be challenging yet defeatable, with this knowledge being up front and already taken for granted. BitD there were no such guarantees; and it's not that we stacked the cards level wise against the players, but we introduced enough uncertainty in encounters and their levels/tricks to make our players more cautious and circumspect in their long term investigations of our climes.
