Why I’m Against a Game Board for D&D
Why I’m Against a Game Board for D&D
The story goes that one day in the Summer of 1776 General George Washington was in Philadelphia to plead the case for his troops. They needed supplies and arms, so he was there to call upon the Continental Congress for funds and donations. He got word of the upcoming Declaration of Independence (which he agreed with) and went to see Congressman Thomas Jefferson about it.
Tom let him have a look at the initial draft, and George could see just one problem. To which he had a solution.
“Mister Jefferson,” he said, “Change the wording here to read’ “We hold this truth to be self-evident; that all men are endowed by their creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”
Tom said it wasn’t necessary, that everyone would recognize that the words, “...all men are created equal...” were a legal fiction, necessary to give the document the proper moral weight. George averred, saying that the capacity of people to take things all too literally could not be underestimated. Today there are those who do take those words most literally, and insist that all must be equal, even if it means enforcing equality by force. And by equality I mean a literal equality in what each person is allowed to be able to do.
So what does this have to do with Dungeons & Dragons?
A certain person (hi Upper Krust!) has been going on and on about adding a game board to D&D. Says it will make it easier for people to get into the game. That may well be true. Then again, it may well not. But how well it facilitates entry is besides the point. A game board for D&D is the wrong move for two reasons; it restricts the playing area, and it reinforces a fundamental misapprehension of what an RPG is.
First, a game board would restrict the field of play. D&D is a game without boundaries, other than what you’d expect when the field of play is the size of the Earth, or larger. A board, unless so large as to be meaningless, limits the field of play, constrains it. There is really only so far you can go before you reach the edge and have to turn back. It true that a world is limited, and that you can reach any limits in time. But a world doesn’t have the feeling of limitation a game board has. Then too there is the perception associated with game boards. Namely, that one cannot go beyond the boundaries. Whatever is there is all that is there. No matter how well a designer explains that the setting can go beyond the bounds of the board, there will always be those who’ll insist that nothing can go past those bounds. Further, they will insist that this is how it must be. No matter how symbolic, any limitation will always be taken literally by somebody.
Second, I’m against a D&D gameboard because it reinforces the idea that D&D is a traditional game. No, not a traditional RPG as some may think, a traditional game with sides, victory conditions, and winners and losers. No, D&D is an open ended game, a cooperative game if the players want such. Dungeons & Dragons is a game where the players can work together to achieve a goal, or fail as luck and skill dictate. There can be competition, but it is not required. There can be a winner, but it is not required. The only real requirement is some degree of participation, though that need only be as small as doing some libary research and patching up wounds if that is what the player prefers. A game board would give the impression that D&D is a traditional game. It has a board, it must be like Monopoly or checkers.
A game board would give the wrong message, give potential players the wrong idea of what D&D is about and how it is played. It would shape play in an undesirable fashion, and degrade play experience in a fundamental way.
Not only that, but it’s insulting. The very idea assumes that the common man needs some sort of crutch. That he is incapable of learning and adapting to something new, something he has not experienced before. It basically says that the mainstream audience cannot - not will not, but cannot - adopt something new unless it is presented as something he is familiar with. That’s what a game board for D&D does, it presents D&D as a board game, when such is something D&D is most emphatically not.
Let D&D be D&D. Let it be the game of adventure, exploration, and - yes - loot grabbing it was made to be. For Gruumsh’s sake let’s not stick a monkey wrench on the end of a dolphin’s snout and call it an improvement over the original model. Keep your options unlimited, say no to a D&D game board.
