The Culture: The Genius Of AD&D1e's Implied World Design

(Following from yesterday's post.)

The picture of the implied world of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition seems odd, if not offensive, but it is not difficult to comprehend.

This is because, in an act of creative genius, the Druid-dominated world mirrors how the Referee is to run the game.

A Disinterested Arbiter

The Referee does not care about any one character or faction. All that matters is the integrity of the game. He runs the game as it is written. He strictly tracks time spent and deeds done, ensuring that there are no paradoxes. He does not care who lives or dies, who wins or loses, so long as the game is properly played and done in good faith.

This exact attitude is how the Druids approach the world and their place in it. They intervene to ensure that the world's integrity is maintained, but otherwise allow the gods to make the arguments for their positions by way of their mortal agents- even if some stretch that word's definition to its most technical extreme.

The world is the board for a Great Game of the Gods. In real world terms, these are playing playing the gods as Faction leaders on the top-tier cosmic scale of play. The Referee is beyond even this, as even the True Neutral god(s) whom Druids serve would be yet another player.

The scope of time needed for gods to play out their plans, and the scale upon which their plans play out, dwarf those of any individiual world; the implied setting is a multi-planar affair for a reason. Therefore the gods delegate, via their cosmic minions, the tasks for a given world to agents that--in a god's view--are mortal. In real world terms, these are the Faction leaders we commonly see: kings, emperors, warlords, archmages, elder dragons, vampire lords, and senior (high level) priests (Clerics and Druids alike) or similar figures like high-level Bards.

This is a fractal arrangement, as we can see the same delegation occur as we scale down to regions and localities until we reach individual villages or hamlets. Players controlling smaller factions, until we get down to individual low-level characters just getting started on their own adventures by handling local problems.

Through it all the Druids watch, listen, and maybe aid or hinder if someone promises to become something more- or something dangerous to world integrity. This is the same atttitude that the Referee, and those who join him in running sessions, have towards all the characters in the campaign. From the greatest of gods to Hapless 1 HP Kobold That's About To Die, he does not care to intervene unless someone's violating the game's integrity somehow.

The Druids only care that the world's integrity persists. The Referee only cares that the game's integrity persists. All else is details, and ultimately ephemeral leaving only tales of adventure, triumph, and tragedy to inspire future generations to make their moves in turn- both the players and the characters they make.

A Genius Design

I don't know if Gary intended this. I don't care either, because it is irrelevant; the result speaks for itself- Gary designed an implicit world, complete with cosmology, that mirrors what players have to do and be to succeed in running their campaigns.

It is this final step in the fractal design that makes it an enduring work of genius, and it is this final step that so many who object to the implicit world fail to notice because they don't connect the two- and they don't connect the two because they reject the truth that the rules define the game. Players are to conform to the rules, not the rules to the player- and that includes the Referee. Refusing to accept this, and to change behavior accordingly, is why they have issues accepting this vision and running with it.

On Earth As It Is In Heaven. (Or, for you more woo-inclined, As Above, So Below.)

It really is that simple.