Friday, April 8, 2022

Best Wishes

Issue #49 (May 1981) of Dragon includes an article entitled "Best Wishes!" by Gary Snyder. The article, as its title suggests, discusses the contentious topic of magic wishes in Dungeons & Dragons, with an eye toward providing guidelines to aid the referee in adjudicating them. Snyder then proposes ten "general principles" toward this end, reproduced here. 

I find it difficult to disagree outright with any of the principles above, which, for the most part, strike me as eminently sensible. At the same time, I can't be bothered to care. I have long felt that the only important question the referee needs to ask himself regarding magic wishes is whether or not to allow them in his campaign in the first place. If he does, fencing in their efficacy with so many caveats, conditions, and provisos strikes me as missing the point of magic wishes in the first place, namely, they can do anything.

Now, I fully appreciate that how potentially destabilizing putting that kind of power into the hands of players could be. After all, clever players already have a nasty habit of upending the referee's best laid plans; give them the literal ability to alter reality with a word and who knows the mischief of which they're capable? If a referee feels that way – and there's absolutely no shame in this – then simply don't allow magic wishes. Eviscerating them to the point where they can scarcely do anything with far-reaching consequences suggests to me the referee doesn't really want them in his campaign anyway. Why not be honest about that?

On the other hand, if you do elect to include them in your campaign, I recommend you allow them to be fully efficacious. This is not to say that magic wishes should not have consequences, even unpleasant ones. Volume 2 of OD&D, for example, counsels the referee to use "utmost discretion" when handling wishes and then offers suffer examples of ways to turn a player's own greed against him through creative interpretations of his wish. AD&D (in both editions) includes similar advice and I imagine it's through the influence of passages like these that I've never really felt the need to rein in the potency of magic wishes. 

If anything, I relish the opportunity to present players with magic wishes, who know full well that W.W. Jacobs is never far from my mind and act accordingly. Wishes are an occasion of a strange battle of ingenuity between not just the players and myself but also within the players' own minds. They carefully ponder the matter, attempting to find the best way to get as much as they think I'll allow before they trigger my desire to twist their words to their detriment. Believe it or not, it's fun, for both the players and myself and probably goes some way to explain why I've never felt the need for "general principles" like Snyder's.

I suppose my real point is that, too often, referees judge how much a rule or aspect of the game as written might "unbalance" their campaigns before they've been given a fair shake. My own experience has taught me that, when it doubt, it's best to assume "D&D is always right," which is to say, that it's usually wiser to stick with the game as it exists until play demonstrates that some rule or aspect of it actually doesn't work well. In other words, try to play the game as it is rather than how you'd prefer it to be, based on some idealized notion of what the game should be. I don't say this to discourage house ruling, which has a long and storied history in the hobby, only to encourage my fellow referees not to worry so much about how magic wishes (or anything else) might "ruin" their campaigns if not confined by all sorts of before-the-fact limitations. Let D&D be D&D – including magic wishes.

https://reparrishcomics.com/post/188710803838/facebook-twitter-instagram-redbubble-buy

16 comments:

  1. I totally disagree. The purpose of wishes in AD&D is mainly as a reset button when something terrible has happened to a character or characters. Thus it's good to have them in the game. But if a player can make wishes as powerful as those in the Arabian Nights or folktales the campaign will go down the drain, so limitations are needed. Limitations can be avoided by "crocking" the wish, but I prefer to avoid that except in cases of extreme greed or carelessness.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep. A wish is a reset button, and we have Gary's own word for that going all the way back to the 1974 D&D game: "Wishes that unfortunate adventures had never happened should be granted."

      Even a single wish can fix anything and everything for the PCs; but...
      Wishes can get you very little. Don't waste wishes on gimmes!

      Delete
  2. I pretty much agree with this, but wouldn't allow wishes as a spell players can learn & cast like any other spell. They might get a wish on occasion from an NPC or magical item though. Probably have to earn it first *grin*

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm solidly in the "if you use them at all, they can do anything you let them do and screw the legalese" camp. That entire pettifogging list can go straight to the circular file in any game I run.

    Very few PCs will ever realistically play and survive long enough to be memorizing even Limited Wish daily anyway. When they do crop up in a normal campaign it's going to be as limited-use instances. Let them have their fun with that. If you're playing some epic power fantasy game where 16-18+ level characters are commonplace (likely because you started in the teen levels rather than first) their opposition is just as capable of casting Wish themselves - so maybe that's the game where you leave Wishes out altogether for your sanity. Or say screw and watch reality fracture. Whichever.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I ran an Eclipse Phase campaign in which the PCs sought a Santa Claus Machine on Mars. This was desirable because it had few of the legal restrictions common to similar devices in that part of the campaign area. For example, it would build civil engineering explosives in the multi-megaton range all day long, which set it apart from the common run of industrial machinery in the setting.

    The player reaction to this wish granting robot varied between who else knows about it and how do we keep it secret, how many of these do we have to build to give away once we get it, and one particularly foresightful player who emigrated from Mars to a safer location.

    In practice such wish-granting robots are easier to limit in science fiction because the players will accept things like the machinery running out of certain raw materials, or having to build a wide range of intermediate products before producing the finished good. This was completely independent of the legal restrictions on such devices in the setting.

    You can apply this to some fantasy settings, especially where you have competitors chasing you down for the wish granting McGuffin.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I"m happy to see voting for the whole monkey didn't result in a full, but dead monkey. Most DM's I know...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some of the players I've known would have tried grafting the damn paw on their PC, all Hand of Vecna-style. "I get infinite wishes now, right?"

      Delete
  6. This is an interesting issue to discuss, but I have to say the list of 10 guidelines from The Dragon strikes me as completely vague, filled with language that sounds self-contradictory, and impossible to predict how the author would adjudicate concrete cases. I'm surprised an editor didn't tell the author to throw the list in the trash and start over with something interpretable by other humans.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I agree with Unknown. That list seems useless to me. And in my experience, there is plenty of proof in play that Wishes need some strict guidelines. My preferred choice is the chart in Judges Guild’s Read Ref Sheets. They give pretty solid guidelines on the magnitude of the wish and the chance of very unfortunate consequences. Completely neutral, fair and playable - as it should be. Since as far I can tell, there are NO completely unrestricted wishes in fantasy stories.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I like how 3e handles the spell. There is a concrete list of things it's "safe" to wish for, followed by a warning: "You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous."

    In adjudicating a wish for greater effects, I would consider the source of the magic. A normal wish-granting item cannot understand intent and would be completely literal in its interpretation of your request, fulfilling your wish via the most expedient means available. A cursed item, however, has a malign intelligence and would screw you over as much as possible, monkey's paw-style. Wish-granting entities like genies would consider your intent and act according to their alignment and whether they're favorably inclined toward you.

    ReplyDelete
  9. There was another article in The Dragon I remember which basically agrees with you that wishes should very rare and very powerful. The always helpful DragonDex says that article is "A Rare Way of Viewing the Wish" by Lewis Pulsipher in #73.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The DragonDex is a wonderful resource, isn't it?

      Delete
    2. It really is! I've used it many times.

      Delete
  10. My players used to love trying to come up with wording for their wish that couldn't be used against them. And they loved it even more when I still found a way to subvert it.

    They enjoyed bargaining with demons, too.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I prefer to limit a wish to changing what has already happened. I also allow a bit of metagame effect in that I will allow someone maximum hit points.

    ReplyDelete
  12. For me wishes are only accessible by long, convoluted rituals at special locations at special times. There is no 9th level wish spell that a wizard can learn and spend a daily spell slot on. Individuals can bank wishes by wishing for an object that grants a wish at the time they complete the ritual. I've never written down my rules for wishes, but they adhere to numbers 4, 6, 8, and 10 on the list. Also wishes can't affect gods or the acts of gods, gods may keep a wish from happening, wishes can't alter the fundamental rules of reality, wishes can't alter the nature of wishes themselves or grant additional wishes, etc. Changing the past, wishing an NPC was dead or never existed, etc. are all game, though. Though, very extensive wishes like wishing an entire kingdom never existed will very likely get denied by the gods and might even result in a smiting for the attempt. I find that the fact the gods monitor wishes and are willing to voice displeasure at their abuse tends to reign in most players' over the top urges.

    ReplyDelete