Friday 15 March 2024

Feel like my soul is beginning to expand - look into my heart and you will sort of understand

Sometimes a picture tells a thousand words. Let us, then, tell many thousands of words with the following images, from what I think of as the holy triumvirate of artworks depicting a conceptual World of TSRan (see posts here, here and here). This triumvirate consists of Larry Elmore, Keith Parkinson, and John Howe - the latter of whom never to my knowledge having illustrated anything for D&D, but whose Tolkien pieces were roughly contemporaneous, and certainly just as influential on the formation of my imaginative contours in my early teenage years (as always, click to enlarge):














In the end, if I can add just a few words, I think what makes these pieces so important in building the necessary mood is the combination of three key elements: first, a sense of vastness of scale; second sufficient hyperrealism to allow the viewer to imagine entering the world depicted; and third, a sense of the transcendent or sublime. These are in short romantic images, and it is perhaps helpful to think of the World of TSRan as imbued with romanticism. 

What can also perhaps be observed is that many, if not all, of these pieces are also curiously intimate despite the size and grandeur of the backdrop. The best example of this I think may be the image of Sturm and Flint travelling through the snowy mountains; these are real people, and you can imagine yourself there with them. There is a kind of genius in this.

Wednesday 13 March 2024

Nostalgia, Hope, Wonder: The World of TSRan

I increasingly look to the future with an inchoate sense of foreboding. The physical world around us seems to be deteriorating before our eyes; there is a degeneration of basic civility in our interactions with one another that speaks of a rapid decline in empathy and common decency; young people walk about in a daze as though shell-shocked by the cataclysmic forces their constant phone use has unleashed on their psyche. This doesn't end well, and it's not in the gift of our political, cultural or religious leaders to fix. 

I therefore become less and less interested in 'dark' themes. The skies are darkening enough. What I would rather do is try to carve out creative spaces in which I (and ideally other people) can re-engage with the best aspects of human imaginative potential - our love for what was good about the past; our capacity to hope; and our excitement about being alive in a glorious world and universe more extensive than we can dream of. This is not naive escapism, but what one might call - if one were of a mind to be provocative - committed escapism: escape not for the sake of running away, but for the sake of re-engagement with certain things that make it good to be alive. Who knows? If enough people start doing it, maybe together we can get somewhere.

Almost two years ago I wrote a post about The World of TSRan, an idea for a campaign world which tries to recapture and also improve upon and intensify what was good about the way high fantasy was imagined in the AD&D of the period 1985-1995. This is an idea that is dear to my heart. Being an adolescent boy is pretty crap, but reading through the material TSR put out in those days - everything seemingly illustrated by Larry Elmore or Keith Parkinson, everything writ large across vast landscapes that made one desperate to run out without a pocket handkerchief and go exploring, everything relentlessly emphasising adventure adventure adventure - was a call to a world that was bigger, grander, and imbued with potential. It suggested not just that there were no limits on what could be imagined but also that what could be imagined could itself be aspirational. One could imagine beauty, and awe, and spectacle, and daring deeds, and that could in itself give you the wherewithal to transcend the limitations around you and make real the burning ambition to be someone, and do things, and leave one's mark. One might, if one tried hard enough, imagine oneself to glory

Partly, the appeal is of course nostalgia - what I earlier called our love for what was good about the past. And the past was good (not perfect); characterised by human interaction largely unmediated through technology; by emebeddedness in community; by a sense that what was coming tomorrow would be largely the same as today but slightly and gradually getting better. I've written this before on the blog, but watch an episode of Friends, or Frasier, or Seinfeld, or an early episode of The Simpsons, if you want to recapture that optimistic world - a world that had its flaws but that was characterised by smiles, humour, conversation, affection. But it is not just that which makes the World of TSRan such an alluring place. It is also that it is filled with hope, and wonder - a dangerous world, to be sure, but one in which it is possible to make one's name, and to see and experience great things along the way. 

One can achieve this, I think, without being too twee, and in acceptance of a certain amount of po-facedneess. What makes the World of TSRan so compelling is that despite its cheesiness it is sincere, and in its sincerity it transcends cliche. It is a world in which in the end - in the distant, distant end - good triumphs over evil and light over dark. Doesn't that sound refreshing set against the backdrop of what we 'consume' by way of culture in 2024?

Monday 11 March 2024

Monsters and Manuals: Best 200 of the First 2000

Dear readers - I am around 40 posts shy of reaching the 2000th post at this blog.

The celebrations can wait until the finishing line is reached, though I have a vague plan to write a post a day for 30 days once I reach the 1970 mark. For the time being, I thought I might enlist your help in a GREAT TASK of INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE.

Once the 2000 mark is reached I would like to release a book featuring the best 200 posts on the blog. I might even go crazy and release two versions, one containing the best 200, and one containing the whole thing.

This will be done POD, not via a Kickstarter.

I know that there are many, many thousands of people - possibly millions - who carefully pore over every word I have written here, commit it all to heart, and are able to recite entire posts from memory to impress people at parties. If there are any posts that you really, really liked or think ought really to be included, then please say so in the comments. I will be downloading the whole thing and reading through to make my selection, but it would be good to have my attention directed to any 'greatest hits' in particular that you would like included. 

Friday 8 March 2024

Forget Trump v Biden

The most important decision in all of public life, on either side of the Atlantic, is now before us:

Are frost giants better than hill giants: YES OR NO?

This is the question that has been revealed by what now, in retrospect, appears to be a giant (pun intended) giant primary election in my previous post. The result: exactly the same number of people chose frost as hill giants as their favourites. There is now no alternative but to have a battle royale. Which will win?

I'm sure you will agree with me that the only fair test is simulated combat. 

In the RED corner, with proponents citing its faithfulness to source texts and ancient myth, not to mention its sexy blonde beard and Nordic good looks - the FROST GIANT!

In the BLUE corner, with proponents citing its 'no frills' ape-like brutality - the HILL GIANT!

The rules are straightforward: Marquis of Queensbury Laws of Giant Combat. Each participant has a random allocation of hp based on HD. Round 1 consists of one opportunity to hurl a rock. Then each combat round thereafter is fought on the basis of ordinary melee rules to the death. Initiative is determined by 1d6 rule each round. Let battle commence - no axe or club blows beneath the belt, and keep it clean. 

STATS: Frost giant: 72 hp, AC 0, dmg 2d8+9; Hill giant: 59 hp, AC 3, dmg 2d6+7

Round 1: rock hurling. The hill giant throws first, and HITS, scoring a solid blow to the frost giant's chest (for 11 hp damage). Roaring in anger the frost giant responds and also HITS with a glancing blow to the shoulder (for 5 hp damage).

Frost giant has 61 hp remaining; hill giant has 54

Round 2: melee. The frost giant advances, swinging his axe ineffectually. Ducking contemptuously aside, the hill giant then brings his club smashing into the frost giant's torso, doing 11 hp damage.

Frost giant has 50 hp remaining; hill giant has 54

Round 3: The frost giant again swings and misses, perhaps due to overconfidence, or perhaps due to overeagerness for revenge for the wounds already suffered. The hill giant, inflated by how well the fight is going, experiences a surge of strength and certainty and clouts the frost giant over his helmeted head, doing another 18 hp damage.

Frost giant has 32 hp remaining; hill giant has 54

Round 4: The hill giant now senses an astonishing upset victory. He advances once more and his club of death (tm) slams into the frost giant's now reeling body, doing another mighty 18 hp damage. The frost giant, sensing grave danger, finds that desparation lends strength and accuracy to his arm, and for the first time his axe connects, slicing a great wound across the hill giant's chest (17 hp damage).

Frost giant has 16 hp remaining; hill giant has 37

Round 5: Both giants can now sense that victory may be at hand. The frost giant, bloodied but unbowed, again goes on the offensive, and has now got his eye in at last - he deals the hill giant another grievous blow (19 hp damage). The hill giant, likewise, like a true champion, goes toe to toe with his opponent, giving no quarter, dealing a blow to the head that would have shattered the skull of a lesser giant (14 hp damage).

Frost giant has 2 hp remaining; hill giant has 18

Round 6: It comes down to this. Which of our pugilists can win the knock-out blow? The fate of our age may depend on the outcome; this is serious stuff. Frost giant strikes first! A hit, sir! A palpable hit! Hill giant sways....stumbles....but stays on his feet, suffering 14 hp damage. Steadying himself, he raises his club for the killer blow....and misses (rolling a 2)! The battle comes down to the bitterest end.

Frost giant has 2 hp remaining; hill giant has 4 - I swear I honestly didn't rig this.

Round 7: Which giant can finish the job? One feels as though fate rests entirely on the initiative roll. Frost giant rolls a 4....and so does the hill giant. The tension mounts. Re-roll....frost giant gets a 2...and so does the hill giant. Tension mounts yet further! Re-roll....Frost giant gets a 6 and hill giant gets 2. Ok, will this be it? The giants square off once more and the frost giant swings.... and hits, cleaving the top of the hill giant's skull clean away, so that his brains spill out across the floor as his gigantic carcasse crashes to the ground.

So there you have it, folks. The answer is frost giant. I thought there might be an upset on the cards for a while there (I kept rolling remarkably low on a 1d20 for all of the frost giant's melee attacks) but in the end, D&D combat is almost always a case of higher HD beating lower HD. I hope you tune in next week for, 'Which is your favourite D&D golem?'

Thursday 7 March 2024

Favourite Giant Poll

Philosophy can be defined as the pursuit of answers to permanent questions, and there is no finer example than the question of the best type of D&D giant.

Vote for your own favourite in the comments; I will keep all comments unpublished for 36 hours or so. This is a scientific exercise and the results are of the most fundamental importance. The options, taken from the AD&D 2nd edition Monstrous Manual, are: 

Cloud

Cyclops

Cyclopskin

Desert

Ettin

Firbolg

Fire

Fog

Formorian

Frost

Hill

Jungle

Mountain

Reef

Stone

Storm

Verbeeg

Wood


Monday 4 March 2024

How to OSRise Any Game in One Easy Step

A lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to describe what the 'old school' approach to role playing is in a nutshell. Quite a lot of people have boiled it down to XP for gold, which I think is pretty close. I would, however, nuance and broaden that a bit. The reason why XP for gold works is that it is the easiest way to operationalise an endogenous system of advancement. If getting gold is the thing that gives your PC XP, then it means firstly that advancement is based on something that has reality within the fiction (gold pieces are a 'real' thing within the game world), and secondly that it is not dependent on external judgment of value: the PCs want gold not merely because it results in advancement, but because it actually allows them to do things in the game. 

Everything within the OSR 'style' of play is founded on this, because it is how you make a sandbox environment work (the PCs naturally want to go adventuring in order to get gold in order to advance) and how at least ostensibly you give the PCs agency (they choose how they go about the matter of adventuring). Other methods of awarding XP (for example, story goals, good roleplaying, etc.) do not work in anything like the same way. They are contingent on the players to a certain extent acting so as to please the DM or jump through exogenous hoops that he has put in place. They might be happy with that - no judgement is being made - but the result will be something very different to what OSR gaming is all about.

It follows that you can more or less 'OSRise' any game if you can introduce into it a similar endogenous system of advancement. The best way of doing it I think has to be based on the gathering of money or items of a certain useful type, because this fulfils the requirement that the gathering of the thing has use within the gameworld rather than being a matter of chasing after otherwise meaningless tokens. That could be anything from gathering spells or some other type of magic item, say, to capturing sprits or monsters that provide some benefit; the important point is only the endogeneity of what is being pursued. 

There are other systems of what one might call semi-endogenous advancement systems, being based on achievements that are quantifiable on the basis of actual activities within the game world - the number of hexes visited, the number of miles travelled, the number of monsters of a particular type killed, and so on. But these are not I think perfectly endogenous, because there is no particular usefulness to the PC of performing the activity in question beyond the fact that it provides advancement. They are not like the system of XP for gold, in which the getting of the gold is itself useful in addition to the XP it generates. 

It would be interesting to put the reasoning into effect in the context of other games, such as Cyberpunk 2020, Call of Cthulhu and so on. CP:2020 obviously lends itself to the XP for money dynamic; Call of Cthulhu much less so, but it could be made to function on an 'XP for mystic knowledge' basis. Other games will vary; to repeat, the idea here is not to create a 'better' way of playing those games, but a way to make them more 'OSRish' if that sounds appealing.

Tuesday 27 February 2024

'It is important that it be fully detailed': What the BBC makes of D&D down the ages

While idly looking at cricket scores on the BBC website earlier today I came across a link to this recent 5 minute 'BBC sounds' podcast on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of D&D. This took me down a rabbit hole, in which some quick Google searches dug up other brief BBC coverage of D&D down the ages; here are two fun examples (the first of which because it features Ian Livingstone, Steve Jackson, Joe Dever and other luminaries of the early British D&D/Warhammer scene, the latter of which because it features Gary Gygax):



I was intrigued by what these efforts all fail to achieve, more than what they actually show. The BBC Sounds' 2024 piece (I don't know if it is accessible outside of the UK) is chiefly revealing of contemporary anxieties, focusing almost entirely on the fact that the audience for D&D has increasingly become more diverse, but that there is still 'more to be done'. The first of the two videos (from 1983), on the other hand, is more like an exercise in anthropology; one could imagine an identical approach and tone being adopted in a National Geographic documentary shot on the Sentinel Islands. The second of the two videos, meanwhile, simply gives the opportunity for Gygax to expound, in between some short segments at a gaming convention in London, in the manner of an academic at a tutorial in an Oxbridge college. None of them comes close to explaining what D&D actually is, or takes any time to document what happens in a typical session. If one were a layperson, one would be absolutely none the wiser. The only continuity between them is a certain wryness on the part of the documentarian, and a sense that some terribly nerdy people are doing something kooky.

That's fine, of course; it's probably pretty accurate. But I do find it interesting that 'normies' find it so difficult to process the nuts and bolts of a D&D game. There are likely two reasons for this. On the one hand I think it is probably the case that D&D enthusiasts are not always very clear, or consistent, in what they think the hobby is all about. Some of the people being interviewed in the various clips seem to be describing communal storytelling; others (like Gygax himself) emphasise how it is all about worldbuilding; others suggest it is about exploring oneself; still others that it is 'like a board game' that goes on inside the participants' heads. On the other hand, when faced with something that is a bit difficult to initially conceptualise, it is human nature to default to the assumption that it is basically and irredeemably incomprehensible and weird - there is clearly a bit of that going on in the heads of the producers of all three clips.

All of this I suppose reinforces, obliquely, what it is that makes D&D so successful, 50 years on. It defies easy summary; it is protean. No two groups play even the same edition of the game the same way, let alone its different variants, and this malleability (what Ron Edwards would have labelled its 'incoherence') is clearly its strongest selling point as a role playing game. Some time ago, I heard the advertising executive Rory Sutherland comment that the reason why McDonald's was more successful than KFC was that not everybody always wants to eat fried chicken, but there's something on a McDonald's menu to provide a mediocre meal for any palate on almost any occasion. Its comparative lack of definition is in fact its great virtue. There is definitely something similar at work in the enduring appeal of D&D.

Saturday 24 February 2024

17 Times the Incidental Illustrations in the 2nd Edition DMG Rocked

Nostalgia can do powerful things. I must have bought the 2nd edition AD&D DMG at the age of about 12 or 13, at a shop in Tel Aviv on a road lined with palm trees; it was early evening and the sky was a beautiful shade of golden pink. One must be careful when under such a sky. It can lead to love. And so it did with me and the strangely evocative incidental illos (particularly the pseudo-linotype ones) in that much-loathed and misunderstood book. Here are my seventeen favourites:

1. She is beautiful, she is mysterious, she is distant and untouchable. These were the days before the internet, when even an innocent picture like this could arouse Strange and Powerful Feelings within the...er...breast of a teenage boy. Setting that to one side, I actually think it is a beautifully executed miniature portrait with just the right amount of late-80s cheese.



2. I am a wizard and I am simultaneously concerned, sad, shocked, and imbued with eldritch energy. FEAR ME.


3. I am a wizard and I have a staff that shoots lightning as I wield it before me, and yet also somehow simultaneously radiates light behind me. For such as I, the laws of physics contain no import! Again, look at his face. Such emotion - a man of great sensitivity and depth, who even as he blasts his enemy with lightning is moved by vast pity.


4. Squint, but squint well. Has he been disturbed in the middle of practicing his wizardly break-dancing routine? Or does he always theatrically fling open the lid of his chest, just for effect? Or is he a thief who has been disturbed? No idea. I am a sucker for wizard's study pictures, though.


5. Again, this one must be squinted at, but I find it deeply evocative. This is what a dungeon looks like when nobody is around. It waits with endless patience for adventure to begin.


6. Even halflings can have excellent hair. 


7. The elegant simplicity of this piece I think deserves more widespread recognition. Look at the stark beauty of the empty landscape; the care with which that withered shrub is depicted and the way it conjures in the mind an image of aridity and desolation; the contrast between it and the blazing glory of the dawn (or dusk); the desperation of the silhouetted figures who traverse that bleak landscape; the sense of coiled energy in the sweep of the monster's tail. A work of evocative power. 


8. This picture is not perfectly executed - the hand almost seems to be gently caressing her in a 'there, there' sort of fashion, and there is something going on with her left arm; it just looks wrong. And yet you can't tell me it lacks 'B' movie charm.


9. I probably hated this piece when I was an adolescent, because I would have seen it as childish. Now I'm old, and can appreciate its daft good humour. 2nd edition's vices - a desire to court less controversy, to be more family friendly, to be self-consciously less 'dark' - are well known, but people often overlook that these can in the right light also be virtues. Must we be so very serious?


10. This, on the other hand, is a great fantasy RPG rulebook illo. It makes you want to play the game. Actually, it makes you want to be within the scene itself, experiencing the delicious hair-raising thrill of seeing that thing come out of its sarcophagus. 


11. Yes, the monster (stone giant?) looks rather like it has just risen from the sofa, hands aloft, and a six-pack of Carling to the good, to celebrate the final whistle in the second leg of the Barcelona-Chelsea Champions League semi-final of 2010. But look at those dwarves with their spears, ready for the fight; again, this makes you want to play the game


12. I am a wizard and I could be about to bless or smite thee; the suspense will be over..... NOW!


13. A great wizard's study study. 


14. This is another light-hearted piece which, to my old and jaded eye, remains on the right side of whimsy. Look harder. There are more of them than you think,


15. Another piece which I think, for obvious reasons, struck me as being deeply fascinating and worthy of careful study when I first saw it. 


16. This looks like it belongs in a very different game to what would I suppose be understood to be the OSR's default tonal palette - redolent of something much more bucolic and fairy-tale inspired: Lyonesse rather than Conan. Is this so very wrong?


17. I just think this is a very well composed and executed picture. No showiness, no special effects, no slo-mo, no CGI. Just two guys who are about to try and fuck each other up. My money's on the swordsman. Those are the stone cold eyes of a killer.


Tuesday 20 February 2024

Does What Happens at the Table Matter?

My previous post generated considerable debate (chiefly about, of all things, Daddy Pig). But it raises wider, and more important, questions that I think it would be worth devoting a post to addressing.

There is a tendency I have often noticed among nerdish men of a certain age to get defensive about particular hobbies - video games, heavy metal, horror films, comics, D&D, and so on. Having been told that these pastimes are variously stupid, evil, corrupting, a waste of time, sinful, and so on in their youths, such men have adopted a position at the opposite extreme, which is that it does not matter what media one consumes. One can listen to as much Cannibal Corpse as one likes, watch Driller Killer five times a day, and spend the rest of one's time murdering disabled children and puppies on Call of Duty: Ed Gein Edition, and it has no effect on one's psyche at all. Nobody is corrupted by any of this; nobody in the real world is affected; one can consume whatever media one desires and still be perfectly well-adjusted.

It is understandable why some people think like this, but it is difficult to imagine a position which could be less accurate. To demonstrate its foolishness, one simply has to ask a couple of straightforward questions. First, do you think it would be appropriate for a six-year-old to be given unrestricted access to pornhub? Second, do you think it is impossible to be moved by a work of great art? And, third, do you think it is impossible for characters in fiction of any kind to be inspirational, or to reinforce a negative stereotype? Well, I'm afraid that if your answer to any of those questions was 'no', then that means that you concede that the media one consumes matters in respect of its impact on the psyche, soul, mind, or whatever word you prefer. All reasonable people can do is argue about the extent to which it matters, in what context, and to whom - and what to do about it.

(A closely related argument concerns the question of 'copycat' behaviour, as when that shy young man Jimmy McJimmy who kept himself to himself and was polite to his neighbours one day commits a vile murder and it is discovered that he had spent the last three days locked in his basement watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or whatever. Clearly, the chain of causation is not clear and nobody has ever been able to identify a situation in which a crazed killer has had his brain borked simply by watching a video nasty. But, equally clearly, it's pretty unlikely that watching such stuff has no effect at the margins. No media savvy person alive in the 21st century can possibly deny that young people in particular are prone to copy behaviours and attitudes which they pick up from watching YouTube, TikTok, etc.; is it really such a stretch to imagine that what one watches as entertainment has an accumulated effect on the way one thinks?)

In short, of course cultural products matter, and of course they influence how people think and therefore how they behave. How could they not? Acknowledging this doesn't, and shouldn't, mean that our culture needs policing or that anything in particular needs banning. It simply means that it is foolish to go through life thinking that what one consumes by way of culture has no effect on how one sees the world, or how one acts in it.

This raises the interesting question, to my eye, as to whether what goes on at a D&D table matters. And here I don't mean to suggest that when a bunch of D&D players imagine their PCs massacring a tribe or orcs that it is going to turn them all into genocidaires or desensitise them to violence. Rather, I mean to ask whether the choices which one makes when thinking as a PC - the decisions which one makes when 'role playing' broadly understood - can have an impact on how one approaches choice-making in real life. To boil the inquiry down to its essence, is it possible to use a PC in an RPG auto-didactically as a way to experiment with what it would mean to behave more honourably, more decisively, more compassionately, etc., and to then reflect on how that could be implemented in one's actual life?

Monday 12 February 2024

What's the Story? A Problem with Plot

Yesterday, I had the misfortune of attending the cinema to watch Peppa Pig's Cinema Party, consisting of 10 'never before seen' Peppa Pig episodes (question: Do Americans, Australians, etc., know about Peppa Pig?) interspersed with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?-style filler in which real-life children interact with cartoons of Peppa and her friends.

It was dreadful. But it was dreadful in an illustrative way. I have nothing against kids' entertainment, and I actually don't mind Peppa Pig as a general rule (although I hate the militant misandry of its depiction of the buffoonish Daddy Pig). But watching the Cinema Party, it rapidly became clear that the reason why these episodes had never been seen before was that they were rubbish. They didn't have stories. They were just a bunch of stuff that happens. Peppa learns to play tennis and has strawberries and cream afterwards. That's an episode. Peppa goes to a wedding and it rains and they all have fun playing in the mud. That's an episode. And so on. Not so much 'a show about nothing' as 'a show about pleasant events in the life of a four-year-old'. 

But stories aren't - cannot be - just series of pleasant events. Stories need conflict, and children's stories especially have to be characterised by a very basic structure in which something bad or undesirable happens and is ultimately resolved. This is true at even the most basic level; a great example that springs to mind is Emily Gravett's Where's Bear?, a book that can be enjoyed and understood by any 2 year-old. In it (spoiler alert) bear and hare are playing hide-and-seek together. They give it a couple of goes. It's too easy for hare to find bear, so hare has a go at hiding. Bear looks for him and can't find him, and ends up looking in the bed, where he falls asleep. Hare emerges, having become bored, and looks for bear, but now can't find him, and a moment of panic ensues - hare misses his friend and rushes about looking for him. Bear is wakened by the commotion, finds hare, and gives him a hug. The end.

Here we have an elementary lesson in what story is: a set-up, an emergent problem, a pleasing resolution. And it works because of the crucial moment of tension in the second act where the game goes awry. Without that moment of tension, all there is is fluff: two animals playing hide-and-seek with some diverting pictures. What's the point of that?

This I think, more than anything else, is at the root of the reason why I have always found narrative-style play, in which the players go through a pre-ordained 'plot' (however loosely sketched), so unsatisfying. The simple fact of the matter is that telling a good story relies on set of basically artificial devices to work, and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with that within the context of a good story, it is almost definitionally a straitjacket - it can't survive being exposed to the chaos of free-decisionmaking on the part of the participants. To do so disrupts the narrative structure. What narrativist games always in the end therefore devolve into, in my experience, is coercion or manipulation (railroading and/or quantum ogres) or a feeling that the PCs are merely jumping through a series of essentially consequence-free hoops, a la Peppa Pig learning to play tennis. The former might be tolerable if the DM was an acknowledged master storyteller like Stephen King; the latter never is. Either way, the likelihood of success is remote, and the most common experience is a blancmange of 'meh'.