New Beginnings: Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings

Onto every parade, some rain must fall. You thought we were finished with campaign design? We aren’t.
It’s not easy making a completely fresh start. This series examines in detail the process of creating a new campaign.
What more do you need? You’ve got the basic plot, you’ve got the basic world, you have these organized so as to spread the developmental workload over the life of the campaign, you’re ready to go, right?
Wrong. I hate to rain on your parade, but there are aspects of campaign development that most GMs either ignore or have never even thought about getting into, and these are the little things that can make the difference between a pedestrian-but-well-organized campaign and something exceptional that will set the standard amongst your group for years to come.
This article looks at two of them: The Campaign Philosophies and the Theme (I know, we’ve been working with the Theme for most of the process, but it’s not all there yet!) The next will tackle two more of these “little things”, Archetypes and Races. In some games, these will be central, in others, not so much – and it depends very strongly on the game system and campaign genre. Then comes Infrastructure, and there’s a lot of that still to be talked about. There’s still a lot on our plate before I can wrap this series up – so let’s get into it…
Philosophy & The Game
If it were possible to do so, I would have put this subject far earlier in the process. It’s sufficiently important, and it potentially requires a complete rewriting of both the campaign plan and the game world. Far better, in principle, to decide these things early and incorporate the results into those plans during the development process.
And, if you have a clear idea of the answers that this section will require of you, that’s the very best approach.
That’s one heck of a bit ‘if’ however, and the general principle of problem solving is that if you can’t solve the entire problem at once, you work any part of it that you can solve and then revisit the parts that you can’t. For that reason, in at least 90% of cases, you’re better off getting the basic plot and world building blocks in place and giving the campaign a chance to take shape within your mind before tackling this area, even if it requires subsequent revisions of what you’ve already built. I’m one of the “enlightened” in this respect and I’d estimate that 2/3 of the campaigns that I start don’t have answers to these questions until after the basic plot and game world are figured out – so what chance is there that anyone who doesn’t think long and hard on these issues will be ready to go early on, even with specific prompting and direction from this article?
Two chances, Buckley’s and None, as the old Australian saying goes.
A tale of two Buckleys
There are two competing theories as to the origins of the phrase. The first relates to William Buckley (1780 – 30 January 1856), an English convict who was transported to Australia, escaped, was given up for dead, but improbably survived and lived in an Aboriginal community for many years. “You’ve got Buckley’s [chance]” is a common alternative formulation of the saying.
Some think that the reference is to the name of a Melbourne Department Store chain, Buckley & Nunn, either as a pun or as rhyming slang. My personal opinion is that the original reference is to William, because there is nothing about the store that suggests that it had no hope of success, but that the commonality of names then connected the saying to the store chain, producing the saying as I’ve quoted it. This makes sense, and fits both the Australian vernacular and our sense of humor.
Those are subtle points of distinction, but the cumulative effect of all four makes a compelling circumstantial case, I think. And that’s an important point of relevance to the subject at hand, because the Philosophical Questions that this half-article gets GMs to pose are not usually about big, fundamental, architectural changes, but are rather about subtleties and nuance and reshaping elements of the campaign.
Nevertheless, there is the potential for fundamental changes in plan as a result, and that’s one reason why everything is still in note form, other than summaries that are so concise that they are unlikely to be affected!
The Deliberate ‘Why’
The basic tool is a simple question, but one that gets to the heart of subjects. Imagine that you are describing part of the game environment – be it rules or game world or adventures or the reactions of characters or whatever – to a small child, one of those annoying types whose response to any statement is always the same three-letter question: “Why?”
“Why is the sky blue?”
“Light is made of a rainbow of colors, and the red colors are more easily scattered by the air, so we see the sky with what’s left, making it blue.”
“Why?”
“Ummmm… The red light’s fatter and can’t get around the dust?”
This invented conversation has the respondent in trouble from the very beginning, not least because he’s got his basic answer wrong – it’s the Blue that’s more easily scattered. But the questions got to the heart of the matter very quickly, didn’t they?
Things get more complicated when we’re not talking about the real world, but one that has been invented. Ignorance is no longer a valid answer, and neither is realism, i.e. mimicking the real world. You need better answers.
The fundamental question that surrounds all issues of philosophy within a campaign is “why”. Ask it yourself, and keep doing so until you can answer it.
Central Philosophy – In Game
Why are things the way they are?
“Things” is, unfortunately, fairly imprecise, though at least it manages to be concise.
Apply the question “why is it like that” to everything that you have created, and then to every answer that you give, at least three layers back, or until the only valid answer is metagame in nature. At which point BzZzT! The buzzer sounds for an invalid answer. You need to be able to give an in-game answer even if the correct answer is metagame in nature because the inhabitants of the world can only see the world around them and HAVE to be able to provide an in-game answer.
While “I don’t know” is not a valid response either, “They Don’t Know” is perfectly acceptable – and should immediately trigger an additional entry either in your ideas file, or – if the question is important enough – scheduling into the plot, in the form of “The PCs discover why [x]”.
Of course, as soon as you do either, you have to answer the question yourself, with a prefix or code that tells you this is GM-knowledge only!
Metagame reasons may exist for many of your decisions – the rejection of past campaign elements from way back in “What To Throw Away”, for example – but there needs to be an in-game reason for this. Even if there isn’t, and for some reason doesn’t have to be, the inhabitants of the world will still come up with one – so even if you don’t need one, you need one anyway.
When I’ve offered advice of this sort in the past, a lot of people have thought I was demanding that everything in the game environment be justified, and to a certain extent that’s true, but it’s not the whole story. Yes, you need some sort of justification or rationalization for in-game purposes, but this can be anything from an anecdote to historical incident to a higher conception of the fictional reality.
There are two criteria which determine what you do with your answers, which I have phrased in the form of two supplementary questions: Is this common knowledge? and Is this different from official game content?.
Common Knowledge, Same As Official Game Content
This particular combination is the only one that doesn’t require you to do anything more, unless it takes advantage of an option within the Official Game Content – in which case I consider it “Different To”, anyway.
Not Common Knowledge, Same As Official Game Content
Time to start compiling notes in a new document called “Player Briefing Notes”! In this case, you want to note that the official answer to the question “why” is not the commonly known or accepted – and specify what is known or accepted in its place! “Legend has it” or something similar is the best way of opening such paragraphs.
You also need a new document called “GM Campaign Notes” in which you copy-and-paste everything that’s in the player’s briefing notes – but then make an additional notation that this “legend” is not true.
Common Knowledge, Different to Official Game Content
This result, quite obviously, also ends up in your two Briefing Notes files. You may want or need to expand on the player’s briefing notes within the GM’s file.
Not Common Common Knowledge, Different to Official Game Content
The final alternative, this should either be revealed in an already-planned adventure or be part of a new adventure that is inserted into the campaign plan! How early and how prominent the change should be made are your only decisions, and those choices should be made on the basis of how fundamental a change this is, and how great the repercussions will be.
Of course, you don’t yet know exactly what the PCs will get up to, and so can’t say with certainty how important the change is – just use your best judgment.
Need-To-Know
Another assessment that should be made of any Uncommon Knowledge is who needs to know about it (if anyone). It’s not uncommon to have additional world information that’s available only to clerics, or to barbarians, or to druids, or to mages, or to Elves, or whatever. More notes in the GM’s file!
Central Philosophy – Players
Before you go too far – does the change conflict with anything you know the players want to do in the new campaign (play a particular character race or class or whatever, or impact on a plan to avoid past mistakes)? If so, you need to think about the consequences. You can either change your mind, or be prepared for complaints – so you’re probably better off taking the first of these options! Sometimes you can permit an exception to be made for PCs, but that can be dangerous too – you’re giving certain individuals within the game world an ability that none of their NPC peers possesses, so think carefully!
But that’s not the only thing you need to think about within this context in the case of many games. How are players to generate their stats? Roll 4 dice and select the best 3? Points-buy? Something else? What’s the policy on critical hits and fumbles? What’s the policy on Saving Throws? What stacks and what doesn’t? Are there any character classes that you need to ban from the campaign, either temporarily or permanently – and why? (this is one decision that you WILL have to justify!)
How are you going to treat the players, during play? What rules of etiquette will be in place? Are players going to be required to contribute for Pizza at each game? Is there a fee that has to be paid for the use of facilities? There are lots of BIG questions that need answering!
Many of these answers should also make their way into the Briefing Notes files, if not all of them!
Central Philosophy – Behind Screen
Take the GM briefing notes and appraise the official rules anywhere that seems relevant. If the rules don’t accommodate “the truth,” you will need a House Rule. And that, in turn, demands notes in a “House Rules” file.
On top of that, there are other decisions that should me made and documented. What rules need to be clarified? Are any of the old house rules worth perpetuating, and does that interfere with anything that you have planned (it shouldn’t, because these were known before plot assembly and world creation began, but now is the time to double-check).
If the extras in “Players” are all about how the GM and the rules are expected to interface with the players and their demands and choices, then this is the other side of the coin – how the GM expects to interface his creativity and creations with the rules. Because of the overlap between PC and NPC, expect 90% or more of this to be done already.
Central Philosophy – Secrets & Surprises
Use your GM briefing notes to appraise the plotlines and game world notes that you have in your Campaign Plan. Does anything in that plan have to change? If so, use the cross-references and common links to track the ripples throughout the Campaign Plan.
For example (generic): Concept of Race X alters character Y which alters the nature or content of adventures Z1, Z2, and so on through every appearance of Character Y. Adventures which depend on one of these preliminary adventures might also be affected as they may now have different outcomes.
This might seem like throwing away the spine of the campaign that you spent so much time crafting, but in reality, such changes are a series of opportunities. First, you have the opportunity to demonstrate the relevance of the rules/standard content changes; you make them matter in an adventure. Second, because these changes are only present for a reason, they bring depth to the game world that you can’t easily achieve in any other way. And thirdly, each time these make a difference, you have two options: alter the adventure planned in order to accommodate them, or arrange “local circumstances” to produce the original outcome despite the changes. Either way, you can build an additional surprise or plot twist into your adventure by having it seem to be heading toward one solution only to change course at the last possible moment because of these campaign concepts.
In the Shards Of Divinity campaign, I had a different idea for how magic worked within the game environment. At a metagame level, this difference manifested in a chance for arcane spells to fail when cast, a chance that (a) did not affect the central PC of the campaign to the same degree as anyone else, and (b) would change over time, generally for the worse. Magic was failing, and it was the PCs task to discover why and do something about it. The answer to that particular “why?” would unlock all the secrets of creation and eventually lead to the destruction of the universe at the hands of that PC – and then its re-creation with him as the new creator of the universe! At which point it would have been revealed that the entire purpose of the universe was to create a companion for the creator of the universe in which the PC grew up – the answer to the ultimate “Why?”. Quite obviously, all this would have major repercussions for the campaign plan – in fact it was going to be the central fact of the last 20% or so of the campaign!
Central Philosophy – Briefings
What else needs to be explained? You’ve been working at a very detail-focused level; if you take a step back, can you generalize into some guiding principles that will enable you to choose between alternative game rulings when there is a conflict, or when something happens that is not covered by the rules? These both need to be incorporated into your briefings, and it is necessary to examine everything else in light of each of the general principles. Change the philosophy behind one rule, and you may well discover that many other rules need to change in order to be consistent.
Again, in the Shards Of Divinity campaign, one of the key consequences of the conception of magic that I built the campaign on was that illusions functioned as reality provided that the perceiver did not realize they were illusions – and that if they did anything different to anyone else because they perceived something as an illusion, that could also break the illusion for others. This is very useful if you’re the target of an illusion, but is unwelcome when you need to cross a chasm or ravine using an illusionary bridge! These illusion rules had major consequences for Elves (who naturally see through illusions) and Fey, requiring a substantial re-invention of both races. Several magic items were also affected, for example “Hat Of Disguise”. Combat was also substantially affected – you could heal as much damage as you wanted to, using an illusion – but if someone saw through the disguise, all the damage came back at once! One consequence that was never discovered was that Warlock Abilities were all illusions. This shifted the most important stat for that class to Charisma instead of Intelligence, essentially reinventing the class!
The Attitude to Game
The final philosophical underpinning of the campaign is perhaps the hardest to pin down. What is the underlying philosophy of the universe from a metagame perspective? What is the existential reality that you are trying to simulate, when boiled down to a few simple statements?
The key to the answer lies in your chosen theme or themes. How does it or do they express itself/themselves in a statement of the principles that the campaign is to be founded upon? How do the theme or themes express themselves in game mechanics? Do any mechanics need to change to produce a game environment in which those expressions are central?
This is a process of devising specifics, generalizing them into broad principles, then employing those principles to identify other specifics that derive from the broad statements. It’s not an easy task, involving a lot of thinking, a lot of perspiration, and a lot of creativity. The theme or themes should be the glue that binds the entire campaign together – this process is how that binding is achieved. It involves fundamentally altering the game structure and mechanics and concepts to reflect and incorporate the themes.
Once again, there is a recursive process involved. All the notes that have been made within the scope of this discussion of philosophy help in formulating the general principles when you reach this point – but as soon as you have those general principles, you need to go back over everything else you’ve done, including the other sections on philosophy, looking for conflicts and ramifications that derive from the general principles. Adventures, Characters, Player-GM interface, Player-Rules interface, GM-Rules interface, Game World – they are all in the firing line.
But the benefits are huge. Instead of the game world being a location where all sorts of campaigns can take place, it becomes customized to accommodate this particular specific campaign, while the campaign itself evolves to draw upon and articulate that uniqueness in the form of adventures that can’t be run as well any other way. The campaign goes from a generic expression of some ideas into being unique and original, different from every other campaign that you’ve run in the past, or will run in the future.
Theme
As you can see, we still aren’t done with the Theme or themes of the campaign. It still hasn’t fully seeped into the bedrock of the campaign, and we are still engaged in a process of stepwise refinement to get it there.
Stepwise Refinement is the process of taking a general answer or task and dividing it into more specific elements, often called modules, each of which is then further designed. It’s how major computer systems are designed a lot of the time, at least in principle. Practicality and not reinventing the wheel means that pre-existing “common modules” are often incorporated at a fundamental level.
We started with a very general idea for a campaign, and from that built up various modular elements, which were then recombined to form a more specific interpretation of that general idea. We then applied various tools to further define each of those elements, in the process breaking them down into still more specific details.
Some sculptors function by visualizing the finished work and removing the surplus material that surrounds it. This is especially true of wood carvers, where the texture and pattern of the grain are integral elements of the finished work. Stonemasons have the same attitude. The shape and appearance of the finished product, they are prone to say, is implicit in the original piece of wood or stone; they simple saw that pattern and removed everything that didn’t belong.
Having been working in this top-down manner so far, the campaign design has now reached the point where we need to integrate the “common modules” and customize the way they relate to the main design when incorporated into this particular campaign. The “common modules” of D&D and Pathfinder are PC Races and Classes; for Sci-Fi games, Races are usually all that’s relevant. In Pulp, there are a number of archetypes, and so on. So these are Rules System specific; change the rules system, and you change the building blocks that then have to be integrated into the campaign.
Another way to look at it is this: you’ve been customizing various aspects of the game system to better accommodate the campaign that’s coming together. Now it’s time to assess all the basic building blocks of the game to see what else has to change to accommodate that customization.
The Pigeonholes
Each fundamental building block in the campaign needs its own pigeonhole, and each pigeonhole should really have something stuffed into it. It might be some minor piece of information that no-one else gets, or house rules, or a legend that may or may not be true. These are specific little bits of player briefing that only specific individuals get; they usually aren’t vital to the campaign (all players get the real essentials) but they are a little bit of custom color that helps tie that particular character to the campaign. Sometimes these can be minimal, sometimes they are extensive, taking up multiple pages.
There are three types of Pigeonholes that are present in most fantasy RPGs and two that exist in most sci-fi, though sometimes all three will be found there as well. The first “row” is for archetypes and character classes. In Pathfinder terms, there’s a pigeonhole for clerics, and one for druids, and one for fighters, and so on. The second “row” is for the key races – Elves, Humans, Vulcans, Drazi, whatever. The third “row” is for the GM’s use; not all of the content in the pigeonholes will generate adventures, and of those that do, some will be adventures already in place within the campaign plan. But between 25 and 40% of the pigeonholes can form the foundations of additional adventures, and these are like crossbeams in the structure – while nominally independent, they tie and hold the rest of the campaign together.
Archetypes
Every archetype – character class in D&D & Pathfinder – needs something. Some of these are easy – with clerics, you write about the theology of the world, who the Gods are, and how the faith integrates with society, for example. With thieves, you talk about the dark underside of society (and they all have one), organized crime (if any), and so on. I’ll often throw in information about the legal system and a myth/legend/truth? about a legendary thief’s exploits.
For some archetypes you need to think outside the box. Fighters for example – there’s not much to say about them in most cultures that don’t have gladiatorial combats. But you can talk about the military, and the conflicts over the last century or so; or about the social system in general; or about politics (though I’ll often save that for Paladins/Knights, because they are more intimately connected to the social structure).
In a sci-fi campaign, there’s a lot of additional social and technological infrastructure to talk about. Engineers might get the basic principles of warp drive, and a list of the top three engineering schools in the campaign, for example. With scientists, the hardest part is knowing where to stop; I would generalize an awful lot and rely on providing specific information in any specialty subject via “library computer” (i.e. me) at the time. You could talk about the history of scientific discovery post-now but that tends to be fairly boring; instead I’ll tend to go into more detail on some of the major discoveries since.
In every campaign briefing there are the things that everyone needs to know, but everyone should get something beyond that. This is information that their specialty would expose them to, and things that may eventually (or even immediately) come out in gameplay, but not in the same level of detail that you provide to the players whose characters come from that sub-world. While you have to be wary of overload, everyone needs something – it not only makes the characters more special within the campaign, but it makes the characters in question feel like an immediate part of the campaign.
One of the key items to be incorporated is how the theme or themes have and/or will express themselves within the architecture and concept of the archetypes. This is where the list of manifestations of the themes that I had people create in a preceding step becomes most useful, enabling multiple choices right when you need them! It should be noted that in some cases it’s better to save that connection for the GM to use as a plot element, rather than priming the players on the subject of the theme from the very beginning. I prefer to employ more subtle interpretations of the theme here; making it a fundamental part of the campaign without drawing too much attention to it right away.
Key Races
The other thing that most campaigns will have in the way of pigeonholes are key races or cultures. Even in an all-human pulp campaign, there are different societies, and each should have something to be said about it for members of that society. This is primarily to help the player of these races get into character, but quite often there will be a secondary function of defining racial perspectives and natures that can be a basis of adventures.
Such facts can be the direct basis of an adventure by virtue of a consequence, implication or revelation; they can be used to complicate otherwise straightforward plots, or simply as an entry ramp or hook to deliver the players to the adventure in question.
Not everything in a racial profile needs to be accurate, or complete – filling in the blanks can be quite rewarding in terms of adventure pay-offs. But the implication of that is the need to have a GM’s version with “the rest of the story” or “the truth” – and that brings me to the third type of pigeonhole to be filled.
Once again, expressing the theme or themes as a constituent or highlight of each racial concept is a major component of the description of the races. However, even more than with archetypes, this can be a fertile ground for the generation of adventures. Refer to the comments made under Archetypes, above.
I wanted to throw an example into the mix at this point. So let’s assume that “Survival” and “Sacrifice” are two of the key themes of the campaigns, and in particular the self-sacrifice concept – “some must be sacrificed for the whole to survive”, which raises lots of thorny moral questions like “who chooses the sacrifice”?
Elves have very long lives. Why? Perhaps, once a generation, one elf must be sacrificed to the needs of society, becoming a conduit to the positive energy plane and a fountain of life from which all elves “drink” (metaphorically) for the next hundred or thousand years. In recompense for this sacrifice, the family are elevated to the nobility within Elven Society, or – if noble already – they assume the throne.
Think about all that for a minute. The politics. The capacity for manipulation in order to gain power. The emotion, the morality of the situation? A willing sacrifice? An unwilling sacrifice? A child born and reared for no other purpose than to be sacrificed? That one paragraph not only links the themes to the race, it radically reshapes the internal workings of the society, making it quite a bit darker. And, it must be said, quite a bit more interesting!
I can think of more adventures based on this one idea than I could ever hope to run in a campaign; they are mutually exclusive. The PCs rescue an Elven Child who has been kidnapped so that he can’t become the Sacrifice. A royal family attempts to substitute a counterfeit sacrifice for their beloved daughter. An unwilling sacrifice (a PC with player cooperation or an NPC if you trust the player to roleplay the revelation of the source of his long life) flees, hides amongst the PCs. There’s a racial guilt option too – every elf who enjoys long life does so at the expense of the sacrifice – they all have blood on their hands, though most of them might not know it. What if the sacrifice was a shameful secret? What lengths will the Elvish inner circle go to in order to protect it? How does the secret tie in with Elvish theology? Does this secret connect with how the Elves were originally created? And how do the Drow figure into this? Perhaps the worship of Lolth prevents the need for such sacrifices? Or perhaps they only think it does? Do they still partake of the largess that results, or do they need a completely separate sacrifice? Just how estranged are the two branches of Elfdom?
Unfortunately, the cat can only be let out of the box once. The surprise element is what makes these different adventures so fantastic; if you can run one of them without revealing the secret, you might be able to use two adventure ideas, but eventually the moment of revelation will come, and from that point on, it becomes just part of the game world; it will never have the same impact on the players a second time around.
Plot Pigeonholes
Almost everything that you populate these pigeonholes with can and should be used in conjunction with one or more adventures within the campaign. It should make a difference. In some cases, those adventures will be the ones you’ve already put into the campaign outline; in others, these plots will be new ones. It might be remembered that earlier in the campaign outline process I recommended adding some plot spaces to be used for character-generated plots; you can fill some of those with these plotlines, or can make a new insertion into the campaign structure.
In terms of using those blank slots, I can only offer some general advice. Because these plots are fundamentally connected with who the PCs are, they should be relatively early in the campaign; but at the same time, the general picture of who the race or archetype are should not overwhelm the distinctiveness of the individual, so they should not be the first such empty slot, which should derive from the personality with which the player endows the character. If necessary, I would create additional empty slots either earlier (to replace the one used now) or later (to contain this adventure). The first inflates the early campaign phases, the second does the same for the middle. Every campaign will be different, so this is something you’ll have to judge for yourself.
Of course, there’s one big caveat to doing so – at this point you probably don’t know what classes and races the PCs are going to be, so you can’t actually schedule these adventures right now! All you can do is some basic prep (and not in too much detail because it could be wasted effort) and plan to fill out the final details of the campaign plan once you have that information.
The Philosophy Of Choice
This also brings up a couple of key decisions that you will need to make. When do you make these exclusive briefing materials available to a player? Do you make them all available from before character generation (not recommended)? Or wait until the player decides on a race and class (recommended)? And if they then change their minds, possibly as a result of the additional briefing material, how are you going to handle that? In the latter case, I would recommend mandating that their new character’s background include an opportunity to get to know the details of the race or class not chosen, thereby justifying the character having access the additional briefing material within the game.
The Philosophies Of The Campaign
Designing a campaign is, fundamentally, about choices. The philosophies of a campaign define the reasons for those choices. Every campaign has a central philosophic core, whether the GM knows it or not; the better the GM is, the more capacity he has for taking control of that philosophic core and bending it to his campaign’s needs, even if he doesn’t realize that this is what he is doing. How much better could he do so if he knew what he was doing – and was able to perform his manipulations with intent, forethought, and in advance of the commencement of play, instead of waiting for the campaign to develop its own unique flavor?
Well, I made deadline for this article, though it was a close-run thing! Next time, I look at more of these subtle nuances that really bring a campaign to life: Archetypes and Races.
Say what? Didn’t we just do those things? My friend, we’re just getting started…
- New Beginnings: Introduction
- New Beginnings: Phase 1: Inspiration
- New Beginnings: Phase 2: Baggage Dump
- New Beginnings: Phase 3: Reinvigoration
- New Beginnings: Phase 4: Development
- New Beginnings: Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment
- New Beginnings: Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings
- New Beginnings: Phase 7: Skeleton
- New Beginnings: Phase 8: Enfleshing
- New Beginnings: Phase 9: Completion
- New Beginnings: Phase X: Beginning
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March 30th, 2015 at 4:33 am
[…] New Beginnings: Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings […]
January 3rd, 2016 at 4:24 pm
Hi Mike,
Ironically, I looked up the ‘Buckley’s and None’ comment when you said it (because I like learning this stuff) before I read the subsequent explanation. My quick search turned up a reference that contradicts your decision that it referred to William.
http://andc.anu.edu.au/ozwords/Oct%202000/Buckley%27s.html
For funsies, I thought I’d point it out. Meh! I’m Canadian… what do I know!
Tracey
January 4th, 2016 at 2:33 am
Interesting link, Tracey, but I don’t find the logic compelling. It fails to take into account the extreme formality in style employed for a great many years – no newspaper would dream of making reference to anything as uncouth as a slang expression, no matter how widely spread the vernacular may have been in common usage. This was especially true in the early days of Australia where the common speech was widely regarded as uncouth, and newspapers were written for ‘gentlemen’. When this formality began to loosen, such idioms were often placed in inverted commas to ensure that the reader would realize that the reference was to a common parlance element rather than being meant literally; within a few years more, the inverted commas became redundant. I still think that William was the original reference, though later ‘Buckleys’ may have reinforced and reinvigorated the saying. But I can’t prove it any more than you can, Canadian or otherwise!