D&D General What is the worst piece of DM advice people give that you see commonly spread?

[cranberry]

"You should run your D&D game just like Matt Mercer, otherwise you're not doing it right"

 

[DEFCON 1]

Nah. There's some advice that's purely bad, unquestionably bad.

Heh heh... and yet there will always be that one DM who see that "bad advice" and believes it answers all of their issues 100%! I don't think there's a single piece of advice any DM can give that won't be acknowledged as true by at least one other DM. LOL! The other 99.999% of us will be thinking "What are you INSANE? That's HORRIBLE advice!"... but that one DM will read it and go "Oh yeah! That's the stuff right there!"

 

[Pedantic]

Rule Zero. DMing is already time-consuming and difficult, you shouldn't also have to be a game designer, and doing the rest of the work doesn't mean your random game design ideas are particularly good or insightful.

Admittedly, this has generally proven to have a more corrosive effect on the initial design of games than the the at the table play, but I think it's responsible for the most misery overall.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

"You should run your D&D game just like Matt Mercer, otherwise you're not doing it right"

Is that advice anyone gives though?

I've never seen anyone suggest that myself.

What I have seen is players with unreasonable expectations because of Critical Role, but that's not DM advice, that's unreasonable expectations.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Nah. There's some advice that's purely bad, unquestionably bad.

You are right, I was speaking in overly absolutes there. I would say there is definitely dysfunctional advice out there that can be safely ignored. I was just saying most of the time when I see people say this is great advice or this is terrible, it really depends on whether that advice fits the groups or the present needs of the table

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Rule Zero. DMing is already time-consuming and difficult, you shouldn't also have to be a game designer, and doing the rest of the work doesn't mean your random game design ideas are particularly good or insightful.

Admittedly, this has generally proven to have a more corrosive effect on the initial design of games than the the at the table play, but I think it's responsible for the most misery overall.

This is a good one, because whilst it's not purely bad, it's certainly responsible for an awful lot of bad stuff.

The problem is, rule zero made absolute sense in the 1980s and even 1990s - quite often your random game design ideas were more well-considered than those of the actual game designers, especially when people were working to certain briefs (c.f. the worst Complete X Handbooks), so the idea of not changing the rules became anathema to generations of players. However, the giant piles of ill-considered "house rules" this generated probably started doing more harm than good sometime in the 1990s - and they still are often terrible. Earlier in 5E's life, if someone did a thread of "what house rules do you use", usually like 50%+ of the "house rules" were simply confused re-iterations of rules that already existed, or that were being made because the DM didn't know about/understand another rule.

And the inverse "never change anything unless you know exactly what you're doing" can be problematic - often there's a relatively simple fix to some real mechanical annoyance.

But game design in 2023 is very different to the 1980s, and frankly far better and more professional, for the most part. Finally the once-questionable "never change the rules until you've played at least a couple of sessions" advice has become extremely reliable, perhaps even essential for some games. I used to bridle at such advice, but now I'd subscribe to it.

 

[el-remmen]

Just eliminate the words never, always and only from advice and its cool.

I agree with this (and said a version of it myself before I saw this).

I will add giving or taking any advice as a mandate. It is as if some people don't know what the word "advice" even means!

 

[Burnside]

Basically, I think it's generally not a great idea to address out-of-game issues with in-game punishments or fixes (i.e. if player is doing something you don't like, talking to them about it is better than killing their character with a dragon).

Also, and related, the notion that if the group is playing a pre-written adventure and a player is obviously reading the adventure and "cheating", then the responsibility is somehow on the DM to re-work the adventure to compensate rather than the player's responsibility to stop being a jerk.

The idea that running pre-written material is somehow inferior to making up your own stuff (or vice versa). Neither is superior to the other; they're just different.

Having events that "need to happen" in order to "advance your story". Unless you're really good at doing that in a way that doesn't remove player agency.

The idea that it's a complete given that the DM has to fix bad design. That's often the reality, but I dislike the idea that it's "supposed to" work that way, and that you "can't" run an adventure as written. In fact, you can run a well-designed adventure as written.

 

[Burnside]

"You should run your D&D game just like Matt Mercer, otherwise you're not doing it right"

Nobody actually says this.

 

[bedir than]

When you ask: how would you do this in D&D?

And they respond: you should play another game