You seem to be talking about sales. The blog was talking about growing new DMs. For all I know the Starter Set has sold better than any other D&D product ever - but that on its own doesn't tell us anything about how many new DMs it might have created. And based on my (second-hand) knowledge of its contents, I doubt that it will create, per unit sold, as many new and capable DMs as Moldvay Basic did. Simply because, as best I understand, it doesn't actually talk about how to undertake the tasks associated with GMing. Whereas Moldvay did.
I don't see why not. The criticism isn't that they failed to assert that they had a product aimed at DM conversion. The criticism, rather, is that that product is a failure in that respect, because it doesn't actually contain guidelines and advice on how to run a game.
If the blogger is, in fact, wrong about that, then his criticism doesn't go through. But from what I've read, no one has argued that he is wrong and that the Starter Set does in fact contain sophisticated GMing advice.
I read it. I don't remember the reasons, but they were probably sensible - Mearls isn't an idiot. But there are many ways to provide GMing advice other than via tutorial books. And it need not be lengthy, either: Moldvay Basic packs more useful adventuring advice into a chapter of 10 or so pages (I'm going from memory here) than Gygax fits into his whole DMG!
I don't know what examples you have in mind, so I'm not sure if you know the examples I know but don't regard them as helpful for teaching GMing, or rather if you're just not familiar with those examples.
I'm going to proceed on the 2nd assumption, and apologise in advance if it turns out to be condescending (and also look forward to hearing why you disagree with me about their value!).
First, chapter 8 Moldvay Basic. This sets out a step-by-step guide for creating a dungeon. It has advice, including random tables (with 10 entries each) on how to choose a setting (eg haunted crypt, tower, literal dungeon, etc) and also a scenario that will drive play (eg treasure hunting, rescue prisoners, etc). It then has advice on how to draw the map and stock the rooms - including when/how to stock rooms in accordance with the setting and scenario, and when/how to use random tables for monsters, traps and treasure. (And it supplies the random tables). It then has a worked example of dungeon design (level 1 of The Haunted Keep). It then has a discussion of "Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art", which includes advice on action resolution for actions the rest of the rules don't cover (by way of stat checks or percentage chance of success, including advice on how to set the percentages, namely, by reference to "objective" likelihood within the fiction), handling questions of rules interpretation, etc.
Moldvay also uses font and paragraph layout to good effect, to make it (visually) easier to pull his advice off the page.
If I compare it to the 4e DMG, the latter spends many more pages (and walls of text) on some of these matters, but when it comes to encounter design gives advice only on the tactical aspects of combat encounters, but no advice on how to use the game's resources to build up the story elements of encounters (it encourages GMs to do this, but doesn't tell them how), and barely any advice at all on how to resolve skill challenges (it talks about skill selection, but there is basically nothing about how to narrate consequences other than encouragement to narrate consequences). Even page 42 is only a shadow of what it might be: for instance, the example involves dealing damage plus forced movement, but none of the charts for DC by level, damage by level etc discusses how to incorporate effects and conditions such as forced movement into the process of adjudicating improvised actions.
The second example I have in mind is not a D&D one, but it is still a fantasy RPG: Burning Wheel, both the core rulebook and the Adventure Burner (which is BW's equivalent to a DMG). These have concrete advice, such as how to frame scenes (do so having regard to the Beliefs the players have written for their PCs, putting those Beliefs under pressure), how to use Relationships ("If one of your relationships is your wife in the village [and] you're hunting a vampyr, of course it's your wife who is his victim!"), how to narrate consequences (including techniques of "fail forward", as well as distinguishing intent from task in action resolution, and emphasising the place of each in narrating both success and failure).
Luke Crane tends more towards the non-Moldvay D&D style "wall of text" without crisp use of font and layout. But the vigour and passion of his writing, and his willingness to cut through obfuscation and explain unambiguously why he thinks a certain GMing choice will make the game play out well, in my view makes up for any visual inadequacies. (Of course there's no reason you couldn't combine his robustness of communication with Moldvay's visual clarity of layout.)
These aren't rules compendiums with codified examples. They are instructional manuals. They explain, in a systematic and (hopefully) clear way how to go about a certain complex task. (Other examples, though not quite as good in my opinion, include Robin Laws advice in his HeroWars/Quest books, and Maelstrom Storytelling. Some very good advice, but for a more freeform and non-fantasy system, is given by Tweet and Laws in Over the Edge.)
I gave a couple of examples, upthread, that I think are important for 5e: what considerations might a GM take account of in setting DCs? Or in deciding which stat to test for some particular task or challenge?
Making good decisions about these things is pretty fundamental to 5e GMing. It should be possible to write a brief (1 or 2 page) and pithy discussion of how to do those things. You don't need very many worked examples. But if you do use examples, you also need to tell the would-be GMs reading along at home what techniques those examples illustrate. If I am watching a video or reading a book telling me how to kick a football, I expect the narrator not just to show, but also to tell. (Liat Gat's knitting video's are excellent models for this.) There's no reason an RPG book can't do the same with its examples. (The 4e skill challenge examples are epic fails in this regard. In both of them the GM is using techniques, in particular drawing upon various metagame considerations to guide the narration of consequences, which are nowhere discussed in the 4e rulebooks and which are not called out by way of explanation in the examples. The reader is expected to extract them by osmosis. This is about as likely as me learning how to make a paper crane by watching a commentary-free youtube video of the world origami championships.)
Last edited:
