The First Person To Ever Play A Wizard: A Short Clip

This is a short interview clip with the first player of a wizard in an RPG, posted by David Megarry. Peter Gaylord played in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign as the Wizard of the Wood in the early 1970s. Peter passed away earlier this year, aged 73. This was before D&D; Blackmoor was Dave Arneson's campaign setting, and was initially a wargaming setting and then part of what evolved into D&D.

[video=youtube;qnY_2qC1L34]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnY_2qC1L34[/video]​

"There has been a lot of demand for more information about Secrets of Blackmoor, as well as a desire to see more footage. Film making is a long process. Until a film is finished, all you have is masses of footage. We really appreciate all of the supportive messages people have sent and we want to thank you for your interest in this project.

This week, we've taken a small amount of time away from working on the movie and clipped together a brief segment from Pete Gaylord's interview.

Pete Gaylord was part of Dave Arneson's gaming group. He played one of the more famous characters in Arneson's Blackmoor games: The Wizard of the Wood.

Just as there is a first dungeon master, there is a first wizard.

Pete is the first person to ever be a wizard in a role playing game. His input as a player in Blackmoor is largely undocumented, yet without a player who wanted to be a wizard, Arneson would not have been forced to adapt his game to include magic spells. His story really is one of the secrets of blackmoor.

We hope you enjoy seeing Pete explain a little bit about his role in the creation of Blackmoor. This interview is very special to us. Pete is missed by everyone who knows him. His legacy is immortalized any time a D&D player decides to be a magic user."

Harvard's Blackmoor Blog wrote about the Wizard of the Wood here.

 

[pemerton]

I can see what he's saying, in that it's not the player or DM coming up with these ideas; rather, in my experience most GMs won't give a second glance unless the mechanic in question comes from a game designer or, more likely, "official sources only." A lot of gamers don't seem to be clued in to the secret that the only difference between a game designer and a gamer, to paraphrase Mythbusters' Adam Savage, is writing crap down.

But this would be a complaint about referees; whereas the post I replied to seemed to be complaining about players.

There's also the issue of workload - if I want to play such-and-such a character, and someone else has already designed it (and perhaps even playtested it), why reinvent the wheel?

If you use published option XYZ, the player knows going in what the benefits are and the detriments. Any deviations from the published rules can lead to rules lawyer discussions. Using the "Can I use super-berries?" approach, the player doesn't know all of the benefits or detriments.

This doesn't seem correct to me. If the GM wants to have use of super-berries irritate local druids, s/he can have the published equivalent do the same.

If the DM says sure try it, the berries might allow higher spell use. Might not. Might allow higher spell use and piss off the local druid. Might have a % chance of lowering INT scores with each use. The DM is free to reward player inventiveness without running afoul of some obscure rule published in errata 3 for supplement XYZ rev 2. And the player is free to use her imagination to try new things without being limited by the published material.

If the GM is rewarding plauyer inventiveness/imagination by imposing a % chance to lower INT, I'm not sure the word "reward" is being appropriately used. (Depending on edition, I guess - in early D&D stat-raising items, fountains etc were pretty common but they're pretty rare in contempary D&D.)

And if you're worried about players "rules lawyering" published material, do you think they're going to cheerfully take % chances of stat loss?

There's a rather big difference, in fact.

Player A, the old-schooler, is asking whether she can use something she has (probably) thought of herself. Original thinking by Player A.
Player B, the modern type, is asking whether he can use something someone else thought up, standardized, and put in a book. Not original thinking by Player B.

In either case it still comes down to the DM to allow it or not; the difference lies in the material's source, and in independently thinking of something new to try.

But then the complaint is silly.

Over forty years, people think of stuff and publish it. So the scope for original ideas becomes narrower. I mean, look at the topic of this thread - do we think that it is bad for players to play wizards (or clerics, or thieves) because they're not the first people to do so?

When I read a complaint about players not being creative enough, because they want to use published material, I don't see a GM who wants to reward player engagement with the game. I see a GM who wants to exercise a high level of control over the game.

And saying to a player or GM "Just make it up" is not a helpful reply to a request for advice. Giving advice on how to make things up (eg what is an appropriate % chance for INT loss when eating a super-berry) is part-and-parcel of talking about the game. It's been going on since the first number of The Strategic Review, Alarums and Excursions, etc was published.

 

[Henry]

But this would be a complaint about referees; whereas the post I replied to seemed to be complaining about players.

It applies to both, though - the players who accept X sources only are as complicit as GMs are in this thought. Just as many GMs accept only certain sources, many players don't think homebrew material can be as good as what the designers put out, so they don't even try.

I'm not saying gamers who don't homebrew are doing anything wrong - I can simply understand the lament that in my and apparently [MENTION=45197]pming[/MENTION]'s experience, most gamer circles don't even seem to think homebrew material is even viable. I know I don't homebrew custom stuff often, but I do when it suits the campaign, and pull 3rd party stuff I like all the time.

But then the complaint is silly.

Over forty years, people think of stuff and publish it. So the scope for original ideas becomes narrower. I mean, look at the topic of this thread - do we think that it is bad for players to play wizards (or clerics, or thieves) because they're not the first people to do so?

When I read a complaint about players not being creative enough, because they want to use published material, I don't see a GM who wants to reward player engagement with the game. I see a GM who wants to exercise a high level of control over the game.

And saying to a player or GM "Just make it up" is not a helpful reply to a request for advice. Giving advice on how to make things up (eg what is an appropriate % chance for INT loss when eating a super-berry) is part-and-parcel of talking about the game. It's been going on since the first number of The Strategic Review, Alarums and Excursions, etc was published.

To your second point, I really can't understand it - how is encouraging homebrew among players exercising a high level of control? High level of PLAYER control surely, but it's the opposite of control - it's basically structured improv.

Your last point I completely agree - "just make it up" without constructive criticism is not helpful. That's why forums like these are still critical to the process - instead of in the old days having very limited contact with fellow gamers, you have critical input from literally around the world.

 

[Secrets of Blackmoor]

Darjr,
Thank you for posting the clip. It seems like you know your history on the subject from your comments too. Blackmoor was a lot more than just an RPG.

Hiya!

Kind of agree with the above with regards to the interviewer. That said, what I found most interesting is towards the end when the Wizard of the Wood explains that with Dave's game everyone could put in their 2¢ for ideas. If Dave and everyone liked it, he'd implement it into the campaign.

The reason this struck me is that it is exactly how I learned back in '81 (when I took the DM'ing reigns). Back then there weren't any 'supplemental books', roughly speaking...at least not available up here where I live (Whitehorse, Yukon Territory; Whitehorse didn't even have paved streets then, nor sidewalks...we did have a boardwalk on Main Street...and we had a grand total of ONE traffic signal; population at that time was around 12,000 iirc). Ahem...where was I? Oh yeah...availability of any game related stuff was through one place called "Jim's Toy and Gift". It was a single 4' wide, 4 shelf high display shoved into a back corner. Needless to say, we got what we got.

Hearing what Peter mentioned was a nice reminder of where the game's roots *actually* came from...a group of people making up in a fantasy world. I don't hear that very often nowadays. Now its all about players trying to convince a DM to buy/use some particular book or option the bought or found in a Sage Advice online article. Questions players ask are very heavily weighted towards "Using the books, how do I get X out of my character?". I, and a few other old grognards, frequently come back with the basic "Ask your DM or tell him/her what you want. Then make stuff up" as our first answer. Sometimes it's taken to heart, other times it's ignored at best, or berated as "not RAW" or playing the "mother may I" game BS that is somehow a 'thing'.

Anyway...it put a smile on my face to be reminded of how and where the game came from. When my players venture back into Eisla (my 1e campaign), this is how we play; the books are there to be used as guidelines. If somethings not there, and it seems like a cool idea...I implement it. IMHO, this is the best way to play any RPG. (not the only way...just the best way...IMHO <--- please note that last acronym!).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Paul,
Your experience is similar to ours. And it was always so hard to find every issue of your favorite magazine back then too.

What you describe as play style is very much an indicator of when the game was still in infancy. Most of the players were not just consumers of the latest thing. They took it and ran with it. When we game, we do the same thing. Lots of improvised rules and rulings.

If you look at David Megarry's channel you can see more videos there:

A video we produced to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Dungeon! as well as a demo on How To Play Dungeon! with Ross Maker Co-author of Source of the Nile.

A brief clip with Duane Jenkins and Bill Hoyt.

And a trailer for Secrets of Blackmoor.

Thanks

 

[Secrets of Blackmoor]

Darjr,
Just tried to PM you, but the site won't let you PM until you've made 5 posts.

So, I suppose we could just spam our way to 5, or let you know we'd love to chat with you.

 

[pemerton]

Just as many GMs accept only certain sources, many players don't think homebrew material can be as good as what the designers put out, so they don't even try.

I'm not saying gamers who don't homebrew are doing anything wrong - I can simply understand the lament that in my and apparently [MENTION=45197]pming[/MENTION]'s experience, most gamer circles don't even seem to think homebrew material is even viable.

<snip>

To your second point, I really can't understand it - how is encouraging homebrew among players exercising a high level of control?

I didn't say that encouragingh homebrew among players is exercising a high level of control. I said that complaints about players not being creative enough because they wanti to use published material seems to me often to be a GM wanting to exercise a high level of control over the game.

If a GM won't let a player use option XYZ that has (for the sake of argument) been playtested and published by a reputable RPG studio, is that GM really going to let the players go wild with their homebrew ideas? I'm not seeing it.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

But this would be a complaint about referees; whereas the post I replied to seemed to be complaining about players.

Sorry if it came off that way...that wasn't what I was intending. I was just saying that when I was learning to play and DM, that we made stuff up every single time we played. New monsters, spells, items, rules, etc. We didn't turn to a supplement because, well, we didn't have any available to us. Hell, I remember my first encounter with Dragon magazine. I found it in a hobby shop in West Edmonton Mall when my family forced me to go with them (c'mon...I was 13 years old! I was totally grown up and all that...geez mom! ). It was Dragon #83 iirc...maybe #81. Wow. STUFF! For AD&D!

When I saw what kind of stuff was in there, and what kind of stuff I had created...and realized that my stuff was at least as good/balanced as the pro's...well, my fate as a DM was sealed. I've been DM'ing primarily for about 36 years now, since I was 10.

There's also the issue of workload - if I want to play such-and-such a character, and someone else has already designed it (and perhaps even playtested it), why reinvent the wheel?

Mainly for the fun and satisfaction of it. Why do people paint pictures of fruit in a bowl if they can just go out and buy one? Because creating it makes it "yours", and with that comes an intimate appreciation for it and the knowledge that "next time I'll do better and not put as much blue in the grapes" (e.g., you will improve your DM/Playing capability as well as your creative process).

Plopping down $40, writing "Uber-Swordmaster - Longsword" on your character sheet, and then letting the DM read the entry from Splat Book XYZ does absolutely nothing to help you improve your game/capability/fun (imho, of course).

This doesn't seem correct to me. If the GM wants to have use of super-berries irritate local druids, s/he can have the published equivalent do the same.

If the GM is rewarding plauyer inventiveness/imagination by imposing a % chance to lower INT, I'm not sure the word "reward" is being appropriately used. (Depending on edition, I guess - in early D&D stat-raising items, fountains etc were pretty common but they're pretty rare in contempary D&D.)

And if you're worried about players "rules lawyering" published material, do you think they're going to cheerfully take % chances of stat loss?

As others have pointed out, it's the "DM created with player input" vs. "It says so right here in the rules" that makes the difference. And a large one at that.

A friend of mine, Chris, was the 'second DM' during my first 10 or so years of DM'ing. He would create stuff and I would steal it. I would create stuff, and he would steal it. There's an old artist saying that goes something like: "Good artists copy. Great artists steal. -Pablo Picasso". Anyway, he had a reoccurring NPC called "Sillius Fatbelly". He was a planes-hopping merchant charlatan of all manner of wares. He would sell you a Longsword +3...but there was ALWAYS a catch. Maybe it caused everyone around you to suffer -1 to all rolls, or maybe it was uniquely designed and stolen...and the Death Knight who owned it wants it back, or maybe it was intelligent and prone to loud sobbing and complaining every time it killed something, etc.

You know what effect Sillius Fatbelly's "wares" had on our game? Some of the most memorable and amazing role-playing situations we had. Yes, even the player who spent ALL his gold and threw in all his magic items just to get that +3 sword. In terms of this thread, the player eating the super-berry and then rolling % each time, eventually failing, and loosing d3 points of Int wouldn't be "upset" (as in actually p'oed) about it. He'd be laughing right along with everyone else, and then he'd start planning how to get his lost INT points back, and then start using super-berries only when absolutely needed.

But...if these were simply in that $40 Splat Book XYZ, with no loss mentioned, and then the DM threw that at him? I'd bet dimes to dollars that most players nowadays wouldn't find it amusing. They'd cry foul, point at the books, and then say something like "If I knew I could loose INT points, there's no way I would have used them!", and be actually upset about the 'surprise'. Then he'd keep whining until the DM ret-conned the situation. Then the player would keep the super-berries he has. And then the player would use them quite happily after he already found a means of skirting the rules somehow and avoiding INT loss (like some particular feat combo, or spell/race thing, or magic-item/spell shenanigans that says something that says 'any Int, Wis or Cha losses come first from these temporary Int/Wis/Cha gains'.

Anyway, this is starting to sound quite ranty...and I really don't want it to. It was just nice to be reminded that I'm not "doing it wrong" and that I'm not a "bad DM that can't handle actual rules supplements", or that I'm somehow "a lazy or bad DM because I can't handle player creativity" ('creativity' referring to rules mastery and optimization).

I'm so grateful that I grew up learning 'on my own'...and that doing all that DM-learning on my own, by making my own stuff up, and seeing it either fail or succeed to various degrees has, IMHO, made me a better DM.

When I read a complaint about players not being creative enough, because they want to use published material, I don't see a GM who wants to reward player engagement with the game. I see a GM who wants to exercise a high level of control over the game.

And saying to a player or GM "Just make it up" is not a helpful reply to a request for advice. Giving advice on how to make things up (eg what is an appropriate % chance for INT loss when eating a super-berry) is part-and-parcel of talking about the game. It's been going on since the first number of The Strategic Review, Alarums and Excursions, etc was published.

First, a DM who wants a high level of control over his game isn't a bad thing if it makes his game lasting and fun. In my experience a DM who doesn't much care about 'controlling' his/her game (e.g. "If you own the book you can use it", for example)...typically don't have lasting games. They may be fun...but only for a short period of time, maybe a half-dozen play sessions or so. Then it breaks down and just becomes silly/pointless and everyone looses interest. IME, anyway.

I also firmly believe that telling a newbie asking for DM advice to "Not worry about it and just make some stuff up!" is MUCH more helpful than giving him/her a bunch of standard, typical, reading lists to follow.

EXCEPTIONS: Articles that treat the DM as something more than "a player who rolls for the monsters". Articles that discuss the 'boring' stuff...economics, political structures, race relations, terrain effects on survivability, etc. All that stuff that has almost NOTHING to do with the Player Characters, at least not in a direct, "ability/feat/skill/etc" way. Articles about dungeon ecology, or aquatic considerations for adventuring, etc. THAT is all great stuff for a DM to read. If an aspiring DM poo-poos all that stuff and "juts wants to make exciting adventures for his players", that's fine...but said DM will never be a great DM, or really even a good one. Competent, sure, nothing wrong with just blowing off steam and playing D&D for the Sh's and Gig's. But to become a "real" DM (e.g., one that creates their own campaign world with it's own quirks, secrets, pitfalls, and believability)? Not gonna cut it. Such a DM needs to know about all that "boring stuff" and then apply it to their own creative muse in regard to their own campaign).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[darjr]

Darjr,
Just tried to PM you, but the site won't let you PM until you've made 5 posts.

So, I suppose we could just spam our way to 5, or let you know we'd love to chat with you.

Hi there! Love to chat! I'm no expert but I love the history of D&D. Two of my favorite things together. Well really three. History, arcane knowledge and D&D.

 

[Secrets of Blackmoor]

I think that you have to PM me for us to be able to chat.

 

[Secrets of Blackmoor]

Just to pop into the ongoing discussion about play style and new products -- There IS a huge difference between how it was when it first started and how it is now.

Generally speaking:
One of the primary differences I see has to do with engagement, players tend to sit back and want the DM to do everything for them and provide a song and dance.

The play style seems more rigid on how DM's play as well. If they write something down, they stick to it. As in the example of super berries, Arneson and his players would think of things in the moment and simply add it in. I know my experience was similar. I am not saying this is good or bad, but as a community of people, gamers were different in the early days. For one thing, most gamers were also war gamers; that is no longer true.

And as has been said previously, there just weren't that many products out early on. What I see as a trend in how consumers approach the game, is that they take the rules as law and do not step outside of that in any way. And they tend to purchase worlds to play in rather than making up their own. This pre-made reality trend is interesting because when compared to the old style of gaming, everything is self referential. If you want to know how a farmer sowed his garden in the game, you buy the farmers and farming implements module.

When one speaks to gamers from the 70's the narrative is completely different. Most of them were already reading real histories. I remember reading roman histories as a 14 year old because I wanted to know more about real ancient worlds, and wanted to use that as a way to create realistic fantasy worlds. I expect the older gamers her will have done the same thing as I did.

To an older gamer who is well read on many subjects, it is really bizarre to talk to kids who do not have a wide knowledge about the real world and only refer to what the rules say; whether it is a mechanic, or a cultural norm within the game.

Now that I've kicked the bees nest. I will step back for a bit.

 

[pemerton]

Now that I've kicked the bees nest. I will step back for a bit.

And have also reached 5 posts! Without too much spamming. (EDIT: only 4 - apparently my counting/reading sucks.)

When one speaks to gamers from the 70's the narrative is completely different. Most of them were already reading real histories. I remember reading roman histories as a 14 year old because I wanted to know more about real ancient worlds, and wanted to use that as a way to create realistic fantasy worlds. I expect the older gamers her will have done the same thing as I did.

I wasn't a gamer in the 1970s - I first played D&D in 1982 - but I did read history when I was 14. The first academic history text I remember reading (as opposed to histories written for non-adult readers) was East Asia: The Great Tradition (later combined with its successor volume into a one-volume abridgement called East Asia: Tradition and Transformation). This significantly informed my development of an Oriental Adventures campaign as a 14-year old.

One of the primary differences I see has to do with engagement, players tend to sit back and want the DM to do everything for them and provide a song and dance.

The play style seems more rigid on how DM's play as well. If they write something down, they stick to it.

This relates directly to the point I made.

A player who wants to play a certain sort of character (say, a wizard of the High Tower) and who reads a supplement that gives ideas on how a wizard of the High Tower might be implemented into the game (mechanically, fictional conceits, etc) is engaging with the game. And is not just asking the GM to "provide a song and dance".

When the GM says "no", or complains about "player entitlement", I don't think that that is encouraging the player to engage further.

If the GM won't let the player use stuff from a commercially published supplement, I don't think that is a very good signal for the prospects of the GM lettting the player just make stuff up!

I've been DM'ing primarily for about 36 years now, since I was 10.

In my case for about 33 years, since I was 11 or 12.

Articles that treat the DM as something more than "a player who rolls for the monsters".

Can you give me an example of a published work of GM advice that describes the GM as nothing more than "a player who rolls for the monsters"? I can't think of one off the top of my head - and the ones that I'm thinking of include classic Traveller, Burning Wheel, Gygax's DMG, the 4e rulebooks, and various Rolemaster books. I'm not that familiar with the 2nd ed AD&D DMG or the 3E DMG - maybe they're the examples you have in mind?

Why do people paint pictures of fruit in a bowl if they can just go out and buy one? Because creating it makes it "yours", and with that comes an intimate appreciation for it and the knowledge that "next time I'll do better and not put as much blue in the grapes" (e.g., you will improve your DM/Playing capability as well as your creative process).

<snip>

A friend of mine, Chris, was the 'second DM' during my first 10 or so years of DM'ing. He would create stuff and I would steal it. I would create stuff, and he would steal it. There's an old artist saying that goes something like: "Good artists copy. Great artists steal. -Pablo Picasso".

OK, so which of these are you advocating?

If your stealing of ideas from your friend Chris is a sign of great artistry, why is some random player you've never met, whose creative personality you know nothing about except from reading a few posts on the internet, showing a lack of artistry because s/he wants to steal something from a commercial publisher?

Sometimes I draw sketches to illustrate things for my game, but not very often because I'm a very poor visual artist. Most of the time, if I want to (say) show the players what a person or creature or place looks like, I will show them a picture that was drawn by someone else. Most of these pictures I find in the RPG books that I own. I don't feel any sort of shame in doing this - that somehow I am a lesser GM because I rely on someone else's illustrations.

I generally take the same approach to maps - in this case, not because I can't draw maps but because it is tedious and I can't be bothered, and so take advantage of the fact that others have already done the work for me.

A player who relies on someone else having done design work is not, in my view, showing any sort of failure of creativity as a player. In my view, the crucible of creativity for RPG players is not in making up game elements, but in conceiving of their PCs as persons within the shared fiction, and in the consequent declaration of actions for their PCs. That's where you find out how creative they are. I have been very fortunate over the past 30-odd years to play with a number of very creative players, whose interesting PCs have engaged in interesting actions. Who authored the mechanics of the game elements they use (mostly commercial publishers, sometimes me, very rarely them) has never been a major consideration.

Plopping down $40, writing "Uber-Swordmaster - Longsword" on your character sheet, and then letting the DM read the entry from Splat Book XYZ does absolutely nothing to help you improve your game/capability/fun (imho, of course).

Is it your opinion that it doesn't increase anyone else's fun either? In that case, you must think a lot of people are self-deluded.

But in any event, that's a very narrow view of what it means to use game elements published by someone else. Given that you describe yourself as a D&D player, I assume that you sometimes use game elements published by TSR and/or WotC. So when you write down "dwarf" on your PC sheet, that is the result of having plopped down $X for Gygax's PHB (or whatever book you started with). Presumably, when your PC found him-/herself in combat with some orcs or hobgoblins, you took advantage of the +1 to hit that Gygax told you, in his PHB, a dwarf receives when fighting such creatures. And, presumably, you don't think that made you a bad player who was not improving game/capability/fun. (I mean, I know from your post that you used +3 swords. That's not a concept you invented - you took it straight from a book that, presumably, you paid for.)

Well, the person who uses some supplement to add some mechanical element to his/her PC is probably doing just the same thing as you have been doing in playing a dwarf (or writing "+3 longsword" on your sheet). So however you justify that to yourself, that is how it is justified for that other person.

this is starting to sound quite ranty...and I really don't want it to.

I would say that it sounds condescending. You're are extending a courtesy to yourself - you can take ideas from rulebooks, like +3 swords and INT as a stat and % chances of stat loss or stat gain, without being damaged as a RPGer - while accusing contemporary players who want to use ideas and mechanics that they find in books of doing it wrong.

You prefer a game in which there are random chances of stat loss, or other unexpected mechanical degradation to PCs, and in which - presumably - that can be undone (given that you imagine a player planning how to get his/her INT back). But even back in the 1970s and 1980s there were people who weren't too keen on that particular approach to D&D play - see eg Lewis Pulsipher writing critically about "lottery D&D" in White Dwarf c 1977 - and its relative absence today isn't a sign that players suck. I'm guessing that most RQ players c1980 wouldn't be that keen on the lottery approach to Superberries or +3 swords or whatever - part of RQ's appeal has always been that it is more "serious" than D&D - but that doesn't make them bad RPGers.

Articles that discuss the 'boring' stuff...economics, political structures, race relations, terrain effects on survivability, etc. All that stuff that has almost NOTHING to do with the Player Characters, at least not in a direct, "ability/feat/skill/etc" way. Articles about dungeon ecology, or aquatic considerations for adventuring, etc. THAT is all great stuff for a DM to read. If an aspiring DM poo-poos all that stuff and "juts wants to make exciting adventures for his players", that's fine...but said DM will never be a great DM, or really even a good one. Competent, sure, nothing wrong with just blowing off steam and playing D&D for the Sh's and Gig's. But to become a "real" DM (e.g., one that creates their own campaign world with it's own quirks, secrets, pitfalls, and believability)? Not gonna cut it. Such a DM needs to know about all that "boring stuff" and then apply it to their own creative muse in regard to their own campaign).

This is pretty ridiculous.

And here's my rant in reply: a GM who never reads serious works of literary criticism, who can't tell the difference (from the literary point of view) between LotR and Dragonlance; or between REH's Conan and Thundarr the Barbarian; will never be a great GM, or really even a good one. Competent, sure, nothing wrong with just playing D&D to discover what piece of geography the GM stuck in the next hex. But to become a "real" GM - ie one who can actually frame the players (via their PCs) into gripping and thematically engaging scenes; who can tell when it is time to dial back the pressure and when it is time to push things harder than the players ever thought would happen; who can create a campaign with its own drama, its own meaning, with moral weight that makes the players sweat, and swear, and think that they wouldn't have had just as much fun reading an atlas or an encyclopedia? Not gonna cut it. Such a GM needs to engage with all that "boring" philosophy and literature and criticism and stuff and then apply it to his/her own creative muse.

Also a more practical point: if GM flexibility and improvisation is so important, then why would I bother to work out all the quirks, secrets, pitfalls etc in advance? I'll introduce the necessary story elements when I need them; when they make sense from the point of view of theme, drama, pacing, focus of player attention, etc. (And it also saves on carrying around folders of notes.)