The Guards at the Gate Quote

[I'm A Banana]

I respectfully disagree. He is human and people on message board should resist the urge to stoop below that level.

He is human, but there are a few other things that separate the standards of content for a DMG over the standards of content for a fan-site message board.

Among them:
1) James Wyatt was presumably hired in part because he displayed a certain level of knowledge and skill with D&D that is unusual. That makes his advice much stronger than some random fan-site's.

2) James Wyatt was presumably paid to write the DMG to the best of his ability. Most posters aren't paid for their opinions.

3) The DMG is a core document of a game system. A message board post is not.

4) A D&D book goes through several layers of editing and vetting. A message board post does not.

...I'm a little shocked that I need to explain the tremendous gulf separating the DMG from a message board post, and why we should expect more of the former than of the latter, honestly. I mean, if Wyatt came on ENWorld and posted that paragraph, I think he'd mostly get apathy (and maybe some spirited debate). The DMG, though, is a whole 'nother ball game.

Wyatt is speaking for the creator, saying "this is how this product should be used"

He doesn't get to set those rules. He provides a toolset for fun, and it's not up to him what we do with it. If he's a good presenter of these rules, he will acknowledge that he doesn't know how the product should be used -- he can only provide the platform. We provide the fun.

The public gets to say how we will use this product. And if we use it to talk to guards, go through faerie rings, and explore catacombs, he doesn't have a Fun Police that can enforce his preferred use of the product. Part of what is great about D&D is that every game is an immensely personal experience, unique to that group, in that moment, experiencing it. That's part of what makes D&D The Best Game (IMO).

But the ultimate end of this line of thinking is that no one can offer any advice because some group somewhere might find the advised-against behavior fun.

Enter the recent buzz about 5e: a game with modular rules, where any group can set a multitude of dials for whatever they really want from the game, without worrying about what James Wyatt (or anyone else) thinks they SHOULD be doing.

Also, I should point out, that no one is suggesting taking this thought to its ultimate end. Rather, what is being suggested is that Wyatt (or any DMG writer) would be better served explicitly mentioning the variables, in this instance, since he is talking from a position of authority.

Finally, it is not Wyatt's (or anyone's) place to tell anybody what they have fun doing, any more than it is my place to tell you what your opinion on the Occupy movement is. Fun is a subjective experience, not an objective one, and no one has any authority to tell you how to feel about it. It is yours to have, not his to give.

What he CAN do is help create an environment that fosters as much fun as possible. But he does that by creating a platform, not by dictating a result. He can't MAKE me have fun, and he can't STOP me from having fun, so he shouldn't pretend or imagine or even dream that this is possible, for him to do, to anyone.

It is like a tween trying to understand love. No, dear, you can't MAKE her fall in love with you. That is HERS to do, or not. You can be more lovable, perhaps, but it is still not your choice, it is hers. This is what living in a world with other autonomous human beings means. You can't control their emotions and choices.

 

[pauljathome]

Sure they can. But what if your group enjoys roleplaying those situations out? I have had groups like that- where they would play out the whole process of going from store to store for different types of goods and love the crap out of it.

No, it's not for every group. But why would you try to talk groups that enjoy it from playing that way?

I just remembered that Feng Shui has a section where it explicitly advises the GM to cut short roleplaying of shopping in order to get to the adventure (by which is meant the beating on people).

And I have absolutely no problem with that.

The difference is that Feng Shui is NOT intending to be a generic game. The explicitly stated goal of Feng Shui is to simulate Hong Kong Action movies.

So, in that context, the advice is very good advice *.

D&D started its life as pretty much a dungeon crawling engine. But, by the time 4th edition came out, it had altered to being a game used for a great many different styles of games.

So, Wyatts advice appears to be trying to move D&D from its then current state of suporting a great many types of campaigns to supporting a reduced subset of campaigns where combat more strongly dominates play.

And that is why people got upset.

For a generic engine its bad advice. For a more specific engine its good advice.

* Feng Shui is actually a strong enough engine that it can ALSO easily support role playing heavy campaigns. I am running one such now. But that is not its primary focus and to run such a campaign I have to ignore lots of the advice in the rule book. NOT the rules, just some of the advice.

 

[Janx]

Sure they can. But what if your group enjoys roleplaying those situations out? I have had groups like that- where they would play out the whole process of going from store to store for different types of goods and love the crap out of it.

No, it's not for every group. But why would you try to talk groups that enjoy it from playing that way?

See my just prior response to your other 1 liner for that answer. Short of its, then keep doing it.

I can't speak to Wyatt's actual mindset. I ain't him.

I suspect that he felt his approach was solid and right and most importantly, it worked for him. Therefore, if you do it his way, you would get similar results.

It's like my best practices for faster combat. People whine about slow combat all the time. I've collated a set of best practices (from a variety of sources). They work.

You can follow these best practices and get the results, or bitch about how you don't like them and that your game is still slow.

As an advice giver, do I owe you something for the fact that you disagree with my advice and thus my advice is incompatible with your environment?

Especially advice written without advance detail of your environment.

Pay me to do Discovery on your group, and I'll write you advice that is directly applicable to your group's preferences.

The real reason to make the trip take an entire session is because the group enjoys it. Perhaps they like how a full session of travel makes the wilderness feel dangerous; perhaps it helps them build their image of how remote the dungeon is, or helps them to 'feel' the world better. Perhaps they don't care where they are or what they are doing so much as how rich the immersion is. Bottom line, it's all about playstyle preference. Advice that suggests discarding most of the stuff that some playstyles really enjoy is bad advice for those playstyles.

I suspect Wyatt assumed that most players do not enjoy wasting time. And that he though he had identified good examples of wasting time.

He could have worded it differently.

But he was also trying to deliberately focus your mind on some specific activities that he found to be poorly run by GMs and thus were a waste of time.

For a group that got great value out of those scenes, it's horrible advice.

For a GM who put that in there as filler and didn't really think much on it, his choice of words made them REALLY consider taking it out.

With my example of the travel session, I KNEW that I was only putting it in there as filler. I did not enjoy running it, as it wasn't particularly interesting to me. Therefore, associating that content with "waste of time" was a valuable advice.

Let me give a totally different example. Cem Kaner, a leader in software quality assurance once personally taught me "Any test that doesn't find a bug, is a waste of time."

Testers would sputter when I would tell them this.

That statement was so outrageous that their mind rebelled at it.

It then forces them to think, and debate. And consider, of all the tests you want to run, and the limited time you have, what is the best use of your time?

From Cem, the reasoning behind that statement is that any bug a customer sees is bad (of varying degrees). Any bug you find and can fix or document is good. Every complex software, regardless of how much you test, will have a bug. There is no such thing as perfection.

Therefore, if you only have time for 10 tests of 20 features, would you rather pick tests that will probably find a bug, or tests that will probably suceed?

1. Any feature you do not test and it has a bug is a loss.
2. Any feature you do not test and it does not have a bug is a win.
3. Any feature you test and it works is a waste of time.
4. Any feature you test and it finds a bug is a win.

In a perfect world, you will hit type 4 every time. Obviously, you cannot do that. You want to avoid type 1, as that is the worst.

And certainly, running a test that passes (type 3) is more valuable than not being 100% sure that an untested feature is OK (type 2).

But you have limited resources (time), so you should aim for #4, knowing that you'll also get #3 as a side effect. Rather than assuming all things are equal and getting a lower set of #4 and a lot of #3.

Bind this concept back to D&D.

Any scene that is not fun/valuable/desirable is a waste of time.

As a GM, you cannot please every player on every scene.

But you can know each player's scene type prioritization preference. And shoot for more of that. Let's pretend D&D only consists of the following scenes:

1. Mundane Travel w/ encounters
2. Mundane shopping
3. Mundane NPC interactions (the boring gate guard)
4. Social Manipulation of NPCs
5. Getting Information from NPCs
6. Solving Problems
7. Traps
8. Combat

While many have indicated that their group likes scenes 1-3, do they really prefer them over the other types?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

But the ultimate end of this line of thinking is that no one can offer any advice because some group somewhere might find the advised-against behavior fun.

...

I suppose you could hedge every single thing you write with caveats to avoid people taking offence, but it leads to less forceful, wishy-washy advice, in my opinion.

1. A little nuance can go a long way. Bullgrit had the right of it earlier.

2. If you are going to write forceful advice for a certain style of doing things, when other styles are not only valid, but well within the range of what your widget can do, then you need to provide multiple, separate, different versions of that advice, and call them out by style.

A little nuance in that second one will still be good, too.

I don't think Wyatt was the only offender here, either. Robin Laws writing never fails to grate on me this way. But mainly, it's been a problem with WotC products from the beginning. It's editorial voice or management or something. I'm not sure. It was somewhat hidden in 3E, because Monte dilutes the forcefulness of his remarks in his writing style, and the 3E "voice" had multiple personalities, sometimes conflicting. They weren't as clearly called out as they could be, but it diluted the force of any single message.

Gygax got away with a lot of this because he had a forceful voice that was in itself advocating different things. Who else can tell you to stay official, but assertively do things your own way? Entertain your players, but firmly keep them in their place?

 

[Nagol]

But the ultimate end of this line of thinking is that no one can offer any advice because some group somewhere might find the advised-against behavior fun.

You should not run Monty Haul campaigns ... some groups enjoy getting tons of treasure.
<snip>

And so they shouldn't. What they should say is "Monty Haul campaigns are prone to suffer from the following undesirable effects..." It's up to the group to decide if such an effect wil affect them and/or what counter-measures to put in place.

 

[Janx]

Steve Jobs was arrogant and sometimes obnoxious to the people who worked for him, or with him. That doesn't mean that aspect of his personality is something all other business people should strive to imitate -- it has a lot to do with why Apple nearly collapsed and he was fired as CEO the first time around.

I don't disagree.

My point though is, a Creator having these bad traits still does not invalidate the desirability of their work or neutralize their success. Steve Jobs being an example of a jerk who you still want his product.

wyatt's writing has not fully hurt the value of D&D or 4e. It may have not helped it as much as it could have had it been better worded.

As a side note to Kamikaze and some other guy who said Wyatt doesn't get to say how to use the product, the consumer does:
Huh?

Every manufactured produce of any complexity comes with directions, written by the manufacturer's agent (in this case Wyatt).
The consumer is certainly free (within some legal reason) to find alternate uses or means of operation. Saying Wyatt can't write the directions on how to play D&D in the bloody manual on how to play D&D defies logical sense.


this whole concept isn't even new. I've never read a 4e book. I don't play 4e. But the Cut to the Chase concept is not new.

The fact that it was incorporated into a guide for DMGs makes sense. Some GMs do make too much ado about useless scenes that eat into the good stuff.

 

[El Mahdi]

Pull my finger...

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I have one question then I think that maybe I should walk away from the thread because people here aren't even trying to reach a anything even remotely resembling a middle ground. Just people talking past each other and constructing straw men and moving the goal posts in order to win the thread.

With Wyatt declaring what the definition of "fun" is for 4E D&D and how the game should be played. Is that alone enough for someone to be turned off by the system and write the entire thing off as something they'd just as soon not be bothered with?

No lengthy explanations (there have been enough of those in this thread), just YES or NO.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

With Wyatt declaring what the definition of "fun" is for 4E D&D and how the game should be played. Is that alone enough for someone to be turned off by the system and write the entire thing off as something they'd just as soon not be bothered with?

For me, no. Anyone else? Each individual has to make those kind of calls for themselves.

 

[Janx]

I have one question then I think that maybe I should walk away from the thread because people here aren't even trying to reach a anything even remotely resembling a middle ground. Just people talking past each other and constructing straw men and moving the goal posts in order to win the thread.

I don't know about that. I think I took a good attempt to answer jester's question within the context of Wyatt's advice that supports jester's preferred means of play.

And moving the goal posts MAY be an attempt to reach a middle ground. it certainly may be an attempt by a person to consider an alternate viewpoint compared to their original starting position. Failure to change your argument would be a sign of failure of a discussion. because saying the exact same thing means you haven't even listened or adjusted to facts that disprove your own position.

With Wyatt declaring what the definition of "fun" is for 4E D&D and how the game should be played. Is that alone enough for someone to be turned off by the system and write the entire thing off as something they'd just as soon not be bothered with?

Given that I never read a 4e document, my impression of 4e is colored by technical descriptions of the mechanics being contrary to what I prefer in 3e.

Nor would I take offense at any game's directions and description of its recommended usage pattern and how that would be fun.

No lengthy explanations (there have been enough of those in this thread), just YES or NO.

No.