D&D General Can we talk about best practices?

[Ovinomancer]

Establish a set of goals, and then talk to how you set things up to get to those goals. Be prepared to have your assertions challenged.

For instance, if I want to talk about best practices for running Blades in the Dark, this is much easier than for 5e, because Blades has a very clear set of principles and assumptions for how it's supposed to run and I can point out ways to do those. 5e lacks this, intentionally, so there is not baseline intended way for it to run outside of "ask your GM."

 

[Thomas Shey]

Run the game you think you can run. Not the kind of ideal game you wish you could run.

It literally took me decades to get this one into my head. I still backslide if I'm not careful.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There are only Best Practices for you. Or me. Or a specific table.

This seems needlessly reductive. Surely, we can speak of best practices that go beyond absolutely individual-people-specific situations. Yes, every table is going to be its own context, meaning you need to treat best practices as guidelines and assistance, not as a replacement for critical thinking. But to say that best practices are a total black box about which we may say nothing other than "do it yourself," is counter-productive to enriching our hobby and improving play experiences for those seeking assistance.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This seems needlessly reductive. Surely, we can speak of best practices that go beyond absolutely individual-people-specific situations. Yes, every table is going to be its own context, meaning you need to treat best practices as guidelines and assistance, not as a replacement for critical thinking. But to say that best practices are a total black box about which we may say nothing other than "do it yourself," is counter-productive to enriching our hobby and improving play experiences for those seeking assistance.

The key is separating out the generic best practice from the ones that are lodged in assumptions about playstyle and social contract. I will admit I'm cynical about how well this is usually done.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you’re going to have adult, mature or otherwise potentially inflammatory tropes in your campaign, do your homework. Don’t rely on stereotypes, rumors, and guesswork to run your campaign. With all the info at our fingertips these days, it’s a lot easier to avoid tainting your game with offensive misconceptions.

 

[Steampunkette]

This seems needlessly reductive. Surely, we can speak of best practices that go beyond absolutely individual-people-specific situations. Yes, every table is going to be its own context, meaning you need to treat best practices as guidelines and assistance, not as a replacement for critical thinking. But to say that best practices are a total black box about which we may say nothing other than "do it yourself," is counter-productive to enriching our hobby and improving play experiences for those seeking assistance.

You cut off the first part of my post where I actually put down several best practices!

But they're all going to be large overarching loose best practices. There will never be a best way to handle initiative or storytelling or spotlight time or pacing of a dungeon crawl. Outside of the big general rules of being a decent human being it's going to be a crap shoot at every table you sit down at.

Though you can also offer your own experiences and advice... you've gotta remember that advice is like spitting in someone's hand.

In your mouth it had a purpose. But once it's in the world it's up to them to figure out how to use it or to wipe it away.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Honestly, my big ones would be, from the GM "If you want certain things to go on in the campaign in a general sense, make sure your players are okay with it. Don't just assume it." And as a player "If they GM asks you what you want, whether in a general or a specific sense, don't say 'That's fine' unless you mean its fine; don't be a Tigger."

 

[overgeeked]

I think it’s true that what’s best for one game, or one group, might not be what’s best for another. But I think it’s silly to extrapolate that there is therefore no such thing as best practices, or that the concept is one true wayist. It just means best practices are contextual.

It's such a weirdly absurd thing to claim.

The key is separating out the generic best practice from the ones that are lodged in assumptions about playstyle and social contract. I will admit I'm cynical about how well this is usually done.

I think we could come up with best practices for certain activities within gaming. Not blanket prescriptive commandments for all games for all time, of course, rather descriptive suggestions of what's worked better and/or descriptive suggestions of what to maybe avoid because it's worked worse. If we avoid things like "X playstyle is better than Y playstyle" and instead go with "these kinds of things tend to make this playstyle work better" it could work.

Just like the aforementioned BitD principles, best practices, goals, and bad habits. Clearly the goals, principles, etc of sandbox play aren't going to be the same as the goals, principles, etc of running linear adventures. Or something like immersion. A list of things that tend to help players become and stay immersed in the game along with a list of things that tend to break immersion. Goals, principles, etc. Best practices of hosting a game. Etc.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The problem is we can't even agree on what a number of those terms mean. I mean, look at the arguments about what "immersion" is. Or what does and doesn't get to counted as a "sandbox".

 

[overgeeked]

The problem is we can't even agree on what a number of those terms mean. I mean, look at the arguments about what "immersion" is. Or what does and doesn't get to counted as a "sandbox".

At a certain point you'd need to filter the noise to get to the signal. We're likely never going to be able to get universal consensus on anything. I don't think that's the point. But as stated upthread, just because it's not an easy, quick, universal answer doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't attempt to come up with such a list. It's the internet. Sometimes people just argue to argue.

Even if there are some things we could never even talk about because it would cause too much of a fight doesn't mean we couldn't come up with better or worse practice suggestions for less controversial topics.

Besides, we're losing generational knowledge by the day. There's a lot of institutional knowledge on this forum. Getting that recorded in some why is a worthwhile goal in and of itself. Forget if people agree with it or not.

(Really? The definition of immersion is a controversial topic? How ridiculous.)