D&D General The DM Shortage

[Retreater]

Isnt this what Adventurers League is though? Pathfinder Society?

IME, Pathfinder Society is the opposite of casual gaming. It's the closest thing we have to Esports in the TTRPG hobby.
All details must be meticulously submitted to Paizo by the GM. Players must track every gold piece earned or spent. There is little wiggle room for any rules misinterpretation or on-the-fly decision - a GM could lose the "privilege" of running Society events if reported. The most involved players have binders of characters, each made with the most competitive builds designed to "win" the scenarios. They boast experience with the replayable adventures and "guide" newer players through them - pointing out hidden traps and monsters.
For me, running a Society event (which I've done several times) is the vilest bastardization of the RPG experience, a joyless and soulless experience that requires the GM to be an rules automaton - a game golem.

 

[payn]

IME, Pathfinder Society is the opposite of casual gaming. It's the closest thing we have to Esports in the TTRPG hobby.
All details must be meticulously submitted to Paizo by the GM. Players must track every gold piece earned or spent. There is little wiggle room for any rules misinterpretation or on-the-fly decision - a GM could lose the "privilege" of running Society events if reported. The most involved players have binders of characters, each made with the most competitive builds designed to "win" the scenarios. They boast experience with the replayable adventures and "guide" newer players through them - pointing out hidden traps and monsters.
For me, running a Society event (which I've done several times) is the vilest bastardization of the RPG experience, a joyless and soulless experience that requires the GM to be an rules automaton - a game golem.

I agree that following the society ruleset is mandated, but I have never in over 10 years seen anything as close to the competitiveness that you describe here. Our local scene actually helps many young gamers learn to GM and be part of the community. Sad to see its not seen as a causal event elsewhere.

 

[Retreater]

I agree that following the society ruleset is mandated, but I have never in over 10 years seen anything as close to the competitiveness that you describe here. Our local scene actually helps many young gamers learn to GM and be part of the community. Sad to see its not seen as a causal event elsewhere.

I've not been a player at a local event, only several different larger conventions (Origins, GenCon, etc). I have attempted to run the Society events at local events, and it was terrible. I had to be GM, event coordinator, reporter, promoter, organizer, and accountant.
I count my attempts of trying to run PFS my worst experiences in 30+ years of gaming.

 

[billd91]

I agree that following the society ruleset is mandated, but I have never in over 10 years seen anything as close to the competitiveness that you describe here. Our local scene actually helps many young gamers learn to GM and be part of the community. Sad to see its not seen as a causal event elsewhere.

Yeah, I think in the various PFS games I've played in, I've encountered maybe just 3 or 4 players who were kind of unpleasantly competitive and that includes playing at multiple Gen Cons.

The accounting for every bit of cash acquired or spent is a little bit of a drag but that's kind of what you get when you have something based on the 3e model where the magic items are such expected power-ups (and it was a direct reaction to how things got out of control with the certs in Living City campaigns). Adventurer's League with 5e is FAR more laid back on that note - and pleasantly so.

 

[tetrasodium]

double post oops

 

[tetrasodium]

I get real a-hole player vibes out of this. Think I’d be happy to see you walk. You seem to be expecting a DM to have an open world ala Witcher 3 fully fleshed out for you. Like, when presented with Options A, B, and C you pull a haha, came up with D. Then get pissed you can tell the DM just recycles A on you or whips out a random sheet from their bag reserved for when adventure goes sideways. You can like what you like, but it’s a cooperative game, not cooperating with the DM is pretty lame, happy to see you go, maybe I misunderstand? It’s all made up dude, why get angry about if it was made up yesterday or today, or be upset you’re creating the story?

That described extreme slant towards letting the most stubborn players go from players who need things from the gm to authors who have no needs and expect to be treated as such is a definite factor in unfairly raising the bar for gm expectations in "modern" gaming. I've seen players do the kind of thing that you describe and complain that the story doesn't make sense

 

[payn]

To bring this back to short casual adventures, while you might not want anything to do with organized play, you can still use those short adventures for your home game without any connection to org play.

 

[Retreater]

To bring this back to short casual adventures, while you might not want anything to do with organized play, you can still use those short adventures for your home game without any connection to org play.

Yes. And they can be really good for that purpose. However, they're mostly fan-created and given few resources. It's not exactly the same as when we'd get original art, quality maps, and professional designers like Gygax, Bruce Cordell, or Monte Cook writing them.

 

[payn]

Yes. And they can be really good for that purpose. However, they're mostly fan-created and given few resources. It's not exactly the same as when we'd get original art, quality maps, and professional designers like Gygax, Bruce Cordell, or Monte Cook writing them.

Maybe that isn't a bad thing. Thinking you can do as good, if not better, can help build confidence in your GM skills. We are talking about casual gaming here, like advanced HeroQuest, I don't think the quality has to be top. YMMV.

 

[Desdichado]

Perhaps I am being obtuse. Is your point simply that people are not going to chance their playstyle because they will just ignore, change, or otherwise not engage with mechanics that don't match their preferrances? I mean, I guess. But that's like saying that recipes don't change people's personal tastes. I would have to agree to a point, but there are a lot of gamers who enjoy experimenting with different systems and the mechanics can have a significant impact on the game experience, including influencing the players' playstyle.

Yes. Most gamers I've interacted with have strongly enough defined tastes, that they will tend to force every game into the same playstyle, regardless of mechanics. This mostly works, but when a system is too firmly designed to facilitate a different playstyle, they'll ignore or houserule the game extensively, and ultimately just decide that they don't really like that game and would prefer not to play it if it's too difficult to get the experience that they want out of that game.

I'm using playstyle fairly broadly here; obviously not every game or even every session focuses on the same things, and sometimes people run things with a different tone or feel deliberately. But using playstyle somewhat broadly, I can say that I've run games as disparate as super rules-heavy 3.5 and Pathfinder in the same playstyle as The Window or Microlite20. I've even done Dread in the same playstyle.

Perhaps my playstyle is particularly susceptible to not caring too much about the mechanics, though, since the elements of it that I enjoy most are not mechanical.