D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Oofta]

That advice is most likely there to try to prevent GMs from becoming antagonistic, bringing in god-tier DMPCs, or trying to outsmart players by preventing them from doing anything unless they figure out the one exact right option that fulfills the GM's pre-set plans. It's not advice for GMs like you and I who actually want the players to enjoy the game.

The advice is already there. It could be spelled out better and I hope the 2024 edition does so, they've already said they recognize that they need to improve it. But to say this kind of advice doesn't exist is simply untrue.

 

[TwoSix]

That there will always be examples of people that will ignore rules or break social contracts doesn't mean that those things are not helpful to boatloads of other people.

Rules absolutely can help people improve as GMs.

Rules can't help people who are bad as DMs because they simply don't care enough to follow guidance or have internalized bad action as being necessary parts of their identity, like the OP.

Where rules can help is with DMs who are willing to listen to guidance, but simply haven't yet had the chance to learn good practices, which is probably a pretty large subset of DMs.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But this just seems to come back to "I know how to run the game better than you do, if you only listen to me you'd be a better DM." It's BS.

It cannot possibly be BS in absolute, because people teach other people how to use these skills better, and books can genuinely be used to guide people on how to do the task better. That's essential to the idea that this is a skill and a body of technique, not an ineffable revelation that can never be discussed or shared.

This isn't Buddhist nirvana, where the end state is literally beyond description (incapable of being understood within the five aggregates) and only transcendental enlightenment can give you any answers. It's a skill, it involves a body of technique that can be expanded or improved, and collection of knowledge that can be communicated in better or worse ways. We can identify important elements of that skill. We can create, modify, and eschew various techniques for practicing that skill. And we can improve how we communicate about that skill, how we collect, condense, preserve, and transmit the knowledge of previous generations of practitioners to future generations, so they can harvest the fruits of their forebears' labor in days, weeks, or months as opposed to lifetimes.

Running a tabletop roleplaying game should not be relegated to an ineffable burst of insight with no ability to speak it to others. It should not be reduced to mere intuition without concept or structure. It should not be confined to the auteur avant-garde GM plastering the world with nigh-incomprehensible modern art.

It should be recognized for what it is: a skill. Skills admit training, practice, evaluation, and improvement.

 

[Faolyn]

How do you explain missing on an attack roll then? Was  that wasted time? The game state hasn't changed.

They're in combat and they're still in danger, and there are consequences to their failed rolls--they didn't weaken or kill their opponent.

It's not the same as failing to pick a lock, where their failure means they literally can't progress past that area.

 

[CreamCloud0]

A world in which nothing happens and everything is static, a wonderful landscape painting by the GM, sounds impossible to create drama in. The GM must provide some hooks and potentials and challenges, or it's dead in the water.

i didn't mean that the GM shouldn't be creating plot hooks, sure, werewolves in the forest to the north, the crime ring in the city to the south-east and the dragon on the mountain to the west, but it's not the GM's duty to make events of the world to cater to the player's own arcs and goals if the players aren't pushing themselves towards instigating and interacting with those things on their own iniative

 

[Faolyn]

But @Faolyn seems to want there to be zero chance of what she refers to as, "wasted time". That seems both impossible and unrealistic (because I'm getting tired of writing "lacking in verisimilitude") to me.

Does the time you spent rolling dice and having anything happen add anything interesting to the game?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except not. A sim doesn't ever pretend to be able to come up with all possibilities for a situation. Sim City doesn't do it. Sim Ant doesn't do it. Flight Simulator doesn't do it. And yet they are still simulations.

It's the same with RPGs. We can come up with enough of the possibilities or hell even one is enough if it's a logical conclusion from what occurred. It simulates a proper response to what happened. @AbdulAlhazred is wrong when he claims that the sim method of DMing doesn't exist.

Well, that assumes you can articulate ANY reason that is fundamentally rooted in some established aspect of the setting/fiction. Also that you can establish that other logical alternatives don't make more sense. The claim that you are simulating something when you simply apply garden variety TV Tropes level lampshading, which I contend is pretty much all a D&D setting can achieve, is simply reducing the term simulation to meaninglessness.

Beyond that though, obviously naming very direct proximate causes to simple immediate events isn't much in question. I think those are often also driven by game logic but "you broke your leg when you fell" can reasonably reflect how a realistic world works. As you move further out, this breaks down very quickly.

IME this is a large part of the division between classic and trad play. Classic play is mostly very focused on NOW and HERE. As you move more into the trad realm play takes on higher level trajectories and more game focused techniques become important. I just contend that simulation is a terrible name for them.

 

[Maxperson]

No rule, nor set of rules, can truly stop 100% of all bad behavior unless that rule or set of rules is perfect. Your standard requires perfection. There is literally no other way to achieve 100% termination of all bad activity.

Then pick one behavior. I'm not looking for perfection. I want to see if you can name a single rule that can mitigate even a single behavior that makes a DM bad. Hell, if you can find a group of rules that can mitigate one thing that makes a DM bad I'd settle for that.

 

[TwoSix]

In what I've read of these books, in no way does Fan of the Characters come across as giving them easy wins, or ignoring the rules to do so. The bolded line is really the key one. I was a fan of Walter White as a character in Breaking Bad, but in no way did I want him to just get away with everything he was doing. I was a fan because I saw how he responded to a whole spread of a situations, including terrible ones, especially ones of his own making. Being a fan of them means giving them an exciting / interesting life, one filled with choices and problems to solve and unexpected tragedies and, to be certain, success as warranted and earned. I think equivocating it to Rule of Cool does short shrift to the sentiment as written.

It's not nearly as pithy as "Be a Fan of the Character", but I tend to view that guidance as being more "Be a supporter of the character's narrative arc."

Some of my favorite characters I've played or GMed for have been the ones I've followed into breakdowns, dissolution, or demise, because that was the natural ending point of their narrative. Where "Fan of the Characters" can break down for D&D is the normal assumption that D&D is fundamentally a game about beating challenges, and every D&D character's arc is intended to be a variation of "Get more power and make numbers go up".

 

[Oofta]

It cannot possibly be BS in absolute, because people teach other people how to use these skills better, and books can genuinely be used to guide people on how to do the task better. That's essential to the idea that this is a skill and a body of technique, not an ineffable revelation that can never be discussed or shared.

This isn't Buddhist nirvana, where the end state is literally beyond description (incapable of being understood within the five aggregates) and only transcendental enlightenment can give you any answers. It's a skill, it involves a body of technique that can be expanded or improved, and collection of knowledge that can be communicated in better or worse ways. We can identify important elements of that skill. We can create, modify, and eschew various techniques for practicing that skill. And we can improve how we communicate about that skill, how we collect, condense, preserve, and transmit the knowledge of previous generations of practitioners to future generations, so they can harvest the fruits of their forebears' labor in days, weeks, or months as opposed to lifetimes.

Running a tabletop roleplaying game should not be relegated to an ineffable burst of insight with no ability to speak it to others. It should not be reduced to mere intuition without concept or structure. It should not be confined to the auteur avant-garde GM plastering the world with nigh-incomprehensible modern art.

It should be recognized for what it is: a skill. Skills admit training, practice, evaluation, and improvement.

There's a difference between "This is how I do it, why, and how I find it useful. Here are some other options you can look into." and "If you do it this way it's better." Because when it comes to DMing, there is no one true way.