D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Enrahim]

But strangely, some people don't want to take that advice to any other game.

D&D is allowed to be weird and goofy and rules can be ignored and replaced at a whim, but other games must be adhered to exactly.

This was a forge thing. "System matters", "protect players against GM abuse" and all that jazz. I never heard anything about strict rules as written because of design in connection with any rpgs before the 2000s. D&D 3ed manage to come out just before this was a thing and hence wasn't affected too badly by this perception. Look at how 4ed is perceived, and I guess it is easy to recognice that this has nothing to do with the D&D brand as such.

 

[Deset Gled]

This was a forge thing.

The Forge was the biggest step forward we have ever seen in RPG design, and also the two biggest steps back.

 

[kermit4karate]

Even saying boring GMs aren't good is problematic. I can recognise the likes of Matt Mercer, Matt Colville, and Brandon being good at what they do. But whenever I try to watch any of their "actual plays" I give up as it is just FAAR too long winded for me. Get to the case, and the interesting decissions please!

Agreed. They're astronomically popular, and their players have a geat time, but I agree insofar as their styles aren't my cup of tea. Too much exposition, not enough action.

But I would never dream of characterizing any of them as bad. They're all fantanstic GMs, just not the ideal styles for me.

 

[AlViking]

Why?

Lots and lots of players will put up with TONS of bad DM's. The hobby is replete with stories about them. Some put up with it because they just don't know any better. Some put up with it because they want to hang out with their friends. Heck, of the times I've seen player revolts, it wasn't like it happened at the first session. Player revolts, IME, occur after weeks or even months of play.

That about 1 in 4 DM's is bad should not shock anyone. 1 in 4 of pretty much anything is bad. They might be bad due to inexperience. They might be bad because they learned to play from other bad DM's. They might be bad for a thousand reasons. And that's not counting the thousand more reasons why someone might just not like a particular DM. Heck, I've had lots and lots of players sit at my table and not stay very long. Just mismatches in playstyle or whatnot. Happens all the time.

But, honestly? I've sat at some truly spectacularly bad tables. The DM, when questioned if he thought his NPC's were more important to the campaign than the players very honestly said, "Of course". :wow: The DM who was so cack handed railroady that the entire group quit on the spot. The DM whose personal grooming was so bad that the group simply couldn't sit at the table anymore.

Am I a great DM? Nope. I'm average at best. I try my best, and I hope my players enjoy my game, but, at no point am I so arrogant as to think that I'm fantastic at what I do. I'm lucky in that I've managed to build groups of like minded players over the years and there have been some spectacularly good groups that I've been lucky enough to be a part of. But a group is always only as good as the members of that group.

------

Edit to add.

Let's not forget that the overwhelming majority of players out there only play for a year or two. There is a constant cycling of players going on. Of the gamers I gamed with when I was in uni, I'm the only one that's still playing. Sure, my current group has been gaming for a while, but, that's not normal. How many gamers go to a year of organized play and then never play again? How many DM's get the Beginner Box for Christmas, play for a while and then move on? Heck, the old Moldvay Basic set sold something like a MILLION copies, yet the gaming population was never more than a few hundred thousand after the bubble burst. Until the recent bubble with 5e, the gaming population was tiny. If people stayed with the game, the game would have grown huge long ago. But they don't. My experiences, your experiences and everyone else's is such a tiny slice of the fandom. Why is it so hard to believe that there are a minority (say about 1 in 4 or 1 in 5) DM's out there that are bad?

Roy Sullivan, a park ranger in Virginia, claims to have been struck by lightning 7 times. Does that mean that being struck by lightning happens to 25% of the population? Of course not. He was just extremely unlucky.

So yes, some people may have well have had a string of bad DMs. But in that poll we have no idea how many DMs the respondents have had or why they considered them bad. For some people "bad" may mean they were not allowed to play an evil character. For others the DMs were bad because the DM was an abusive a-hole who couldn't retain a group and only ran a few games and the person answering the survey happened to be unlucky enough to play with that DM for the brief period of time they were DMing.

But a bad DM to me means, among other things, that you don't enjoy playing the game. So no, I don't think the game would be as popular as it is if 25% of people were not having fun playing. I have no idea where you get the number "people only play for a year" from. A fair number of people try it out, many don't have time to play because they have other time constraints or simply find that the game isn't for them.

But unlike Lake Woebegon where all the kids are above average of course most DMs will be average, and many will be starting out and make mistakes, I just don't think that makes them bad DMs even if they aren't running a game I want to play.

 

[kermit4karate]

Roy Sullivan, a park ranger in Virginia, claims to have been struck by lightning 7 times. Does that mean that being struck by lightning happens to 25% of the population? Of course not. He was just extremely unlucky.

So yes, some people may have well have had a string of bad DMs. But in that poll we have no idea how many DMs the respondents have had or why they considered them bad. For some people "bad" may mean they were not allowed to play an evil character. For others the DMs were bad because the DM was an abusive a-hole who couldn't retain a group and only ran a few games and the person answering the survey happened to be unlucky enough to play with that DM for the brief period of time they were DMing.

But a bad DM to me means, among other things, that you don't enjoy playing the game. So no, I don't think the game would be as popular as it is if 25% of people were not having fun playing. I have no idea where you get the number "people only play for a year" from. A fair number of people try it out, many don't have time to play because they have other time constraints or simply find that the game isn't for them.

But unlike Lake Woebegon where all the kids are above average of course most DMs will be average, and many will be starting out and make mistakes, I just don't think that makes them bad DMs even if they aren't running a game I want to play.

Bravo. Well said.

 

[Remathilis]

The biggest issue with that thread is that it doesn't define good and bad. Is a bad DM simply one that is boring? Or is a bad DM one who railroads and drops comets from the sky on a party when a player annoys him? I'd argue the former isn't a bad DM and the latter is.

I believe the Supreme Court's definition of indecency applies: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it"

 

[Hussar]

That's likely the disconnect you are having with a lot of us here. Bad DMs are the ones who abuse authority, railroad, etc. Boring ones aren't good, but they aren't bad, either. If you are including that type, it's no wonder you encounter so many more than us.

When each side is using different definitions, it makes really hard for the conversation to make much sense.

No. What makes conversation very difficult is the endless quibbling and waffling over every single definition out there without any actual attempt to engage in discussion. FFS, is "Bad DM" really that hard to define? Good grief.

I notice that you did manage to completely ignore the whole "1 in 5" thing I posted about virtually every other amateur hobby out there. You really believe that somehow DM's are batting better than average than pretty much any other hobby?

 

[Hussar]

have no idea where you get the number "people only play for a year" from.

Umm, every single source for the past forty years or so? Why do you think that the gaming population stayed more or less static from about 1985 to 2014? If people weren't leaving the hobby as often as people join it, then the hobby population should have been growing. But it didn't. After the fad years in the early 80's, the gaming population remained largely unchanged for decades. But, the average age of gamers didn't change - always somewhere in the late teens, early 20's. It was that in the early 80's and it stayed that way until 2014.

It's not exactly a controversial stance I'm taking.

 

[AlViking]

Umm, every single source for the past forty years or so? Why do you think that the gaming population stayed more or less static from about 1985 to 2014? If people weren't leaving the hobby as often as people join it, then the hobby population should have been growing. But it didn't. After the fad years in the early 80's, the gaming population remained largely unchanged for decades. But, the average age of gamers didn't change - always somewhere in the late teens, early 20's. It was that in the early 80's and it stayed that way until 2014.

It's not exactly a controversial stance I'm taking.

For a long time the game didn't grow much but correlation doesn't mean causation. I can associate any number of things, it's meaningless. On the other hand the game grew by double digits every year for a decade with 5e (we don't have good numbers any more so we don't know). Maybe, just maybe, it had more to do with the rule system and other cultural influences than bad DMs.

 

[Umbran]

Who is "they"? I'm talking about setting hard rules to govern GM behavior in an RPG. I'm not in favor of them.

"They" are "game designers and writers".

If they want to include hard rules to govern GM or player behavior in their games, they get to do that.