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I don't necessarily see it as an either or. You have an entire world to play with, there can easily be a region controlled by powerful vampire like Ravenloft and another area that's standard city based adventure or anything else you want. Why limit yourself? I typically start with a specific...

I'm not sure what label would be correct, but they do represent different approaches and trains of thought. One view is that there is logic and reason, the world works like a clockwork mechanism and there is a reason behind everything even if we don't understand it. Another view is that there...

When 9% of the people responding to a poll say that all or almost all of the DM's they have ever had were bad, and one person far upstream said every DM that they had ever had was bad. I think it's pretty save to assume that some people would say Mercer is a bad DM. On a related note I just...

Whether or not a game is boring is subjective. Some people thrive on high risk campaigns even those that include tropes I would personally never touch with a 10 foot pole (and any DM that does use them should okay it with every member of the group, asked in private) are part of the excitement...

Can we then politely ask that you not conflate your opinion of what bad means with an objective standard? Because that's what most of this is about - any judgement about whether a DM is "bad" typically comes down to personal preferences and judgement. One person may think a DM is bad another...

I was the one who decided it because I will never run a game with evil characters or even participate in a game where evil characters are a focus of the game. It's a personal preference of how I want to spend my leisure time. But there are other examples of someone leaving for some reason...

I "drove a player to another game" because I don't allow evil characters. I don't like running games for evil characters and I have players that don't want it either. That makes me a bad DM? Really? By your definition if a DM is not the right DM for every player in existence then I think...

Maybe it does for you, I think abusive and controlling (along with a couple other terrible patterns) is what makes a bad DM. But this whole side tangent was spawned out of discussions of abusive and controlling DMs. The poll was given as support for the idea that abusive and controlling DMs are...

Technically you included "might" but the implication is pretty clear.

I really, really hope that no new DM reads the attitude that "If you aren't above average you're bad" to heart. Because I can't imagine how anyone would want to start DMing, would want to acknowledge that they can always improve if they're automatically labeled "bad". Nobody starts out DMing...

So if we don't agree with you we're bad DMs? Not exactly the most convincing argument in the world.

I wasn't a great DM when I first started, but none of us were. Meanwhile we all had fun, no one was abusive or controlling so I don't think we were bad. We were just inexperienced and learning which is different.

I agree but in groups I've been involved with the bad player is easier to deal with because they stop getting invited to the game.

I'm not going to quibble about average vs median but approximately half of DMs are not bad in my opinion (assuming there was an objective number we could assign which we can't do). Being below average just means that they are slightly worse than all of those average or above DMs. Chuck is not...

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Not any that I recall and that includes comments of "it's just a game". Definitely not in the 21st century. My wife and I have been playing together for decades, she wouldn't let it slide. The guy we had a while back that refused to cooperate with the group didn't repeat the bad behavior...

Below average is 49% of all DMs. You have a very different definition of bad than I do.

You might be able to get a ranking with a large enough pool of people rating, but that doesn't mean the rating would matter much to any individual. When it comes to restaurants for example I have very simple tastes. I'd rather eat at Culver's because I get exactly the portions I want and I...

Expertise and reliable talent can make a huge difference. I don't think any individual class is required for a group, you can almost always compensate for another class. But if you are doing things to compensate for a missing piece that means that you've compromised the niche of your chosen...

It just comes down to where you put them on the bell curve and what the person making the decisions qualifies as "bad". I may value rules knowledge over encounter variety, someone else may value sheer entertainment value over ability to improvise and react. But those things are all completely...