D&D General A Rant: DMing is not hard.

[AlViking]

No offense, but that is kind of the response I expected from you. You asked for specific examples, supposedly out of an open-mindedness. You asked:

I predicted your reply, because I didn't really believe you were being open-minded. You just wanted something to try and pick apart. That is why in my response I specifically stated:

Notice that is what you just did with your response:

You see, you making a claim that "it's not required" is a no brainer. No one in this forum said it is required. You saying "nor is it the best way for many people" is just not true. Experience is experience. I can state many analogies but all you will do is poke holes or disregard them. Because you want to be right.

But DMing is like education - the more you know... Talk to someone that just learned Algebra and then another that learned Algebra and Geometry. See which one understands how to apply the math better. Talk to someone that only reads fantasy books versus others that read fantasy, horror, romance, mystery, travel, etc. See which one of them has a better grasp of story structure and literary elements. Talk to someone that understands biology. Then talk to someone that understands biology, chemistry, environmental science, and geology. See which one can apply the science to everyday activities more often.

Go ahead, poke holes. That's what you want to do. But, the more open-minded thing to do would be to consider the claims and logic of those claims, and then re-evaluate your claim.

You have perfectly valid experiences and you learned from other games. Good for you. There's just not anything unique that can only be learned from other games but not from other sources.

If anyone is devaluing experiences it's you. My expertise, knowledge, how I DM and player is worth less to you because I did not follow your particular path.

I am not devaluing what works for you. Why do you insist on devaluing other experiences? We're not talking quantum physics here, we're talking about a game where we pretend to be elves.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If you want to run a Cthulhu game because the game itself looks fun obviously you should go for it. While I'm glad it works for you if I wanted to run a mystery game and felt I needed help running it there are tons of options out there that do not include learning, organizing and running a Cthulhu game.

Oh, most certainly.

Separately, though, if you want to run a game where mystery-solving is the draw, the most important part of play, it is not even slightly unreasonable for someone to tell you, "Well, that's not really something D&D was designed for. You should consider running a system that was designed for mystery-solving as the core play experience." Like...that's one of the most natural things to say. It would be like getting mad if someone suggested that instead of trying to find a way to heat up coals in your oven, you probably should use an actual grill designed to use charcoal.

What bothers me is that some people are saying is that I can't be a good DM if I don't run other games like Cthhulhu or that a DM running games in multiple systems matters more than any other factor.

Given the people you're allegedly talking about have repeatedly said that that isn't the case, is that actually being said? Or is it you trying to manufacture a controversy out of something benign?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You have perfectly valid experiences and you learned from other games. Good for you. There's just not anything unique that can only be learned from other games but not from other sources.

If anyone is devaluing experiences it's you. My expertise, knowledge, how I DM and player is worth less to you because I did not follow your particular path.

I am not devaluing what works for you. Why do you insist on devaluing other experiences? We're not talking quantum physics here, we're talking about a game where we pretend to be elves.

Why do you insist on claiming that the trivially true and extremely basic fact--that experiencing a variety of experiences is a valuable activity in and of itself--is somehow an attack against you? Is some how "invalidating" your experiences?