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

[Maxperson]

Bailing hay is hard work.

Digging ditches is hard work.

Picking tobacco is (extremely) hard work.

Running a marathon is hard.

It's been a hard day's night. I should be sleeping like a log.

Do I need more examples?

I get your usage. What I'm saying is that 9 times out of 10 people don't use it that way. At least in my experience. I see...

I'm beat. Been bailing hay all day.

Boy am I exhausted from digging all of those ditches.

I tried running a marathon, but by a quarter of the way through, I was so tired that I just walked the rest of the way.

And so on.

The word hard is used primarily to be synonymous with difficult. I'm not saying the way you are arguing is a wrong definition. It's just not the way I commonly see it used.

 

[Maxperson]

Oh, well... sort of? She also had to learn dance in order to do performative calligraphy and learn choreography in order to form a troupe for performative calligraphy. And, I don't think you quite understand just how broad the art is if you think that it's all very similar. I'll be the first to admit to my ignorance of the ins and outs of her art, but, I do understand that there's rather a large difference between the styles, brushes, and the performative aspects of the art as well.

Okay. That's still all within that single art, though. Think of it like this. Each edition of D&D is different, even though they have similarities that mark them D&D. 1e might be basic calligraphy. 4e might be performative calligraphy adding in dance since it's the most different. It's still the person focusing on that one artform. They aren't say going outside the calligraphy(D&D) to a different type of artistic expression like sculpting(Blades in the Dark) to improve at calligraphy(D&D).

That's not to say going outside the artistic expression won't have any use at all. If I'm a writer and I learn to sculpt, I will likely learn a lot about anatomy and how it works in descriptions. Whether people like my longer, more descriptive anatomical writing is going to vary from person to person, so it won't necessarily make me a better writer, but it could be of use.

Running games is like that. What you learn from other systems is useful, but only if the players like it. If they don't like it, then it's not useful to engage those techniques. Focusing on D&D will make you better at D&D style DMing, but if your players are bored with that or want more, it won't be as useful to stay focused as it would to broaden your knowledge.

Neither way is better or worse than the other. They are just different ways to potentially be better at what it is that you do.

 

[Maxperson]

I agree with this for the most part. I would clarify that just because you run multiple systems, doesn't mean you are forcing all the techniques you learned from each system in all your games. Ideally you pick the best and appropriate ideas you could incorporate. No detracting techniques should be used.

I learned a great deal about running mysteries from CoC(Call of Cthulhu) that I can transfer to any game. I also learned a whole lot of narrating horror and making a dreadful atmosphere too. Thing is I am personally never running horror campaigns in my mainstay DnD game,or in general these days, so those techniques are put aside for the most part. Which is to say that what you get out of a different system is ultimately up to you and your preferences. If you only run games that have no player narrative mechanics then the techniques from a game based around those would not be as useful for you.

Even if its not a requirement to be better, I think playing or just reading multiple systems is still a good idea though. Much like going back to lore books from 2e, using an oddly specific random table from 3.5, or adapting that one mechanic you liked from 4e. There is plenty of things to borrow, use and be inspired from other sources. Even if its just the lore/resources and not the mechanics or tips.You should just curate your sources if you know you have a specific preference to get the most out of it.

All general "you"s by the way.

Oh, for sure. I'm not suggesting that you would bring in all of the techniques from the other systems into D&D. You'd bring in the ones you think work best, and that would be hit or miss depending on the players. If you really need D&D to be more and include the techniques you like, you might need to find new players who share your vision.

 

[Maxperson]

You forget the one thing that is hard no matter what. Dealing with people. Arguing with those that don't like your rulings, the huge extra load of work if you do anything besides run pregen modules. I think you've been DMing so long you forget playing is much easier than running the game.

Yeah. Periodically I need a break and one of my players DMs for a while. When play starts and I'm just thinking about and worrying about a single character and not an entire world, game of rules, NPCs, monsters, the adventure, and more, I realize just how much easier it is. The only part that is harder is the unknown. It's a much greater issue for the players, but that just isn't comparable to all that DMs have to do.

Of course, it doesn't take long before I'm thinking, "I would have done that differently," and "Ooh, that gives me a great idea!" I rarely make it past 5th level before I want to DM again, but our games rarely stop before 10th-12th(the short ones that the players run). My games usually stop at 17th to 20th level.

 

[Maxperson]

You would get sick of the number bloat very fast. 2Es easier to run. We went from 3E to 2E and damn.
3E makes DMing harder.

YOU would get sick of it. I played 3e from day 1 of its release, through the end of 2019. My group played through 3rd edition, the entirety of 4th edition, and though the first 5 years of 5e. We only switched when 5e actually had a decent number of options to pick from. Even now, though, half my group wants to go back to 3e because of the amount of choice it gives.

 

[Zardnaar]

YOU would get sick of it. I played 3e from day 1 of its release, through the end of 2019. My group played through 3rd edition, the entirety of 4th edition, and though the first 5 years of 5e. We only switched when 5e actually had a decent number of options to pick from. Even now, though, half my group wants to go back to 3e because of the amount of choice it gives.

I was talking in general. 3E has more player facing content, 2E more DM toolbox type content.

 

[Maxperson]

I was talking in general. 3E has more player facing content, 2E more DM toolbox type content.

I still disagree. Choices don't equate to player facing rules. A lot of people loved 3e for those choices and still do. You can't make the statement that it's too much in general, because that hasn't been proven in any way.

 

[HatWearingFool]

More effort doesn't equate to hard. Hard is synonymous with difficult, problematic, complicated, complex, etc. If there's no chance of failure, it wasn't hard to do, even if effort was involved. At least the way I see the word hard most commonly used. I can't remember the last time I saw someone use it to mean exhausting.

In my experience people tend to use words like exhausting, tiring, strenuous, etc. to describe tasks like moving those rocks across the road, not the word hard.

You’ve never heard of “hard labour” or doing “Hard Time”?

I’m not sure why I’m still replying to this thread at this point I guess I just find this dissection of the word “Hard” to be really weird.

I wonder if it’s a regional thing. My kid often complains that cleaning is room is too hard…

Around here people often use hard when describing things that take more effort than they want to expend rather than something that requires specialized training. All though no one would be confused when it was used that way either ie that was a really hard math test.

 

[AlViking]

Sure.

I think it might have been 7th Sea, but I got the idea to allow feats for flaws with mechanical detriment to them. Those flaws could be triggered once per game at an appropriate time by anyone at the table. So if someone was say paranoid and had to treat someone new as being after them in some way, any time you met someone new that could be a threat, anyone could trigger that flaw and you'd have to roleplay it out.

Sounds similar to S&P (Skills & Powers) traits and disadvantages from 2e. Seems like the flaws would have to come into play fairly often in order for it to justify a feat though - in S&P people could take disadvantages that didn't come into play very often or ever. I took stupid (for a character) disadvantage like compulsive honesty which meant I hated lying and deception. I had fun with things like that but others would take "lazy" which for the most part was just an inconsequential RP thing.

Care to share some flaws?

From another DM I got the Fate Deck. Basically it's a large deck of magic cards and they get triggered on a 1(fate roll) or sometimes a very important natural 20(only sometimes since 20s already give increased effect). The cards can be positive or negative, depending on circumstances. If you were rolling to try and cleave a door in two with your sword and rolled that 1, pulling Shatter, your sword would break. If you were rolling to try and smash the door in with your war hammer and rolled that 1, the door would shatter.

In that DMs game one of my characters was a Chosen of Osiris and had powers of course dealing with the dead. We opened up a door sealed by the power of Osiris and inside was an avatar of an evil Egyptian god and the corpses of the 100 paladins of Osiris that died sealing the tomb. preventing anything from escaping. We quickly began to lose the fight(It was an avatar!) and I asked that since nothing could escape, were the spirits of the paladins still present. He said yes. So I called them to duty once more, commanding them to reinhabit their bodies to aid us. I had no idea if it would work or not, but the DM told me to roll and said that whatever number I rolled, I would multiply that by 5 and that's how many came back to aid me. A 20 would be all 100. I rolled a 1. So I slowly reached for that fate deck, not knowing what I would find. Would it be good, or would it be bad. Turns out I pulled possibly the best card in the 300+ card deck that I could pull. Sacred Boon. All 100 came back and we trapped him inside once more. This time, though, since I was a chosen of Osiris, I had the power by myself to reseal the cave and held the door open long enough that the paladins could go to their afterlife as they should.

I can't remember which ones they were exactly, since this was 6+ years ago and I don't use them anymore, but I adopted a few different player facing rules that I learned about during talks with @pemerton and others. My players didn't like those, though, so they fell by the wayside.

I'm sure there are others that I can't remember now.

Interesting, is the list of cards available online somewhere? I've never seen a critical failure system I cared for but there are exceptions to every rule.

 

[AlViking]

They're rules like Plot Points from page 269 of the 5e DMG. The player can use these points to alter the game in some fairly minor, but helpful way. I tried Option 1, but my players just didn't want to do things like that, so they didn't get used.

Yeah, I can see why some people wouldn't like those. Too much metagame for me as well, we all have our preferences.