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

[AlViking]

Presumably, we are talking about a group of friends. It would seem strange to me that if one of my friends was really interested in trying something new, that I would veto them. For what? Because I couldn't trade a few sessions of my favorite half orc thief, or the game I am running?


I sometimes wonder if other people don't play with friends.

I play with people that have become friends but I did not know most of them before we started playing together. I also play with family, some of whom I actually like.

 

[AlViking]

Again, this is entirely on you and has absolutely no relation to anything anyone here

You have repeatedly stated that I cannot be as good a DM or player without playing other games. Are you changing your mind now?

 

[prabe]

Sure. And if one is making simply very high-level, abstracted responses, I can see there being warrant. For example, I haven't played Numenera or any of its sister systems, but I do have a very negative perception of three of its mechanics, namely, GM Intrusions, the express intent that XP should be split between temporary and permanent rewards, and the extreme punitive effects of holding too many consumables. That doesn't mean I know how it actually plays out at the table, and it's certainly possible that a very deft GM could use these tools productively...but I do think they come from incorrect understandings of general game design principles. (E.g. if you have to be punitive in order to stop a perverse incentive...you should really just change the incentives so that people don't have a perverse one in the first place.)

The Intrusions present a pretty good opportunity to talk about the analysis of game design stuff, because right in the very text, we get the immediate mention of the mechanic being trivial to abuse if the GM isn't cautious (emphasis added in both quotes):

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There are two ways for the GM to handle this kind of intrusion. You could say "You're standing in the wrong place, so make a roll." (It's a Speed defense roll, of course.) Alternatively, you could say "You're standing in the wrong place. The floor opens under your feet, and you fall down into the darkness." In the first example, the PC has a chance to save themselves. In the second example, they don't. Both are viable options. The distinction is based on any number of factors, including the situation, the characters involved, and the needs of the story. This might seem arbitrary or even capricious, but you're the master of what the intrusion can and can't do. RPG mechanics need consistency so players can make intelligent decisions based on how they understand the world to work. But they'll never base their decisions on GM intrusions. They don't know when intrusions will happen or what form they will take. GM intrusions are the unpredictable and strange twists of fate that affect a person's life every day.

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Using (and Not Abusing) GM Intrusion
(Cypher System Rulebook, page 410)

Too much of a good thing will make the game seem utterly unpredictable—even capricious. The ideal is to use about four GM intrusions per game session, depending on the length of the session, or about one intrusion per hour of game play. This is in addition to any intrusions that are triggered by players rolling a 1.

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Note the repeated reference to "capricious" usage. That's a serious problem, which the text basically wishes away with "well, just don't do that, 4head." GM Intrusions are beyond merely a powerful tool, they're one of the most powerful possible tools, which is given with the tiniest fig-leaf of "don't abuse it!" and zero context for how you would...y'know...not actually DO the abusive usage. Given the authors themselves felt the need to repeatedly talk about abusive usage, but spent no time actually...y'know...showing you how to avoid abusive usage, it seems pretty fair to criticize the system for including an easily-abused power with little to no guidance on how to avoid being abusive. I don't think you need to have played Numenera to criticize that.

I do, however, think that my opinion about the "casting-from-HP"-type rules in Numenera (where you are expected to sometimes "spend" your stats for the day out of your three attributes--burning them for the day, not forever, more or less) require actual in-play experience to criticize, because the issue is all about the actual rate at which you spend this stuff vs the risk that you get caught in a death spiral. I have been told by multiple other people that the "death spiral" thing just doesn't happen in play, even though I struggle mightily to understand how it wouldn't be a constant issue. Their actual play experience trumps my theoretical worries, at least in the field of discussion--I certainly still consider it a huge risk, which is part of why I have no interest in playing the Cypher system.

Yeah, I ran a campaign in Cypher, and I A) never Intruded, except on a Nat 1 and I B) hacked the XP system to use something like Dungeon World's questions--basically, the idea was the PCs earned XP for me "doing GM stuff" and they earned XP for "doing PC stuff," and I C) told them what every Cypher did/was before anyone attuned to it, which reduced the sense of punishment, or at least made bearing this Cypher instead of that one an actual choice. (This is not me arguing with you about whether those changes are enough for you to enjoy the game, or about whether the game as written has problems, or really about anything.)

I screwed up the campaign in other ways, but I continue to think those changes made it a better game, at least for our table, and if I ever run another game of Cypher I'll stick with those changes. Relevant to at least the starting point of this thread, I wouldn't have known about the things I pulled into that Cypher game if I didn't have a reasonably broad base of TRPG experience. But I'm also convinced that my having run (and played in) a variety of games makes me a better GM--it absolutely doesn't make me a worse one.

 

[AlViking]

Does that mean that in at least one previous life you were a fish?

Maybe something like this?

 

[AlViking]

It is highly likely I missed additional clarifications as I skimmed through this fast moving thread.

Also, I feel I should acknowledge my previous post was a bit passive aggressive, so I have to give you credit for not really rising to the bait.

Nah, you haven't missed anything. It's been stated multiple times that playing multiple games makes you a better GM and player (and driving a tank makes you a better driver) so logically I'm worse at being a player and DM because my TTRPG gaming is limited to D&D.

 

[KYRON45]

Nah, you haven't missed anything. It's been stated multiple times that playing multiple games makes you a better GM and player (and driving a tank makes you a better driver) so logically I'm worse at being a player and DM because my TTRPG gaming is limited to D&D.

What if you only play D&D....but you own and read tons of not-D&D because in almost 40 years of gaming.....no one i've ever gamed with ever wanted to leave D&D?

My research shows that most people only ever want to play D&D because everything else is just imitation D&D any way.*

*this is a blatant lie. i'm too lazy for research of any kind.

 

[AlViking]

What if you only play D&D....but you own and read tons of not-D&D because in almost 40 years of gaming.....no one i've ever gamed with ever wanted to leave D&D?

My research shows that most people only ever want to play D&D because everything else is just imitation D&D any way.*

*this is a blatant lie. i'm too lazy for research of any kind.

Unlike some people who shall remain nameless, I am curious about other games now and then and have looked at a few. To a certain degree many do feel like D&D with a slightly different spin or such a different approach to gaming that it just doesn't appeal. There's a lot of great games out there, just like there are a lot of awesome women I could theoretically date but I've chosen one partner. Which is probably a terrible analogy now that I've written it especially if my wife reads this and realizes I'm comparing dating other women to playing other games now and then.

 

[KYRON45]

Unlike some people who shall remain nameless, I am curious about other games now and then and have looked at a few. To a certain degree many do feel like D&D with a slightly different spin or such a different approach to gaming that it just doesn't appeal. There's a lot of great games out there, just like there are a lot of awesome women I could theoretically date but I've chosen one partner. Which is probably a terrible analogy now that I've written it especially if my wife reads this and realizes I'm comparing dating other women to playing other games now and then.

I don't know a lot about women or being married, but i do know this.....you should start shopping now for the make up gift.

 

[Marc17]

And that's why session 0 is important. Stuff like that is discussed before game, so if you are not ok with some of the table expectations, you can say thank you and walk away. Even though i'm playing for years with same people, if i plan to include PvP option, i tell them in advance, so they can say No.

Yep. I ran across a PvP backstab that was obviously due to player misconceptions about relations, not really characters. It was a VtM Sabbat game and a one-shot, so not too big a deal. However, I didn't want that to happen in an ongoing game, so for VtM I started chronicles with asking if the players wanted PvP cutthroat, or a meta-gamed PCs can generally trust each other. So far everybody has chosen the trust option. From there I added it to D&D games, but more in just stating that it is assumed, they can all trust each other and offer the PvP option if they want (which nobody has ever wanted). For D&D, there was never too much PvP or even serious disagreements, but it has ended three hour in character discussions on if the party can trust the new PC they meet in a tavern.

More tangentially, IME, (for TTRPGs) it has never been character disagreements that bleed over into real life, but rather player dislikes that bleed over into the game. I've had to split a couple of games up due to that, as there's not much you can do but that or kick one out. One time, it was one of our small town high school friends, so some players had known him since 1st grade. Not a bad DM, but as a player was the disruptive evil player everybody hates. His only goal was to disrupt the game and steal from and kill other players. He would even have fake character sheets and such. Thing was he was really bad at it. We all went to college and the people who hadn't known him forever clued in pretty quick and even took it as a challenge to figure out his character's betrayal plans in character and kill off his character before he could put it into action. Finally, we decided to have an all evil campaign, which he was into. I forget what the main plot was, but it started with the cleric and fighter stating "You don't care about me and I don't care about you, but we are all in this together and that's the only way we're going to get through this. So the two of us have decided that if anybody purposely messes with the party's chance of success, they die. If they attack another party member, they die. If anybody steals from another party member, they die. We don't care if you agree or not, we'll hunt you down and make it stick if we have to. Anybody unclear on these terms?" Nobody speaks up."Good. On to business." Then that player never showed up for the second or later games, decided he didn't like D&D anymore, and found another hobby.

 

[HatWearingFool]

I find most people aren’t really into actually evil campagins. I don’t mind fake cartoonish evil, but real evil is a pretty awful thing to role play.

I’m always reminded of the Rock’s SNL sketch when ever people talk about “evil” campaigns.

YouTube SNL evil robot