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

[Hussar]

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

No. This is your interpretation of what I have said, but, it is not what I actually said. I said you will be a BETTER DM if you play other games. Not that you cannot be a good DM. The opposite of BETTER is not bad. You can be a perfectly good driver without learning to drive other cars or vehicles. But, learning to drive other vehicles will make you a BETTER driver.

I hope that's clear enough now.

 

[Hussar]

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.

Being worse =/= being bad.

 

[aco175]

I'm not gonna read 45 pages of this thread, but:

It is only 23 pages if you set your preferences to 20 post per page.

 

[AlViking]

No. This is your interpretation of what I have said, but, it is not what I actually said. I said you will be a BETTER DM if you play other games. Not that you cannot be a good DM. The opposite of BETTER is not bad. You can be a perfectly good driver without learning to drive other cars or vehicles. But, learning to drive other vehicles will make you a BETTER driver.

I hope that's clear enough now.

You should double check your accounts then because someone has hijacked it since you obviously didn't come straight out and say "I don't think you can be a good player or a good DM without ever trying another game.". By that logic every race car driver should be lining up to take truck driving school ... but surprise surprise they don't.

I'm not sure I actually agree with that. There is just so much to learn from experiencing other games. It would be like saying you can be a good cook if you ONLY cook food from one country. Yes, you might cook that country's food really well, but, it's an extremely limited palate. No chef worth the salt would ever claim that only learning to cook Mexican food (as an example) is a good way to learn to cook.

Heck, even the idea of driving. Sure, you can learn to drive only driving one car. You might really like that car. You might even drive pretty well with that car, but, unless you actually experience driving other kinds of cars, you aren't a good driver. You can't be. You can't understand why other drivers do what they do without having any experience with those vehicles.

Variety is, as they say, the spice of life. I've learned FAR more about how to run a game from running other systems and then coming back to D&D than I ever learned from just running D&D. Whether it be stuff I want to do or stuff I don't want to do. Either way.

So, no, I don't think you can be a good player or a good DM without ever trying another game.

It's all complete **** as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Hussar]

You should double check your accounts then because someone has hijacked it since you obviously didn't come straight out and say "I don't think you can be a good player or a good DM without ever trying another game.". By that logic every race car driver should be lining up to take truck driving school ... but surprise surprise they don't.




It's all complete **** as far as I'm concerned.

Wow. This was already resolved a couple of pages back.

But, just to repeat, one more time:

THE OPPOSITE OF BETTER IS NOT BAD. I know that this is a basic English definition, but, it seems like there's been a rather fundamental breakdown of communication. Every professional baseball player is a fantastic baseball player. They are the top of their sport. But, there are some players, even at that level, who are better than other players. That doesn't make one a bad baseball player.

Again, just to be absolutely, 100% crystal clear here. Just because experiencing different RPG's will make you a better RPG player DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE A BAD GAMER!!!!!!!

Is the clear enough? Do I need to repeat it a fourth time?

 

[Scott Christian]

I guess this leads to the question of: Is a person a better DM if they also have experience as a player?

 

[Hussar]

I guess this leads to the question of: Is a person a better DM if they also have experience as a player?

I would say so, yes. If nothing else, watching other DM's helps to become a better DM yourself. Whether it's learning from the great stuff they do or the bad. DM's need to get out from behind their screens from time to time.

Again, IMO and IME and all that.

 

[SableWyvern]

I guess this leads to the question of: Is a person a better DM if they also have experience as a player?

It can, but I think the degree to which it does is often overstated, and there is certainly no guarantee that spending time as a player will be more helpful than spending that same amount of time as a GM instead.

I am certain that understanding what the players at my table want from a game and enjoy is far more important than understanding what I want and enjoy as a player, and that those two things are not necessarily going to be the same.

 

[soviet]

It can, but I think the degree to which it does is often overstated, and there is certainly no guarantee that spending time as a player will be more helpful than spending that same amount of time as a GM instead.

There's surely a diminishing returns aspect to this. Is your second hour of actually GMing more valuable to your GMing ability than an hour of being a player? Sure. But the hundredth hour? The thousandth? The millionth?

I am certain that understanding what the players at my table want from a game and enjoy is far more important than understanding what I want and enjoy as a player, and that those two things are not necessarily going to be the same.

I don't think it's so much about exploring your own preferences as a player, it's more about seeing what the dynamic feels like from the other side of the screen (and also seeing how differently another GM might approach things).

 

[AlViking]

Wow. This was already resolved a couple of pages back.

But, just to repeat, one more time:

THE OPPOSITE OF BETTER IS NOT BAD. I know that this is a basic English definition, but, it seems like there's been a rather fundamental breakdown of communication. Every professional baseball player is a fantastic baseball player. They are the top of their sport. But, there are some players, even at that level, who are better than other players. That doesn't make one a bad baseball player.

Again, just to be absolutely, 100% crystal clear here. Just because experiencing different RPG's will make you a better RPG player DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE A BAD GAMER!!!!!!!

Is the clear enough? Do I need to repeat it a fourth time?

According to you the best I can be is mediocre. After all you clearly stated that a person cannot be a good player or DM if they don't play multiple games. Are you taking back what you said?

The idea that playing multiple games is the only way to be a good player or DM, that it's the only way to get "better" at either (whatever "better" means) is BS. Repeating the assertion doesn't make it so.