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

[AlViking]

It's not that you can't, it's just that there's nuances you might miss if you don't see it in action. Theory vs application. And for some of us, exploring different game mechanics is part of the draw of the hobby. IF you have the interest and IF you have the time, playing other systems can greatly expand your understanding of the hobby as a whole.
If all you want to do is be a sculptor, sure, skip the painting classes. But you might miss out on something you didn't know you found fun.

I could also miss out on something because I spent time playing that other game. We all make decisions on how to spend our time, what will be valuable. For example I will never drive a semi, but I did take a race driving course that cemented best practices for me and gave me techniques for dealing with emergency situation handling. I am a better driver because of that course. I cannot see how learning how to drive a semi could have been more useful. It's the same with games. Playing a different game and playing it for long enough to really understand those subtleties would take at a guess 50 hours between getting up to speed on the rules and actually playing a short campaign. For one game. I can't imagine how many blogs, books, conversations with fellow gamers can happen with those same amount of hours all of which can be done on my schedule. Even if it's something like 20 hours to really get to know a game, that's still a huge commitment of time and in many cases money.

If you enjoy and have the opportunity and time to play other games, great. I don't. Could I hypothetically learn something new? Anything is possible. But I can get far more bang for my buck (and time) pursuing other options.

 

[AlViking]

I have learned in no particular order:

Call of Cthulhu and Vaesen: Run better mysteries and be better at telegraphing clues, characters and events. Also I learned how to narrate and emphasize horror tones in my plots.

Worlds without Number and Stars with Number: Run better sandboxes and dungeons.

Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars : Run better cinematic and dramatic plots.

Warhammer fantasy/40k and pathfinder: learned make tactically interesting combats.

No offense, but these are all vague platitudes. What specifically did you apply, why do you think you could not have learned just as much or more playing D&D? I run mysteries all the time, every game I run is a sandbox, I get inspired by cinematic and dramatic plots from several sources including fiction not related to gaming at all.

 

[AlViking]

Yep, revert to main. You love what you love and have fun, so it's your go to. That's why my PF1 group for last 10 years plays PF1 in pretty much same style. All the campaigns are in essence combat heavy, role play light, tactical h&s. There are variations in story and characters, but bare bones game structure is the same. That's what they like to play, that's what DM likes to run.

I've run many, many games over the years and the style shifts and changes depending on what the players want, the level of the characters and where they are in the campaign. D&D is obviously pretty combat focused, but I've also run games where no combat happens for an entire session. Other groups would be bored to tears so I lean into what people enjoy.

Just to follow up on some of the other comments I get that if you run a game focused solely on mysteries, you are likely going to get better at running mysteries. But you could have also done that in D&D. Run a campaign where the group is the Scooby Doo gang and the characters do nothing but solve mysteries if it's what your players enjoy. Unless there's some specific mechanic you can import into your game from that mystery focused game, it wasn't the game itself it was that you chose a specific theme. If I want to get better at dramatic plots, a quick internet search will give me tons of advice on how to do so with any set of rules.

Different people learn different ways and perhaps being forced into a niche is what some people need. I just don't think it applies to everyone.

 

[Cadence]

No offense, but these are all vague platitudes. What specifically did you apply, why do you think you could not have learned just as much or more playing D&D? I run mysteries all the time, every game I run is a sandbox, I get inspired by cinematic and dramatic plots from several sources including fiction not related to gaming at all.

Taking a tangent...

Is consuming a wide variety of genres of movies/tv/books/comics also very helpful? Are there some genres that would be not helpful at all? Would the writing styles and interactions in them still be useful in them regardless of the genre?

How about activities like writing, improv, and strategy games?

How different do the games systems, styles, and settings need to be to provide maximum bang for the buck when trying different games? Are there some alternate ttrpgs that provide minimal benefit (because they're too similar? because they're too different)?

Is there a set of 8 movies that would be more useful than 4 four-hour sessions of a new game? 16 hours of improv?

Why don't we all have infinite time!?!?

 

[BrokenTwin]

I could also miss out on something because I spent time playing that other game. We all make decisions on how to spend our time, what will be valuable. For example I will never drive a semi, but I did take a race driving course that cemented best practices for me and gave me techniques for dealing with emergency situation handling. I am a better driver because of that course. I cannot see how learning how to drive a semi could have been more useful. It's the same with games. Playing a different game and playing it for long enough to really understand those subtleties would take at a guess 50 hours between getting up to speed on the rules and actually playing a short campaign. For one game. I can't imagine how many blogs, books, conversations with fellow gamers can happen with those same amount of hours all of which can be done on my schedule. Even if it's something like 20 hours to really get to know a game, that's still a huge commitment of time and in many cases money.

If you enjoy and have the opportunity and time to play other games, great. I don't. Could I hypothetically learn something new? Anything is possible. But I can get far more bang for my buck (and time) pursuing other options.

I'm just trying to explain why I play other systems, and the benefits one can get from doing so. I don't honestly care if you play other games or not. I pretty explicitly said IF you have the time and interest, so yeah, I'm aware there's a sunk cost. I'm not sure why you're taking this as such as personal affront.

 

[AlViking]

I'm just trying to explain why I play other systems, and the benefits one can get from doing so. I don't honestly care if you play other games or not. I pretty explicitly said IF you have the time and interest, so yeah, I'm aware there's a sunk cost. I'm not sure why you're taking this as such as personal affront.

It been repeatedly stated that if I don't play multiple games I will never be as good as someone that has. Sorry if it's become a sore point.

Some people may feel like they've benefitted and that's fine. I feel like I've gotten better over the years by DMing, reading and other activities without spending significant amount of time playing other TTRPGs.

 

[AlViking]

Taking a tangent...

Is consuming a wide variety of genres of movies/tv/books/comics also very helpful? Are there some genres that would be not helpful at all? Would the writing styles and interactions in them still be useful in them regardless of the genre?

How about activities like writing, improv, and strategy games?

How different do the games systems, styles, and settings need to be to provide maximum bang for the buck when trying different games? Are there some alternate ttrpgs that provide minimal benefit (because they're too similar? because they're too different)?

Is there a set of 8 movies that would be more useful than 4 four-hour sessions of a new game? 16 hours of improv?

Why don't we all have infinite time!?!?

There are too many things to list of what we can do to improve our game time. I get inspiration for things from such a wide variety of sources I'm not sure where I would start. But yes, infinite time and resources would be nice so why don't you get on that. Let me know how it's going, I expect official reports on a weekly basis.

 

[aco175]

Run a campaign where the group is the Scooby Doo gang and the characters do nothing but solve mysteries if it's what your players enjoy.

Did someone mention Scooby-Doo.

I was thinking this would be cool and someone had already made it. There are no original thoughts.

 

[cbwjm]

Did someone mention Scooby-Doo.

View attachment 424616 View attachment 424617

I was thinking this would be cool and someone had already made it. There are no original thoughts.

Haha, I love Scrappy as some crazy looking gnoll.

 

[Warnavick]

No offense, but these are all vague platitudes. What specifically did you apply, why do you think you could not have learned just as much or more playing D&D? I run mysteries all the time, every game I run is a sandbox, I get inspired by cinematic and dramatic plots from several sources including fiction not related to gaming at all.

Well just to stick to one example, with call of cthulhu, a couple things like

"There are Obvious Clues and Obscured Clues. Make sure Obvious clues are not something the players need to work for Especially if missing that clue make them stuck. Obscured Clues should be helpful but not pivotal to the investigation."

"Try not to lead your players when describing evidence. You should describe to them how the players found the evidence, not how they would feel or think about the evidence. Leave it up to the players to make their own deductions."

"The players can be creative when looking for leads in an investigation. Try to incorporate that creativity and let leads manifest when it makes sense for it to do so."

"While most perception checks are to look for Clues, you should ask your players if they might have a different goal in mind such as looking for a journal with relavant information. If you are happy with that goal, let them roll perception to find it. If not modify the goal to something more appropriate or use normal rules for looking for evidence where there is none."

"When the players seem stuck or bored then its time to give them a nudge. Introduce new information or dramatic moment. Maybe an NPC calls for aid with a problem that is relevant to the investigation."

"If your players are completely stuck offer them an idea roll(a hint roll). If a character succeeds they make an important connection with their current investigation."

"A failed roll doesn't necessarily mean the goal fails. If failure would lead to a stop in play consider alternates. Such as if an investigator failed to open a locked door in a flooding room, rather than the investigators all drown and end the session, have the failure be the investigator opened the door at the last minute causing great damage to the group as the full room of water pushes and crashes them into the next room. The goal of opening the door was achieved but at great cost to the group for the failure."

All paraphrased.

I'm not saying this stuff is super special advice that you can only learn from call of cthulhu. Or that all these lessons are useful for every game type. I'm sure that most experienced DMs will figure this stuff out and what works for them eventually.

However, if you were like me and didn't know anything about mystery pacing and placing the right clues from previous rulebooks and gaming, these ideas greatly improved my mystery design by giving me written rules/ideas to think about and experiment with. Most importantly it gave me a load more direct and tangible experience with this concept. I was actually doing a mystery every session with call of cthullu rather than a few sessions out of a year with dnd.