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

[AlViking]

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.

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.

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.

 

[soviet]

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.

So just to be clear, you do get ideas for D&D from non-D&D sources? It's only non-D&D sources that are games that offer no possible benefit?

 

[soviet]

Here's an example, albeit from the Edition That Cannot Be Named: in 4e (oh no I did it) skill challenges are basically a not very good implementation of an idea that can be found in various non-trad games, that being the extended conflict aka set piece. We had some experience playing these out, including in a game I designed, which meant that when we played the 4e version we already had the muscle memory of how to make them work. We didn't change any rules. We didn't bring in any rules from non-D&D. We just had a sense of the right rhythm and best practice to get the most fun out of them.

 

[Lanefan]

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).

Agreed.

Personally, I see the path to DMing runs through first being a player in the system you intend to run. If nothing else, it flattens out the learning curve a bit when it comes to rules etc. in anything other than a very rules-light system.

That said, IME and IMO something is lost as a player when one starts DMing: there's no more mystery and considerably less wonder. Rather than just enjoying the sausage without really knowing or caring how it's made, now you do know and thus kinda have to care whether you want to or not. For me, becoming a DM has somewhat tainted my experiences as a player ever since.

 

[Scott Christian]

Looking back at my own experience, the best DM's I've ever had have had experience running other systems. And the worst DM's have all been single system DM's.

This has been my experience too. However, I can say, in my experience only, the best DMs I have had were also players, not just experienced running other systems.

 

[Lanefan]

I was noodling over this thread and something occured to me. Imagine a thought experiment. You have two potential DM's that you are possibly going to play with and you have to choose one. Both have about 10 years of experience running games.

DM 1 proudly proclaims that they have only ever run D&D. Not only that, but, they think there is zero value in learning any other system. That everything you can possibly learn about running a game can be learned from running D&D. That learning any other system is a complete waste of time and effort. Playing one and only one system leads to being the best DM one can possibly be.

DM 2 proudly proclaims that they have run D&D as well as dabbled in half a dozen other systems over the years. They mostly run D&D, but, they've done some one shots and some other stuff in other systems. They claim that learning other systems helps them create a better D&D game and makes them the best DM one can possibly be.

I'm assuming here that each of these DMs is inviting me into a D&D game using an edition with which they're familiar?

If yes, and if I only had time for one of these two games, I'd lean toward DM 1 if all else is equal; purely on the basis that a specialist is on average better and-or more skilled at their specialty than is a generalist.

That said, if each of these DMs is inviting me into a game using a system they'd never run before, if all else was equal I'd lean toward DM 2, as a generalist will likely be better at starting fresh with a new system than will a specialist.

 

[Lanefan]

Not really. Moving 10,000 one pound rocks from one side of the road to the other takes a lot of effort, but a toddler could do it. It takes a lot of effort, but isn't at all hard to do.

It isn't hard to learn how to do in theory.

The very fact that it requires a lot of effort makes it hard to actually do in practice. Moving one rock across the road is easy. Moving 10,000 of them is hard.

 

[Lanefan]

So just to be clear, you do get ideas for D&D from non-D&D sources? It's only non-D&D sources that are games that offer no possible benefit?

I get ideas of what to run, as in plot-story-adventure ideas, from non-D&D sources.

I don't get any ideas as to how to run those things.

 

[AlViking]

So just to be clear, you do get ideas for D&D from non-D&D sources? It's only non-D&D sources that are games that offer no possible benefit?

I never once said nor have I implied that people cannot get ideas from other games. I personally don't have the bandwidth, opportunity or desire to play other TTRPGs so, of course I don't.

 

[soviet]

I'm assuming here that each of these DMs is inviting me into a D&D game using an edition with which they're familiar?

If yes, and if I only had time for one of these two games, I'd lean toward DM 1 if all else is equal; purely on the basis that a specialist is on average better and-or more skilled at their specialty than is a generalist.

That said, if each of these DMs is inviting me into a game using a system they'd never run before, if all else was equal I'd lean toward DM 2, as a generalist will likely be better at starting fresh with a new system than will a specialist.

I think I said earlier that there is a diminishing returns angle to this.

If DM 1 has run 100 sessions of D&D and DM 2 has run 10 sessions each of 10 different games (including D&D) - then sure DM 1 will probably run a better game of D&D.

But if DM 1 has run 1,000 sessions of D&D, and DM 2 has run 100 sessions each of 10 different games (including D&D)? Or if DM 2 has run 910 sessions of D&D and 10 sessions each of 9 other games?

Is the millionth session you run of D&D really more of a learning experience than the first session you run of something different?