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

[EzekielRaiden]

Its coming across as a combination of arrogance (to the point if being deluded), system/edition warring, and onetruewayism.

I dont really care about these other games you cant find players for. I dont care that others like then fill your boots.

Are you then going to say that it is not "arrogance to the point of being deluded" to claim that someone can learn literally everything--absolutely ALL things--about GMing solely from playing one single system? That there is never anything, at all, ever, which can be gained from playing even one different system?

Because that, to me, is arrogance to the point of delusion.

 

[Zardnaar]

It's not that it doesn't count for anything, it's that there are necessarily, guaranteed, always diminishing returns. The amount of additional learning you can get by going from 20 years of experience with one specific edition of D&D to 25 years of experience with that one specific edition of D&D is minuscule. The amount of additional experience you can get even from just playing any other entirely non-D&D system one single time is quite significant.

Would I think that someone who's run, say, 2e D&D for 30 years is more experienced with GMing than someone who's run 2e D&D for 20 years? Hell yes, absolutely.

Would I think someone who's run 2e D&D for 20 years, and also run three completely different systems a few times, is more experienced with GMing than someone who's exclusively run 2e D&D for 25 years? Yes, yes I would, hands down. That's not, in even the slightest degree, an insult to the person who has exclusively run 2e D&D. It is merely a recognition of simple fact, that diversity of experience matters at least as much as depth of experience. Arguably moreso, because in my experience, once you've run a system for two or three years, you know at least 90% of what there is to learn about it.

I fear the man who has practiced ten kicks a thousand times each rather more than I fear the man who has practiced only one single kick ten thousand times--because the latter is a one-trick-pony. The former has much more ability to adapt.

2E woukd be a bad example. Its the one D&D you might run for 25 years without getting bored. 5 years Darksun. 5 years Ravrnloft etc.

With the sandbox nature of the edition you probably would have a very very good DM. 2E is very very DM friendly in terms of options and advice.

 

[Hussar]

I fear the man who has practiced ten kicks a thousand times each rather more than I fear the man who has practiced only one single kick ten thousand times--because the latter is a one-trick-pony. The former has much more ability to adapt.

I mean, pithy aphorisms aside, this is just wrong. The idea that you can be the top of something by only doing that one thing and not learning how to do any related activity is just not true.

I'm the best guitarist I can be because I do nothing but play Van Halen. Heck, do nothing but play rock and roll and you're still not even cracking the top 100 best guitarists you could be.

I'm the best writer I could be because I do nothing but write iambic pentameter. Or Haiku.

Good grief. One of my students is one of the top ranked calligraphers in the country. She travels all over teaching Japanese calligraphy. She's won a shed load of awards.

And she STILL constantly learns new styles and techniques. 78 years old and she's on an airplane every month to go somewhere and learn new techniques.

The idea that you can be the best or even really good at anything by only studying that thing and there is no value and nothing to be learned by studying related things is just wrong. Every single pedagogical study in the past century says that this is wrong. There is nothing that supports this idea. It runs contrary to every single training method for pretty much anything you care to look at. I'm absolutely astonished to see the strident defense of this. It's mind boggling.

Heh. My Similar Threads at the bottom of the page returned this @Snarf Zagyg thread:

D&D General Thread 'The Best Advice for New DMs I Can Give'

Nov 12, 2024

So I was looking at the other thread about the "new" Rule 0, and I noticed that some people were going into the usual conversations about the balance of authority at a D&D table, or the issues with a bad DM/GM (hereafter, I'll just write DM), and so on. And I thought to myself, "Self, a long time ago I wrote about some good advice in general that I think also works for new DMs that I think is worth putting out again."

Normally, advice is worth what you pay for it (and you're not paying my hourly rate), but I think that what follows is helpful, Even though it isn't specific to DMing...

• Snarf Zagyg
• Replies: 24
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

• 
• 

This pretty much nails it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

2E woukd be a bad example. Its the one D&D you might run for 25 years without getting bored. 5 years Darksun. 5 years Ravrnloft etc.

With the sandbox nature of the edition you probably would have a very very good DM. 2E is very very DM friendly in terms of options and advice.

I didn't say you wouldn't have a very good GM.

I simply said that the difference between "20 years with 2e + having played a handful of other systems" and "25 years of exclusively 2e" is significant. Again: diminishing returns. Once you've run a system for twenty freaking years, there is very little left for you to learn about GMing that system. You will not make very many mistakes because you've already made them a hundred times before. But if you have pushed yourself to think in ways you never had before, if you have worked with structures and concepts that never appear in 2e D&D, if you have had to resolve conflicts that literally don't happen in 2e rules, then you--objectively!--have useful experience which 2e cannot even in principle provide. That may, for example, reveal to you possibilities you wouldn't have considered, or

Does that mean it's impossible to learn to be a good 2e D&D GM just by playing and running 2e? No. Not one word of the above means or implies or even vaguely gestures at that idea. But it does mean that perfect unbroken hyperfocus offers less long-term benefit than very very slightly less hyperfocus + a tiny bit of exploration. Because it turns out that exploring the possibility space is, in fact, a useful learning experience.

There is, quite simply, more to learn when you are working with something you don't yet understand.

 

[Zardnaar]

I didn't say you wouldn't have a very good GM.

I simply said that the difference between "20 years with 2e + having played a handful of other systems" and "25 years of exclusively 2e" is significant. Again: diminishing returns. Once you've run a system for twenty freaking years, there is very little left for you to learn about GMing that system. You will not make very many mistakes because you've already made them a hundred times before. But if you have pushed yourself to think in ways you never had before, if you have worked with structures and concepts that never appear in 2e D&D, if you have had to resolve conflicts that literally don't happen in 2e rules, then you--objectively!--have useful experience which 2e cannot even in principle provide. That may, for example, reveal to you possibilities you wouldn't have considered, or

Does that mean it's impossible to learn to be a good 2e D&D GM just by playing and running 2e? No. Not one word of the above means or implies or even vaguely gestures at that idea. But it does mean that perfect unbroken hyperfocus offers less long-term benefit than very very slightly less hyperfocus + a tiny bit of exploration. Because it turns out that exploring the possibility space is, in fact, a useful learning experience.

There is, quite simply, more to learn when you are working with something you don't yet understand.

I don't think you understand 2E.

You may not hit the diminishing returns part of that edition. Im still discovering new things in if after 30 years. I haven't played it continuously however.

 

[GrimCo]

Runing multiple systems will give you different perspectives. You will learn how different mechanics solve same problems. It can be valuable if, and that's big if, you pick system that's good at something specific.

To ilustrate point. You only ever ran 5e d&d. You like it, but tactical combat isn't really best in 5e. If you pick up 4e or PF2, you will get valuable experience on running tactical combat. If you pick up Houses of the bloodied, you will learn nothing about tactical combat cause that game doesn't have it.

So, when time is limited, branching out needs to be thoughtful. You need to find pain points in system you run for type of games you wanna run, then find system that does those things good. It might give you ideas you can incorporate in your main system or how to tweak it to work better.

I would argue that you can learn and run 10 different systems, have solid system mastery over all of them, and still be bad dm ( i consider bad dm someone who: railroads players by forcing them into a predetermined story, acts adversarial by trying to "beat" the party, applies rules inconsistently or unfairly, ignores player agency and character backstories, hogs the spotlight or plays favorites, neglects consent or player comfort, refuses to improvise or adapt, paces the game poorly or shows little preparation, and uses their authority in toxic or belittling ways that undermine player enjoyment ).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Runing multiple systems will give you different perspectives. You will learn how different mechanics solve same problems. It can be valuable if, and that's big if, you pick system that's good at something specific.

To ilustrate point. You only ever ran 5e d&d. You like it, but tactical combat isn't really best in 5e. If you pick up 4e or PF2, you will get valuable experience on running tactical combat. If you pick up Houses of the bloodied, you will learn nothing about tactical combat cause that game doesn't have it.

So, when time is limited, branching out needs to be thoughtful. You need to find pain points in system you run for type of games you wanna run, then find system that does those things good. It might give you ideas you can incorporate in your main system or how to tweak it to work better.

I would argue that you can learn and run 10 different systems, have solid system mastery over all of them, and still be bad dm ( i consider bad dm someone who: railroads players by forcing them into a predetermined story, acts adversarial by trying to "beat" the party, applies rules inconsistently or unfairly, ignores player agency and character backstories, hogs the spotlight or plays favorites, neglects consent or player comfort, refuses to improvise or adapt, paces the game poorly or shows little preparation, and uses their authority in toxic or belittling ways that undermine player enjoyment ).

I agree, but if this is a 2000-lb argument, 1999 pounds of it are being carried by a single word: can. You can still be a bad GM even with this experience, and you can become a great GM even without this experience.

But that is like saying that someone can be a terrible writer despite having read and carefully studied a thousand different authors' works, while someone else can be a profoundly sublime author despite having never read even a single line of anyone else's prose. Yes, there is a vanishingly small probability that a person could just be naturally amazing at writing books without any training, experience, or effortful understanding of the craft. Yes, there is a small (though not nearly as small as the previous) probability that someone who has carefully studied and genuinely understood many works of literature could still be just objectively and unequivocally terrible at writing prose.

For the overwhelming majority, however, reading and understanding the work of lots of authors is critical to being a good writer yourself, and very few of the great authors in human history would have been nearly so good if they had actively refused to read any books they didn't personally write. It is, simply, a fact that in any creative medium--and GMing is a creative medium!--you should engage both deeply (digging far on one specific area) and broadly (digging into many different areas, albeit rarely quite so deep).

Isaac Asimov was a better science-fiction writer because he was also a nonfiction (and particularly textbook) author. And, I'd argue, he was also a better textbook author because he understood how to write good, interesting, compelling science fiction, especially the type he personally specialized in, ideas-focused fiction rather than character- or plot-focused fiction.

 

[GrimCo]

I agree, but if this is a 2000-lb argument, 1999 pounds of it are being carried by a single word: can. You can still be a bad GM even with this experience, and you can become a great GM even without this experience.

Yes, can. Because, as i clearly stated, what makes DM good or bad, isn't tied to experience with different systems, at least in my personal opinion. You may use different metric for judging how good or bad someone is as a DM. I use can, because, there is no guarantee that you will be better DM ( by my metric of good or bad) if you learn different systems. You will definetly be more technically proficient. Now, if you measure how good/bad someone is based on how proficient they are in technical stuff, cool, then yes, by that metric, playing different games will make you better.

Isaac Asimov was a better science-fiction writer because he was also a nonfiction (and particularly textbook) author. And, I'd argue, he was also a better textbook author because he understood how to write good, interesting, compelling science fiction, especially the type he personally specialized in, ideas-focused fiction rather than character- or plot-focused fiction.

And if you don't like ideas focused fiction and don't find it fun, but really like character and plot driven fiction, and you measure how good author is based on those 2 criteria, Asimov is not very good writer.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, can. Because, as i clearly stated, what makes DM good or bad, isn't tied to experience with different systems, at least in my personal opinion.

I don't see how it has no impact on your chosen rubric. To whit:

( i consider bad dm someone who: railroads players by forcing them into a predetermined story, acts adversarial by trying to "beat" the party, applies rules inconsistently or unfairly, ignores player agency and character backstories, hogs the spotlight or plays favorites, neglects consent or player comfort, refuses to improvise or adapt, paces the game poorly or shows little preparation, and uses their authority in toxic or belittling ways that undermine player enjoyment ).

• Railroading: Running systems which actively oppose railroading would directly help a GM see how railroading causes problems, while not railroading can be done without harming the cohesion and groundedness of the setting.
• Adversarial: Systems which forbid the GM from making rolls could help with this, as could systems which have strong GM-facing rules, so that the GM is aware of what they're doing. I admit, this is a "could" rather than "would", but it still would be very very likely to help, and my lived experience is that it has in fact helped some GMs I've known realize what they're doing wrong.
• Inconsistent/unfair adjudication: As above, a system which lives and dies on actually following its rules as they are written will make very clear very quickly that capricious GMing is bad. This is very much a D&D-specific problem because of its culture-of-play, and systems that lack that culture-of-play will make this clear.
• Ignoring agency and backstories: There are systems--plural--which are litearlly driven by player agency and character backstory. PbtA games are great examples there, doubly so because they're intentionally easy to pick up and play.
• Hogging spotlight/playing favorites: Again, very much something baked into the design of D&D. Playing systems which do not do "spotlight balance" (a concept I personally despise) would help a lot here. It isn't a magic bullet if the GM is simply an @$$#*+&, but for accidental spotlight-hogging/favorite-playing, running other systems is exceedingly likely to reveal the error.
• No improv/non-adapting: This is...literally directly helped by doing systems you aren't familiar with because you will need to improvise at least some of the time...?
• Poor pacing/preparation: Running a system you do not know well forces you to think more carefully about what you are doing. This is, again, going to directly contribute to thinking about this sort of thing, and thus developing those skills more.

Neglecting consent or player comfort, consciously capricious/mean-spirited adjudication, and toxic or belittling behavior are not GMing skill failures. They are moral failures long before any consideration of GMing came into the picture. Someone who practices such behavior cannot learn to be better through any amount of running the game--neither depth nor breadth will help. "There are problems that breadth of experience can't fix" Yes, and...? I never said otherwise. More importantly, since depth of experience with a single system won't fix this either, by your logic it doesn't matter how much experience you have of any kind. You can be the world's best GM without ever having run a single game in your life--and you can be the world's worst GM despite having 50 years of experience running your game of choice.

So if your argument purports to show that breadth is irrelevant, it also shows depth is too. If your argument isn't showing that breadth is irrelevant, then what is it saying?

You may use different metric for judging how good or bad someone is as a DM. I use can, because, there is no guarantee that you will be better DM ( by my metric of good or bad) if you learn different systems. You will definetly be more technically proficient. Now, if you measure how good/bad someone is based on how proficient they are in technical stuff, cool, then yes, by that metric, playing different games will make you better.

And if you don't like ideas focused fiction and don't find it fun, but really like character and plot driven fiction, and you measure how good author is based on those 2 criteria, Asimov is not very good writer.

Given I wasn't judging that...?

I'd still say that writing more means you're a better writer. You definitely won't be better at absolutely every form of writing, but that's trivially obvious.

Like I don't understand what your objection is here. I have never said that writing multiple genres makes you a genius at all of them. I've simply said that you will be a better writer overall, at whatever you do choose to write, by exposing yourself to a variety of literary sources, and by becoming good at writing more than one style of prose.

 

[AlViking]

Oh, most certainly.

Separately, though, if you want to run a game where mystery-solving is the draw, the most important part of play, it is not even slightly unreasonable for someone to tell you, "Well, that's not really something D&D was designed for. You should consider running a system that was designed for mystery-solving as the core play experience." Like...that's one of the most natural things to say. It would be like getting mad if someone suggested that instead of trying to find a way to heat up coals in your oven, you probably should use an actual grill designed to use charcoal.


Given the people you're allegedly talking about have repeatedly said that that isn't the case, is that actually being said? Or is it you trying to manufacture a controversy out of something benign?

If I want to play checkers I'm not going to pull out the backgammon board. If I and my players wanted to play a game with a lot of mysteries I can do that in D&D. If we want to play a game with a lot of mysteries that doesn't have a combat subsystem as a core component we would look at some other games.

Do I needed to quote specific examples of people stating that people who play multiple games are better yet again? I've never once said you can't learn from other games. People have repeatedly claimed superiority because they or others do.