Lanefan
Victoria Rules
And yet if its a formula that works every week for that table, so what?
In any situation, if everything is otherwise fine, stagnation is not a negative thing. Just keep on keepin' on...
D&D General A Rant: DMing is not hard.
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
In any situation, if everything is otherwise fine, stagnation is not a negative thing. Just keep on keepin' on...
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
I don't see how it can. Turning, braking, accelerating, changing lanes, parking, etc. are all different for a semi than for a car. Driving a semi will make you a better truck driver, but it's not going to do squat for your car skills.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Pacific Northwest, yes. Never actually been up into the Canadian portion thereof, but I've been close, did a couple marching band competitions in northern Washington.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
A wood fire "works every week" (indeed, any time) for cooking and baking, and humans used wood fires for literally thousands of years to do their cooking. I strongly suspect that you would not prefer that all the cooked food you eat be prepared using exclusively wood fire, without temperature control, without modern understanding of chemistry and cooking times. Yet at some point, someone would have been able to make the exact same argument to you now: Wood fires work every day for cooking, why do we need stoves and ovens and all this fancy-shmancy bull$#!%?
The simple answer is that something can work, and yet things can still be better. You shouldn't replace something solely because it is old. That's chronological snobbery, and I'm right there with you in thinking that chronological snobbery is foolish nonsense. But you also shouldn't cling to things solely because they're familiar and functional.
Perhaps, perhaps not. There was a thread a few years back on here, where someone realized that, even though what they had been doing was "working" in the sense that a game was being played, it was not working in the sense that it was producing outcomes they did not want. But how can you know whether something is producing outcomes you don't want, if you never reflect on what you're doing and why? And how can you have any awareness of what is possible, if you never look outside of the very first thing you ever did?In any situation, if everything is otherwise fine, stagnation is not a negative thing. Just keep on keepin' on...
As I said in a previous post, albeit in different words: If your argument boils down to "you can be a good GM even without ever playing other systems", well, that exact same argument applies to having extensive experience with a single system. You can be a good GM from the very first second you start GMing, without any prior experience at all, let alone decades' worth. So if the simple fact that it can be done without breadth of experience means that breadth is totally irrelevant and even harmful to suggest for others to seek out, then that exact same argument tells us that depth is also totally irrelevant and even harmful to suggest for others to seek out.
And if "you can be a good GM even with no experience at all" doesn't mean that depth of experience is irrelevant, then the exact same logic indicates that "you can be a good GM even with experience of only one system" doesn't mean that breadth is irrelevant either.
Being a good GM is a function of many inputs. Two of those inputs are depth and breadth of experience. Ceteris paribus, if I have two GMs of otherwise equivalent ability, where one has 25 years of experience exclusively with one and only one system, and the other has 20 years of experience with that one system and 5 years of experience spread across (say) six other systems? I don't see the slightest problem in saying that the latter GM is going to be better at a variety of skills useful for GMing: creativity especially in the space of developing new rules content (e.g., new spells, new treasure), flexibility in adjudication, preparation for unexpected interactions, patience for dealing with seeming conflicts, ability to adapt to changing circumstances, etc.
That the second GM would be somewhat better at these things says nothing whatever about whether the first GM is good or bad with them. Again, ceteris paribus, I would think both GMs would be pretty good--assuming you were playing the one system they have 20+ years experience with--but the latter would be slightly better. Say, if we were ranking the two of them on scales 1-100, bigger = better, then I'd expect (say) mid to high 80s for the first GM and low to mid 90s for the second. A small but meaningful difference--nothing more. Could other factors overshadow it? Sure, probably; that a factor could be overshadowed doesn't make it irrelevant, otherwise childhood nutrition would be irrelevant for height because DNA matters, and we all know that childhood nutrition definitely matters.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
You see no value in learning so pointedly the lesson "two vehicles might work VERY differently despite seeming superficially similar"?
SableWyvern
Cruel Despot
I don't understand how you're making the leap from reading "only plays one system" or "feels everything is working just fine" to the conclusion "never reflects on what they're doing and why?"
Tangentially, there are debates on pickleball and tennis (does the former mess with built up muscle memory from the later and things like that), looks like some types of endurance work mess up sprinting, and it is common to hear that bughouse messes with normal chess playing. Those movements/thinking processes might be a lot more narrow/specialized than the suite of skills in DMing a ttRPG though. (See also playing doubles in tennis along with singles and how that might help).
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I took a race driving course that really taught me a lot, far more than driving a truck ever would. I suppose there might be something I could learn about the limitations of the semi that might lead me to treat them with a little more respect while driving, like limited lines of sight and needing significantly more distance to stop. But I can also learn those by reading articles. So I agree it's unlikely to hurt but I don't see why people assume it would help.
Some of it was pretty simple way of visualizing what your car can do - imagine a rope tied to your steering wheel to your brake petal, the harder you turn the less you can use your brakes and vice versa. One of our first lessons was related to that and how you relate to an emergency such as a semi jack-knifing in front of you while driving highway speeds. Your natural reaction might be to turn the wheel as far as you can and slam on the brakes since it works on TV. But your tires can only do 100% of any one thing - turning or stopping. So you're far better off slamming on the breaks and then lifting off the brakes as you starting to turn. If you do start to skid, turn into the skid as fast as possible and if you can't regain control you're kind of SOL so the best you can do is slam on the brakes and hope for the best.
Other things were like how to read a track line and get around corners as fast as possible because the course was both defensive driving an race driving. Hint: going sideways around a corner is typically quite slow, it only works better under very specific circumstances like rally driving on gravel. TV shows dramatic driving, not effective driving.
In any case, it did make me a better driver because it was focused on the dynamics of the vehicle I was actually operating.
Other things were like how to read a track line and get around corners as fast as possible because the course was both defensive driving an race driving. Hint: going sideways around a corner is typically quite slow, it only works better under very specific circumstances like rally driving on gravel. TV shows dramatic driving, not effective driving.
In any case, it did make me a better driver because it was focused on the dynamics of the vehicle I was actually operating.
Surely race driving vs everyday driving is actually a closer analogy to 'playing different roleplaying games' than the semi was? If so you seem to have conceded the point.
Can learn something from reading articles, sure. Will learn more from actually doing? Also sure.
How could it possibly hurt? The other game cooties infect your brain and kill your D&D cells?
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
I'm never going to drive a semi for a living, so what value is there in knowing how to drive one? It's not going to help me be a better driver in general. It's not going to help me drive my car. It can only help me drive a semi, which I'm never going to do. It would only be of value to me if I was going to make a living as a truck driver.
As learning that they work differently, I have never in my life driven a semi and I know that already. Just like I know flying a plane is also very different, despite seeming superficially similar. When I spoke of semis being harder to turn, harder to park, harder to change lanes in, and needing longer distances to brake, that was knowledge I have without ever having spoken to a truck driver or taken semi lessons.
