D&D General Being a DM is like being a cook

[MichaelSomething]

This reddit thread about cooking reminds me of discussions here about being a DM.

Being able to follow written instructions vs adapting on the fly? What do DMs need more of??

 

[Autumnal]

Celebrity British chefs storm in to yell at you? Yeah, that tracks. Well, more likely to be Australian for us here on the West Coast, but the principle and front door damage are the same.

I think of following instructions and adapting as inseparable for the good GM. It’s about understanding the broad situation and the specific at-hand situation, and harmonizing them in a way that’s fun for the folks playing. The balance shifts moment by moment.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Recent discussions show that the best way to teach someone to cook is to strand them in the desert with a $2000 dollars chef's knife, a delipidated flint and steel and they're child's pet hamster. Then yell at them for cooking the hamster.

It's the only way they'll learn to engage their brain and do things for themselves. Recipes are for the weak and wrong.

 

[Stormonu]

It’s all about the Oregano, after all.

Thee best DM’s are the ones who know (and could follow) the rules, but prefer to d things their own way, and are willing to experiment every once in a while.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Being a DM is almost entirely not about following written directions.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Recipes are for the weak and wrong.

Recipes are for teaching the techniques of cooking, consistency of results and especially, for commercial dining experiences.

Adaptability and thinking outside of recipes is ALSO a necessary skill for a good cook.

When I taught a chef in Norway how to do a proper creole gumbo, I needed to be able to construct a working recipe, reverse engineered from how I make mine, but also anticipating things like certain ingredients not being available to him, and providing reasonable substitutions.

A GM needs to be able to follow the text of the adventure/campaign- if one exists- but also must be able to be able to handle the unanticipated.

So I agree- being a good GM IS a lot like being a good cook.

 

[ReshiIRE]

Cold take: r/unpopularopinion is full of nasty people hiding behind having an ""unpopular"" opinion to be nasty to people they don't even want to try to understand. I wouldn't use it as a source of anything except how reddit can be a nasty community that doesn't give a crap about anyone and anything, and is so overconfident to be so incorrect. I firmly believe that the person in that OP probably hasn't actually attempted to cook anything in their life, or has had so much help and support growing up that they expect that their experience is the same as everyone else, because they couldn't emphasise with anyone who's even slightly shorter than them.

Related opinion: I don't feel that GMing is like cooking, because in a lot of cases there is not a reciepe to follow. There are instructions and techniques, and I guess you could count an Adventure Path as a recipe - but to me, GMing is a discipline that encompasses improve in acting and referring; lots of 'yes and'ing, taking what the other actors (players) give you, taking an initial scenario and going with the flow into different directions - and then adjudicating rule elements for fictional and gameplay purposes.

I am not an accomplished or good cook nor GM, I admit, but from my experience of both, cooking is much more structured, individual and repeatable than GMing.

 

[ichabod]

If GMing is like cooking, I must be a much worse GM than I thought.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Being able to follow written instructions vs adapting on the fly? What do DMs need more of??

Yes. The answer is "yes."

Learning how to follow written instructions is the foundation of DMing, in exactly the same way that doing a bunch of mostly-pointless essays or repeatedly rehearsing the history of science are the foundational steps for becoming a journalist or a physicist.

Just as being a journalist does not consist of writing essays about the classic novel you read over the summer and being a physicist does not consist of doing lab reports on known scientific observations (that you probably goofed up somewhere along the way anyway), DMing does not consist of restrictively adhering to written instructions.

But the skills you develop by doing these things, and the knowledge you gain via exposure to the discourse, are part of what makes these fields happen. In a sense, you must walk before you run, and you must crawl before you walk. The action of crawling is not particularly relevant to running. But balance, equilibrium, observation, and other skills that can develop in the gentler environment of crawling continue to be important ever after.

Adaptation is extremely important. I'll never dismiss that. But first developing the intuitions about what is and isn't productive, what is and isn't balanced, what is and isn't reasonable...those are absolutely critical if you want to be really good at adapting on the fly. Leaping straight into adapting, without any prior experience with an effective and focused structure, is a great way to teach yourself bad lessons that are very difficult to unlearn.

 

[Shiroiken]

Cooking is more art than science. You need recipes/instructions to get the baseline of what to do, but you just following directions leads to mediocre results. Many cooks personalize everything, making minor adjustments to the baseline in order to make the final product more desirable. D&D is the same: following instructions can be a fine game, but personalization often leads to excellent games.