D&D General Can we talk about best practices?

[Ovinomancer]

At a certain point you'd need to filter the noise to get to the signal. We're likely never going to be able to get universal consensus on anything. I don't think that's the point. But as stated upthread, just because it's not an easy, quick, universal answer doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't attempt to come up with such a list. It's the internet. Sometimes people just argue to argue.

Even if there are some things we could never even talk about because it would cause too much of a fight doesn't mean we couldn't come up with better or worse practice suggestions for less controversial topics.

Besides, we're losing generational knowledge by the day. There's a lot of institutional knowledge on this forum. Getting that recorded in some why is a worthwhile goal in and of itself. Forget if people agree with it or not.

(Really? The definition of immersion is a controversial topic? How ridiculous.)

Gah, my games got better after I unlearned a lot of that institutional knowledge. The received wisdom of D&D is not exactly covered in glory.

 

[Ace]

I hope we can*, otherwise we’re doomed to never get better at...whatever it is we’re doing.

So simple question: how can we talk about best practices without being told it’s badwrongfun or onetruewayism?

EDIT: Changed the title without changing the first line.

Good topic.

I think there is only one essential best practice. Communicate with your players/GM like adults in an open, respectful manner.

All else flows from this.

The best practices campaign will have the players and GM on the same page regarding style, system, what topics are OK and which are not and ready to game. That leads to good gaming IME.

 

[loverdrive]

Insofar as there are such things as best practices for playing TTRPGs

Well, there are best practices for playing a specific game or a branch of games. In pretty much all new-school games, taking risks, not making complex plans and screwing your character for the sake of drama are good ideas, and trying to protect your character from harm is a stupid endeavour.

Now, there's no "correct way" to run and play D&D, but, honestly, that's a lie and a direct result of WotC not having damn balls. Every tool has the best way to apply it.

That's the main reason I'm such an advocate for division. That big tent BS doesn't really do anyone any good.

 

[Yora]

Well, it does benefit the seller of that supposed product that fits everyone.

But yes, the designers and writers at WotC seem to know remarkably little about gamemastering.

 

[jasper]

Well, if YouTube says it!

DOES NOT. YOU LOOKING A THE BOOB TUBE>
DOES NOT
DOES NOT
DOES NOT

 

[Oofta]

Good topic.

I think there is only one essential best practice. Communicate with your players/GM like adults in an open, respectful manner.

All else flows from this.

The best practices campaign will have the players and GM on the same page regarding style, system, what topics are OK and which are not and ready to game. That leads to good gaming IME.

I was actually thinking about this overnight and was going to post something related to this.

If you DM, share your expectations. Talk about what kind of game you're comfortable running, if you have a problem with the way that someone is running their PC just talk about it. Don't "punish" the player by way of having bad things happen the PC or forcing other RP aspects on them. Just have an off-line conversation about what's bothering you.

This is a two way street. If I'm not happy as a player or there's something the DM is doing that bothers me, talk to the DM about it. Trying to nudge or influence behavior in game comes across as passive-aggressive and, more importantly, almost never works. Admittedly talking about it outside of game doesn't always work either, but no DM can be the right DM for every player and vice versa.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Now, there's no "correct way" to run and play D&D, but, honestly, that's a lie and a direct result of WotC not having damn balls. Every tool has the best way to apply it.

That's the main reason I'm such an advocate for division. That big tent BS doesn't really do anyone any good.

I disagree. The attraction of big tent games is that they don't have one true way of being run.

Some people run D&D as a heavily narrative game. Others might want an old school dungeon crawl experience. And while it might not be the best possible game for either, it can capably manage both. Whereas if I take a narratively oriented new school game and tried to run an old school dungeon crawl, it just wouldn't work. It's simply not built to do that thing.

A multi tool is almost never the best tool for the job, but it's incredibly handy to have because of its broad utility. I carry one with me wherever I go, and it's been useful many times. Sure, a set of screwdrivers might be better for those times when a variety of screwdrivers would have been handy, but they'd be far less useful those times when what I needed was a knife. I'm certainly not going to carry a set of screwdrivers with me wherever I go.

I'm not saying that new school games are bad by any means. Many of them are great at doing what they're designed to do. But they're not great for everyone and everything (which isn't to suggest that big tent games can do everything - just a broader range). Sometimes, what you want is a multi tool and that's where the big tent comes in. It offers a greater degree of flexibility than bespoke games.

 

[Quickleaf]

The concept of "best practice" is a professional term referring to procedures that are accepted or prescribed as being correct or most effective. Best practices tend to be quite specific and focused on a concrete deliverable objective. For example, in my discipline (architecture, if I can survive school), an example of a best practice would be:

During the Design Development phase, review and confirm with the Owner the project performance requirements of the project. This avoids miscommunication and misaligned expectations that can lead to problems later on.

But I'm not sure that translates well to running a D&D game where there usually is no objective beyond having fun...

Sure, we might say in principle that talking in advance about each player's expectations for the game and having a session zero is good, but (a) that is not nearly as specific as a typical best practice example (it's more of a loose principle rather than a specific technique/practice), therefor each group using a "session zero" it's likely their "session zero" will look differently, and (b) for some group types – players who've known each other a long time, one-shots, convention games, West Marches style games – that principle might not even apply.

I wonder if there might be a disconnect resulting from unarticulated assumptions. For example, if we assume that we're cataloguing best practices for home campaigns that are not between long-time friends, are not one-shots, are not convention games, and are not West Marches style, then yeah with those assumptions in place, the above might be called a "best practice." But we've had to go through a lot of acrobatics to get there.

 

[Marc_C]

Spend less time on social media and more time playing!

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I hope we can*, otherwise we’re doomed to never get better at...whatever it is we’re doing.

So simple question: how can we talk about best practices without being told it’s badwrongfun or onetruewayism?

EDIT: Changed the title without changing the first line.

I think one of the main things to avoid when discussing best practices is to avoid ill-defined terms with negative connotations when talking about practices other than your own.

Most people agree that "metagaming", "railroading", "powergaming" etc are not best practice for example. However everyone has a different definition of what they actually mean, so if you're going to talk about them, explain where you personally draw the line.
Likewise, someone talking about "Mos Eiseley Cantina" for example, might not mean it in a derisory fashion, but it has been used in a dismissive sense often enough that its a really unfortunate word choice. Better to actually give solid details as to what is meant to start with rather than protest innocence later.

Cadence nailed the other (and probably more important) point. Make sure your opinions are expressed as opinions, and not framed as objective truth.