hawkeyefan
Legend
You've put forward quite a good list and I had one or two thoughts about it on the GM side. The fourth point is what I am interested in.
While I don't see this as exactly wrong, I feel it also might not be the best practice for 5e D&D. Rather I believe the DM must understand themselves. They must make the game about that which can come from within them, which they can weave fluidly and naturally. To any question, any line of exploration, they will know what must lie there. The players should be a fan of the DM: that is why they will join that DM's games. In my experience and observation, the greatest D&D RPG experiences required a DM who understood what they wanted to and could do, and thus were able to fulfil their role confidently and naturally.
Sure, this one is an area I figured might see some disagreement. There are plenty of folks who would say no this idea and would maintain that the DM must be a neutral arbiter and should remain impartial at all times.
I disagree with that. I think the game must be about the PCs; without them there is no game, so they are the protagonists and that should be acknowledged. They are more important than the NPCs or lore that I craft as a DM.
I don't think that idea needs to conflict with your idea of the players being a fan of the DM, although that's hard to have in place at the start of a new game with new people. A player can keep that in mind....and I think that's what I was kind of getting at with players being willing to engage with the GM's ideas.....but being a fan of the GM or trusting the GM is something that may need some time to develop. I think it may be a best practice to suggest to players "Trust that your GM will try and enable fun and engaging play, and accept their rulings with that in mind"; that's likely a good default position for a player to take until they see evidence that they should not do so.
I think that's a bit different than the GM being a fan of the PCs.....those are the characters in the game. All the participants getting along is more of a social matter. A GM being a fan of the characters is about the fiction of the game, not the social dynamic of the table.
Whether one agrees with that, however, is not what I most want to call attention to. The practice proposed is likely more relevant to efforts at elevated RPG, rather than casual gaming. It makes an assumption that a group will not be content with less than the most unique and interesting play that they can engage in. If that is right, then on top of other considerations already laid out in this thread for what will identify best practices, there is the consideration of the seriousness or quality of RPG a group intends to be involved in. In another thread we talked about Bushido, which to my mind is most successful with this sort of elevated intent.
Coming back to a point I made earlier, it seems
If that is so, then identifying a set of practices as '5e D&D' cannot be enough because that is too far down the hierarchy. It cannot be right to say that
- There are ways to play (modes, and hybrids of modes)
- There are qualities of play (what we decide to count as good)
- There are game rulesets (e.g. the designed artifacts of D&D) under cultures of interpretation (e.g. rulings not rules versus COWTRA)
- At each step down this hierarchy (i.e. 1-3), for each combination up to that step, there can be a set of best practices
Because the practices put forward are based on trying to run D&D in a specific way. That's not a criticism of your practices! More an attempt to understand what is going on when we put forward any view of practices. What I'm suggesting is that the hierarchy must be respected: to say "5e D&D" will require commitments on modes, qualities and cultures.
I think you're breaking it out in a way that does make sense, but I don't think that we need to hold back at any stage. We can offer best practices.....or rather our take on best practices...at any level of your hierarchy. I would agree that the further you move along what you've laid out, the more specific things will get. And sure, at the top level, something like "Decide what style you want to play" is probably a good suggestion for a best practice.
However, my concern would be in establishing all those different tiers and styles and so forth. I mean, as a group we can't agree on any terms, and even just the idea of best practices has been met with resistance. The level and scope of definition that you're describing would take a miracle.