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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9767391" data-attributes="member: 4937">There are two things going on, particularly in the 1e AD&D DMG.One, Gygax gives some of the strongest examples of play and descriptions of play in any rulebook ever written.  That passage with the party investigating a dungeon that ends in one of them getting randomly eaten by a ghoul with little chance of survival is not only believable from the rules, but actually highlighting what might otherwise be considered (or would be considered today a problem) in the rules.  Gygax is admitting very openly based on experience what the rules are designed to do and showing a GM how to apply them, and that experience includes your character being devoured by ghouls.  It's almost a horror game, but that example of play is super intriguing and interesting, and honestly the sort of thing that a whole lot more games should be striving to include in their rulebooks.  Games like Vampire: The Masquerade, Mouseguard, FATE Core, Dungeon World, Monsters and Other Childish Things, even Ironsworn have comparatively terrible examples of play because they feature things that are quite clearly cherry picked and involved no real application of the rules nor the dice nor the likely course of play in a social group.  Every game designer should be studying the example of play in the DMG.And two, Gygax describes standards of good GMing that prevail at his table, and they are very specific to his table without Gygax really making any indication or acknowledgement that his table is pretty abnormal and what is necessary for his game is probably not necessary and even counterproductive to four or five friends playing together.  It becomes really clear to me in retrospect after getting a lot of experience as a GM that it's not that Gygax's advice about GMing is dysfunctional and overtly hostile to players, but rather it's advice from one experienced GM to another GM on the assumption that GM has 12 or more players weekly not all of whom can be expected to show up every night and not all of whom are close friends of the GM.  Once you understand that, then Gygax's comments on how to be a good GM become quite reasonable and indeed very insightful and worth following.</blockquote>

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