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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 7652244" data-attributes="member: 32740">I think Mamet is an excellent writer and his instruction is spot-on for screenwriting.  I'm a little reluctant to just say, "Do this same thing with D&D."  It's a serious mistake that is repeatedly made - the things that make a good book do not necessarily make good D&D.  The things that make a good movie do not necessarily make good D&D.  Books, movies, TV shows, plays, D&D; they share many of the same requirements, the same terminology, but they are NOT INTERCHANGABLE.For one thing the DM is not actually writing most of the scene - THE PLAYERS ARE!  The players determine what their characters motivations are - NOT THE DM.  The players write their characters dialogue - NOT THE DM.  D&D is not a wholly written medium, nor is it a medium dominated by visuals as movies and TV are.  The job of the DM is not like the job Mamet assigns to the screenwriter - to ensure that the hero repeatedly fails or is otherwise prevented from succeeding until the end of the show.  The DM has to compose adventures in such a way that at any point when the players come up with better ideas that they can actually succeed prematurely.  It is considered BAD DMing to write as Mamet suggests and we even have our own name for it - railroading.I think our greatest challenge, our most needed skill, is the ability to re-write our entire show on the fly.  To not have our episode or our entire multi-story arc collapse in a puff of logic just because the PC's succeeded in achieving goals before we initially planned.  We have to anticipate that they will REPEATEDLY achieve goals before we really want them to.  We have to RELY on the idea that things will NOT develop as we WRITE them to develop and that we will then have to REWRITE everything that follows quickly and believably.I am not David Mamet, however.  I could be wrong.  But I suspect that he'd see the truthiness of this.</blockquote>

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