MGibster
Legend
Needing a mentor to show you the difficult ropes is another form of gatekeeping.
We're kind of lowering the bar on what it means to gatekeep, aren't we? At this point just needing the rules is a form of gatekeeping.
Needing a mentor to show you the difficult ropes is another form of gatekeeping.
Not at all. If you cannot learn to GM from the rulebooks, but instead need a mentor to walk you though it, that's a problem. Having a mentor isn't a problem, the problem is NEEDing a mentor to be a GM.We're kind of lowering the bar on what it means to gatekeep, aren't we? At this point just needing the rules is a form of gatekeeping.
Not at all. If you cannot learn to GM from the rulebooks, but instead need a mentor to walk you though it, that's a problem. Having a mentor isn't a problem, the problem is NEEDing a mentor to be a GM.
If the only way to learn the job is to be mentored, then there's gatekeeping. Not all gatekeeping is bad, look at being an engineer, but I submit if that a hobby activity that shouldn't require mentoring to play is widely thought to need mentoring, then there's gatekeeping going on that needn't.
A mentor is not required to be a GM. It just helps. There’s no gatekeeping. Nobody is going to stop someone new to gaming from being a GM. It’s just a lot easier if you have someone who can help.
I somewhat disagree, but assume that you are correct. So what? On the gaming night in question - given how the game progressed - the most important thing that happened all night was the player intervening to help move the story forward.
So I see the issue, you are defining importance as "possessing the most authority. No one disagrees that the DM has the most authority. Instead, I counter that importance is based on what is actually done - not what one is empowered to do but remains undone.
A mentor is not required to be a GM. It just helps. There’s no gatekeeping. Nobody is going to stop someone new to gaming from being a GM. It’s just a lot easier if you have someone who can help.
I don't think such a broad definition of gatekeeping is a useful one. Risk is a more complicated boardgame than Sorry. Are the makers of Risk guilty of gatekeeping, or is their game just different from Sorry?Needing a mentor to show you the difficult ropes is another form of gatekeeping.
And, D&D is bad in it's manuals (usually, some older exceptions) at teaching anything useful about GMing. Largely, I think, because a lot of material on HOW to GM would make many returning customers upset. There's already loads of complaints about the 'wasted' space in the 5e DMG that does talk about the basics of GMing. So, yeah, that's gatekeeping as well.
I huge amount of the problem is that we all think that the way we, personally, prefer games is how games should be, and that's been locked in through a few decades of GM's doing the heavy load lifting. But, you don't have to. You can offload a lot of the tracking onto the players. You can using random generated dungeons, either from the back of the DMG or any number of tools online. You can pretty quickly pull encounters straight from the MM that will work, especially with other neophyte players, or you can use an online tool like KFC to do work for you. In game, all you have to do is listen to what your players say and then call for checks when needed. It's not hard, but it would probably not look like a game you'd prefer. But, that's okay, you're GMing. And, maybe that game doesn't need to be like yours.
But, this conception we have that DMing should look like our DMing (and mine doesn't look like the example above) and we know how much work we do so therefore DMing is HARD is really gatekeeping -- it's stepping on games that don't look like ours.
I was guilty of all of these things for pretty much my entire hobby experience. GMing was clearly the toughest job. It's only after I've started playing other games that I realized exactly how much mental overhead I've borrowed in how I've run D&D, overhead that wasn't necessary to run a game of D&D. That that overhead was a combination of how I was "mentored" and the lack of good, clear methods of running in the rules. That I didn't have to do it that way. That let me then choose what I kept and didn't, and the fact that I've chosen to keep stuff I didn't have to is my choice, and not a requirement of GMing.
EMWorld is a great place to be intimidated as a new GM. We climb deep into the gears here, because we're gaming nerds that like to argue arguing about gaming. It's not as friendly and welcoming as you think.
Not at all. If you cannot learn to GM from the rulebooks, but instead need a mentor to walk you though it, that's a problem. Having a mentor isn't a problem, the problem is NEEDing a mentor to be a GM.
If the only way to learn the job is to be mentored, then there's gatekeeping. Not all gatekeeping is bad, look at being an engineer, but I submit if that a hobby activity that shouldn't require mentoring to play is widely thought to need mentoring, then there's gatekeeping going on that needn't.
The DM is still first among equals. Even if the player occasionally does more in session than the DM, he still doesn't take over the first among equals spot. The DM still has far more responsibility, puts in far more work prepping for the game, plays far more roles, etc., than the players do.
So, then, you agree GMing isn't that hard and having a nentor is just helping, like with anything else? Like, say, being a player?
We're into a place where there's simultaneously an argument that GMing is hard to kearn on your own and that it's not hard enough to really need a mentor.
Either it's easy enough to pick up from the rules ir it isn't. Which are you staking, here?