Rob Donoghue is a roleplaying game designer who helped create Fate (in general, and several of the specific variants) and Cortex systems. Recently, he made some observations on GM advice, leaning heavily into one point - it is very difficult to test whether the advice actually works or not.
Say you are given a piece of advice, and you try it out. The session you first use it in goes really well, or really badly, or somewhere in between. So, did the advice work? How do you tell? Did the session go well, or badly, because of that advice, or in spite of it? Even with a particular group, RPG sessions are not really repeatable events, and there's a slew of things that can go wrong or well - you cannot really focus on one variable to test, because the players each carry with them variables that change from day to day, week to week.
So, you have to try advice several times over before you can assess its value. But many of us only game every week or two - it can be months before you can really say that you've given a bit of advice a fair shake.
Which is not to say advice is useless, but given the long time you have to work at it to determine if it helps, it pays to vet the advice first, and that includes some things that often get lost in our discussions - who is the advice supposed to help, and the reason you want to do the advised thing
We've got a couple of threads now that touch on railroading, for instance, and if history is a guide, very quickly they'll include a lot of "You should do X!" - detailing the action to be taken, but not detailing who that action is supposed to help, or why.
Like, advising people on making their games "less railroady" - before we listen to that advice, we should ask - who at my table is having issues, and is reducing railroadyness really going to fix their problem?
Say you are given a piece of advice, and you try it out. The session you first use it in goes really well, or really badly, or somewhere in between. So, did the advice work? How do you tell? Did the session go well, or badly, because of that advice, or in spite of it? Even with a particular group, RPG sessions are not really repeatable events, and there's a slew of things that can go wrong or well - you cannot really focus on one variable to test, because the players each carry with them variables that change from day to day, week to week.
So, you have to try advice several times over before you can assess its value. But many of us only game every week or two - it can be months before you can really say that you've given a bit of advice a fair shake.
Which is not to say advice is useless, but given the long time you have to work at it to determine if it helps, it pays to vet the advice first, and that includes some things that often get lost in our discussions - who is the advice supposed to help, and the reason you want to do the advised thing
We've got a couple of threads now that touch on railroading, for instance, and if history is a guide, very quickly they'll include a lot of "You should do X!" - detailing the action to be taken, but not detailing who that action is supposed to help, or why.
Like, advising people on making their games "less railroady" - before we listen to that advice, we should ask - who at my table is having issues, and is reducing railroadyness really going to fix their problem?