D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Don Durito]

And this highlights the problem. You highlight a person calling his GM overall good with a single situation complained about as evidence of a bad GM.

If that’s the criteria there are no good GMs.

No don't be silly. The guy is calling his players idiots.

"Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?".

 

[Lanefan]

And even when it is among good, close friends, rules are not some horrible affront. I mean, obviously a crappy rule could be such. Bur rules in general are tools. Even among close friends, they can be useful tools.

They can be useful tools, sure; but that shouldn't prevent us from being able to swap out those tools for something better (analogy: tweaking or rewriting a rule that's not getting the job done) should the need arise.

Such tweakings should, obviously, be done between campaigns; not always possible if-when your campaign goes on for ages like mine do. My only option at the moment is to bullrush some changes into my ongoing campaign, and I reeeeeeally don't want to do that.

 

[Maxperson]

There seem to be an awful lot of posts on reddit that say things like "We couldn't solve the GM's mystery so he said we are all idiots. How should I deal with this situation as he's a good GM?"

So I don't think bad GM's are that uncommon - or players who put up with then far more than they should.

They are that rare. The problem is that with multiple millions of players, there are enough DMs that if even 1 in 100 were like that, it would still be a significant number of DMs for the internet to complain about. And humans go to the internet to complain many, many more times as often as they go to say how good someone or something was.

You're just seeing a lot of it posted, which is deceptive in that it makes it incorrectly seem like it happens left, right and center. It's like Teslas. People are all like, "I would never drive a Tesla, because they catch fire and kill you." The news has sensationalized Tesla car fires and it seems like it happens all the time. The truth is that Tesla car fires are much more rare than gasoline vehicle fires, and nobody talks about how they won't drive a gas vehicle because they catch fire and kill you. That's because even gas vehicle fires are pretty rare. Gas vehicle fires don't get the ratings like Tesla fires do, so they aren't all over the news.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

They can be useful tools, sure; but that shouldn't prevent us from being able to swap out those tools for something better (analogy: tweaking or rewriting a rule that's not getting the job done) should the need arise.

Such tweakings should, obviously, be done between campaigns; not always possible if-when your campaign goes on for ages like mine do. My only option at the moment is to bullrush some changes into my ongoing campaign, and I reeeeeeally don't want to do that.

Well, I was speaking more about rules for the friend-group's behavior, but yes, that too.

That is, I was thinking of stuff like, say, a rule for who pays for lunch. "We round-robin it based on where your birthday falls in a given year" or "each pays individually" or "we all pitch into a communal lunch pot, and if it comes up short for a meal, Dave picks up the rest, but we never ask Dave to put anything into the pot." Or whatever. Such a rule is a useful thing for the group to have--but as with anything else, the group may choose to set it aside for a particular outing, e.g. "It's Mary's birthday, so we're treating her to lunch, everyone else will split her bill in addition to paying for what they each ate."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

They are that rare. The problem is that with multiple millions of players, there are enough DMs that if even 1 in 100 were like that, it would still be a significant number of DMs for the internet to complain about. And humans go to the internet to complain many, many more times as often as they go to say how good someone or something was.

You're just seeing a lot of it posted, which is deceptive in that it makes it incorrectly seem like it happens left, right and center. It's like Teslas. People are all like, "I would never drive a Tesla, because they catch fire and kill you." The news has sensationalized Tesla car fires and it seems like it happens all the time. The truth is that Tesla car fires are much more rare than gasoline vehicle fires, and nobody talks about how they won't drive a gas vehicle because they catch fire and kill you. That's because even gas vehicle fires are pretty rare. Gas vehicle fires don't get the ratings like Tesla fires do, so they aren't all over the news.

I really don't think they ARE that rare--or, at least, merely "pretty mediocre" GMs are not nearly that rare. And "pretty mediocre" GM can mean both "just really mid on everything"...and "great at two things and garbage at two things" or "great at two things, below average but still okay at two things, and slightly bad but not offensively bad at one thing."

This is why the standard people seem to hold up every. single. damned. time, where the ONLY options are "the GM is obviously the worst GM ever, just never ever play with them" or "the GM is perfect and never does anything even remotely problematic at all, ever" gets so incredibly irritating. It's entirely possible to have a GM who is mostly good, but has one or two areas where they aren't. Or someone who is absolutely PHENOMENAL at a few things, and disappointingly poor at others. Or whatever.

This presumption that every GM is either perfectly good at every single thing, or perfectly BAD at every single thing, just doesn't hold muster. The vast majority of GMs have at least one area where they aren't particularly good. I'd even assert that a majority of GMs are outright poor with at least one of the skills demanded of GMs in the "traditional GM" format.

 

[Don Durito]

What is actually at stake here in the argument about how rare bad GMs are meant to be?

Now, as in many times in this thread, camps seem to appear without it being actually all that clear what the argument is supposed to be about.

 

[clearstream]

Whereas I see the extremely simple and obvious fix of "there are rules we agree to abide by" plus "if we choose not to abide by them, we make that clear and talk it out openly" (which is, itself, another rule we agree to abide by, explicitly).

(Emphasis mine.) Game rules don't enforce themselves, ergo their presence in a text no matter how nested does not guarantee they are followed (and this is setting aside differences in interpretation.)

Consider the rule "1. Agree with Clearstream". Could a second rule "2. Obey rule 1." guarantee that you follow it?

In the end it's the adoption of the lusory-attitude, a fact about players, that procures they put rules in force for themselves. A form of social contract. I believe learned habits or predispositions have something to do with it too.

 

[Maxperson]

I really don't think they ARE that rare--or, at least, merely "pretty mediocre" GMs are not nearly that rare. And "pretty mediocre" GM can mean both "just really mid on everything"...and "great at two things and garbage at two things" or "great at two things, below average but still okay at two things, and slightly bad but not offensively bad at one thing."

For sure. There are a lot of mediocre DMs. Mediocre DMs aren't bad DMs and what you and others keep describing are bad DMs.

This is why the standard people seem to hold up every. single. damned. time, where the ONLY options are "the GM is obviously the worst GM ever, just never ever play with them" or "the GM is perfect and never does anything even remotely problematic at all, ever" gets so incredibly irritating. It's entirely possible to have a GM who is mostly good, but has one or two areas where they aren't. Or someone who is absolutely PHENOMENAL at a few things, and disappointingly poor at others. Or whatever.

This presumption that every GM is either perfectly good at every single thing, or perfectly BAD at every single thing, just doesn't hold muster. The vast majority of GMs have at least one area where they aren't particularly good. I'd even assert that a majority of GMs are outright poor with at least one of the skills demanded of GMs in the "traditional GM" format.

Perhaps if the examples weren't of DMs calling their players idiots, railroading, ignoring the fiction to zap a pixie into place to cause a fall, we wouldn't think you guys were talking about horrible DMs and argue against that. Those things aren't "not offensively bad."

 

[Maxperson]

What is actually at stake here in the argument about how rare bad GMs are meant to be?

Now, as in many times in this thread, camps seem to appear without it being actually all that clear what the argument is supposed to be about.

It gets brought up as part of other discussions. Say DM authority.

One side argues that the DMG gives the DM absolute authority, but the DM can't just do anything he wants because many things would be abuse of authority and violate the social contract.

The other side then starts pointing out the rare really bad DM who calls his players idiots, teleports the group into the middle of a volcano, accomplishes everything of import with his DMPC, etc. as attempted proof that DM authority is bad.

Then the first side has to point out that bad DMs are really rare, and that those rare bad DMs aren't a result of DM authority. They're just jerks, which is a people problem. No rules changes are going to fix them. It's not like a jerk is going to say to himself, "Well darn! I was going to teleport the party into some lava, because they ruined the encounter, but this rule here says I can't." and then not do it.

 

[Hussar]

Wrong. The thing about failed skill checks is that if the character had been more proficent, they would have succeeded. Ergo, any failed check is a consequence of the character being insufficiently skilled. Pixies don't come into it, it's no ones fault but the person using the skill.

The only exception is critical failures* on a natural one, if that rule is used. Because the check fails irrespective of skill. In which case, it could be due to something outside of the character's control, such as pixies. That's why a lot of tables don't use critical failure on skill checks.

*and successes

Note that if the skill check was with disadvantage, and they only role one 1, then whatever caused the disadvantage must have been the cause of the failure.

Not true. You could easily have succeeded because of helpful pixies. Again, the system in no way gives any indication of how a result was achieved. You succeeded because a friendly air spirit gave you a boost up and you climbed the wall. Again, nothing in the mechanics invalidates that interpretation because the mechanics do not give any indication at all about how something occured, just that it occured and it is now completely up to you to make it make sense in your game.

Which means, in a very narrativist game like Ironsworn, I can make it 100% simulationist by your definition simply by choosing results that mold the narrative based on this simulationist priority. So long as the group chooses narrations of results that fit within the realm of plausible to explain those results, my very, very narrativist game (again, Ironsworn is by no means even remotely sim) just became as simulationist as FKR. It is 100% equally sim to all other sim games.

Which makes the definition of simulationist play that passes off simulation onto the narrator a ridiculous definition.