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

[Umbran]

My rule of thumb when I DM is to ask myself "would I want to play under me if I was a player?"

Eh, the trope is that if you run into your clone, you're eventually going to try to kill the other you, so no thanks.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, yes, because I (and, I suspect, many DMs) tend to run the game I'd like someone else to run so I could play in it.

Many, but not all. I believe there are a fair number of DMs who get married to the concept of their world or the NPCs they create or the plot they created or the setting details and forget that the game isn't (just) for their (the DM's) amusement. I tend to find the Original Sin of bad DMs is forgetting that the players are equally important to making the game work. It is the source of inflexible DMs, godlike DMPCs, railroads, "The DM's Thinly Disguised Fetish" and the Power Tripping God Emperor DMs. Almost every sin in basically boils down to "not respecting their players" and I think if they could be players on their own games, they would hate it.

 

[Remathilis]

Eh, the trope is that if you run into your clone, you're eventually going to try to kill the other you, so no thanks.

“If I had a clone, I’d make out with myself.” (SNL 10/12/02 - S28 E2)

 

[Hussar]

If 25% of DMs were truly bad I see no way the game would be as popular as it is today.

Why?

Lots and lots of players will put up with TONS of bad DM's. The hobby is replete with stories about them. Some put up with it because they just don't know any better. Some put up with it because they want to hang out with their friends. Heck, of the times I've seen player revolts, it wasn't like it happened at the first session. Player revolts, IME, occur after weeks or even months of play.

That about 1 in 4 DM's is bad should not shock anyone. 1 in 4 of pretty much anything is bad. They might be bad due to inexperience. They might be bad because they learned to play from other bad DM's. They might be bad for a thousand reasons. And that's not counting the thousand more reasons why someone might just not like a particular DM. Heck, I've had lots and lots of players sit at my table and not stay very long. Just mismatches in playstyle or whatnot. Happens all the time.

But, honestly? I've sat at some truly spectacularly bad tables. The DM, when questioned if he thought his NPC's were more important to the campaign than the players very honestly said, "Of course". :wow: The DM who was so cack handed railroady that the entire group quit on the spot. The DM whose personal grooming was so bad that the group simply couldn't sit at the table anymore.

Am I a great DM? Nope. I'm average at best. I try my best, and I hope my players enjoy my game, but, at no point am I so arrogant as to think that I'm fantastic at what I do. I'm lucky in that I've managed to build groups of like minded players over the years and there have been some spectacularly good groups that I've been lucky enough to be a part of. But a group is always only as good as the members of that group.

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Edit to add.

Let's not forget that the overwhelming majority of players out there only play for a year or two. There is a constant cycling of players going on. Of the gamers I gamed with when I was in uni, I'm the only one that's still playing. Sure, my current group has been gaming for a while, but, that's not normal. How many gamers go to a year of organized play and then never play again? How many DM's get the Beginner Box for Christmas, play for a while and then move on? Heck, the old Moldvay Basic set sold something like a MILLION copies, yet the gaming population was never more than a few hundred thousand after the bubble burst. Until the recent bubble with 5e, the gaming population was tiny. If people stayed with the game, the game would have grown huge long ago. But they don't. My experiences, your experiences and everyone else's is such a tiny slice of the fandom. Why is it so hard to believe that there are a minority (say about 1 in 4 or 1 in 5) DM's out there that are bad?

 

[kermit4karate]

That about 1 in 4 DM's is bad should not shock anyone.

It doesn't because it's not true.

 

[Faolyn]

Rules have weight, a sense that you're playing wrong if you don't do what they say.

At my table, when we play D&D and Level Up, we let you have up to three points of inspiration at a time. The game says one. Are we playing D&D/Level Up wrong?

I mean, there's a big tangent on this thread about house rules. I think we agree that most tables use at least one. Are millions of gamers playing wrong by not doing what the game says?

Also, in a game that can be played in many different ways like D&D and most of its relatives, having a rule governing behavior says that other ways should not be pursued, which is something of a slap in the face to those who disagree with that rule.

D&D says (or said, in 5.14) that druids can't wear metal armor. If you disagree and think they should be able to wear metal (metal is natural!), is that a slap in your face?

D&D says that a spellcaster can cast one spell per round (with an exception for bonus action cantrips). If you disagree and think they should be able to cast more, is that a slap in your face?

D&D says that any race can be any class. If you disagree and think there should be limitations on what race can be what class, is that a slap in your face?

D&D says that paladins are expected to follow an oath (or be Lawful Good, in earlier editions). If you disagree because want to be able to smite your enemies and get a cool warhorse but don't want to be bound by an oath or alignment, is that a slap in the face?

No, and it's utterly ridiculous to think that. The game isn't insulting you by writing down how it expects to be played.

And now that rule can be cited by your players whenever things don't go the way they prefer, putting pressure on you to "tow the line" if they don't think you're a big enough fan of the players to suit them.

...do you really think you're going to get players who are actually playing a PtbA game say "you're not being enough of a fan"? I mean, really? Has this ever actually happened, or are you just making this up?

And if it did happen, did it happen because the GM was being antagonistic or because you had a jerk of a player who wasn't playing the game themselves correctly by assuming that "be a fan" meant "kowtow to the players"?

 

[Maxperson]

I had a chance to look at https://www.enworld.org/threads/in-your-experience-how-good-are-gms.293390/*. All I can say is that I get that some people are incredibly unlucky when it comes to DMs but I also find it hard to believe that A) D&D would be as popular as it is if most of the DMs were terrible (to the point of players "revolting") and B) That there's an easy solution to it.

I mean, I've had plenty of DMs that were just okay and I've hit a couple that ran games I wasn't interested in, but I wouldn't say they were bad GMs. Meanwhile even with the so-so GMs the other people that I played with made the game fun and worthwhile to me. So to a certain degree I do think this is just a question of preferences and expectations. I don't expect a DM to be semi-professional and there will always be things I would want done differently. But I also think that the game is largely what you make out of it. Like the song says, you can't always get what you want.

Over decades of play and more GMs than I can count if I include public games I could count the number of truly bad GMs on one hand and still have fingers left. But it's also sadly human nature to remember the bad more than the good, the memory of that one truly terrible GM can crowd out the memory of a dozen good GMs. Same way that I talk about bad players ... I've had a lot of fantastic players but I'll always remember the one that wanted to be a werewolf. I know any one person's personal experience isn't an indication of anything but when I've experienced (probably) hundreds of GMs and I've experienced only a handful of bad ones I tend to think I simply have different expectations and definition of "bad".

*answers if you don't want to bother following the link - Most of them 8.7%, More than half, but not a lot more 19.2%, Less than half, my GM's have been mostly good 46.2%, Very few. I've had lots of great GM's 26%.

The biggest issue with that thread is that it doesn't define good and bad. Is a bad DM simply one that is boring? Or is a bad DM one who railroads and drops comets from the sky on a party when a player annoys him? I'd argue the former isn't a bad DM and the latter is.

 

[kermit4karate]

At my table, when we play D&D and Level Up, we let you have up to three points of inspiration at a time. The game says one. Are we playing D&D/Level Up wrong?

I mean, there's a big tangent on this thread about house rules. I think we agree that most tables use at least one. Are millions of gamers playing wrong by not doing what the game says?


D&D says (or said, in 5.14) that druids can't wear metal armor. If you disagree and think they should be able to wear metal (metal is natural!), is that a slap in your face?

D&D says that a spellcaster can cast one spell per round (with an exception for bonus action cantrips). If you disagree and think they should be able to cast more, is that a slap in your face?

D&D says that any race can be any class. If you disagree and think there should be limitations on what race can be what class, is that a slap in your face?

D&D says that paladins are expected to follow an oath (or be Lawful Good, in earlier editions). If you disagree because want to be able to smite your enemies and get a cool warhorse but don't want to be bound by an oath or alignment, is that a slap in the face?

No, and it's utterly ridiculous to think that. The game isn't insulting you by writing down how it expects to be played.


...do you really think you're going to get players who are actually playing a PtbA game say "you're not being enough of a fan"? I mean, really? Has this ever actually happened, or are you just making this up?

And if it did happen, did it happen because the GM was being antagonistic or because you had a jerk of a player who wasn't playing the game themselves correctly by assuming that "be a fan" meant "kowtow to the players"?

All over the game, all over the books, they talk about having fun and imagination. I don't get the feeling from any forward in any core rulebook from any edition of D&D that the authors took the rules as seriously as many of us do now.

I think they'd be like, "You do you! Change what you want! Above all, enjoy yourself!" That's the vibe I've always gotten from D&D.

 

[Faolyn]

In my experience, allowing non-standard races isn't usually a cause for concern. But it's when someone wants to play a juvenile red dragon or a lich that we have to, like, parley about it.

ince both those things are far more powerful than any other racial statblock, that's blatantly unfair to the other players. That's where the line is. If that player doesn't get it or doesn't care, then they don't have to play.

Or, you play a game like GURPS where everything is built on points and you can actually build a dragon or lich character that's equal to the others.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As previously noted, I can see the point for D&D, but only because that game holds an absolutely unique position in the market that makes some forms of experimentation or innovation difficult to do well.

But, that doesn't hold for any other game, and similarity to D&D should not be considered an obstacle. If they have inspiration to try something, I say they should go for it!

Who is "they"? I'm talking about setting hard rules to govern GM behavior in an RPG. I'm not in favor of them.