D&D General The DM is Not a Player; and Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock

[Micah Sweet]

That's just simply wrong.

Group can (and certainly should) make conscious effort to forge a story, with structure, characters arcs and naughty word without a pre-scripted plot. Well, pre-scripted plot on a hard rail ultimately contradicts this goal.

But that's besides the actual point.

Whatever kind of game the group plays, both players and GM need to make a conscious effort to push the game in the intended direction. If they are playing a dungeon crawl, then there must be dungeons and the PCs must venture in those dungeons. If they, say, playing comedy, then they need both work together to set up and deliver jokes that work. If they... Ok, I guess you've got my point.

Again, you are presenting your opinion as fact. There is no play style that all players "should" engage in, and having your story be emergent through play rather than forged consciously by the participants is 100% as valid as any other style. D&D is played many different ways, and your preferred style is not what anyone "should" be doing unless they want to.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's not a very interesting game if the absence of any given player character does not fundamentally mean it is a different game.

I vehemently disagree with that idea. That assumes that every player is a fundamental and vital part of the game, and that's simply not always the case. Many players are simply there to have a good time, or engage socially. Does their lack of commitment make that game uninteresting, even if other players are committed to it? I cannot accept that. What if a new player comes in, and engages casually? Does the whole suddenly become uninteresting?

 

[Maxperson]

Can't say the same about Raggi or that LL dude.

Yeah, but Raggi had Fred, Daphne and Velma to keep him going.

 

[Azzy]

I'm done with this discussion because it's just you explaining to us that the meaning of the word's Player and Referee have been redefined by Wizards of the Coast and hasbro.

WotC is using the same definition of the word "player" as the vast majority of English-speaking people use—that is, "one who plays a game". D&D is a game. DM's are playing said game. To claim otherwise is utterly ridiculous.

I assume they bought Websters and get to define the english language now?

Pedantry here, but Websters and other dictionaries do not dictate what words mean—common usage does. Dictionaries provide definitions that reflect that common usage as the language evolves.

 

[Azzy]

It's a joke about punk rock being dead.

Yeah, but post-punk is undead.

 

[Charlaquin]

I really don't understand why you are making this argument.

There are plenty of DMs (as this is a growing field) that are hustling to make money. It's a job. People need to make money.

There was an article last year about a woman who, when unemployed, supported her gender transformation by DMing on-line games because she couldn't get employment through regular means. I know someone who currently works at a Dunkies during the day and makes ends meet by DMing for pay (on-line) at night.

They don't do it because it's fun. They do it because they get paid.

Just like everyone else who works. We work to get paid.

EDIT: given the rise of the so-called "gig economy" and recent issue people have had with the covid-induced downturn, it does seem ... wrong ... to continue to make this argument. I just don't see what your point is. If a person who is working is having fun, that's great. That has no bearing on their payment. And it is certainly not true that "a creative" has to "have fun" to be good; a lot of creative work is drudgery.

We’re getting pretty far from the topic here, but productivity does suffer when laborers feel their work is pointless, and improve when they enjoy their work. And if people were paid based on the actual value of their labor, then that would have an impact on their pay. That isn’t really how the world we live in works though.

 

[clearstream]

You're saying up is down and east is west, though. The game explicitly says the DMs are players. You can change it for your game if you are the DM and just make yourself not a player, I suppose. You have no ability to say that I am not a player when I DM, though.

I might misunderstand, but it appears to me the resistance is to the DM being defined as a player "like any other player".

A DM might well be a player in some sense, without being "like any other player". So far as I can tell, failure to separate those points is leading to a lot of repetitive argument here.

 

[Imaculata]

The DM is simply a player with a different set of responsibilities. He is both a parcipant, and a sort of storyteller and a sort of referee.

But do not make the mistake of thinking that just because we use the words "referee" and "storyteller" to describe what a DM does, that that is exactly what he is. We use terms that people are familiar with, to help explain and approximate the very unique role that a DM occupies in the game. He is neither exactly any one of those two things.

He is sort of a storyteller, in the sense that he often narrates, and writes plots and characters. But he does not always dictate every outcome of his plots, like a writer might. Because the other players can also sway the plot.

He is sort of a referee, in the way that he makes rulings, and is expected to be most knowledgable about the game's rules. But he is not a neutral arbiter, and his calls are not the final words on everything. The ruling side of the game can be collaborative between the DM and the other players. And he is a parcipant in a way that a normal referee is not.

It is easy to get hung up on those words we use to explain what a DM does. But the role of the DM is neither one of those things to the letter.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

We’re getting pretty far from the topic here, but productivity does suffer when laborers feel their work is pointless, and improve when they enjoy their work. And if people were paid based on the actual value of their labor, then that would have an impact on their pay. That isn’t really how the world we live in works though.

I saw this, and will address it first because it's a tangent and thus will probably get buried by my second response to another post from yesterday which is actually on-topic.

So we can imagine various idealized worlds in which people are paid based upon the "actual value of their labor." Call it "util" or something. A world in which a teacher that adds a great deal to society is paid more than, say, a person who makes arbitrage profits. But as you note, we do not live in that idealized society, nor is there some way to measure the "actual value of labor" ... except money. Money is how we are able to allocate scarce resources (in this example, your time, your skills, etc.). This is overly-simplified, but you get the gist.

The quickest way to make laborers feel their work is pointless is ... to not value their labor. To not pay them for their labor. By definition, you pay someone because you want them to do something that they would otherwise not be doing if it's an issue of employment. I think that we should all want the terms and conditions of work to be better; more vacation time, a safer working environment, more breaks during the work day, more allowance for sick time, more ancillary benefits, and so on. But whenever I see someone talk about how "fun" work should be, I see someone who is usually plugged into a certain mindset and is neglecting the vast majority of workers; a video game company can claim that they are "fun" with free sodas and nerf battles (never mind the crunch) and google can claim that they are "fun" (never mind that people work there because of the pay and prestige), but most Americans do not work at those type of companies. They want good pay, good benefits, and a safe working environment. Not "fun" or "fulfillment" from their work.

The reason that this (tangentially) ties into the DM thread is because the original claim is, IIRC, that the people being paid to DM are probably just doing it because it's fun, and why not? And you know what? Sure, there are some people that are doing it for just that reason. But I know that there are other people that are not doing for that reason. Moreover, because D&D is so much more diverse now in so many ways, including economically, it is not correct to say that the people who DM for pay are likely just doing it for "fun." I just gave two examples- one that I read about, and one that I know personally, of people that were depending on the money that they were earning from DMing. I don't know the socioeconomic situation of the women who used DMing for pay to support herself when she was transitioning, but I know the person that I know who DMs for pay at night on-line never went to college, and has only had service industry jobs.

The point being, the way the world works I always try to have the utmost respect for people's labor. In fact, given the increasing rise of the so-called "gig" economy, I am often impressed at the ways some people can hustle to make ends meet. If DMing pays your bills, more power to you.

 

[Maxperson]

I might misunderstand, but it appears to me the resistance is to the DM being defined as a player "like any other player".

A DM might well be a player in some sense, without being "like any other player". So far as I can tell, failure to separate those points is leading to a lot of repetitive argument here.

And I think that's because the game has two categories of player. One category is people playing the game, where the DM is "like any other player." All people at the table are playing the game. The second category is role, where one player is DM and the rest of the players are Players. The DM is not a Player, but he is a player. If someone can't understand that distinction, it's going to cause problems when they participate in this discussion.