D&D General The DM Shortage

[Desdichado]

Why are you assigning a massive portion of the gm's role to a player? If you are saying that the gm should do that there's two big problems.

First problem is that the gm does those things normally in trad game play... Heck even classic does it. You aren't describing anything new that requires a new term.

Second problem is a pretty big one & relates to how "the modern style" is just trying to claim Hickman manifesto severed from mechanics & game play because some of d&d's most memorable npcs come from that very set of points
A convenient term that comes up occasionally, this describes it & other flavors well

Six Cultures of Play

A blog about roleplaying games and theory focused on Mythras, Dungeons and Dragons, and OSR games.

retiredadventurer.blogspot.com

I guess I'm struggling with what you mean by the severance from mechanics and game play. Read literally, that should mean that the Hickman Revolution only has relevance in an AD&D paradigm. Quite simply, the mechanics have very little impact on play style, and people with playstyle preferences (which are most people) will tend to run most games according to their playstyle, regardless of mechanics, and will probably also tend to dislike or be frustrated with games who's mechanics make their playstyle more difficult to pull off—or they will ignore or houserule significant portions of the mechanics anyway.

 

[Oofta]

I don't necessarily love or agree with all of what this guy says, but this particular video really nails it on the head, and I think is very directly relevant to the idea that playstyle expectations and how WotC has addressed (or not) that angle leads to the "DM Crisis."


That's some grade-A great suggestions on how the game could be written better to facilitate DMing and make it more appealing and less intimidating to folks who maybe only know 5e.

I feel like a movie reviewer here, but I disagree with almost everything. The guy has a decent overall point, that modules don't do a very good job of teaching how to DM in his preferred style. Which, I get. Writing modules for public consumption is difficult and tend to be linear. I agree. However, I think it also misses the whole purpose of modules. Modules are designed for people that don't want to, or don't have the inclination to run home brew sandbox type campaigns.

So what does he talk about? That LMoP (Lost Mine of Phandalver) is terrible at teaching people how to run home campaigns. In his mind, the initial goblin encounter could have been simplified with three bullet points that there are dead horses, goblins use cover and run away. That this "should be enough for any DM". I looked at the actual text and it's a page or so and most of it is just walking through the DM on suggestions for introducing motivation for the players and how to set the scene. It also talks about how to run stealth, what to do if the PCs are defeated (don't TPK) and so on. It's not very long. But his bullet points? Even as an experienced DM I'm not sure what to do with that. Do the goblins attack? Are they just watching? How the heck a brand new DM would know what to do is beyond me.

Following this, Cragmaw Cavern could have been reduced from 8 pages to a single page spread. His version would have no mention of the trail to the hideout, what the goblins know, descriptions of the cave, how to read or use a map, no suggestions on how to use descriptions to set the environment. Also no guidance on how to run any of this, which is a good chunk of the text. The motivations and what NPCs know? All gone. Because all you need is a map with a list of monsters, right?

Rant about page order enforcing linearity. Umm, last time I checked books have pages. His version of course wouldn't include any "unnecessary" details. Like any information at all other than who's where. What are the goblins doing? What do they know? Bah! Too many pages! The one suggestion he has that I agree with and have suggested elsewhere is that as a starter module there should be links to some actual play videos, at least here and there. On the other hand search for "Lost Mine of Phandalver Stream" and there are plenty of examples if people learn better that way.

A glossary of who's who, what are the organization's goals might have been nice because that's pretty much where I start when I DM. But if you don't need or want that, it should also be something you can skip. Because he uses that as a jumping off point of the players going completely going off the rails and assisting Yeemik in taking over the goblins in the area. Really? Cool idea, bro. In a home game. There's no way to include sections all of that while simultaneously having short and concise. If you want to go that off the rails, you're running a home campaign. Modules simply can't cover all of that.

I think one of the main goals of the DMG should be how to run a home campaign. Modules are written for an entirely different reason, they're designed to be easy to pick up and run. Yes, they're going to be more linear. Modules can't, nor should they try to be, a "How to run a home campaign". They can be "How to run a module" which I think LMoP is okay at. How to run a sandbox home campaign is the province of the DMG.

 

[payn]

I feel like a movie reviewer here, but I disagree with almost everything. The guy has a decent overall point, that modules don't do a very good job of teaching how to DM in his preferred style. Which, I get. Writing modules for public consumption is difficult and tend to be linear. I agree. However, I think it also misses the whole purpose of modules. Modules are designed for people that don't want to, or don't have the inclination to run home brew sandbox type campaigns.

So what does he talk about? That LMoP (Lost Mine of Phandalver) is terrible at teaching people how to run home campaigns. In his mind, the initial goblin encounter could have been simplified with three bullet points that there are dead horses, goblins use cover and run away. That this "should be enough for any DM". I looked at the actual text and it's a page or so and most of it is just walking through the DM on suggestions for introducing motivation for the players and how to set the scene. It also talks about how to run stealth, what to do if the PCs are defeated (don't TPK) and so on. It's not very long. But his bullet points? Even as an experienced DM I'm not sure what to do with that. Do the goblins attack? Are they just watching? How the heck a brand new DM would know what to do is beyond me.

Following this, Cragmaw Cavern could have been reduced from 8 pages to a single page spread. His version would have no mention of the trail to the hideout, what the goblins know, descriptions of the cave, how to read or use a map, no suggestions on how to use descriptions to set the environment. Also no guidance on how to run any of this, which is a good chunk of the text. The motivations and what NPCs know? All gone. Because all you need is a map with a list of monsters, right?

Rant about page order enforcing linearity. Umm, last time I checked books have pages. His version of course wouldn't include any "unnecessary" details. Like any information at all other than who's where. What are the goblins doing? What do they know? Bah! Too many pages! The one suggestion he has that I agree with and have suggested elsewhere is that as a starter module there should be links to some actual play videos, at least here and there. On the other hand search for "Lost Mine of Phandalver Stream" and there are plenty of examples if people learn better that way.

A glossary of who's who, what are the organization's goals might have been nice because that's pretty much where I start when I DM. But if you don't need or want that, it should also be something you can skip. Because he uses that as a jumping off point of the players going completely going off the rails and assisting Yeemik in taking over the goblins in the area. Really? Cool idea, bro. In a home game. There's no way to include sections all of that while simultaneously having short and concise. If you want to go that off the rails, you're running a home campaign. Modules simply can't cover all of that.

I think one of the main goals of the DMG should be how to run a home campaign. Modules are written for an entirely different reason, they're designed to be easy to pick up and run. Yes, they're going to be more linear. Modules can't, nor should they try to be, a "How to run a home campaign". They can be "How to run a module" which I think LMoP is okay at. How to run a sandbox home campaign is the province of the DMG.

Thanks for writing up my thoughts!

I don’t think modules are meant for rookie GMs. Not to say a savvy person can’t start there but it’s not a good instruction. I think the two pager dungeon is good for that. I think WOTC should do both instead of one or the other YMMV.

 

[Desdichado]

Second problem is a pretty big one & relates to how "the modern style" is just trying to claim Hickman manifesto severed from mechanics & game play because some of d&d's most memorable npcs come from that very set of points
A convenient term that comes up occasionally, this describes it & other flavors well

Six Cultures of Play

A blog about roleplaying games and theory focused on Mythras, Dungeons and Dragons, and OSR games.

retiredadventurer.blogspot.com

Thats a very interesting blog post. It does wonders for explaining my frustration with people who pejoratively use "story games" to refer to what are really "trad games" because it gives story games a real category that is not just "any game where elements of a story are integrated in any fashion whatsoever" which is how I often hear them dismissed.

I think he loses it somewhat in the OC Neo-trad section, or rather, if that's a segment, I've never really heard of it and he's missing one, namely the one that we're talking about here right now. He starts off in giving it a high level description that sounds reasonable; story is an important goal, but relative to Hickman-influenced trad games, it's less the DM telling a story that the PCs participate in and more an emergent story that the PCs contribute to much more meaningfully. But as he describes it more and more, it turns into something that I don't recognize at all, and honestly, I wouldn't have imagined that what he's describing is a big enough cohort to merit being called out and labeled as a specific subset of the gaming population at all.

When, in his description of the OSR, he says that it "draws on the challenge-based gameplay from the proto-culture of D&D and combines it with an interest in PC agency, particularly in the form of decision-making. The goal is a game where PC decision-making, especially diegetic decision-making, is the driver of play." he comes close to defining the "modern" style, at least as I run it, except that instead of drawing on challenge-based gameplay from the proto-culture, it draws on trad-based play from the early to mid-80s Hickman revolution and merges it with PC agency and decision making as the driver of play. But the challenges aren't challenges in the traditional "classic" style, rather they're NPCs and their agendas.

Hmm... this has turned into a more interesting discussion than I anticipated.

 

[tetrasodium]

Thats a very interesting blog post. It does wonders for explaining my frustration with people who pejoratively use "story games" to refer to what are really "trad games" because it gives story games a real category that is not just "any game where elements of a story are integrated in any fashion whatsoever" which is how I often hear them dismissed.

I think he loses it somewhat in the OC Neo-trad section, or rather, if that's a segment, I've never really heard of it and he's missing one, namely the one that we're talking about here right now. He starts off in giving it a high level description that sounds reasonable; story is an important goal, but relative to Hickman-influenced trad games, it's less the DM telling a story that the PCs participate in and more an emergent story that the PCs contribute to much more meaningfully. But as he describes it more and more, it turns into something that I don't recognize at all, and honestly, I wouldn't have imagined that what he's describing is a big enough cohort to merit being called out and labeled as a specific subset of the gaming population at all.

When, in his description of the OSR, he says that it "draws on the challenge-based gameplay from the proto-culture of D&D and combines it with an interest in PC agency, particularly in the form of decision-making. The goal is a game where PC decision-making, especially diegetic decision-making, is the driver of play." he comes close to defining the "modern" style, at least as I run it, except that instead of drawing on challenge-based gameplay from the proto-culture, it draws on trad-based play from the early to mid-80s Hickman revolution and merges it with PC agency and decision making as the driver of play. But the challenges aren't challenges in the traditional "classic" style, rather they're NPCs and their agendas.

Hmm... this has turned into a more interesting discussion than I anticipated.

Yea I like both trad & story games but they are each pretty distinct things that tend to require a mindset & playstyle with elements that are almost if not outright toxic to the other.

The trouble with OC/Neotrad is that he's right about them developing within play constraints where player agency was basically zero (ie AL) & forum based play by post where everyone involves can trivially ignore anything & continue on with no real expectation of anything. In a more traditional face to face (or online equivalent like voip) that starts breaking down. The deemphasized depowered GM didn't matter because the organizers were running this particular module or whatever this week & the players were playing it ir they were playing something else. Whenever "The Modern Style" comes up though it seems to amount to "take neotrad PC players, keep the gm power the same, put those PCs & players in a more traditional game where they aren't limited to 'but guys the adventure is lmop(or whatever), you can't go to waterdeep to be pirates because Mary wrote how she wants to topple the pirate who killed the rest of the Sue family' & is just expected to run it while still being bound by all the adversarial & killergm type things a GM should avoid...

 

[tetrasodium]

I guess I'm struggling with what you mean by the severance from mechanics and game play. Read literally, that should mean that the Hickman Revolution only has relevance in an AD&D paradigm. Quite simply, the mechanics have very little impact on play style, and people with playstyle preferences (which are most people) will tend to run most games according to their playstyle, regardless of mechanics, and will probably also tend to dislike or be frustrated with games who's mechanics make their playstyle more difficult to pull off—or they will ignore or houserule significant portions of the mechanics anyway.

Except they did matter. The gm had a lot of control, PCs had mechanical needs, adventurer was a social class, PCs didn't have plot armor, players avoiding death while threading that needle created the story. Now with 5e & "the Modern Style" you invert those things like so & somehow that creates story on the back of the GM that just works even though PCs are now unrelatable starfish aliens free to ignore anything about the story's continuity whenever it's convenient but the GM gets bludgeoned by the social contract and "That is not the modern style" if they try to be a GM & push back.

 

[Cadence]

Except they did matter. The gm had a lot of control, PCs had mechanical needs, adventurer was a social class, PCs didn't have plot armor, players avoiding death while threading that needle created the story. Now with 5e & "the Modern Style" you invert those things like so & somehow that creates story on the back of the GM that just works even though PCs are now unrelatable starfish aliens free to ignore anything about the story's continuity whenever it's convenient but the GM gets bludgeoned by the social contract and "That is not the modern style" if they try to be a GM & push back.

While the local game run in the earliest 80s by the old wargamer was replete with death, I don't think our home games of B/X or 1e had many deaths at all. Maybe that came from being middle schoolers at the time, but in later years, it feels like plot armor has always accrued a bit if the character survived a while and there was an attachment.

I'm not sure I know what is meant by "adventurer was a social class", or rather, I don't think how adventurers have been viewed has changed much in any of the games I've played. Except that after 1e I don't remember us getting free fiefdoms/followers.

 

[tetrasodium]

While the local game run in the earliest 80s by the old wargamer was replete with death, I don't think our home games of B/X or 1e had many deaths at all. Maybe that came from being middle schoolers at the time, but in later years, it feels like plot armor has always accrued a bit if the character survived a while and there was an attachment.

I'm not sure I know what is meant by "adventurer was a social class", or rather, I don't think how adventurers have been viewed has changed much in any of the games I've played. Except that after 1e I don't remember us getting free fiefdoms/followers.

Mine didn't have death like they were some kind of dcc funnel either. Death was definitely close enough that one of my most vivid memories is trying to kill an almost dead ghoul while clinging to the cave wall/ceiling using my bow as a thrown weapon because firing it would need two hands when I needed one to hang onto the wall out of reach. 5e PCs are so insulated from risk that they make wolverine look a little squishy.



Puffinforest does a nice little bit about the

Spoiler: social classes

Backgrounds shift PCs into the shoes of actual social classes without any of the risks & responsibilities that go with those shoes allowing them to occupy a quantum social class of adventurer as well as their background whenever one or the other is useful but never when one is a problem because adventurers are godlike entities capable of depopulating entire cities before lunch. Coupled with everything else PCs no longer risk or need & it becomes a big mess

 

[Ancalagon]

Most of the pre-written adventures require heavy amounts of re-writing and prepwork.

This is a serious issue and it doesn't have to be this way. I'm currently running a 3rd party adventure path (Dungeons of Drakkenheim) and it's SO MUCH better (from an organizational, ease of use point of view) than any 5e adventure I've read so far. It's also good as an adventure incidentally, but that's besides the point. The authors clearly spent a lot of time thinking about how a DM will use the material.

A premade adventure should have 2 things: one is quality material that is interesting, and 2 it should make the DM's life easier. Some of the WotC adventures are so badly thought out that I think they take more work than homebrewing!

 

[Desdichado]

Backgrounds shift PCs into the shoes of actual social classes without any of the risks & responsibilities that go with those shoes allowing them to occupy a quantum social class of adventurer as well as their background whenever one or the other is useful but never when one is a problem because adventurers are godlike entities capable of depopulating entire cities before lunch. Coupled with everything else PCs no longer risk or need & it becomes a big mess

That seems related to my earlier comments about generational pop cultural zeitgeists. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that PCs are like this in the same age that we have superhero movies dominating the box office. 5e is like the fantasy Avengers.

I prefer games that are something more like the fantasy Daredevil Netflix show or the fantasy X-files. But I'm not sure that that's entirely generational. I've always struggled with getting D&D to do what I wanted it to, even way back in the mid-80s.