D&D General The DM Shortage

[MichaelSomething]

But I thought people wanted natural language that inspires the imagination?

Didn't lots of people hate how 4E just told you the rules?

5E is wordy. You could lose nothing and literally cut the word count in half. There are much simpler ways to say things.

 

[Minigiant]

How do you mean? What DM advice is designed for old school play that contradicts the game design?

I mean the DM advice given is not for the game the group wants to play.

DM adviceforold school play is for old school play. It isn't tailored specifically for new school or even middle school play.

It's like using a video game's guide for the Single Player Campaign for Multipayer Co-op or Multitplayer FFA. Some of it migt apply but a lot of it won't be helpful

 

[Cadence]

Since people like word count, too...here goes.

Full basic rules. 129,428 words.

For reference: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen – 126,194 words. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – 106,821 words. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince – 169,441 words. The Hobbit – 95,022 words. The Two Towers – 143,436 words. The Return of the King – 134,462 words.

Average page of this kind of text is between 500-1000 words per page. Being overly generous at 1000 words per page, at 15 1/2 pages, that's about 15,500 words saved by cutting it down to 3rd level. Which would bring the total word count down to 113,928.

So a 3rd level version of these would make it go from being slightly longer than Sense and Sensibility to slightly shorter than Sense and Sensibility.

For reference: the entire text of the Moldvay Basic, including the Haunted Keep, comes to about 60,000 words.

I'm surprised Moldvay was relatively that long (just a bit under half) to only get to third level. But I'm guessing Cook is about the same length, so that B/X is about the same length as the new Basic rules?

 

[Oofta]

Professor DM has a response to Questing Beast's video.

Good grief. I just got done sitting through this and ... it's a lot. The first 5 or 6 minutes is comparing page count without really discussing the rules or how the game played.

Then he compares the AD&D DMG and PHB and notes that the DMG is bigger because it has all the rules for combat. Which ... wait ... those rules were better because only the DM knew how to run a critical portion of the game (we all just had the DMG and PHB) but the original argument for OSR is better was because there was 5E is bad because the DM is expected to know all the rules. But AD&D was better because if you listened to Gygax and the players never read the DMG then the DMG has to know all the combat rules. He doesn't see the contradiction here?

Then he's ranting about how you can't have resource attrition matter in 5E. So many issues. Why would a newbie DM going to give a fig about old school resource attrition like torches? But it gets better. They claim that all races have darkvision so they don't need torches. He seems to assume that every group has a druid so you always have goodberries. Have an encounter on a collapsing bridge? That aarakocra will just fly away! Literally states "The players have already conquered darkness, dehydration, hunger and gravity." Which is quite a trick. I don't know how they're countering dehydration other than a spell to create water that was in my old books. Yes, if you happen to have a druid in the party and they cast the goodberry spell every day you have food. You also have a druid down a spell slot. That aarakocra doesn't have darkvision so I guess they can blindly wave into the darkness as their compatriots fall to their doom.

He complains about speed of advancement which may or may not be relevant, that depended on the group and if they rewarded XP for treasure. They complain about how casters have spells at low levels and cantrips is a bad thing. Because somehow it's so much worse than casting 1 spell a day before they resorted to ineffectively chucking darts. But it's all good because you could house rule (his words) that wizards could get spells from other spell books which forced them to raid tombs. Huh? In 5E you don't even have to house rule scribing spells. Oh, then says PCs in 5E level up 1 level per session ... which is not the case in any game I've played and not the guidance in 5E after level 1.

I love "fewer rules means fewer things to argue about". Really? That certainly wasn't my experience. A little later they claim that putting a note in the PHB that the DM makes the decisions would "put rules lawyers out of business once and for all". If only it was that easy. Then he goes on to talk about how you can tell epic stories with OSR (and alludes to making a complex rules system from scratch is somehow better) but that you don't have to. Implication there is that 5E can't do location based games for some reason.

I do agree that the DMG can be improved. If you're new to DMing you should limit some options and slow down advancement for a bit until you get a better feel for the game. But the rest of it? It's not a surprise to me that he, and Questing Beast, are in the business of publishing OSR games and adventures. The bias is blatant to me. If you like OSR games and minimal rules, that's great. OSR and 5E are different. That doesn't make one inherently better or easier to DM in my opinion.

EDIT: minor typos.

 

[Cadence]

5e: Be able to constantly reference and parse an extensive ruleset, read a 300 page module and then direct the PCs through it, create 6-8 balanced encounters per adventuring day, understand or create world's full of lore, improvise and act like Matt Mercer, buy all the books, set up fancy battlemaps on a vtt, or some combination of the above.

I've apparently (thankfully) been doing 5e all wrong by that metric

 

[Cadence]

Barnes and Noble also carries D&D books, usually near the sci-fi/fantasy section.

Our metro area of 750k is down to one of those (in a mall that will soon be demolished) plus the B&N affiliated campus bookstore (which had D&D but not the sci-fi fantasy section anymore). The regular B&N here seems to never be busy (as opposed to the one in my hometown in IL or the one in Pittsburgh vaguely by Squirrel Hill).

 

[Reynard]

I mean the DM advice given is not for the game the group wants to play.

DM adviceforold school play is for old school play. It isn't tailored specifically for new school or even middle school play.

It's like using a video game's guide for the Single Player Campaign for Multipayer Co-op or Multitplayer FFA. Some of it migt apply but a lot of it won't be helpful

I meant examples. You are asserting a thing and I am wondering what specific thing you are talking about.

 

[Minigiant]

I meant examples. You are asserting a thing and I am wondering what specific thing you are talking about.

People who don't want location based gaming don't want to be told to do a location game.

If people want to run an narrative adventure across multiple locations, factions, and peoples, give advice to run narrative adventure across multiple locations, factions, and NPCs.

If people want Bid Bad Evil Guys, give advice of how to write a BBEG and how their quirks affect gameplay.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But I thought people wanted natural language that inspires the imagination?

Didn't lots of people hate how 4E just told you the rules?

I hated natural language before it was a prop to praise the OSR!

 

[Clint_L]

I read the original article that spawned a subsequent video that spawned this thread...and there is zero evidence offered that there even is a Dm "crisis" or even a DM shortage, other than some anecdotal claims about particular reddit posts and a few professional Dungeon Masters, as if that is proof of anything.

This seems to be how a lot of threads are generated: someone posts a clickbait article of video, and then people respond as if there is an actual issue. And then we start offering solutions for things that might not even be problems. I dunno. Just seems like arguing for the sake of arguing a lot of the time.