D&D General The DM Shortage

[Micah Sweet]

Basically

1. Old School Location Based- The location is the star. You play someone there.
2. New School Event Based- The event or adventure is the star. You control how the event unfolds
3. Modern Character Based- The characters are the the stars. Your relationships and actions choose the events and the locations.

I am very much a type 1 DM.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I just don't agree with that. You can play the game focused on things that aren't verisimilitude and still have fun.

I can't, or at least, its much harder.

 

[Aldarc]

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.

This is why I think that Professor DM misidentifies some of the core problems of the aforementioned DM Shortage. While he does touch up on some possible reasons for the DM shortage, it honestly does feel less like he is more like he's more interested an excuse to complain about "Kids these days... am I right?"

Clue: The DM shortage is not the result of Ardlings with Wings and Darkvision.

Most new DMs have little interest or knowledge of running the sort of resource attrition dungeon crawlers that Professor DM describes. Nor have I ever seen or heard a neophyte DM cite player races or restricting player options as a reason for their DMing burn out.

 

[Minigiant]

I think the trouble with "The Modern Style" is the almost circular reference to avoid admitting that it's pretty much just

Spoiler: The Hickman manifesto

1. A player objective more worthwhile than simply pillaging and killing.
2. An intriguing story that is intricately woven into play itself.
3. Dungeons with an architectural sense.
4. An attainable and honorable end within one to two sessions playing time.

If you somehow sever it from the gameplay & mechanical tropes it was written for.

The mistake is people still think the Modern style is writing stories. It's writing NPCs.

It's making an orc raiding tribe and a hobgoblin warband. Designing their personalities and cultures. Equipping them and their part of the dungeon with what they would want and have access to. And then understanding how they think in order to match the encounters and mechanics to their mentality and how they would react to the PCs actions.

Once you understand the orc chief, you know how all the encounters should look and what he or she will say or react depending on what the PCs do..

 

[FrozenNorth]

Well, the basic rules has three chapters for the "Dm Toolset": Monsters (mostly just statblocks), Building Encounters, and Magic Items. If we're talking about the "expectations of the ruleset," that should give you a pretty good idea of what the designers think the DM's job will be. The DMG has six pages on creating different types of scenarios (location, mystery, intrigue), and then six pages on creating balanced combat encounters...again, it tells you what kind of game the designers had in mind.

…And 24 pages on cosmology. Clearly, something went wrong somewhere.

 

[MNblockhead]

Just seems like arguing for the sake of arguing a lot of the time.

Well, sure. But without that, I would only need to visit EN World for a few minutes every week to read the occasional industry news and and watch the NuTSR car-wreck unfold.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

OC Neotrad character

what is this?

 

[Desdichado]

How about give players the choice between OSR versus no game at all? That seems to have worked for @bloodtide at least!

Worked in what sense, and what problem was he trying to solve? The problem of the OSR allegedly being full of DMs who can't find enough players for everyone who wants to run to be able to, or the problem of the 5e crowd allegedly being full of players who can't find enough DMs for everyone who wants a game?

Because I'm pretty sure that a not insignificant portion of the people who get that ultimatum will opt for no game at all and then still be counted as 5e players looking for a DM.

 

[Desdichado]

The mistake is people still think the Modern style is writing stories. It's writing NPCs.

It's making an orc raiding tribe and a hobgoblin warband. Designing their personalities and cultures. Equipping them and their part of the dungeon with what they would want and have access to. And then understanding how they think in order to match the encounters and mechanics to their mentality and how they would react to the PCs actions.

Once you understand the orc chief, you know how all the encounters should look and what he or she will say or react depending on what the PCs do..

The question is; is this a style that's widely recognized and widely used, and was it ever ascendant in any edition of D&D? I can't think of very many products that describe play this way, or any DM advice sections that describe play this way, etc. other than Perkins' DM Experience column during 4e that hinted at it, and Dungeon World which codified it into a very jargon-filled and process oriented approach in the form of Fronts, and Sly Flourish who took the Dungeon World system and simplified it in a blog post.

I don't disagree that that's a style—in fact, it's the one that the bulk of how I run resembles—but I don't think its ever been anything other than a fringe style that some people have stumbled onto often independently. I don't think it's modern in the sense that it's associated with modern versions of the game, or even that it's necessarily something that is emergent recently, though.

 

[tetrasodium]

The mistake is people still think the Modern style is writing stories. It's writing NPCs.

It's making an orc raiding tribe and a hobgoblin warband. Designing their personalities and cultures. Equipping them and their part of the dungeon with what they would want and have access to. And then understanding how they think in order to match the encounters and mechanics to their mentality and how they would react to the PCs actions.

Once you understand the orc chief, you know how all the encounters should look and what he or she will say or react depending on what the PCs do..

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

what is this?

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.

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