The Guards at the Gate Quote

[Reynard]

Right there, that puts the whole thing into perspectives. The two guards at the gate in the example aren't a challenge, thus, we skip over them. Everyone who is up in arms over the quote is ignoring that fact. If the guards were a challenge in some way, appealing to the players motivations (detailed at length earlier) then you would of course include it.

But, it's much easier, of course, to take a single line or two out of a an entire section and ignore context because that makes for better quips on message boards. :/

No, we're not. I'm not, at least. I'm saying that "challenges" are not the only thing that matters in D&D and that telling new DMs that things that aren't challenges are "boring" and should be left out and skipped over is terrible advice.

Again, it comes down to the open nature of RPGs and how RPGs do this one thing better than anything else: you can do anything. Wyatt is excising possibilities as "unfun" when he should be promoting *possibility* in general.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

The two guards at the gate in the example aren't a challenge, thus, we skip over them. Everyone who is up in arms over the quote is ignoring that fact. If the guards were a challenge in some way, appealing to the players motivations (detailed at length earlier) then you would of course include it.

I'll agree with Reynard above. That's not what I'm doing.


I specifically describe (in some detail) the importance of non challenging encounters...feel free to disagree with that importance, but it is my perspective and I don't seem to be alone in that opinion.

You can read my points here:
The Guards at the Gate Quote - Page 8 - EN World: Your Daily RPG Magazine
and here:
The Guards at the Gate Quote - Page 8 - EN World: Your Daily RPG Magazine

 

[Mercutio01]

I think we're all missing the fact that the DMG isn't geared towards people like us. It's geared to the 14-year-old kid who just got a copy of the game from his weird uncle and whose only experience with RPGs so far is something like WoW.

Frankly, telling that n00b DM-to-be to skip the "boring crap" when first getting into gaming sounds like excellent advice to me. Is the advice good for long-term GMing and game-making? Of course not, but it's not geared to folks like us who spend untold hours of our lives on web-forums kvetching about who means what when they said how.

And I think that's the main thing being glossed over here. This advice simply isn't geared towards the people who are offended by it. And I suspect (I may be wrong, but based on the names of the people involved in this discussion) that most of the offended posters are people who don't like 4E to begin with and just seem to keep finding nits to pick.

I will reiterate it one last time, since I'm fairly sure people will only read that last sentence and try to use that as my entire post while ignoring the meat of what I'm saying---Wyatt's advice is excellent for people who are just becoming DMs for the first time and need the express train to funville to keep them interested. It's not for experienced players and DMs who dribble away bits of their time and energy in the minutiae of parsing the language of a roleplaying game. We just aren't the target audience.

 

[pemerton]

Of course, not every DM runs a game that is a constant string of goal-focused challenges. And many don't pre-determine if guards at the gate are a "situation" or not.

<snip>

The DM isn't the sole arbiter of what "faffing around" is, and if the players at the table derive endless volumes of enjoyment from doing things involving little direct confrontation, it is really awful advice to tell a DM to ignore that part of the game.

Yeah, no one is really disputing the fact that not every scene is worth spending time on.

The conversation is mostly about James Wyatt's way of articulating that thought, which, depending on your level of charity, is either really badly written, or actually says that the scenes that aren't worth spending time on are the scenes that are not "encounters" with "attack rolls."

Who says it's all about GM authority?

DMG p 103:

Player-Designed Quests
You should allow and even encourage players to come up with their own quests that are tied to their individual goals or specific circumstances in the adventure. Evaluate the proposed quest and assign it a level. Remember to say yes as often as possible!​

PHB p 258:

You can also, with your DM’s approval, create a quest for your character. Such a quest can tie into your character’s background. . . Quests can also relate to individual goals, such as a ranger searching for a magic bow to wield. Individual quests give you a stake in a campaign’s unfolding story and give your DM ingredients to help develop that story.​

And who says it's all about combat?

PHB pp 9, 258-50:

Encounters come in two types.
*Combat encounters are battles against nefarious foes. In a combat encounter, characters and monsters take turns attacking until one side or the other
is defeated.

*Noncombat encounters include deadly traps, difficult puzzles, and other obstacles to overcome. Sometimes you overcome noncombat encounters by using your character’s skills, sometimes you can defeat them with clever uses of magic, and sometimes you have to puzzle them out with nothing but your wits. Noncombat encounters also include social interactions, such as attempts to persuade, bargain with, or obtain information from a nonplayer character (NPC) controlled by the DM. Whenever you decide that your character wants to talk to a person or monster, it’s a noncombat encounter. . .

Encounters are where the action of the D&D game takes place, whether the encounter is a life-or-death battle against monstrous foes, a high-stakes negotiation with a duke and his vizier, or a death-defying climb up the Cliffs of Desolation. . .

Two kinds of encounters occur in most D&D adventures: combat and noncombat encounters. . .

A skill challenge occurs when exploration (page 260) or social interaction becomes an encounter, with serious consequences for success or failure.​

The point is that it's about encounters. Situations in which there are serious consequences for success or failure. If it's just about talking to two guards on the way into a city, and there are no serious consequences for success or failure - it's just colour - than Wyatt is saying to move through it quickly. Whether or not one enjoys playing this sort of game - personally, I do - it is not "terrible advice". It's pretty standard advice on how to run a situation-focused game.

I don't think pemerton is saying "ALL RPG's" be run in that manner.

Correct. But it is Wyatt's prerogative to give advice on how to play the game, just as Gygax did back in his PHB and DMG. Advice that not everyone followed, or follows.

And new DMs need to be aware of both of these methods of playing, since it's something they might enjoy, too. It's pretty bad advice just to categorically say these things are not fun, period.

Where's the evidence of all these new GMs being led astray by James Wyatt? I mean, the AD&D PHB and DMG only gave me advice on how to run a Gygaxian/Pulsipherian style game aimed at challenging "skilled players", but I nevertheless worked out for myself how to GM the sort of game I was interested in.

All that has been said is that Wyatt is demonstrably wrong, and giving terrible advice to new GMs.

Where are all the threads bemoaning Gygax's "terrible advice" in the AD&D PHB? Have you (or anyone else) read it lately? It's advice for running a boring, bomb-squad style game of the sort discussed on the recent Tomb of Horrors thread. Maybe you like that sort of game, but I'm pretty confident a lot of players don't. And they managed to find other styles, and even use AD&D to run those games, despite Gygax's advice. I'm sure people who like talking to guards for the sake of colour are running those games in 4e despite what Wyatt wrote.

The fact that Wyatt, or I, think those are boring games shouldn't deter them, any more than I'm deterred in running my game by the fact that many posters on this board would think it has not enough exploration, nor enough fictional positioning at the gritty action resolution level.

 

[Reynard]

And I suspect (I may be wrong, but based on the names of the people involved in this discussion) that most of the offended posters are people who don't like 4E to begin with and just seem to keep finding nits to pick.

I don't like 4E, but it's not a nit: the quote is *one of the reasons* I don't like 4E, because the quote underscores a design intent that I don't think makes for good D&D. You are dismissing my opinion by suggesting it's just a "nit."

I will reiterate it one last time, since I'm fairly sure people will only read that last sentence and try to use that as my entire post while ignoring the meat of what I'm saying---Wyatt's advice is excellent for people who are just becoming DMs for the first time and need the express train to funville to keep them interested.

And I think you are absolutely wrong. i think it is terrible advice. By training your new-to-gaming DMs that all that matters is "challenges" you are limiting the scope of their enjoyment and the enjoyment of the players, which will in the end lead them back to Skyrim and WoW because, frankly, those games do "challenges" far better than D&D can.

It's not for experienced players and DMs who dribble away bits of their time and energy in the minutiae of parsing the language of a roleplaying game. We just aren't the target audience.

Are you really sugggesting that the 4E DMG was only written for new DMs and that it was not intended to convey design intent to existing, experienced DMs, even in the face of an overt strategy by WotC to convert the existing base first and grab new players later?

 

[Reynard]

Where are all the threads bemoaning Gygax's "terrible advice" in the AD&D PHB? Have you (or anyone else) read it lately? It's advice for running a boring, bomb-squad style game of the sort discussed on the recent Tomb of Horrors thread. Maybe you like that sort of game, but I'm pretty confident a lot of players don't. And they managed to find other styles, and even use AD&D to run those games, despite Gygax's advice. I'm sure people who like talking to guards for the sake of colour are running those games in 4e despite what Wyatt wrote.

The fact that Wyatt, or I, think those are boring games shouldn't deter them, any more than I'm deterred in running my game by the fact that many posters on this board would think it has not enough exploration, nor enough fictional positioning at the gritty action resolution level.

I actually just reread the AD&D PHB because I picked up one with the "statue" cover for $10 at a game store. Anyway, there have been, and continue to be, lots of threads bemoaning Gygax's advice and writings in both the PHB and DMG. In fact, i bet if I started a thread titled "You Favorite/Most Hated Gygax Quotes" it would fill up with negativity very quickly -- and half the "hated" quotes would come not from the PHB or DMG, but Sorceror Scrolls and interviews.

In any case, Gygax never actually engaged in one-true-wayism in the DMG the way Wyatt does. When he said "Don't do this" (such as issues around demi-human level limits) he told you why and what you were in for if you ignored his advice.

In the OP quote, Wyatt is taking a playstyle stance that I find wrong and offensive and not very D&D-like at all.

 

[Mercutio01]

I don't like 4E, but it's not a nit: the quote is *one of the reasons* I don't like 4E, because the quote underscores a design intent that I don't think makes for good D&D. You are dismissing my opinion by suggesting it's just a "nit."

It is a nit. It's one line in one book out of a line of dozens. The design intent is something I can understand harping on, but one line? That's like the very definition of a nit.

And I think you are absolutely wrong. i think it is terrible advice. By training your new-to-gaming DMs that all that matters is "challenges" you are limiting the scope of their enjoyment and the enjoyment of the players, which will in the end lead them back to Skyrim and WoW because, frankly, those games do "challenges" far better than D&D can.

And now we get to the crux...it's just your opinion, dude. That's it. It's not some universal standard that you can ascribe to everyone. I happen to think it's excellent newbie advice. If you sat down with a first grader and told them to read "Lord of the Rings" you'd be rightfully laughed the hell out of the room. You start with the basics.

Are you really sugggesting that the 4E DMG was only written for new DMs and that it was not intended to convey design intent to existing, experienced DMs, even in the face of an overt strategy by WotC to convert the existing base first and grab new players later?

Only new DMs? No. Primarily new DMs? Abso-freaking-lutely. Just as every PHB and DMG in every edition had significant space devoted to basics for new players/DMs. Also, I don't think the whole DMG is written to any one individual reader. But I do think specific bits are targeted at specific types of gamers and levels of experience. And that's exactly what we are talking about--one, single specific piece of advice in a 200 page book which is clearly aimed at some piece of the audience that is obviously not you.

How often to you interact with entry-level practitioners of any type of art? I teach college composition. If I started off with "advanced" writing techniques like targeted fragments, hyperbole, allusion, etc, and ignored the fundamentals like capitalization, punctuation, subject-verb agreement, and misspelling, I'd be greeted with nothing but unholy messes of papers and letters that attempted to be words and sentences and failed completely. I view this bit of advice from Wyatt to be something similar. That whole paragraph really boils down to, "Keep it fun," which seems insanely elementary and ridiculously unnecessary. But I have to spend a whole class on "They're, There, Their" and basic subject-verb number agreement (let's not even mention tense-shifting), things that also seem insanely elementary (literally, actually, as those things are supposedly taught in elementary schools) and ridiculously unnecessary.

The point is that some people do need to be told to skip the boring needless encounter. Not all guard encounters are such, and not everyone needs that level of advice, but there are more than a few who do. I'd argue even some long-time players/GMs need such advice, as I've played with my share of them, too.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Whether or not one enjoys playing this sort of game - personally, I do - it is not "terrible advice". It's pretty standard advice on how to run a situation-focused game.

Except it's terrible advice in the context of fun. He's literally saying "this is not fun, don't do this." That's terrible, terrible advice to everyone who enjoys this.

Correct. But it is Wyatt's prerogative to give advice on how to play the game, just as Gygax did back in his PHB and DMG. Advice that not everyone followed, or follows.

That's true. It's his prerogative. It doesn't make his advice any less terrible. To my knowledge, he does not mention the type of game you're speaking of. He also explicitly does say that something many people enjoy isn't fun. When telling someone how to have fun, saying "your way isn't fun" is terrible, terrible advice when it is, you know, fun.

Where's the evidence of all these new GMs being led astray by James Wyatt? I mean, the AD&D PHB and DMG only gave me advice on how to run a Gygaxian/Pulsipherian style game aimed at challenging "skilled players", but I nevertheless worked out for myself how to GM the sort of game I was interested in.

How does this negate the fact that the DMG advice should be better? Sure, Gygax's should've been, too. We've learned a ton about RPG and play styles since it was written. Let's write about some of it, yeah? Or, let's write about what we're trying to get across. If he's promoting a situation-focused style of game, then say that. He should make a note of that, so proper context is given.

And, even then, he shouldn't say something isn't fun. He should say it's falling short of the goal of this particular play style.

Where are all the threads bemoaning Gygax's "terrible advice" in the AD&D PHB?

Two things here, I think.

One, I probably wouldn't like a lot of his advice. I might like a lot, though. It's probably a mixed bag. I have absolutely no problem saying Gygax's advice about ethereal mummies is terrible. There; now we can admit that Wyatt's advice in the original post is terrible, right?

Two, complaints about Gygax could be in a thread about it. As it stands, someone created a thread asking why people didn't like what Wyatt wrote. People are replying. Outcries of "why are we focusing on this?!" seem rather confusing, to me.

The fact that Wyatt, or I, think those are boring games shouldn't deter them, any more than I'm deterred in running my game by the fact that many posters on this board would think it has not enough exploration, nor enough fictional positioning at the gritty action resolution level.

Cool? I'm glad you are running your game the way you want to. I mean, I do it, too. I think all GMs should. However, you're in a thread about "why do people not like what this guy said?" saying "why are we talking about this guy?" Add to the fact that he's telling people that they're having fun wrong and not just playing his potentially preferred style wrong and you have your answer as to why people are upset.

I'm glad you get to play the game you want to. I have no problem with authors pimping their preferred play style (I did so in my game). However, they should be really clear what it is they're saying (I had a section titled "Designer Biases and Preferences" that I broke down into different subsections), and they shouldn't be making value judgments on what isn't fun. Saying, "I tried to make a gritty feeling game" is one thing; saying "gonzo games aren't fun, don't play them" is another.

Maybe this strikes a particular nerve with me, though. I think it has something to do with my signature. As always, play what you like

 

[ShinHakkaider]

And I think that's the main thing being glossed over here. This advice simply isn't geared towards the people who are offended by it. And I suspect (I may be wrong, but based on the names of the people involved in this discussion) that most of the offended posters are people who don't like 4E to begin with and just seem to keep finding nits to pick.

I suggest that you try not ascribing motive to people here in order to strengthen your argument. No I'm not a fan of 4E, but if you've read ANY of my posts at all when I've discussed 4E I've never railed against it in a way that I can be labled a 4E hater or whatever they're called.

In fact, I've pretty much stated (not recently) that when the core books came out that the DMG (with obvious exceptions) and the Monster Manual were darn good.

So yeah has NOTHING to do with 4E hate (thanks for playing!) and everything wit the fact that some of us think that Wyatt gave fairly bad advice.

Its not for us? UGH.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

The issue is that Wyatt didn't declare a definition of "fun". [snip]

I would XP you if I could. Thank you for going through the book for context. This was exactly what I was referring to. You can't harp on one sentence and ignore the rest of the book and claim you're taking the quote in context. Especially those who keep saying he's advising that 4E be all about the combat.

The problem is you can either take the quote explicitly or you can assume some intent other than what was explicitly stated. Taking it explicitly means he said that it was badwrongfun to enjoy gate guard encounters. Assuming some intent, other than explicit intent, seems to be where the argument arises. You obviously assume some other intent and think it means something that suits your style of play and condemn others who either take it explicitly or assume it doesn't support their style of play. I'm not sure your dismissive false quote helps either argument.

We know he gave two gate guards as an example of "unfun" but how does that translate to "its all about combat" like many posters here are claiming?

[MENTION=9213]ShinHakkaider[/MENTION] - Yes, I think the quote is enough to put someone off of 4E. But I would think it a shame to base one's opinion on a single quote.