hanez said:
I disagree with that quote, and if your sure about it how can we prove it?
Well, the logic goes like this:
a) One of the necessary (though insufficient) qualities of a "good DM" is the ability to ignore, enhance, or replace the rules-as-written when the rules-as-written conflict with their group's fun.
b) When a "good DM" runs up against a system with poor rules, assuming no alternative is available, she will then ignore, enhance, or replace the rules-as-written, for the fun of her own group.
c) Thus, a "good DM" is rules-agnostic. A good DM ignores, enhances, or replaces the rules-as-written when they conflict with what is fun for her group, so she does not depend on any particular rules set to have fun.
I believe it is entirely possible that many DMs found it hard to insert stories, non combat action, and a deeper sense of purpose in characters in 4e. Or perhaps I am the only DM that felt that way.
I think you're not alone.
I do think, though, that those DMs who found it hard to run games that were fun under 4e mostly found other rulesets that made it easier for them. In as much as they COULD have made 4e into a game they wanted to play, it was a lot less effort for them to make Pathfinder, or Castles & Crusades, into the game they wanted to play. Even a good DM usually doesn't want to walk uphill when there's a perfectly good escalator available.
Perhaps we could say, a great system makes it easier to be a great DM. Or the inverse, some systems make it harder to DM (ignoring what area you want to be good at, I believe 4e makes it easy to be a great tactical combat DM, if thats what your looking for)
I think your parenthetical kind of hits the right place -- different systems are better for different DMs (and even for different kinds of games), and some DMs are going to find 4e easier to run than Pathfinder, and others will find Castles & Crusades easier to run than 4e, etc. Probably no DM will find FATAL to be easy to run for their style of fun, unless their style of fun is....deeply disturbing?
The difference between a horrible ruleset and a good ruleset is thus how many DMs prefer it -- how many "good DMs" find it easier to play that ruleset than others. If 5e is right about this modularity thing, and does it in a way that makes it easy to DM, then it has the hallmarks of a really, really good ruleset, that can be preferred by many diverse DMs who enjoy many diverse things. Which would be awesome.
But you can't really say that because a system
can be good under the right DM, that the system is necessarily a good system. Because you can say that about horrible, horrible systems, too. A good DM is a defense against all sorts of badness.