D&D General What is the worst piece of DM advice people give that you see commonly spread?

[Vaalingrade]

All the other bad advice: 'The DM is God', 'The DM is Daddy, here to teach and punish the players', 'The DM should be doing the heavy end of the game design work', 'The DM is an Authority', 'DMing is hard and thankless', etc, are all basically something that stem from the well-intentioned and yet wholly wrong-headed Rule 0, which saddles the DM with all responsibility and then just abdicates responsibility for the game on behalf of the designers and other players.

So any advice that starts with "You're the DM, you can just..." is the worst advice or the descendant of the worst advice.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So any advice that starts with "You're the DM, you can just..." is the worst advice or the descendant of the worst advice.

Counterpoint: If you are the DM who asked the question and actually was looking for a solution (and not just wanting to vent)... sometimes the only solution IS "You're the DM, you can just..."

Too many time though... these questions aren't asked to get actual answers, but rather just to allow the poster to complain. And in those cases... then anyone can respond to your complaints however they want. If you don't want people to tell you that they think your complaints about D&D are silly... don't complain about D&D on a public D&D messageboard.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Anything to do with preventing “metagaming” or punishing players for such behavior.

Yeah, I find discouraging table talk just discourages all player communication and collaboration. Very often, the player with the best idea isn't the player running that PC. I have a hard enough time getting players to talk to each other and make plans.

The older I get and the longer I play, the more I reject the idea that metagaming is bad. Like, sure, if the rogue finds treasure three rooms away it's not exactly right to immediately run across the dungeon to claim your share. But outside of literally making your character act on knowledge they shouldn't know anything about, it's frustrating.

I don't understand - in what context do you see this as bad advice? Or, what is the "it" you don't think should be reskinned?

To me, it's not the advice to "just reskin" something that's annoying, it's that it tends to accompany an attitude that you should willfully ignore the flavor and instead treat the game like it's a programming language. That flavor is and should be totally independent of your final design for use in-game.

My go-to example is element-shifting spells. If you make fireball deal cold damage, there's this idea that frostball should still ignite flammable materials because fireball does that. Even though the outcome is basically nonsense according to what you're doing at a conceptual level. Yes, you can invent a diegetic rationale for cold spells creating fire... but why? And why don't other cold spells do that?

It's that value judgement about the respective utility or prescriptiveness of game rules, and a willingness to say that flavor is mutable but hard mechanics are not. Thinking that inflammable frostball is what you should do because flavor is unimportant while the base mechanics are somehow more immutable is just bizarre to me. Maybe it's just a failure to take their designs beyond the step of mechanical balance and a failure to integrate them into the game world.

It's like people have understood that mechanical balance and flavor are separate things, without understanding why flavor is there in the first place.

 

[Digdude]

I think the worst DM advice I've ever heard is "Its ok if you're not having fun DMing." You absolutely should be having fun or you are wasting everyone's time.

 

[James Gasik]

About whether or not it's the DM's job to ensure everyone has fun, since D&D is a game, the players should be having fun or what's the point? So I think the DM has a vested interest in facilitating fun, though I agree that their not having fun isn't necessarily the fault of the DM.

 

[Oofta]

All DMs are power hungry maniacs out to dominate the game instead of just having fun like everyone else. Therefore you must limit their authority and anyone who disagrees is obviously a power hungry maniac.

Corollary, the DM's enjoyment of the game is of no consequence. If you aren't doing everything in your power to make sure that every player is maximizing their enjoyment you're doing it wrong. Every DM must be the perfect DM for every player.

 

[Vaalingrade]

About whether or not it's the DM's job to ensure everyone has fun, since D&D is a game, the players should be having fun or what's the point? So I think the DM has a vested interest in facilitating fun, though I agree that their not having fun isn't necessarily the fault of the DM.

For me at least, it's part in parcel of putting the onus of everything on the DM. Everyone should be making sure the group is having fun.

Then again, I often see the argument that the DM isn't responsible for the group's fun to be--again--and abdication of responsibility telling the DM to only care about their own fun, usually by taking it from everyone else as part of a power move.

 

[Dioltach]

"Don't hit your players" might not be the worst, but it's pretty useless. At least give me an alternative.

 

[cranberry]

"You shouldn't allow the PCs to die because that would ruin their story"

 

[cranberry]

No.

That's obviously not DM advice. That's just Youtube comments being full of morons, which is a near-constant on virtually any subject.

Like I said, it implies advice.

And ever social media site has morons, not just YT

Or are you implying that everyone who has ever linked to a Youtube video on this site shouldn't because nothing said on YT is relevant or valid?