Why does the stigma of the "jerk GM" still persist in our hobby?

[Immortal Sun]

Emigrate. I know, pedantic, but it's fairly interesting (to me) that there are different words for coming (immigrate) and going (emigrate) and that most of us in the Western world don't pay much attention to that (not saying you don't, just, you know, generally) because we really mostly only ever talk about immigrants. The USA has even adopted "ex-pat" as a sub-in for emigrant.

And now back to the thread.

Technically speaking, an ex-pat is someone who still considers themselves a member of the nation they left, but refuses to live there for *reasons* Sean Connery is a notable ex-pat, though not American.

 

[Hussar]

Technically speaking, an ex-pat is someone who still considers themselves a member of the nation they left, but refuses to live there for *reasons* Sean Connery is a notable ex-pat, though not American.

Speaking as someone who's been an ex-pat most of his adult life, there is a significant difference between ex-pat and emigrant. I've never heard anyone confuse or conflate the two terms.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Technically speaking, an ex-pat is someone who still considers themselves a member of the nation they left, but refuses to live there for *reasons* Sean Connery is a notable ex-pat, though not American.

Speaking as someone who's been an ex-pat most of his adult life, there is a significant difference between ex-pat and emigrant. I've never heard anyone confuse or conflate the two terms.

"Emigrate" just involves moving to another country with the intent of living there permenantly. Nothing about citizenship is implied. I know a number of immigrants here in the US with no interest in changing citizenship for themselves. They emigrated from their home countries.

We, the West, tend to use "immigrant" for anyone that's come here to live regardless of citizenship status or intent. We do not use "emigrant" for citizens of the West moving to other countries, despite the word clearly applying. We use "ex-pat." Technically, that term could also apply to green card (permanent resident) holders in the US that have no interest in changing citizenship. My neighbor is an ex-pat from Germany, but she emigrated from Germany and immigrated here.

 

[Aldarc]

Emigrate.

A correction well-deserved, since I otherwise do know better. Thank you.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Er....I feel like this is alluding to something ... Considering how .. the capitalization of the world empowerment, I feel like there's something you're saying but aren't actually saying it.

Sorry, I forget this isn't the 5e forum, sometimes. "DM Empowerment" is a feature of 5e D&D, one that I've talked up, a lot, so I felt obliged to acknowledge that it's not all rainbows & unicorns, all the time.

Like so much of 5e, it's a feature that's been brought back from the classic editions of the game, the TSR era, in particular. (Though it wasn't seen as a feature or given such a trendy name as 'empowerment' back then - DMing was just hard, and the DM held a lot of imaginary 'power' in the play procedures, thus, between the two, a lot of social power in the group dynamic.) Since the D&D of the 80s was so influential in the development, perceptions - and stereotypes - of our hobby, and 5e is again far out in front, today, it seemed relevant.

It is easier today than ever to DM

There's more exposure. The current edition of D&D, itself, is not as approachable as 4e/E was, and is more DM-dependent than it was or 3.x/PF are. While the other WotC-era eds were disliked by DMs because they encouraged "Player Entitlement," they did put less of a burden of the DM as a consequence of putting so much in the hands of the players. You could run 3.x formulaically like you were a video game AI just putting challenges in front of your players; you could positively 'phone in 4e,' it was so carefree to run.

5e is like 1e: it demands more DMs, but Empowers them, in return, and allows them to deliver exceptional experiences to their players...

...or be total jerks.

DM's choice.

if you want to given the number of sources that people have, and the easy availability of instructional videos on free sources like youtube. If seventh graders can do it, I'm pretty sure that the people on this forum can, too.

We were 7th graders playing 1e AD&D back in the day. It was a nightmarishly complicated game in many ways, and there was nobody streaming games on YouTube, but if you were enthused enough you did it anyway.

People strangely underestimate kids.

Whether you're in 7th grade or retired or anything in-between, AD&D and 5e present challenges to the DM that only a fraction of players are equal to.

DM's were and are a precious resource.

 

[Umbran]

I'd say it's the other way 'round. In my experience, it takes one great GM to undo several bad GMs.

You can say it about yoruself just fine. If you generalize it, you'd be running against the basic operation of human psychology and neurochemisty.

 

[S'mon]

I don't think there is a general narrative of jerk GMs. There are a few people online who go on about jerk GMs.

 

[Hussar]

I don't think there is a general narrative of jerk GMs. There are a few people online who go on about jerk GMs.

I dunno about the "few". There's a host of "bad DM" threads on this forum alone, going back to the very first days. This is an issue that has been around since gaming started.

Of course it has. I mentioned Sturgeon's Law for a reason. The majority of DM's cannot be great. That's just simple math. It's a bell curve, at best, and, like any bell curve, that means that half of the bell is below average tailing down to very bad.

And, adding in the social nature of the game, a bad DM results in a LOT of time spent bad gaming. Like I said, in a team sport, if you don't like one of your team mates, well, you don't really have to socialize with them. So long as that team mate performs as expected, everything is good.

A bad DM is like a bad teacher. It ruins the whole experience.

 

[S'mon]

I dunno about the "few". There's a host of "bad DM" threads on this forum alone, going back to the very first days.

Most of them started by you, right?

 

[Maxperson]

I dunno about the "few". There's a host of "bad DM" threads on this forum alone, going back to the very first days. This is an issue that has been around since gaming started.

Of course it has. I mentioned Sturgeon's Law for a reason. The majority of DM's cannot be great. That's just simple math. It's a bell curve, at best, and, like any bell curve, that means that half of the bell is below average tailing down to very bad.

And, adding in the social nature of the game, a bad DM results in a LOT of time spent bad gaming. Like I said, in a team sport, if you don't like one of your team mates, well, you don't really have to socialize with them. So long as that team mate performs as expected, everything is good.

A bad DM is like a bad teacher. It ruins the whole experience.

Upset people like to complain. Happy people are usually content to be happy. Don't mistake a lot of complaints about this as indicating that it is anything other than a small minority of people who are bully DMs. Even if it is a bell curve, it's only those on the extreme end that are bad. The middle of the curve isn't the low end of average, and average spans a large part of the bell. I've encountered about as many truly great DMs as I have bad ones. There aren't that many of those, either.