To distill our concern down to it's base form. Whose playstyle are they going to categorize as 'bad' DMing?
To distill down my total bewilderment: Why does anyone's playstyle need to be categorized as "bad" DMing?
I brought this same point up earlier in the thread. While the discussion is being framed as guidance for running and playing D&D... there is an undertone of... because I believe that playstyle X is the right way to do it.
Where X is their preferred way of practices/resolution/whatever.
The kind of advice I'm asking for is completely style-agnostic. I've explicitly said, several times, the kinds of things that would be useful advice here: player psychology, group etiquette, ways to handle problematic player behaviors, ways to get DM expectations and player expectations lined up with one another, etc.
So it's been a long time since I picked up the DMG and just started reading through it. Honestly, it's pretty dang well written and absolutely full of great advice. A few excerpts are below.
All of this is just from the first 2 pages.
None of the first quote is advice in any form I recognize. "Focus on what you enjoy" and "it's supposed to be fun" are...not actually
productive. Again, referencing the above, things like "some players are <personality type,> which means they value <activity> and don't get much out of <other activity.> Keep this player engaged by offering them <content>, and don't let them make everything be about <thing they want.>" This is obviously generic, but I have to speak in generalities because if I speak in specificities, I'll be nailed for narrowly supporting only one playstyle and (always exclusively by implication) giving the big middle finger to every other style. (But of course, if I
do speak in generalities, I'll be accused of
secretly trying to implicitly give the big middle finger to every other playstyle....)
One example of this is the description of the "Explorer," which is a very close description of one of my actual players (as in, I read the description to him, even though I don't run a 4e game, and he
instantly said, "Oh, so
me.") This read as follows:
An explorer loves to see new places in the fantasy world and to meet the residents of such places, fair and foul. All the explorer needs is the promise of an interesting locale or different culture, and off he goes to see that place.
The explorer wants to experience the wonders the game world has to offer. He also wants to know that there's more out there to find. He presses for details: proper names of characters and places, descriptions of the environment, and some idea of what's over the next hill. He's sometimes interested in the adventure plot and his character's motivations. (The explorer is close kin to both the actor and the storyteller.) The wonder of new discoveries is what is key to keeping the explorer happy.
AN EXPLORER...
- Seeks out new experiences in the game's setting.
- Likes learning hidden facts and locating lost items and places.
- Enjoys atmosphere as much as combat and story.
- Advances the plot by being willing to move ever on.
ENGAGE THE EXPLORER BY...
- Including elements that call for exploration.
- Rewarding curiosity and willingness to explore.
- Providing rich descriptions, and using cool maps and props.
- Recruiting him to map for the party.
BE SURE THAT THE EXPLORER DOESN'T...
- Use knowledge of the game world to his own advantage.
- Bore the other players or exhaust you with his thirst for detail.
This is focused, useful, productive advice that is completely style-agnostic. It identifies the priorities of the associated player type, specific things you can do or use that enrich the experience for that player type, and typical problem behaviors to watch out for from that player type. It doesn't waste space, nor is it miserly: it communicates a lot of information quickly and efficiently. This profile (as implied by the references to the "actor" and "storyteller") is but one of the eight "Player Motivations" listed. The opening paragraphs explicitly say that many players enjoy a variety of different things, and it's pretty clear that a given player might evince multiple motivations, whether serially or simultaneously.
Your second quote is...
closer to advice, but open-ended to the point of near-uselessness. It boils down to "It's up to you; here's one canned example,
figure everything else out yourself." That's not advice, and is certainly not practical enough to be broadly-applicable.
The third isn't advice at all, and isn't even
trying to be, it's just a high-level description of the book's contents. I don't understand why you included it.
The fourth also isn't advice at all. It's a fluffy, qualitative description. It's the equivalent of painting a beautiful sensory picture of how fluffy and moist and delicately sweet the perfect batch of cupcakes is, without actually telling people any of the
ingredients cupcakes contain, the techniques needed to make cupcakes, or the common difficulties encountered while baking. In the very strict sense of "how things are done in practice," it has no
practical value. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be there--evocative value is very important!--but if your intent was to give examples of
advice, it is devoid of such content.
Not sure what you're getting at. I mentioned some improvements to the DMG above. But even if they make drastic improvements I simply don't think it will change much. First, very few people actually read the advice in the DMG.
Repeating the statement does not make it true. I have yet to see any actual evidence that "very few people actually read the advice in the DMG." And, if we actually make the advice very good, wouldn't that
encourage people to read it? Many--even 4e critics--spoke very highly of 4e's DMG. Hard to cogently praise something you've never read.
But even if they do, it takes practice and experience.
I never said it didn't. I'm saying, we can avoid common pitfalls and errors, improve the starting experience, and make the jump into DMing easier and more effective for the people who try. I have explicitly and repeatedly said that
some things will require experience. That is not a reason to abandon any effort at teaching.
I've had DMs that ran the gamut from awful to awesome. Years of experience DMing didn't really move the needle up the scale all that far. I've had newbie DMs that were enthusiastic that made mistakes but ran a fun game. I've had experienced DMs that insisted on reading every bit of box text and taking 5 minutes or more drawing maps that had to match the module's maps exactly.
Then...wouldn't it be useful to communicate to DMs about known ways that certain practices can go wrong, and methods to address those concerns? Again, things like the above, which (as far as I can tell) are playstyle-agnostic and focused on "finding ways to make your game work for your group."
The worst experiences I've had were with experienced DMs. One only ran super deadly killer dungeons. Another had a d6 with body parts on it that he rolled if enemies crit. Roll the "head"? Gee, too bad another PC got beheaded!
Okay. I...don't really understand what I'm supposed to get from this. It seems to be undercutting your own point--experience
didn't make these DMs better. Experience, in fact, failed to make any appreciable change at all in their behavior. If experience is so unreliable, shouldn't we be willing to add other options to the toolbox, like useful advice and instruction?
The new DMs? They needed a few pointers and feedback but most were decent, sometimes even good. A good DM has more to do with attitude and being able to read the players than anything in my experience.
Okay. Why can't the DMG include at least some of those "few pointers"? Obviously feedback requires a live audience and practice, but a lot of feedback can be generalized into useful advice. DMing isn't some vastly esoteric thing where every single table is totally, completely, unutterably, ineffably different with absolutely nothing in common whatsoever. A
lot of DMing pitfalls and problems are quite common.
I believe it's because the 'critics' have suggested some degree of change or improvement is perfectly fine, but people asking for things to get better keep pushing for better and better without any clear end in sight.
1. Why is it a bad thing to ask for things to get better?
2. As I have said, many of the
alleged efforts to make things better were never adequate to begin with, and at least I have been very consistent on that front--I've never said otherwise.
3. Even apart from the previous to things, this would be you admitting to a slippery slope fallacy: "Oh, so if doing A wasn't good enough, and now you're asking for B, then clearly reaching X, Y, and Z won't be good enough either and you'll keep making demands
forever." You have not established that such demands will occur; you've simply
accused people of making such demands, often when they have explicitly rejected doing so. It's not productive or effective. It comes up
all the time and gets a cross response
every single time. Why keep doing it when it
never ever actually gets anywhere?
Because those critics are happy with things the way they are, more or less.
Seems like kind of a crappy position to take then. "Because I'm happy with the way things are, you must be a demanding jerk who will never be happy with anything less than perfection." Why take such a position?
And just maybe IMO, because the changes being proposed are mostly abstract and not concrete, it's really easy to picture an abstract change yucking on your yum.
See, here's the problem, as mentioned above. It's a "heads I win, tails you lose" argument from people criticizing any effort at change.
If you give specifics, you will be accused of excluding anything that wasn't mentioned in the specifics--no matter how hard you work to specify that you're just making one example. Or, almost as commonly, your example will be dismissed as
overly specific. "We're talking about a whole
game here, not just one fiddly specific instance!" The "white room" rebuttal, for example, is very frequently used to write off anything even remotely specific as
too specific to ever be useful in any way.
So we adapt, by speaking in generalities, in abstractions that can be applied elsewhere. But now, as you can see, that's also unacceptable. Generalities are
too general; they can't be
applied because they're clearly a subversive effort to sneak something nasty in. If someone speaks in abstractions and generalities, they're secretly trying to destroy specific playstyles they hate.
Heads you win; tails we lose.
I addressed it when you brought it up earlier, and I'll do so now. They can offer advice and guidance about multiple playstyles. There's no need to eliminate anyone's style.
Agreed--although my example above is (as far as I can see) style-agnostic, there can and IMO should be style-specific advice for a variety of styles, not just a single one. Some groups value a lot of DM control, other groups value a DM-hands-off approach; both things have their pitfalls and benefits, and discussing those things and what helps make them sing would be useful information.
I get that there's a new edition coming, and so people are on guard about what may be changed... but I don't think calling for more clarity and better guidance are the kinds of changes you have to worry about.
Agreed.