D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[Vaalingrade]

I don't know if it's been on this thread, but there is definitely a culture present in D&D in certain corners of having to 'earn' fun games, be it from a player or DM perspective.

 

[pemerton]

So the guy didn't have the tools in 2E. Would he have them now? What would it look like?

I posted one example that was published in Classic Traveller in 1977. A contemporary mechanical system that resembles this is the Circles check found in Burning Wheel and spin-off games.

Another, different, sort of tool would be skill challenge, or similar, resolution.

Yet a different sort of tool would be the way Apocalypse World handles "I look for an <X>"-type actions: Read a Situation, Barter-moves, and GM soft moves when those don't apply.

There are lots and lots of tools for GMing relatively open-ended scenarios like defending a city against infiltration other than railroading through a GM's (or module author's) preconception of how things must happen.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Learning to DM can be accomplished through either means, IME. I've taught maybe 20-25 players to become DMs over the years (so I can get a break and JUST PLAY once in a while!!! Purely selfish motives. ).

I teach mechanics first. You should know how the system works. Of course there will always be things DMs forget, but knowing most of the systems is vital to running the game.

Once you learn the game (from its design), then you want to decide what works for you and the game you want to run and what doesn't.

Finally, when you are comfortable with the management of the game, it is time to work on the presentation, including becoming comfortable improving (because we all know it WILL HAPPEN!).

Grasping the mechanics/systems and then being comfortable with improv and not panicking IME are the two biggest hurdles. Other aspects can be problems, sure, but those are the big ones.

I'm sure others might disagree with that process, but it has worked for me and those I've taught to DM (and play as well, of course).

Certainly, each DM will decide for themselves what level of mechanics vs. narrative/story that want, as well as hopefully developing their own style! The last thing I want when I teach someone to play is to run or play the game the way I DO. I will offer suggestions, sure, but people need to learn to play the game their own way. I LOVE playing in a game where I helped the DM learn to run a game, and see how THEY do things--the differences are what makes it unique and fun for me!

The problem with learning from tutorials online (IME) is the new DMs expect to then run the game as well as those they've learned from. While I don't believe someone needs decades of trial and error to enjoy playing the game, EXPERIENCE from running the game for years will make someone better (hopefully!) and new DMs sometimes fail to understand it takes a lot of practice and time to be a good DM and run a smooth game. It seems to me sometimes like younger / newer DMs sometimes expect too much from themselves too quickly, and get frustrated or discouraged when things go wrong, etc.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Trifle not with 1e, lest ye play 1e, and if you gaze at the purplish High Gygaxian Verbiage, the purplish High Gygaxian Verbiage gazes also into you.

I cut my teeth on the Metzer Basic, then went straight into 1e core. That and the 2e lore have formed the basis of what D&D is to me.

 

[Campbell]

I posted one example that was published in Classic Traveller in 1977. A contemporary mechanical system that resembles this is the Circles check found in Burning Wheel and spin-off games.

Another, different, sort of tool would be skill challenge, or similar, resolution.

Yet a different sort of tool would be the way Apocalypse World handles "I look for an <X>"-type actions: Read a Situation, Barter-moves, and GM soft moves when those don't apply.

There are lots and lots of tools for GMing relatively open-ended scenarios like defending a city against infiltration other than railroading through a GM's (or module author's) preconception of how things must happen.

I think a lot of young DMs/GMs get a bit over their skis because they think they have build a whole world (or be actively interested in world building) when you just need a solid backdrop to start. I also think we are taught to focus way too much on what will happen in the future. Games often point beginners towards these massive adventure tomes that are really intimidating. I know I would have been better served by something like Matt Colville's 4 room dungeons or the Worlds Without Number approach of asking players what they want to do next session and just prepping material around that. Prep what you need for the next game and whatever else is fun. No more than that.

Speaking personally for me the world building was a big part of what I struggled with. Scenario design and character design are fun for me, but like world building details - intricate histories, geography and the like are really boring and need to be in the context of cool scenario design for me to give a rip. Someone telling me that was alright would have been immensely helpful.

 

[Oofta]

I posted one example that was published in Classic Traveller in 1977. A contemporary mechanical system that resembles this is the Circles check found in Burning Wheel and spin-off games.

Another, different, sort of tool would be skill challenge, or similar, resolution.

Yet a different sort of tool would be the way Apocalypse World handles "I look for an <X>"-type actions: Read a Situation, Barter-moves, and GM soft moves when those don't apply.

There are lots and lots of tools for GMing relatively open-ended scenarios like defending a city against infiltration other than railroading through a GM's (or module author's) preconception of how things must happen.

But can those games handle other scenarios? In detail? I mean ... D&D gives you tools. They may not be as "structured" as you want, but they are there. I can see a case being made for more explanation, the chase rules are just one example of how to run things and there could be myriad others.

Other games have different goals, different approaches. No game can be the best at everything, every game has strengths and weaknesses. That doesn't, in my mind, make them better or worse just different. If I want to go camping off road, I'm not going to take a sports car. If I want to win a race on a track, I'm not going to hop in that off-road vehicle. If someone is railroading, first that's not necessarily a bad thing based on what the group enjoys. Second, there are many ways around it, although it does take some effort in 5E.

But you didn't answer the main questions. Did your buddy give up DMing? More importantly, is this something you see on a regular basis? Because I don't. Then again most first time DMs should probably start with a module, not a custom campaign until they get the hang of the game.

 

[FrogReaver]

There also seems to be a strong sentiment that the decades of trial and error are “the way” and any attempt to bypass that is therefore looked down upon.

I think decades is a bit of hyperbole, but I also think 'there is no greater teacher than experience' is just as true in RPGs as it is for most of life.

 

[Fifth Element]

I cut my teeth on the Metzer Basic, then went straight into 1e core. That and the 2e lore have formed the basis of what D&D is to me.

Ditto. Really only played one BECMI character (a cleric), then went into 1E. First characters rolled was a paladin. Switched to 2E when it came out.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I gotta ask. Is this whole "D&D is hard to pick up" really a significant issue? We all goof, especially when we first start to play. I'm sure I've gotten rules wrong many a time. But it never stopped us from playing.

I genuinely believe it is, yes. D&D is the face of TTRPGs, for good and for ill. Having a bad experience with D&D is a great way to ensure that a person never interacts with TTRPGs again. It would be like being served bad sushi the first time you eat it--you've given it a shot and hated it, why would you ever try it again?

I've had truly bad, horrendous, DMs but it had nothing to do with them or their players not understanding how to play the game.

Doesn't it? A "truly bad, horrendous" DM can only happen one of three ways:

1. the DM knows exactly what they're doing and how upsetting it is, and doesn't care (aka, they're a jerk or acting in bad faith).
2. the DM believes certain things actually are good behavior, but is incorrect in that belief.
3. the DM makes serious mistakes in their attempt to pursue what they correctly believe to be good DMing.

As you've said, nothing can be done about case 1. A DM who doesn't care cannot be made to care. No one denies this. But the other two...those can be addressed, and several of us here (presumably @Fanaelialae and @pemerton at the very least) believe the other two are quite common, especially for first-time DMs. The second type of DM is mistaken, and if you catch their erroneous beliefs before they play out in an actual campaign, you can prevent issues from happening in the first place. The third type is perhaps the most awkward, having the right idea but not understanding how to make it happen; instruction may or may not be helpful, as it might just require practice to understand the gap, but instruction is unlikely to hurt.

I think there are actually relatively few DMs who fall into case 1. They certainly occur, but they're uncommon. It's just that, as you say, they're really just the worst™ when you DO find one. You get more horror stories out of such things, and those horror stories are more interesting and more worthy of attention, so these absolute stinkers get talked about a lot. The ones that are merely poor, without being horrible, get a lot less mention....but are a lot more common.

And that means cases 2 and 3 are way more common, yet they're also the potentially fixable ones! The ones that, if you can nip the problem in the bud, you can save everyone a lot of time and frustration. Isn't it worthwhile to try to find the common problem areas and address them? Isn't that what guidance is for? Shouldn't a book labelled "guide" give that guidance?

 

[FrogReaver]

Doesn't it? A "truly bad, horrendous" DM can only happen one of three ways:

1. the DM knows exactly what they're doing and how upsetting it is, and doesn't care (aka, they're a jerk or acting in bad faith).
2. the DM believes certain things actually are good behavior, but is incorrect in that belief.
3. the DM makes serious mistakes in their attempt to pursue what they correctly believe to be good DMing.

The dreaded option 4!

4. the DM's style is 'good' but just doesn't match the style that particular player(s) prefers.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The dreaded option 4!

4. the DM's style is 'good' but just doesn't match the style that particular player(s) prefers.

That isn't relevant to the example given by Oofta. Oofta was explicitly granting that the DM was, in fact, actually bad, horrendously so, not that they were a perfectly 100% fine and just a bad fit for this player/group. I was working within the example given, where it is a given that the DM is in fact horrendously bad, not just contextually inappropriate.

I think decades is a bit of hyperbole, but I also think 'there is no greater teacher than experience' is just as true in RPGs as it is for most of life.

And yet, at the same time, most of us do not want engineers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, pharmacists, architects, veterinarians, and educators who have no pre-training and instead learn everything they do purely through experience, right? At this point in the thread, I honestly can't be sure anymore. Do you want your lawyer to have attended law school and passed their bar exam? Do you want your child's pediatrician to have attended med school and gotten a medical license? Do you want to know that the architect who designed the office building you worked in actually got a decent degree and a licensed to practice? Do you want the civil engineers who work on replacing a major bridge to have a solid educational background in civil engineering, rather than just picking up anyone who can answer physics questions?

Because if you're saying yes to most of those questions, you don't seem to actually believe that experience is the best teacher ever, no question. There's certainly a critical place for it. Medical doctors complete residency, after all, and lawyers should generally have internships or other work at a law firm relevant to their legal expertise, etc. But it very much seems to be that experience shouldn't be the foundation of knowledge, but rather the house we build on top of the foundation--a foundation coming from theory, explanation, and analysis, stuff that can in fact be taught.

Now, this is a leisure-time activity. It's not something that we should expect a whole friggin' degree for. But that isn't a reason to throw people to the wolves and whoever survives can successfully DM thereafter. DMing is hard; almost everyone recognizes this. And DMs are in incredibly short supply; everyone recognizes that. If we can do things that make it easier to get into DMing, if we can reduce the rate of errors--or hell, even your non-sequitur example of DM/player mismatch, if we can reduce rates of that too, which good instructions CAN mitigate!--isn't that worth doing? Shouldn't a thing purporting to guide dungeon masters help address that sort of stuff?

The 4e DMG spends a significant section of the first chapter--four and a half pages--just talking about how a group forms, what its dynamics are (and how they can become dysfunctional), and player psychology and how to address those things, both dealing with destructive stuff (distractions and players acting out) and promoting constructive stuff (how to give various player types what they want: that is, how to ensure they have fun.) There's a whole further section that talks about your role and behaviors and preferences as DM (two pages), as well as "table rules," social etiquette and effective ways to deal with problematic behaviors. The entire first chapter is information meant to forestall problems, equip DMs with tools to address them, AND inform them about playstyle/approach/preference differences that COULD lead to problems so you can try to work through them or recognize that they simply can't be resolved well in advance.

Like...how is this hard? How is this a bad thing to include? The 5e DMG gives all of this--this entire concept--less than two pages of discussion! In separate parts!

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think a lot of young DMs/GMs get a bit over their skis because they think they have build a whole world (or be actively interested in world building) when you just need a solid backdrop to start. I also think we are taught to focus way too much on what will happen in the future. Games often point beginners towards these massive adventure tomes that are really intimidating. I know I would have been better served by something like Matt Colville's 4 room dungeons or the Worlds Without Number approach of asking players what they want to do next session and just prepping material around that. Prep what you need for the next game and whatever else is fun. No more than that.

I think there's matters of degree that can come up. I'm not married to having to build every damn thing anyone may ever want to interact with before its needed, and am far from allergic to letting players add in things to support their own backstories and such.

But some setting elements cast long shadows, and putting them in after-the-fact, no matter who's doing them can look odd. If there's a hostile nearby kingdom that has constant low-level border clashes with the one the PCs operate out of, that probably shouldn't be something that comes up late in the day.

But there's no need to detail every village in the kingdom, or even countries hundreds of miles away for the most part; it can sometimes be useful to do random examples of that, but its not necessary.

 

[FrogReaver]

That isn't relevant to the example given by Oofta. Oofta was explicitly granting that the DM was, in fact, actually bad, horrendously so, not that they were a perfectly 100% fine and just a bad fit for this player/group. I was working within the example given, where it is a given that the DM is in fact horrendously bad, not just contextually inappropriate.

I think you are wrong about what Oofta said. I mean Oofta even liked my response. But I think it’s best to just let @Oofta speak for herself.

 

[FrogReaver]

And yet, at the same time, most of us do not want engineers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, pharmacists, architects, veterinarians, and educators who have no pre-training and instead learn everything they do purely through experience, right? At this point in the thread, I honestly can't be sure anymore. Do you want your lawyer to have attended law school and passed their bar exam? Do you want your child's pediatrician to have attended med school and gotten a medical license? Do you want to know that the architect who designed the office building you worked in actually got a decent degree and a licensed to practice? Do you want the civil engineers who work on replacing a major bridge to have a solid educational background in civil engineering, rather than just picking up anyone who can answer physics questions?

…because playing d&d is soo much like lawyering, doctoring, engineering etc. I’m rather in Disbelief at this comparison.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

…because playing d&d is soo much like lawyering, doctoring, engineering etc. I’m rather in Disbelief at this comparison.

Perhaps it would be useful to read two paragraphs down where I literally said that, instead of quipping at individual sections.

I think you are wrong about what Oofta said. I mean Oofta even liked my response. But I think it’s best to just let @Oofta speak for herself.

Their literal, actual words were:

I've had truly bad, horrendous, DMs but it had nothing to do with them or their players not understanding how to play the game.

How else was I supposed to interpret that other than that the DMs in question were, in fact, "truly bad, horrendous"? If Oofta did not mean that these DMs were "truly bad," why use the word "truly"?

 

[Oofta]

If someone is a new DM I give them a lot of slack. I assume most people do.

We're all just playing a game, I don't expect perfection from anyone. As long as they're trying and listening to feedback it's all good. No amount of text is going to make a first time DM a pro, Mercer effect aside.

I think improvements can be made, just don't expect miracles.

 

[FrogReaver]

Perhaps it would be useful to read two paragraphs down where I literally said that, instead of quipping at individual sections.

IMO if you can dismiss your first 2 paragraphs with your third then surely my 2 sentences doing the same shouldn’t be a problem.

Their literal, actual words were:

How else was I supposed to interpret that other than that the DMs in question were, in fact, "truly bad, horrendous"? If Oofta did not mean that these DMs were "truly bad," why use the word "truly"?

I think you are looking past some key words in Oofta’s reply. But again. I’ll let Oofta speak for themselves.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If someone is a new DM I give them a lot of slack. I assume most people do.

We're all just playing a game, I don't expect perfection from anyone. As long as they're trying and listening to feedback it's all good.

Alright. Players temper their expectations. Sounds like a useful thing.

I don't see how that, in any way, leads to...

No amount of text is going to make a first time DM a pro, Mercer effect aside.

...this. Because you are conflating player expectations and responses with designer guidance. The two are completely unrelated things. The game can give useful, productive, focused advice that can quite easily forewarn prospective DMs against common problems. Problems like "having a mistaken idea of what good DMing is," or "having a mistaken idea of how to pursue good DMing goals," or even "having a mismatch between what you want as DM and what some or all of your group wants as players."

No one is asking for "professional" DMs here. We're asking that we get advice to short-circuit the (many, many) common problems that a lot of first-time DMs are likely to encounter. That is, exactly the purpose of education: to teach new generations the lessons learned by prior generations' efforts, mistaken and successful, so they don't have to repeat those mistakes themselves.

Sometimes it won't work. That's okay. The fact that teaching doesn't always work is not a reason not to teach!

I think improvements can be made, just don't expect miracles.

Genuine question: Why is it, whenever people ask for things to get better, their critics project a desire for perfection and miracles onto them? That's clearly not a charitable reading. There is no world where treating "why can't the DMG actually have guidance and teaching elements?" as asking for miracles is a useful contribution to the discussion. You have to know that no one will do that. Why even say it?

 

[FrogReaver]

...this. Because you are conflating player expectations and responses with designer guidance. The two are completely unrelated things. The game can give useful, productive, focused advice that can quite easily forewarn prospective DMs against common problems. Problems like "having a mistaken idea of what good DMing is," or "having a mistaken idea of how to pursue good DMing goals," or even "having a mismatch between what you want as DM and what some or all of your group wants as players."

To distill our concern down to it's base form. Whose playstyle are they going to categorize as 'bad' DMing?

 

[Imaro]

To distill our concern down to it's base form. Whose playstyle are they going to categorize 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.