D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[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.