D&D General worst (real) advice for DMs

[Blue]

Honestly, all of this comes across as... not responding to what I wrote, because you're... assuming I didn't respond to what you wrote in response to this particular nugget of advice:

The base condition for writing adventures tailored to your PCs is writing adventures tailored to the PCs. Trying to say "well, you didn't explicitly call out that writing adventures tailored to your PCs doesn't apply when you aren't writing adventures tailored to your PCs" is just sophistry to try to win an argument.

And when you talk about "hundreds of pages of player facing content", you yet again are expanding the argument from knowing all of the features of all of the players to knowing all of the details of all of the features of all of the players, which is a whole exponential level more that was never said. Knowing a character has a favored terrain of desert to throw it in once in a while is so much easier than what you haved tried to expand the argument to in order to make your point. Knowing a character is a caster and seeing they have a chance to cast right there eliminates over a hundred pages of "player facing content" that are details, not a list of the character's features.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A Hill Giant is a perfectly fine encounter for a party of 2nd level PCs in a properly run campaign.

This sentence is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Traditionally games have done a crap job of providing useful retreat options that would work with any reliability, and as such, even if a given version does, people have been trained that trying to retreat is even less likely to work out that fighting and overpowered opponent.

So I think assuming a given incarnation of the game and the GM will handle this in a way that doesn't make it an at least partial death sentence is just as problematic as overly fixating on balanced encounters if not more.

 

[Vaalingrade]

There's a good one:

In a game about being wandering badasses with 80% of the mechanics being about fighting, it is a great idea to suddenly (without prior discussion) expect the players to flee from or avoid combat with something they don't know outmatches them and then berate them for trying to engage with the mechanics of the game.

 

[prabe]

The base condition for writing adventures tailored to your PCs is writing adventures tailored to the PCs. Trying to say "well, you didn't explicitly call out that writing adventures tailored to your PCs doesn't apply when you aren't writing adventures tailored to your PCs" is just sophistry to try to win an argument.

And when you talk about "hundreds of pages of player facing content", you yet again are expanding the argument from knowing all of the features of all of the players to knowing all of the details of all of the features of all of the players, which is a whole exponential level more that was never said. Knowing a character has a favored terrain of desert to throw it in once in a while is so much easier than what you haved tried to expand the argument to in order to make your point. Knowing a character is a caster and seeing they have a chance to cast right there eliminates over a hundred pages of "player facing content" that are details, not a list of the character's features.

I think it's perfectly possible to create adventures tailored to the PCs without having an encyclopedic knowledge of what the PCs' abilities are. Some of that is knowing (or learning) the types of adventure elements that work well for a certain group, some of that is knowing what a given group of PCs want, some of that is knowing what a given group of PCs can do.

I don't know absolutely everything all the PCs in the parties I'm GMing can do (five or six characters, mid-high levels) but I am absolutely creating adventures tailored to those PCs' interests and desires, and tailored to what works for each group of players.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think it's perfectly possible to create adventures tailored to the PCs without having an encyclopedic knowledge of what the PCs' abilities are. Some of that is knowing (or learning) the types of adventure elements that work well for a certain group, some of that is knowing what a given group of PCs want, some of that is knowing what a given group of PCs can do.

I don't know absolutely everything all the PCs in the parties I'm GMing can do (five or six characters, mid-high levels) but I am absolutely creating adventures tailored to those PCs' interests and desires, and tailored to what works for each group of players.

I think @Blue 's original comment about knowing what the PCs can do was not so much about knowing every single thing about every PC so much as having a sense of what choices the players were making with character options and the like in order to then make sure to include those elements in adventure design/presentation.

When players make decisions of that sort, they're pretty much sending a signal to the GM, and the Gm should be aware of that. I largely agree with the idea. If someone takes the Linguist feat, for example, I'm going to make an effort to include elements that allow that ability to shine a bit. @Blue please feel free to correct me if I mistook your original point.

This doesn't mean that a GM needs to have an encyclopedic knowledge of every player facing rule, and I think taking the comment that way (not that you did that at all @prabe , your comment just prompted my thoughts) kind of misses the point.

There's a good one:

In a game about being wandering badasses with 80% of the mechanics being about fighting, it is a great idea to suddenly (without prior discussion) expect the players to flee from or avoid combat with something they don't know outmatches them and then berate them for trying to engage with the mechanics of the game.

Yeah, I think if we look at D&D as a genre the way we tend to consider movies, then it would be the action movie of the RPG world. It doesn't have to be nothing but fighting, and there may be plenty of opportunity for other elements, but if there's no fighting at all, then D&D would seem an odd choice (except for the "it's what we know" familiarity factor).

It'd be like hiring Michael Bay to direct your film and then having him show up with explosives and giant set pieces and greenscreens and a stunt team....and then asking him to make Glengarry Glen Ross.

 

[jmartkdr2]

It'd be like hiring Michael Bay to direct your film and then having him show up with explosives and giant set pieces and greenscreens and a stunt team....and then asking him to make Glengarry Glen Ross.

They're explosives salesmen now. And one of them is played by Megan Fox wearing very little for the context.

 

[dave2008]

Reddit is a breeding ground for terrible advice. Of the ones already mentioned, I'd like to add:
"Combat taking too long? Use a 60-second timer! If the time is up and they haven't called their action, they lose their turn."

Ha! I had to comment on this because we actually use a version* of this in our game and it works great. But I can totally understand it doesn't work for everyone!

*We only allow 30 seconds per turn. It was rough at first (really just the first session or two), but now it is not only faster, but more chaotically fun as well!

 

[dave2008]

I have actually used a timer in combat with large groups and it's effective. 60 seconds is too short. But if you have 7+ players and people are taking 5 minutes on their turn it is an issue.

Nonsense - we do it in 30 seconds!

 

[Burnside]

It'd be like hiring Michael Bay to direct your film and then having him show up with explosives and giant set pieces and greenscreens and a stunt team....and then asking him to make Glengarry Glen Ross.

Would really like to see Michael Bay's Glengarry Glen Ross now.

(Ext city street. BLAKE shoulders a rocket launcher.)

BLAKE
Coffee is for closers.

(CU BLAKE's finger squeezes the trigger)

(POV shot missile approaching the real estate office)

(Ext city street real estate office explodes.)

BLAKE
Third prize is you're fired.

 

[dave2008]

This is actually great advice. If your players pick abilities to focus on things, like trap disarming or what-have-you, and your don't know about it so they never get a chance to shine, that's a missed DM opportunity and makes the player regret picking it.

Now, you think it's bad advice - why do you feel that way?

It is to much for some DM's to handle. If this statement is true, it implies DMs that cannot handle knowing everything 6 or 7 different 15th level PCs can do is a bad DM. I don't believe that is the case. I think a DM needs to know generally what the PCs can do, but it is not necessary to know everything.