The Hater's Game

Compare the following.  First, this description of dungeon mastering from the 5th Edition DM's Guide, p. 4, Introduction:

"The Dungeon Master (DM) is the creative force behind a D&D game.  The DM creates a world for the other players to explore, and also creates and runs adventures that drive that story ... A Dungeon Master gets to wear many hats.  As the architect of a campaign, the DM creates adventures by placing monsters, traps and treasures for the other player's characters (the adventurers) to discover.  As a storyteller, the DM helps the other players visualize what's happening around them, improvising when the adventurers do something or go somewhere unexpected."

And now, another definition, from the 1st Edition DM's Guide, p. 7, Preface:

"When you build your campaign you will tailor it to suit your personal tastes.  In the heat of play it will slowly evolve into a compound of your personality and those of your better participants, a superior alloy.  And as long as your campaign remains viable, it will continue a slow process of change and growth.  In this lies a great danger, however.  The systems and parameters contained in the whole of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons are based on a great deal of knowledge, experience gained through discussion, play, testing, questioning and (hopefully) personal insight."

Interesting.

The replacement of the 2nd-person "you" with the 3rd-person "DM" is telling.  The 1st Edition introduction doesn't talk at all about the DM or the adventure.  It talks about systems, about what the author tried to include, about boundaries to put on the party and what not to allow the party to do.  And again, it talks about "you," not some amorphous "the DM."

I had to find a comparison paragraph in the Preface that I could match up with the 5e DMG, and it still doesn't.  The 5e DMG uses a lot of verbs to describe what the DM does.  The DM creates (used 3 times), runs, gets, places, helps and improvises.  These are all connected directly to the DM and what the DM does is written in every sentence.

The 1e DMG uses two verbs, build and tailor, and only in the first sentence.  The rest is about what happens after the DM acts.  The campaign evolves, continues, changes, grows.

The 5e introduction spends its time talking about what an adventure is, what things are, what the DM gets.  It never talks about cost and it never talks about change.  It is static.  It is these things we are telling you.

Whereas the 1e preface talks about what things require, what they limit and balance, and ultimately where it can all go wrong.  It talks about this on the first page.  Six paragraphs in, Gygax is warning that a mutable system means it can all go wrong and fast.  In the paragraph above, he lays it straight.  This is not going to be easy.

And it wasn't.

Consider the words, "In the heat of play," and how divorced they are from virtually anything you will read in a rule-book nowadays.  Gygax is remembering his wargaming days, his Chainmail days, the sessions where fights broke out and people hurled dice and threats at each other.  He's telling us, the reader, that the forge of play is going to make our game better.  The phrase, "evolve into a compound," is a weaponsmith's, the metallurgist seeking the right mix, so that it can be hammered and beat on the anvil to produce the best metal.  Those elements are our personality and our best participants.  Not players we "help," but players who, along with ourselves, found together to make the best alloy.

It is right there in his 2nd paragraph.  Inferior DMs and Players do not make good games.  A good game is not created, it is forged in fire and anger and hard work.  Nothing is guaranteed.  You've got to work.  You've got to discuss and play.  You've got to test and question.  Hopefully, he says, you have insight.

Why "hopefully"?  Why toss in that possibility that you won't have insight?  Why doesn't he just pat you on the head, like 5e does, and assume you can do it, without ever giving you reason to doubt?

Gygax isn't selling something.  He's saying, "Life is pain.  Anyone who says differently is selling something."

And this, I think, is at the core of everything.

2nd edition and everything afterward ~ no, scratch that, because I think it started even while I was still playing D&D in high school.  The modules and other like role-playing games that were published tried to sell an idea that "anyone could do it."  It is splashed all over the 5e DMG.  This book will help you.  As a DM, you get to wear many hats, like you've won a prize.  Want to invent a world?  This book helps you "nail down a few important details," like it's something you can sluff off in an afternoon, no problem.  Your world is a place where you can escape.  You don't have to memorize this book.  Swear to gawd, it says right here, "Being the DM should be fun."

Why?  Why should it be fun?  Because, as the 5e DMG says, "Focus on the aspects you enjoy and downplay the rest."  See?  This isn't about you and your players working together, this is about you slacking off when you don't give a fuck and just doing what feels like a laugh riot.

This guy made a game.

I want to emphasize something.  Try to imagine I'm writing this in giant letters written on a mountainside, so I don't have to spend the next 14 years carving.  5th Edition was the culmination of player advice being given to the company, which the company dutifully included in the book in order to please the fan base.  5th edition did not invent this perspective on the game.  The disgruntled, unhappy part of the fanbase, those fans who felt dissatisfied with the game as it was, those who had the will and the motivation to complain, built this system.  Those people that Bav called the 10%.  The loud chorus that declared their appreciation for 5e, because they hated old D&D as it was.  Essentially, if you're playing 5e, you're playing the Hater's Game.

Gygax takes time and effort to make it perfectly clear that no, not everyone can be a DM.  You can try, but be warned.  These are dangerous waters.  You're going to fuck up.  You're going to have to work.  There's heat and lots of hammering ahead of you.  And a lot of sweat.  It is going to be a bitch to bring this sucker home.  And you might never do it.  Be warned.

The Hater's Game says, "Hey, woah, slow down there.  DMing should be fun.  You don't have to work that hard, man.  You've got the books, don't you?  If something happens, well, shit, it's your world.  Just ... make something up.  Improvise.  Fuck, dude, what's with all this danger bullshit?"

One is truth and one is evasion.

One is your parents telling you as a child, "You lost.  If you want to win next year, you'll have to keep practicing."

The other is your parents telling you, "You did great!  You tried your best.  You have nothing to be ashamed of!"

It isn't even that there's a black and white line between "yes you can" and "no you can't."  That's a grey, grey line.  With a lot of work needed over here and time spent practicing over there, with things inside us to overcome and books to read, not to mention figuring out just what "insight" is.  But however grey the line is, there is definitely a tipping point that DMs reach where they realize, "No, I was not cut out for this."

In my opinion, that tipping point comes just at the moment when the DM realizes what it is we mean when we say, "this."   Effectively, the actual whole and complete picture of what it really means to be a DM.  It takes time to get there; and a lot of that time is spent wallowing around and scrambling ~ and then the sun comes up and the whole vista of D&D reveals itself as one immense picture.  For a moment, we stare at it, taking it all in.  It's ... it's huge.  It's just so fucking big.  Big and beautiful ... and scary.

And DMs divide themselves into two kinds of people.  One hesitates, blinks, feels a moment of lightheadedness, then picks up a pair of heavier gloves, hefts the forging sledge up on their shoulder and starts down into that enormous valley.

And the other shakes their head and says, "No fucking way," and promptly goes back the way they came.  The sun sets and leaves the familiar way in the dark and for a few years, the backpeddlar furtively pokes around at shit before deciding, "You know, this is kind of a waste of time."

I believe that 5th Edition, the Hater's Edition, deliberately caters to the backpeddler.  And the company went along because they realized that the DM with his hammer wasn't going to need the company anyway, not after they'd seen Shambhala.  So the Company and the Haters made a marriage and 5th Edition is the rough beast offspring that came out.  And we have be vexed to nightmare by the rocking cradle.