Wednesday, January 20, 2021

All Problems Solved

In dungeon mastering a game, you're being asked to accomplish three impossible tasks.  

First, you're expected to learn and implement a vast number of rules, any of which may come up at any time during play.  This is made harder in that the rules are often scattered over multiple books, inserted between content that may have nothing whatsoever to do with the game's actual rules.  It is up to you to decipher the difference.

Second, you're asked to create or adapt some kind of setting, either a "game world" or some "adventure," which must be of a quality that the players will appreciate.  If you fail in this task, the players will become bored and your game will fail.

Third, you must deliver the game to the players with a verve you may not possess, in such a way that the players will be made interested—while at the same time you must also act as a referee and a gatekeeper upon your players' activities.  This is made harder in that these players are often your closest friends.

In answer, the D&D game industry has invented a solution to these problems, a solution that is oft-repeated by thousands of commentors and game pundits, as THE key answer in how to be a DM.

Slack.

That's right.  Having asked you through the game's design to do these things, you are told repeatedly to neglect to do these things, mostly because these things are inordinately difficult and not fun—and the game is supposed to be fun.

Advice #1: "You don't have to learn all the rules.  Just the main ones.  The ones that come up a lot.  And anything else, well, just make a ruling.  D&D is better when it's simpler, anyway."

Advice #2: "You don't even need a game world.  There are tons of great adventures you can purchase; just ask around and find out which ones are good, and then have a good time running your players without all the stress."

Advice #3: "Nil.  We don't talk about #3.  Even when we pretend to talk about #3, we're really just talking about #1 and #2.  Where it comes to #3, we slack."

And there you have it.  D&D problems solved.  Now go and be a great DM, and never worry about the game again.

5 comments:

  1. Yep, this is how everyone starts their DMing career. No new DM knows the rules all that well, has a fleshed out world ready to go, nor are they great judges simply because of lack of experience. And because everyone starts out deficient, they see that their first few adventures aren't all that bad, so they don't make real effort to improve and we end up with people who have been DMing for 30 odd years and are still amateurs.

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  2. Pretty good summation. I kind of love this post (especially for its succinctness). Really.
    : )

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  3. "Succinct" is a succinct way to say "not enough words."

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  4. As a hack writer who often struggles with packaging ideas in something less than a deluge of words, I appreciate succinctness.
    ; )

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  5. It's way off topic, but you do realise that a) the blog tag says this is a blog with too many words and b) that whole "succinctness" thing was propaganda by schoolteachers who were forced to read multiple bad essays and merely wanted to lessen their workload. I suppose we can add, c) I'm Russian.

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