But ... I know people hate to say, "good post," and I'm on record saying that it bears little improvement on silence. I don't write these posts for the applause, anyway. I sincerely write them to help others be better DMs. I've spent hundreds of hours searching online for the sort of posts that I've been writing this year, and these RPG 201 posts are really hitting the mark.
So let's try this.
If the posts have suggested some directions for your own preparation plans, write a comment that says,
"These posts have been helpful."
If the posts are managing a paradigm shift in your thinking about how we've been structuring preparation for the game, write a comment that says,
"I've never thought of it this way before."
And if the posts have already started you making notes of your own for actual preparation work on your own game, or you've actually started making a new campaign, then write a commen that says,
"This started me working."
And then, maybe, you could add a sentence or two to describe what sentences in the posts were helpful, or something about how you're thinking now, or what you've started working on. Then we could all feel like some sort of communication has started.
Of course, if you just don't care, feel free to remain silent.
These posts have been helpful. They can confirm my preparation and enhance it. The sectioms on estimation and planning were especially useful.
ReplyDeleteI dont post comments because I avoid conflict, and you can be.. blunt. Effective, but blunt. I feel intimidated, coming in to comment and opening up possible criticisms.
ReplyDeleteI'll say that your recent "201 class" posts have clarified some of my recent thinking, and that your discussion on research and preparation has been extremely useful. I am designing some new dungeons and areas for my world, keeping your recent words in mind. Preparing my notes with more care has changed how the game is played, custom monster tables, details for traps, treasure, and npcs. All give me more time to actually play on game day.
I used to be one of those DMs who winged everything with no notes and made my own rules instead of taking the time to even check the book. I look back on that time as necessary to get to where I am, but those games were trainwrecks that most of my players have luckily forgotten.
Your writing also convinced me, long ago, to focus on working on a single game world, which has been extremely beneficial. Making new worlds and concepts can be exhausting, and used to be a huge blow to my morale when a game would fail, and if lose interest in my current concept. I went through a cycle of making worlds, but a new world wasn't the problem, my precious inability to make a world that kept me interested was the issue. Your writing helped me learn this.
I enjoy your writing and I check daily for new posts. I go over your posts and re read them on occasion. Typed this on my phone, can reply to expand details, apologies for any grammar or spelling issues.
Alex,
ReplyDeleteI seek to be a better sounding board than I've been in the past. I've been working to change myself these last two years. I appreciate you being blunt with me.
Please don't be intimidated. I'm glad to hear the recent posts are effective, and that you've been increasing your focus in other ways for a while now. That's good to hear. I hope it all works out as you plan.
I've never thought of it this way before. Your examples in the first post of kids playing sports was especially thought-provoking for me. I'm still processing your posts though, so I'm not yet sure how they will affect my own approach to the game. I will be re-reading the ones you've written thus far as I give this more thought. Looking forward to future posts!
ReplyDeleteHow amusing, I read this post after making a comment on the 3rd class, and while asking myself what I should post on the math one. I'll do that there, and be more general here.
ReplyDelete* Your classes posts are a blast. I want that, I want to learn (that's why I come here), and you deliver.
* You produce fresh, deep and constructive posts, most of them either broadening my horizons, or hammering the good practices while breaking and washing away the bad (even if it takes time for it to take hold).
* I check daily your blog, each new post a highlight of the day. Sometimes I devour it, sometimes it takes time, but always a pleasure. I don't have much to say, except that I'd spend hours speaking to you to get your advice if I could (but less talking mean more writing for you ^^).
* Similar to Alex Langley, you've driven home the need of a single game world. Aaaand i don't follow it.
(long text, feel free to skip)
** I've a group of young gamers (age 13-14) to whom I want to give a little more experience into gaming together, and that are quite unruly ny nature. Those play in the "Forgotten Realms" setting (with as much modifications from your teachings as I can though), but in a region I've used much in the past, and that I play with more depth. Still, not mine.
** My adult group play in a proceduraly generated region, and there is a framework for generating content that goes with the game. I didn't have much time to prepare something "big", and was really curious about said framework (the rules were also simple, flexible, and with an old-school vibe, while not using a D20 at all). Following your advice, I kept at it, even when I wasn't interested, because it was an experiment on "single world long term play". I'm ambivalent on this world : I've this place that grew with the players and their actions, they are putting their mark on it, and I dig a big part of the "feeling" and tropes, but on the other hand some big parts of it are illogical, and the mechanics are sometimes too "simplified" for my own taste. Still, persisting at it gives me a perfect testing place for what I learn here.
** With both of those taking my time, and 2 different systems to boot, I'm at a loss on how to bring this "single world of mine" to life. It'd take time and efforts from those games, without anything in return until I can start a new game - and I stinn don't know what game system I'd use too -_- ... If you have time, one day, maybe we could speak on this ?
(end of long text)
* As said some times ago, I've learned more from you than from all the other bloggers combined,by several orders of magnitude - and not only on RPGs, but on life itself. For all that, thanks.
I did some thinking on how to make the switch earlier in the year, as i'd become dissatisfied with using 3.5e dnd, in addition to being unhappy with my "autopilot process" making up a new world every six months or so. I've been DMing for about a decade, but mostly without any self reflection on how I could do better.
DeleteI put some hard thought to the problem, and identified the type of game I most enjoyed running and preparing for, which is dungeon crawl centric. Then I went system hunting. Eventually I found one that worked for me, and with new system in hand, I started work on my single world and have not looked back.
But yes, I did lose progress, having set aside what couldn't be integrated from other game settings. Luckily I also made this shift when my players were unavailable for a few months, so there was no traumatic shift. I announced that I'd be running this new thing for the foreseeable future... And everyone was okay with that, which struck me as odd and fortunate.
I'm unsure what system you should use. Whichever one suits the needs of your game, and you're comfortable using, I suppose. Take time to look around at what's available, and be prepared to modify what does exist to improve your game. Good luck, whatever you choose!
Vlad,
ReplyDeleteThis recent leap that I made with the 1st introductory class, that you don't actually need to prepare for the game, the preparation is extra, is changing my mind too about things. Aside from what I'm often accused of, I'm constantly reconsidering my positions and trying to find the most accurate way of looking at the game.
Of course there's a "best" way to play, but that certainly doesn't mean that others aren't playing just because their world isn't base on a homebrew world. The bigger key is not that preparation is needed, but WHICH preparation we have time to employ. So those are my thoughts about it presently.
I think you'll find much to appreciate with today's post on practice and rehearsal, which I'm building up to write.
These posts are helpful in the sense that they will reinforce a framework I've been working on these past few years (ever since finding your blog, in fact). I've some time before I'm free to start my game again; when I do, rest assured I'll take the time to dig these up and review them.
ReplyDeleteThese posts are helpful because they are establishing a framework for thought and for discussion of how to improve our runnings. Nobody else has even tried that, afaik.
ReplyDeleteThe distinction between advice and a practical procedure for improvement was a bit of an aha moment, I will admit.
Once we're clear that we need a practical procedure, a syllabus, courses, a lot of things become more clear.
I would add that any course or teaching or what have you has three key components: instruction, application, and evaluation. Here on the internet, the first is no problem. The second is largely up to people to do or not on their own. The third would seem to present some difficulties.
Who would do evaluations? Would there be tests? Online multiple-choice graded by a computer?
When considering evaluation, I'm reminded of a factoid I heard, which was that you want a young GP and an old surgeon. Surgeons improve over the course of their career because they are essentially being evaluated in every surgery - if they screw up, it is immediately obvious to them, the nurses, eventually the patient, and so on. GPs essentially never get evaluated, if their advice or recommendation doesn't work out, the patient is unlikely to bring it up again, and if they do, it will be long enough later that the GP has forgotten.
Anyway. All to say that this is an interesting project, and it's got me thinking.
In talking about expertise, I was going to write a passage on Bede and some of his contemporaries, to point out that there was a recognition of expertise in times when no evaluations - or the idea of evaluation - existed. What made Bede respected? What defined his expertise to others?
ReplyDeleteI believe it was because he had things to say that could not be found from any other source. Bede became a teacher because he understood a part of philosophy that no one else had comprehended ... and his accreditation became bound with that ability to teach and have others reproduce that teaching.
As such, we don't really need a board to produce an evaluation; among the learned (and who that was not learned was even aware of Bede at the time), there is a general acknowledgement that evaluates the voice and pronounces it worthy. We don't have anyone like that in the games industry. Game designers with recognizeable names turn out not to be teachers; they expect to be copied and in some ways that produces other designers, but its really not a universally comprehended step forward, like we've seen in every other field. When Pasteur made his progression, the whole world took a step forward. When Lister made his, the world stepped forward again. And continues to do so.
But game design just wallows. RPGs are no different. Mercer is famous but he's not a teacher. The same is true of Mentzer, or Monty Cook, or anyone you can name, right through Gygax and Arneson. They were, or are, famous for what they DID ... not what they taught.
I think there are going to be some enormous changes in the way we think about game design, when that changes.
Anyway, I changed my mind about using Bede to talk about expertise. I stumbled across a better model.
ReplyDeleteI see evaluations as for the learner's benefit, to identify concepts not well understood, to correct deficiencies, and so on. Not as accreditations, although the two have largely become synonymous.
ReplyDeleteSelf-evaluation is certainly possible, and it's likely the model that many idiosyncratic greats relied on. But self-evaluation is prone to passing over the exact blind spots it would be best to identify.
As you've been discussing the University model - how many universities don't have some kind of formal evaluation of the students? Everything I've seen indicates feedback is important to the learning process.
My apologies. I meant that since Bede lived in the 7th-8th century, and no university system existed, it was impossible to evaluate Bede for his students benefit or for anyone else. I did not mean to imply that anyone was self-evaluating.
ReplyDeleteI used Pasteur and Lister as examples of persons who began practicing and teaching others before anyone stepped in to evaluate their work; they became famous because the results made evaluation a foregone conclusion (though of course, some went through the process anyway, because bean counters need jobs too).
I don't discount evaluations, university evaluations included. But there were teachers and students many centuries before there were evaluations, or tests.
These posts have been great. I find that they are affirming my general outlook of DMing and are giving me content to review to help continue refining my approach.
ReplyDeleteI should mention that I have been reading your blog for about 99% of the time I've been DMing, so much of what you have been saying over the last decade has been incorporated into my gameplay style. These posts have been taking all of that and putting it into words in a way that is easily accessible and nicely distilled into a teaching format. If only more of my university professors had been as good at communicating.