The image shown is p. 13 of 4th Edition's DMG, How to be a DM.
This sets my teeth on edge.
The content of this page gives no information whatsoever about how to be a DM. What is it doing here?
In my early days, I was part of a group that rotated being the DM each week. However, it was not as described here. We each had our own game world. Except for one commenter who wrote earlier this month to say that he experienced this idea of multiple DMs, I've not met another instance. No one running a blog that I know of talks about it and none of the hundreds of DMs I met while working at cons spoke about it. The searches I've made have people talking about how they used to do it. I don't know exactly why 4th edition felt it was needful to push the concept.
In any case, yeah, in most games, one person does a lot of work. That's not a weakness. Dungeon mastering being characterized in that fashion makes me incensed.
It is equally infuriating to be told that an ongoing game does not expose the players to new ideas or different play styles.
I do agree that disconnected adventures can start to feel purposeless. I feel that purposeless in the first two minutes, once I know it is going to be a disconnected adventure. Why should I invest? I don't play one-shot games nor take part in convention events; I would not do so under any circumstances, either as a player or an adjudicator. I equate it to a one-night stand with a sex worker whose health is evidently lax.
I don't have more to say about these things I've mentioned. I have no respect for the position being offered or the inclusion of this text in the book. I have a few things to say on the campaign.
I've been fussing with a definition of "campaign" in D&D since reading this post from JB. I am thoroughly unsatisfied with the examples given, from Moldvay or Gygax. These don't go far enough. I keep thinking about a quote from 1996's The Craft (of all movies): "If God and the Devil were playing football, Manon would be the stadium they played on. It would be the sun that shone down on them."
The campaign is the adventure, it is the setting, it is the boundaries provided by the rules and the decisions made by the players. It is not just the series of adventures being played; it is one single ongoing adventure with episodes that resolve moments but never all the threads of possibilities. Because I play a deep game, where the players can pursue possibilities as far as they want, and weave their own plans into the various quests that occur, there are no episodic adventures that take place. As with our experience of being alive, each day carries the possibility of a new path, the abandonment of a path that never does get resolved or events that may bring about success or death.
Therefore the D&D that I play—the D&D clearly implied by Gygax and which everyone I knew played between 1979 and 1984, before we were overwhelmingly met by cries that it was just too hard or even impossible to run—isn't even mentioned on this list. At best, the "campaign game" described here is a watered-down version of that, one supposedly fraught with painful cliches.
I'm quite disgusted. I'm going to put down this series for awhile before picking up page 14. I'm going to need a little time to clean the stink off me. These last sections have been enough to raise my gorge and I could use a clense.
I'll tackle the subject of talking to NPCs. That seems a worthy change.
I probably should have made this comment to @JB earlier, but I think that Marc Miller said it a little better than Gygax or Moldvay:
ReplyDeleteThe Campaign: Several players manipulate their characters in a series of continuing, linked adventures in a consistent universe. The referee is responsible for generating the basic facts of the universe before play begins. As the campaign unfolds, the players may range far and wide through the universe, perhaps beyond the referee's original boundaries. In such cases, the campaign may be temporarily halted as the referee expands the available data (or the referee may be forced to work through the night getting ready for the next day's adventures).
I think there’s a very strong contrast between the way 4e and Traveller present the campaign.
Compare Wyatt’s description of the campaign in which adventures are linked by a theme or a villain who is behind every adventure, to Miller clearly showing that the campaign unfolds before the referee as much as it does before the players. Wyatt requires that the DM has composed some kind of story arc like a novelist after having downplayed the work required of a DM. Miller expects the referee to prepare only “the basic facts” of the setting, but acknowledges possibly having to pull an all-nighter to accomplish that just to accommodate the “next day’s” play.
It’s the difference between selling and instructing, perhaps.
That’s good stuff Sterling. I can’t say I disagree with anything in the Miller quote.
DeleteFunny thing: just picked up CT 2-3 months back but haven’t had a chance to read it yet...in fact, the book (yes, I still prefer hard copy) was misplaced till yesterday, when I found it while cleaning my dining room (which has been used as the de facto “game room” since the summer).
: )
I don't find this page nearly as offensive as some of the earlier ones, though I do chaff at the "everything positive" approach in the text (Why Multiple DMs Are Great! Why Single DMs Are Great! Why Con Games Are Great! etc.). While I often strive to be a positive, glass-half-full type...instead of going to my natural "dark side" perspective...this sappy text makes a mistake for me by presenting all these options as more-or-less equal choices. Perhaps in an effort to acknowledge, and not give offense, to a reader's preferred style of play. "Weigh the pros and cons and use the option that works best for YOU" kind of thing.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I don't think all these types of games are "created equal" and some display more strengths than others and AS A TEACHING TEXT I'd think the DMG could be a better GUIDEBOOK for the prospective DM than the work they're doing here.
But I guess that just falls under the heading of The Usual Complaints.
RE Multi-DM Campaigns
When I ran in a multi-DM campaign in came down to two people wanting to DM, but wanting to use the same world AND (more importantly) the same pool of player characters. But it wasn't necessarily an equal partnership...one DM would run for a while, then the other, and nothing on a regular schedule (plus if players were unavailable to one DM, there might be simultaneous "adventures" being run...I use that term in the loosest way possible).
However, I'm not sure I'd do it again. It made sense for us (at the time) because we'd been playing for so long that we had many high level characters with large histories and campaign connections and neither the DMs, nor the players, wanted to "start over" with fresh characters. In many ways, it felt informed by our reading of Marvel comics: different writers across different titles/issues, but using the same, shared world. Does that make sense?
But my co-DM and I were very much on the same page about a lot of things. The number of people I've met with whom I've had a similar connection have been few and far between...and to my knowledge NONE of them are interested in running a D&D game these days.