Setting the Standard

For the record, this series of how to DM posts have as their goal not to teach anyone how to DM ... that would require the actual book, not a series of paragraphs scattered all round.  This series began, and was inspired by, a desire to write about the many hurdles that the author of such a book would have to overcome.

If this were 1980, I could write a four page pamphlet that said basically, 

AD&D has its problems, but it's a vast improvement over Basic D&D in that it touches on far more subjects and solves problems that BD&D doesn't remotely acknowledge.  Beware moments in AD&D where the author (s) went too far up their own assholes; ignore unnecessary rules such as alignment, paying to be trained, race tolerances and stat minimums, along with others that constrain play rather than enable it.  Ignore rules like psionics, which provide too much power to the players and have too few rules. The illusionist and bard are unfortunately writer failures; but they're good ideas, so sit down and make better rules.  Concentrate on the actual events of play and building your game world; keep character creation short and simple; and get the players out of a dungeon once in a while.

But ... this isn't the simple days of 1980.  D&D has been overhauled, cocked up, divided and subdivided, beyond repair.  ANYONE entering into the realm of D&D as a new player doesn't know it yet, but the day will come when they learn of the game's sordid, polluted history, causing them to scratch their heads and mutter, "Whaaaaa—?"  They will have their balloon popped by cretinous morons online, they'll find themselves ripped off of hundreds of dollars in product, they'll grumble at the bullshit spewed by the company each time the company decides to gut some other part of the game for a few bucks.  They'll be bullied by players, humiliated at cons, frustrated with the amount of work needed to be done to fix a $60 module and with each denegration their resentment will grow and grow, until it consumes their game completely ... whereupon they'll become one of those people who say, "D&D?  Yeah, I used to play.  I liked it for a while, but ... well.  It's kinda stupid."

If there's any chance — at all — that I can be the one shining lighthouse in this murk of a game, I will be.  That can't happen by ignoring the murk.  One has to cut through it, explain it, enlighten the DM and get them on the right path.  Teaching a new DM is really teaching two people.  The one who picks up the book and knows nothing, and the one who picks up the book again two years later and finds greater clarification they didn't see before.  A good book isn't meant to be read once, but as a tool to be returned to again and again, as the DM evolves.  And I want to write a good book.

So when I write that we've got to put answers into a DM's pocket that can be used against a player, I'm thinking of the tool that makes our would-be reader damned glad he or she has this book ... because time and time again, it's saved them a ton of bloody woe.  For me, there's no other reason to write such a book.  For me, if the effort isn't made to put this book at the forefront of the buyer's game shelf; if the book isn't good enough to be brought to the table when the DM runs the game ...

Then there's no point in making any effort at all.