The New Dungeon Master

I tend to agree with JB regarding Mentzer, so I choose to distill Moldvay's text as an experiment.  I felt a temptation to post each page, applying different colours to material we could define as fluff, extraneous details about the game, confusing sidebars that take away from the main point and so on, but in fact that would require posting the full text here on the blog.  I'm happy to link to someone else willing to pirate the content openly, but I suppose I have some resistance to doing it myself.  What a hypocrite I am.  I will post sections of the book to be worked from.

Given recent decisions about what content I'd like to include on this blog, I don't wish to address the rightness or wrongness of the games rules as presented, nor disparage the writers nor their decision to write the booklet.  I think my past writing defines well enough where I stand on those things.  Occasionally, as a matter of writing and teaching, I do intend to criticise organisational choices and syntax, that is, the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed phrases and, ultimately paragraphs.  My goal with this is to stress clarity for the sake of the reader.  I believe throughout the booklet that there are many, many choices in this regard that unfortunately interposes statements and additional information at times where they don't belong, which drastically undermines a properly coherent presentation of the material.

All that goobledygook is to say that I think the booklet is badly written.  Examples will follow.

Remember, most of all, to view the book through the eyes of someone who has no experience with any D&D rule; a 10-y.o., say, or a young adult, who has heard of the game, knows no one personally who plays, who nevertheless obtains the game online or as an asked-for present, and is now faced with learning the book though no other means beyond the text.  This is the situation JB more or less describes in several posts, culminating in this one.

The first critical information is found on page "B3" ... a telling amateurish decision with regards to book page numbers.  I don't find anything prior to this point that addresses the game's play.  Some of the discarded material is legitimately interesting, and ultimately useful to the DM's state of mind, but fundamentally I feel that these things could have been left until much later in the booklet, as well as being stated more briefly and to the point.

Throughout the text to this point, the authors try to simultaneously interject details, often with one sentence statements, while frustratingly using words casually that have not been defined yet.  For example, in a section called "Definitions ..." the writer casually uses the word "adventure" in the first and second paragraphs, as though the reader understands what it means, and then defines "adventure" with the start of the fourth paragraph.  This is an issue that a good editor would have caught at once ... particularly as this is technical writing and NOT prose.  The requirements of what was needed wasn't understood.

It can be argued that no one at the time understood the game well enough to write about it technically.  I've had trouble with that also, given that no technical works about D&D exist, so that my efforts in the past have been written without guidelines or previous work to write from.  The authors here suffer from the same problem.  However: we may excuse them, we may applaud their attempt ... but in this day and age is falls on us to correct them, putting forth better work based on their efforts, and not excuse them to the point that we keep ourselves deaf, dumb and blind to a better means of expressing their material.

Editing the material: if the lead paragraph is placed nearer the start of the booklet, and not buried on page 3, there's no need to stress how important the material is or that it should be read carefully.  In defining terms, we're better defining them as they become important, and NOT as an info-dump as shown here.  Nor is it necessary to define "session" by giving it the name "adventure"; just call it a "session" and later, when the session is discussed, the concept of "adventure" can be included.  There is certainly no reason at this time to explain what a bunch of adventures are called.  We don't know anything yet.  Presenting these things in this format only calls for the reader to keep flipping back in the book to this page to grasp what's being said.  The reader shouldn't have to do that.  Each idea should be clearly understood before jumping to the next idea.

Allow me to distill the text to what really needs to be stated first and foremost, drawn from the text shown above:

When a group plays a D&D game, one person acts as a referee.  It is the DM's job to prepare the setting before the game begins.  The DM must be willing to spend time in preparation.  The DM's job takes time, but it is creative and rewarding.  When the DM has prepared a [setting], the game is ready to begin.

Until the above is understood completely, we don't need to know what the other participants are called, we certainly don't need to know anything about NPC's, the assumption that the setting will be a dungeon is prejudiced, the need to map a dungeon when moving through it is not pertinent here and in fact is not true, we're shouldn't be blatantly selling a module or the concept of a module at this point, we don't need to sell the "DM's Job" as super special, and the whole deviation into adventure is completely wasted until the reader clearly comprehends what a DM is.

As the book progresses into page 4, however, we talk about having someone speak for the party, what a monster is (which gets more definition than DM does), the use of the word level, dice and "how to win" ... all of which is discussed and still the reader has no clear idea of what a DM is, what he or she does, any explanation of why a setting is necessarily a dungeon and not something the dictionary describes as a "setting," etcetera.  While you and I understand these discussions easily, and can defend them, the information comes fast and furious to the inexperienced reader as a hodge-podge of confusing additional words that are not immediately defined by the booklet.  The experience would be extremely frustrating for a full-grown, well-educated adult; it's impossible for a 10-y.o.

Like I said.  We need to define each term carefully, patiently and in precise words that assume zero knowledge of the game.  Any term that doesn't need to be defined at the outset — such as a "caller," which has been dispensed with long since despite the push for such a person — must be left for later in the text, when it is pertinent.  That is, when we include a passage about controlling the game, and the need to reduce the number of speaking voices by asking the players to have only one speak for the group.  But this shouldn't be touched upon until we set the stage for controlling the game to begin with ... that is, what does "controlling the game" even mean?

I'll take a swing at the distilled paragraph above:

What is a DM?

Among the participants of the D&D game, one person accepts the responsibility to coordinate and "run" the game, which means to set the game in motion by presenting the game's "setting."  A setting is an imaginary place that surrounds the other participants of the game, where the events of the game take place.  The dungeon master, or "DM," creates this setting in advance of the game, which gives the dungeon master time to know all that's needed to be known about the place before presenting to the players.

For example:  the DM imagines a small one-room house surrounded by woods.  He or she writes down, or has it in mind, what the house looks like, what kind of trees there are, what immediately surrounds the house, what the house is like inside, who lives there, what kind of people they are, what they do for a living and so on ... as many details as the DM can dream up.  Then, when the other participants approach the house, the DM will say, "You see a house."  The DM describes the house and answers any questions the others have about the surroundings.  The DM must have this information ready, or be prepared to "make it up" on the spot.  Once a detail has been said out loud, it should be considered fixed and unchangeable.  Now that they have encountered the house, the other participants are asked, "What do you do now?"

Whatever the others say, or do, or wherever they go, the DM must be ready to say what happens, what the dwellers in the house say or do, and how the situation is resolved.  There are many rules for this, which we will discuss later, but for now it should be understood that the dungeon master is responsible for including details about the setting like the example above.

A setting requires many, many details, and so the DM must be a person whose able to be very creative and imaginative; the DM must have a good memory; the DM has to pay close attention to detail; and the DM must be ready for anything the other game participants say.  This requires a lot of preparation, which takes a lot of time.  However, because the DM controls everything about the game, the DM also has a great deal of power over what happens, and what everything looks like.  It can be terrifically exciting to have this kind of power — but it's also important for a DM to be responsible and to maintain a great deal of concern for the other game participants.

There.  NOW, we can talk about "players."

Moldvay starts with the fantasy roles of the character the players play, in that order, but I'd reverse that, putting the PLAYER front and centre.

What is a Player?

The other game participants are called "players."  Players manage the game pieces, called "characters" who act as the players' alter-egos in the game's setting.  In a sense, acting on the character's part is a sort of "role," like an actor plays; but as D&D is a game, many of the decisions the player makes for his or her character decides the survival, the success or the future opportunities for the character.  Therefore, the player must make each decision carefully.  When the DM asks, "What do you do?", the players are free to do whatever they like — within the physical limitations of the character.

Many of those limitations are, however, fantastical in scope.  Players are able to fight like knights, cast spells, perform remarkable feats and more ... but all of these capabilities are also carefully managed by the game's rules.  Players must make characters at the start of the game, using a complex but ultimately very rewarding formula.  It can be great fun to watch a character come to life out of virtually nothing except die rolls and the choices the player makes.  Let's move straight into how a player's character is made.

Now, see?  We get rid of all the extraneous details.  We don't call the participant a "player" until we're ready to talk about what players ARE.  We don't call it a "player character," except that we cleverly put together the phrase "player's character" at the end, to prime the reader for the term.  To segway into the game's parlance, we use phrases that every game uses, like "game piece."

We don't bring up dungeons or adventures, because it's too soon.  One step at a time.  Nobody needs to be "amazed" but all the shit the game offers up front.  We'll get there.  Until then, let's tidy up each group of details so that later, the reader doesn't have to flip back and forth through the book.  It's perfectly clear, to a point, what the DM does.  And yes, it looks big and scary and frightening; but that has to be understood up front.  The reader has a whole book in his or her hands.  There's plenty of time to get "comfortable" with being a DM.  If a few phrases puts them off, well, it's a matter of whether they keep reading.  Notice I picked a perfectly ordinary setting — one that everyone can easily imagine.  Not something completely alien to their experience, like a dungeon.

This is how it's done.  Patiently.  One bit at a time.  Not a mess thrown all at once.