"Well, at this point I'm not very interested at being 'a great DM.' Somehow it's enough for me as it is. So now I'm not very interested in that kind of books."
Me: I want to write a book teaching people how to be a DM for Dungeons and Dragons.
Chat: That sounds like a fantastic project! Being a Dungeon Master (DM) for Dungeons and Dragons is both an art and a skill, and there's a lot to learn and share in a comprehensive guide. Here's a rough outline to get you started:
Title: "Mastering the Dungeon: A Comprehensive Guide to Becoming a Dungeon Master in Dungeons and Dragons"
Introduction:Welcome to the World of Dungeon Mastering
- What is Dungeons and Dragons?
- Why Become a Dungeon Master?
- What This Book Offers
Chapter 1: Getting Started
- Understanding the Role of the Dungeon Master
- Gathering Essential Materials
- Choosing an Edition: D&D 5th Edition Overview
- Setting Up Your First Adventure
Chapter 2: Building Worlds and Narratives
- Crafting a Compelling Setting
- Developing Engaging Storylines
- Creating Memorable Non-Player Characters (NPCs)
Chapter 3: Rules and Mechanics
- Understanding the Core Mechanics
- Combat: A Detailed Overview
- Handling Challenges and Skill Checks
- Incorporating House Rules
Chapter 4: Preparing and Running Sessions
- Session Zero: Character Creation and Expectations
- Structuring Your Sessions
- Improvisation Techniques
- Managing Player Choices and Agency
Chapter 5: Managing Players and Table Dynamics
- Fostering a Positive Gaming Environment
- Dealing with Player Conflict
- Balancing Player Engagement
Chapter 6: Creating and Balancing Encounters
- Designing Balanced Encounters
- Adjusting Difficulty on the Fly
- Using Terrain and Environmental Factors
Chapter 7: Building and Managing Campaigns
- Planning Long-Term Campaign Arcs
- Integrating Player Backstories
- Maintaining Campaign Consistency
Chapter 8: Enhancing Your Game
- Incorporating Props and Visual Aids
- Using Music and Sound Effects
- Experimenting with Alternative Game Styles (Theater of the Mind, Hexcrawl, etc.)
Chapter 9: Troubleshooting and Problem-Solving
- Addressing Common Issues at the Table
- Handling Player Disengagement
- Rebooting a Stalled Campaign
Chapter 10: Continuing Your Journey
- Resources for Further Learning
- Joining Online Communities and Forums
- Seeking Feedback and Improvement
Conclusion:Congratulations! You're a Dungeon Master
- Final Words of Encouragement
- Appendices:Sample NPCs and Monsters
- Sample Adventure Modules
- Glossary of Terms
- Character Sheets and Blank Maps
Remember to include examples, anecdotes, and tips from your own experiences as a DM to make the guide more relatable and engaging. Good luck with your book!
See? No thinking necessary. And if you want to wade into a world of garbage thinking, ask Chat to explain any of the above points.
The problem isn't that writers of game books choose not to be useful; it's that the actual philosophy of how to describe gaming, and what gaming is, and what matters, contributes to a culture of "proactivity" that is more concerned with organising the bullshit than discriminating between what is and what isn't helpful.
Me: Explain how to deal with player conflict, as a DM, within D&D, in paragraph format.
Chat: Dealing with player conflict as a Dungeon Master (DM) in Dungeons and Dragons requires a delicate balance of diplomacy, fairness, and assertiveness. The first step is to address the conflict openly and directly. Encourage players to voice their concerns in a respectful manner and ensure that everyone has an opportunity to speak without interruption. As the mediator, listen attentively to each side's perspective and strive to understand the underlying issues. Once the root cause of the conflict is identified, work with the players to find a compromise or solution that satisfies everyone involved. This may involve making adjustments to the game mechanics, revisiting previous rulings, or clarifying expectations for future interactions. It's crucial to remain impartial and avoid taking sides, focusing instead on fostering a collaborative and inclusive gaming environment. If necessary, remind players of the importance of respect, teamwork, and mutual enjoyment. Ultimately, the goal is to resolve the conflict constructively while preserving the integrity of the game and maintaining positive relationships among the players.
See? Whatever the question, the result is a parade of subjective non-specific things you ought to do, without any possible comprehension between what's offered. There's no point in asking how to be "diplomatic" or "fair" or "assertive" ... the answers are all equally subjective. Not because Chat is designed to be subjective, but because the source material that Chat is pulling from is only more of this. These are what all the source materials already existing on the internet, or in those piles that Chat was trained to comprehend, are designed to convey. They simply spew tons and tons of this kind of material ... because it fills pages. Lots and lots of pages. Pages that people are willing to pay for.
It's the same rhetoric the pervades the self-help phenomenon. It's not possible for a person to just "be more assertive" or know what to do just because players have been encouraged to "voice their concerns." Like a book that urges you that getting better isn't that hard, that you have to just keep climbing, that you have to believe in yourself and not give up, none of this actually tells us what we should be doing. And worse than helping, self-help books prevail upon the reader to think more and more about the problem by promising a solution that never, in fact, materialises. In effect, the book blames you, the reader. If you, the reader, would just be make the right adjustments to the game mechanics, your game would be great. If you, the reader, would just remind the players of the importance of teamwork, your game would be great. But somehow, it never is. And because of the source material you're reading, the answer to that, too, is obvious. It's because you, the reader, didn't do it right.
I don't know how I can make this clearer. You, dear reader, are the victim: and the self-help book industry is blaming you. Because it empowers the self-help book industry. Q.E.D.
However, the RPG industry has insidiously embraced this industry for a long time, so that they've successfully convinced the balance of would-be DMs that this is how advice ought to be given. Many, many commentors habitually describe these phrases, such at those Chat above generated, as "concise" and "practical," though obviously they're not. It's not ignorance; it's a belief that, in the absence of any concrete information being available, many convince themselves that they were helped by such books, although in fact it was little more than a pat on the head that effectively said, "just be yourself, you're a good person, everything's fine" or some other similar drivel.
For any book to be actually helpful in training a dungeon master to do any of the things generated above, in concrete terms (that is, existing in material or physical form, not abstract), there are specific things that it needs to do. But to portray that, I'll have to use an example from a completely different
activity:
Me: How do I prepare a soft-boiled egg?
Chat: To prepare a soft-boiled egg, start by selecting fresh eggs from the store. Fresh eggs ensure a firmer egg white, which helps maintain the egg's structure during cooking. Next, fill a pot with enough water to cover the eggs and bring it to a rolling boil over high heat. Gently lower the eggs into the boiling water using a spoon or tongs, being careful not to crack them. Set a timer for about 4 to 6 minutes, depending on your desired level of doneness and the size of the egg. While the eggs are boiling, you can prepare an ice water bath to stop the cooking process and prevent overcooking. Once the timer goes off, use a slotted spoon to carefully remove the eggs from the boiling water and transfer them to the ice water bath to cool down. Let them sit for a few minutes before gently cracking the shell and peeling it away. Serve the soft-boiled eggs immediately with toast or incorporate them into salads or other dishes. Adjust the timing as needed based on altitude, egg size, and personal preference. With practice, you'll achieve perfectly soft-boiled eggs every time.
There. Stores exist. There are eggs there. They have recognisably different properties that can be defined. Do this. Then do this. Set this timer. Recognise you may have specific tastes regarding how long the egg ought to be cooked to fit your personal needs. Use these tools. Let them cool. Crack the shell and peel it away. Practice the procedure.
Until the question, "How do I become a dungeon master" can be defined in this manner, the book you're reading is useless.
Naturally, the begged question is, can a book about DMing be written in this way? Is that possible? Quote, "Because it doesn't seem possible. I've never seen such a book; no one has ever published such a book; the company hasn't even hinted that such a book could be written. D&D seems so, um, subjective to me." I find it hard to believe that a concrete book of this time is a believable possibility."
Yep. See, this is why the self-help industry is very careful in targeting a particular kind of subject ... squidgy, imprecise subjects. Little did I realise in the early 80s, with my first experiences of D&D, that the inability of people to be precise about the sort of game they wanted to play would open the door to the sort of writing that would make so much money from telling romantics how to get married, or would-be businessmen to become rich and famous, or youtubers how to make tons of money making their own videos, etcetera, etcetera. But here we are. Don't discount what I just said about the industry setting out to convince you, the reader, that you need the self-help industry. It's your life-line. After all, there's no other possible way you could start a successful business. You have to believe in yourself. You have to think your way to success. You can't just do a simple thing well, keep doing it well, be polite to people, don't overspend, learn the industry you're in, pay attention to changes and work all the time, so as to be successful. That's just crazy talk.
When a person on the internet says, "Stop playing 5th edition," we read that as "opinion," which can be instantly ignored. But when that same person says, "foster a collaborative and inclusive gaming environment," that sounds very positive, and therefore obviously much better than "opinion." Gosh, I'm going to keep playing 5th edition, only from now on I'm going to foster a collaborative and inclusive gaming environment. That'll work.
There's a method of telling the difference between "opinion" and "knowledge." The method hasn't been around very long. Only 2,300 years and some. The distinction addresses one of the most subjective subjects there is, human thought, yet somehow gets a lot further towards providing a concrete definition than a typical how-to D&D book. Here goes ...
According to Aristotle, knowledge is characterized by certainty and necessity, based on true and justified beliefs grounded in demonstrable evidence or logical reasoning. In contrast, opinion lacks the certainty and reliability of knowledge, as it is based on appearances, probabilities, or premises accepted as true but not necessarily universally valid. Knowledge involves understanding the causes and principles underlying phenomena, whereas opinion relies on perceptions and beliefs about the world that may be subject to error or revision.
If you want to dive into this — and trust me, you won't enjoy it — the works are Nichomachean Ethics and Prior Analytics. But this is all I'm going to say about Aristotle today. You think.
For a book to be helpful regarding D&D, is must be rooted in research; that is to say, the writer must have done more than play the game, and must be willing to go further than giving subjective advice without concrete examples of what is meant by the words used. If the writer says, "D&D requires a delicate balance" of anything, then the following must be included: (a) several factual, concrete examples of this balance; (b) a specific step-by-step guide, equivalent to how to boil an egg, to explain how this balance is achieved by someone who has never done it before; and (c) a conclusive paragraph explaining how the results of this balance cannot be achieved in some other way, specifically because of what the balance concretely does.
If these three things are not written about this balance, then the passage is not merely opinion, it is BULLSHIT. It's certainly not knowledge. Aristotle says so.
No, two out of three is not enough.
For a book to be helpful regarding D&D, the advice given has to be universal. Let's see, what does that mean? It means it can't be contingent on specific circumstances, individuals, or subjective perspectives. Instead, universal knowledge is applicable across all instances of a given phenomenon and is independent of particular contexts or personal beliefs. In essence, the knowledge claims must possess characteristics that are genuinely "knowable."
If the advice being given is, "do what feels right," or "you do you," these things are utterly subjective in their perspective. In no way whatsoever is this advice objectively comprehensible. It doesn't even help me know what feels "right" for me, much less the next person. Something that's universal is often characterised by its necessity. You NEED this if you want to boil an egg. It can't be done at all if you don't have this specific thing, namely an egg, the water it has to float in or the heat needed to boil that water.
For a book to be helpful regarding D&D, the advice can't make false promises. It cannot give assurances that something unrealistic will happen. We can't say, "this book will make you a better DM," because we don't know who's reading it. When you pick up a book about chemistry, you don't find in the introduction, "This book will make you a better chemist." In fact, absolutely nothing whatsoever is said about the reader, because the book is about chemistry, not the reader. A book on how to play D&D should not start with the question, "Why Become a Dungeon Master?" ... because my choosing to become one or not is none of the book's fucking business. The book should shut the fuck up about why I'm reading it and get about the business of telling me what I want to know. A high school chemistry book might have an introduction about why chemistry is a great subject, but that part's written by some educator, not the chemist! The chemist doesn't care. The chemist is concerned with chemistry, the reason the book is being written.
There is too much time spent in these books that have nothing to do with the subject at hand ... which is, without a doubt, evidence that the book's goal is not to teach us how to be a dungeon master, but how to appreciate the author's suffering and how to feel worse about ourselves.
And finally, for a book to be helpful regarding D&D, though I've already said this, it must provide real-world actions that I, the reader, can take. And I, the reader, must in turn take those actions, experimenting with them to see if they ARE universal and not, in fact, about blowing smoke up my ass. These actions should be crystal clear. "Stop playing 5th Edition," for example. Buy 3rd edition books, 2nd edition, 1st edition, for these reasons. And we, as the reader of this book, like we would if we were reading a chemistry book, knowing very little ourselves about chemistry, should trust that the damned author understands the material being presented.
When the D&D book says, a DM must have these specific, point-by-point expectations of the players, for these reasons and these reasons, and must enforce these expectations, in this way and in this way, then we as the people who wish to become better DMs have to embrace that concept and walk the path laid out for us. We can't suddenly decide, "Wait, my friend's feelings were hurt," and then choose not to enforce our expectations for that reason ... and suppose at the same time that we're going to somehow understand what's being said and why. The book can explain, "Sometimes you'll have to hurt your friend's feelings," and "In the end, you'll discover why your friend will be grateful for that" ... but if we won't actually go through the actions in order to get the wisdom, then we deserve to be ignorant. Because this is how knowledge works. Sometimes, what we suppose is not knowledge, and conversely, knowledge is often what we don't suppose. Part of the reason for that is because, according to Aristotle again, your suppositions are "opinions" and NOT KNOWLEDGE. The book is here to provide knowledge. It shouldn't be here to assuage your suppositions ...
... particularly because your suppositions aren't universal.
Would it be easy to write a book like this? Fuck no. Is a chemistry book easy to write? Is a children's book ...? All books are hard. If you, dear reader, have no idea how a book like this would sound, or read, or have to say to you, then you're obviously not the person to write such a book. And if you choose to base the probability of such a book based on your suppositions about it's purported existence?
Then you're a bloody moron.
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