Novices

Acting as a dungeon master is not something that we learn to do in a structured environment. As we've said, there are no instructors, no formal education for players who decide to run their own games — and certainly not for those who, lacking a model to go buy, purchase the books hoping that these works will provide enough insight to let an individual take control. Those who leap into DMing must nearly always do so out of passion and desire, for there is no one to hold their hand. As a result, those who succeed define a "trial by fire" model, often adopting an attitude the dungeon mastering OUGHT to be learned this way, and that those who would seek to learn it otherwise would not, in the end, make good DMs.

This point of pride among those who succeed damages the game's value. As an initiation, it's quite useless if ensuring that "good" can be applied to the result — that appellation is largely ascribed by the individuals themselves, NOT because it's accurate, but because there are so few around that can dispute it. The reason why there are so few DMs is this very reason — because there is no instructor to provide knowledge or guidance; because there is no standard by which a novice can readied for any part of the game. The rules, disastrous hodgepodge that they are, fail to provide the structure that "quality" requires. The would-be DM has no step-by-step path to follow, and therefore no way to judge well between the options of behaviour, speech, explanation or management of the players that potentially exist.

The manner in which self-created DMs crown themselves as "good" is accomplished with, at best, the external validation of the players, who must needs be sycophantic... since the players need to appease the DM, lest the DM quit running and thus leave the players without a game to play. This creates an unearned assuredness in DMs who survive their "trial by fire," who desperately cling to such appeasements, since any objective measure, from some observer NOT dependent upon the game, does not exist. The result is a mutual-admiration dynamic, where the players preen DMs for the sake of the game, and DMs preen themselves out of the desperate belief that all their preparation and session efforts have not been done in vain.


Continued on The Higher Path