Was Gygax a good DM?

[Synovia]

So, because you cannnot take precautions against all possibilities, you take precautions against none of them?

Yeah, that's real logical.

There's no evidense that they took no precautions. All we know is that 8/9 parties were wiped out by the pit trap.

[Synovia]

See, that's exactly where the players went wrong. They assumed.

The purpose of sticking a ten-foot-pole into the darkness ahead of you is not to support an assumption, whether that assumption is "portal" or "trap." It's to find out what's in the darkness...without walking right into it. If the pole determines there is no floor there, if the pole comes out dripping green slime, if the pole gets bitten in half by a grue, if the pole and its wielder get sucked through a portal as soon as the pole enters the darkness, if a bag of flour falls on the pole, you've discovered something worth knowing.
And we have no idea whether or not they did this. All we know is that they eventually all went in to the darkness.

My guess is the description of sticking a pole into the darkness came back like this "you don't feel anything"

[Kish]

...Fellow, have you not read what you're arguing about?

One group used a pole to discover the pit trap. One group, only one, thought to tap around with a pole. That group got past the pit trap and was declared the winners because no one else got even that far. "Probing with a pole got no information" is one thing we absolutely know to be false.

[hamlet]

There's no evidense that they took no precautions. All we know is that 8/9 parties were wiped out by the pit trap.

There's no evidence, either, that they did.

But you're using the whole thing as evidence that Gygax was a horrible DM for writing a trap into the module that killed so many people because, according to you, it can't possibly have been the fault of all those players. Even across 9 different tables, with 9 different DM's, in 9 variations, it can't possibly be the players who failed here according to you.

[Tyndmyr]

But advice from one can carry across to another, as it does here.

By rushing in without knowing what was going on and what they were getting into, the PC's died. Simple as that.

If they had expended a bit of the time resource, moments, yeah, somebody else may have died, or been injured slightly more, but the remainder of the party stood a dramatically better chance of avoiding the problem.

Again, you're using post-hoc logic to justify the choice. Yes, in this instance, rushing in resulted in death. THATS WHY WE'RE TALKING ABOUT IT.

Prior to the decision, the same data point did not exist.

They didn't know that death was even a possible outcome for this scenario, and nobody wants to be the group that looses because you spent half the allotted time futzing with the door in.

[Kish]

They didn't know that death was even a possible outcome for this scenario,
Who on earth plays a D&D game with a DM they don't know--any edition--just assuming that character death is not a possible outcome unless they've been told otherwise?

[kyoryu]

I just thought of another possibility, one which I think is probably closer to the truth.

Given that the goal was "to get as far as possible within the allotted time," the groups may have thought that whatever damage they sustained as a result of bursting through the darkness would be acceptable compared to the lost time for futzing with it.

[Tyndmyr]

Who on earth plays a D&D game with a DM they don't know--any edition--just assuming that character death is not a possible outcome unless they've been told otherwise?

You don't, in practice, assume that every element contains possible death. See also, disbelieving the air (http://agc.deskslave.org/comic_viewer.html?goNumber=56). Doing so would bog down the game, and you wouldn't get anywhere. This is *especially* true in a game where time is a huge factor.

Also, who doesn't get a save to avoid walking off a cliff? Even in darkness, you're walking, not sprinting. Anyone who has ever walked anywhere in complete darkness can assume that you're not jumping forward at a full lunge.

[Vladislav]

That was long before Reflex saves were invented.

[hamlet]

Again, you're using post-hoc logic to justify the choice. Yes, in this instance, rushing in resulted in death. THATS WHY WE'RE TALKING ABOUT IT.

Prior to the decision, the same data point did not exist.

They didn't know that death was even a possible outcome for this scenario, and nobody wants to be the group that looses because you spent half the allotted time futzing with the door in.

No, I'm not.

I'm saying that the PC's don't know what's in the darkness. It's stupid - outright and unmitigatedly stupid - to just walk in. It's even worse to walk in while in a situation where you have all reason to believe the situation is dangerous (i.e., being told the goal of the module is to "get the furthest" which implies that you will face deadly danger) and after having heard a strange noise of some sort after the first few walk in.

Don't know what's in there, but walking in without investigation is just dumb and dangerous. That's what I'm saying. I don't need to know that there's a trap there post hoc, I just have to know that I don't know what's there, and what I don't know can harm me. It's called common sense.

When you wake up in the middle of the night and have to pee, it's dark and you can't see. Do you jump up out of bed and, without turning on a light, dash off to the bathroom? Or do you pause and flip on the lamp?

[Vladislav]

No, I'm not.

I'm saying that the PC's don't know what's in the darkness. It's stupid - outright and unmitigatedly stupid - to just walk in. Assuming you know death is an option. Which, for many games, is not a given.


It's even worse to walk in while in a situation where you have all reason to believe the situation is dangerous (i.e., being told the goal of the module is to "get the furthest" which implies that you will face deadly danger)Actually, the opposite is the true. If the goal is to get the furthest in limited time, it implies the module is a cat-drowning contest of sorts. You know, whoever drowns the most cats wins. Or slays the most goblins, etc. The players might have come in with this (reasonable but ultimately wrong) assumption.

[obryn]

Did it not occur to you that there really were 8 out of 9 parties worth of truly bad players?
Has it occurred to nobody that this was a tournament game and thus utterly unrelated to home games whatsoever? Open-style tournaments are scored, based only on player skill (and the dice, of course), and basically have minimal role-playing because it's a waste of time.

I played a few D&D Opens at Gen Con in the late 80's/early 90's. The point of a tournament game like that is to win. It's a reason so many of the early dungeons are such death-traps.

It's like the difference between Barefoot Contessa and Iron Chef. Nobody is suggesting that you cook for your family with mystery ingredients and a 60-minute time limit. Trying to extrapolate tournament games to how Gary or anyone else ran games at home is ... well, it's kind of baffling that this conversation has gone on this long, honestly. :)

I'm also kind of surprised nobody's even brought up some recent first-hand experience. A few years ago, shortly before his death, a group of ENWorld mods and admins got to play in a D&D game DMed by him. By all accounts, it was a blast. I hope this is the link (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/204729-gaming-gygax-1.html).

-O

[Synovia]

There's no evidence, either, that they did.

But you're using the whole thing as evidence that Gygax was a horrible DM for writing a trap into the module that killed so many people because, according to you, it can't possibly have been the fault of all those players. Even across 9 different tables, with 9 different DM's, in 9 variations, it can't possibly be the players who failed here according to you.

Most common factor: If almost every table failed, with multiple dms, the most likely explanation was that the module was the problem. Not the players.

[Kish]

Assuming you know death is an option. Which, for many games, is not a given.
I still wonder who on earth assumes "no risk of death" when playing D&D for the first time with someone they don't know who has in no way indicated such.

(That is the most relevant question. It is, after all, not like Gary Gygax had any sort of reputation or the players had any way of suspecting that his game would be any more lethal than an average stroll through Ohlone Park.)

However. No, what hamlet said doesn't actually require the players to know that death is an option, the validity of their hypothetical assumptions that it was not aside. It requires the players to know that there is something, anything, here that would be called a hazard. Delay. Humiliation. In short, it requires them to know...

...that the guarantee, "Nothing will impede you, you should charge ahead blindly full-speed!" is one which the DM has not given them. And nothing more. That is all it requires them to know, and they had no excuse for not knowing it.

[Synovia]

No, I'm not.

I'm saying that the PC's don't know what's in the darkness. It's stupid - outright and unmitigatedly stupid - to just walk in. It's even worse to walk in while in a situation where you have all reason to believe the situation is dangerous (i.e., being told the goal of the module is to "get the furthest" which implies that you will face deadly danger) and after having heard a strange noise of some sort after the first few walk in.



The bolded implies no such thing.

It could simply imply that theres a series of puzzles that are going to be difficult to decipher. You're making your statement completely based on hindsight.

[neriana]

Whatever one may expect from a friend who's DMing, as obryn has pointed out, this was a tournament. I don't see how anyone could possibly expect that character death wouldn't be a given.

Expecting your characters not to face the threat of death in this situation would be like expecting every player on the team to play in the World Series, as they would in a friendly neighborhood softball game.

[Synovia]

Whatever one may expect from a friend who's DMing, as obryn has pointed out, this was a tournament. I don't see how anyone could possibly expect that character death wouldn't be a given.

Expecting your characters not to face the threat of death in this situation would be like expecting every player on the team to play in the World Series, as they would in a friendly neighborhood softball game.

I may have missed it, but I don't think anyone said that the players didn't think there was threat of death. This seems like a strawman to me.

The issue isn't that the players didn't think they could be killed in the adventure, the issue (to me) is that it seems that the DMs/Module did a very poor job indicating that players had been killed.


Unless there's silence cast on a pit trap, it should be pretty friggen obvious when a fighter in platemail falls to his death. It would be LOUD. And clearly it wasn't in this module.

[Vladislav]

Or, maybe they did see death as an option, but decided "hey, it's a tournament with limited time, we don't really know if it's a deathtrap, it might be, but then again it might not be, so we'd rather take a 10% chance of death over 100% chance of wasting an hour probing for traps; if we waste an hour looking for traps, we'll survive, but we'll probably not come in first in the tournament."

Which is a reasonable metagame-ish way of thinking. Except that in this particular case, the chance of death was not 10%, but 100%. Hindsight for the win.

[neriana]

So Gygax expected players to play their characters, rather than metagame. (Metagame in a very weird way, imo.)

There's total darkness in a dungeon. Walking blindly into it is just asking to be eaten by a grue.

[Vladislav]

I don't know what he expected, and I'm not going to argue the merits of roleplay vs. metagame. I agree that it's stupid to ignore darkness and grues and other dangers. But I also maintain that it's almost equally stupid to go into a tournament game and ignore the fact that you're in competition against other teams.

[obryn]

The issue isn't that the players didn't think they could be killed in the adventure, the issue (to me) is that it seems that the DMs/Module did a very poor job indicating that players had been killed.
I'd say these specific DMs might, indeed, have done a poor job of describing the noise if all of the statements in the original article are completely factual. :) Those plate-clad fighters need to hit the bottom eventually. Or, alternately, these players may have been incautious. Players are perfectly capable of asking follow-up questions like, "I call for him - do I hear anything?" or holding onto ropes or pretty much anything.

IMO, this is part of the general dangers of poor description. This is rather deadlier in oldschool gaming than new, given the smaller buffer between life and death and the absence of most other rules-based cues. But this example in particular tells us nothing about (1) whether or not Gary himself was a "good" GM, (2) whether or not the adventure as a whole was well-written or well-designed, or (3) anything generalized at all about oldschool play or oldschool adventuring in home games.

So I'm basically confused why it's been the topic for several pages now.

-O

[Knaight]

Most common factor: If almost every table failed, with multiple dms, the most likely explanation was that the module was the problem. Not the players.

I'd note one major flaw in the description - it assumes the characters just fall, silently, then hit the ground. Nobody thinks to yell, or curse, or anything that would almost inevitably happen in a situation like that, either instinctively or to warn everyone behind them. I'm guessing that the way the module was written, it specifically blocked off the person falling from taking any action.

This is abject nonsense, and almost certainly a flaw in the module.

[ThiagoMartell]

To everyone complaining the module is unfair... this was a tournament. It's supposed to be hard.

[Knaight]

To everyone complaining the module is unfair... this was a tournament. It's supposed to be hard.

The whoosh-thud effect is the equivalent of making a videogame hard by making the controls terrible. It's condemned in that medium, the equivalent should be condemned in this one.

[obryn]

The whoosh-thud effect is the equivalent of making a videogame hard by making the controls terrible. It's condemned in that medium, the equivalent should be condemned in this one.
This is true - but a failure of description generally needs to fall on the DM, rather than the adventure. Since there were 9 DMs, I kind of don't believe this was identical among all groups. I find it fishy, but YMMV.

Again, though, I don't think this tournament example says a thing about (1) Gary's own home games and his DMing ability; or (2) anything really about oldschool gaming in general other than, "be sure to describe dangerous things at least well enough to provoke cautious players into investigating."

-O

[Knaight]

This is true - but a failure of description generally needs to fall on the DM, rather than the adventure. Since there were 9 DMs, I kind of don't believe this was identical among all groups. I find it fishy, but YMMV.

If there were 9 different terrible descriptions, I'd attribute it to the GM. As is, I strongly suspect that it is box text description, and as such the fault of the module.

[obryn]

If there were 9 different terrible descriptions, I'd attribute it to the GM. As is, I strongly suspect that it is box text description, and as such the fault of the module.
There was no such thing back then.

And even if so ... what conclusions can you draw, other than "that was a poorly-written adventure."

Like I said, I suspect the anecdote is faulty.

-O

[kyoryu]

What's most interesting here is how, given very little information, people are filling in the blanks in ways that support their pre-existing biases.

Myself included, of course.

[valadil]

Something else to consider - who are the people playing the game? I don't mean to ask if they're used to lethal dungeons or playing immortal heroes. I'm wondering if they'd ever played D&D before. Saying that this happened in a tournament at a con could imply that there were preliminary rounds to determine the best parties out there. Or it could imply that whomever showed up at the con and wanted to see what that D&D thing was all about was a contestant.

Here's something anecdotal for you. One of my friends played in a game at a con. There was a pit trap, but it wasn't in darkness. It wasn't too deep and there wasn't anything in the bottom. He watched all the other players roll jump check after jump check, trying to cross the pit and climbing back out with their heads hanging in shame. When the rest of the party determined the obstacle was impassible my friend climbed into the pit, walked to the other side, and climbed out.

Anyway, I just want to point this out to show that the distribution of players in the tournament probably wasn't seasoned veterans or complete morons, but people who didn't really know what they were doing. They were confused and out of their element so they just tried what the guy across the table did.

[Jarawara]

What's most interesting here is how, given very little information, people are filling in the blanks in ways that support their pre-existing biases.

Myself included, of course.


Well of course, given so little information, there is only one logical explanation to be found: Gary was attempting real-life spellcasting, mass suggestion of 'you will walk forward into the darkness'. Of those few who made their saves, Gary had a team of (real-life) Thules there ready to intimidate the remaining players to follow in and join their teammates. Thules can be very pursuasive. (Thules are OD&D monsters, not really sure what they are, but if I met a real-life Thule, I think I would be intimidated.)

Gary was about to pronounce a nine-party kill when Freddy walked in late carrying a pair of pizzas, and when notified that all the other groups had gone ahead into the darkness, said "Well I run in after them, leaping into the darkness!" The shocked DM then had to admit that Freddy had leapt clear across the pit, and therefore his team had gotten the farthest.

Gary was found walking the halls in shock afterwards not because 8 of 9 parties were TPK, but because his plan of a full 9 party kill was foiled by a pair of anchovy and mustard greens pizzas.

[kyoryu]

Gary was about to pronounce a nine-party kill when Freddy walked in late carrying a pair of pizzas, and when notified that all the other groups had gone ahead into the darkness, said "Well I run in after them, leaping into the darkness!" The shocked DM then had to admit that Freddy had leapt clear across the pit, and therefore his team had gotten the farthest.


Whoa. Freddy came across from the dream realm to play D&D, instead of trying to kill teenagers?

[Menteith]

To everyone complaining the module is unfair... this was a tournament. It's supposed to be hard.

Hard doesn't mean nonfunctional. I'm not going to jump into this without more information, other than saying that a luck based challenge - "Looks like you guessed poorly!" - isn't hard, it's bad design. If you have no basis for making a decision that results in failure, then skill has no place. You could have no experience or skill at a task and do better than a highly skilled individual, if you're both faced with a luck based challenge.

[kyoryu]

Hard doesn't mean nonfunctional. I'm not going to jump into this without more information, other than saying that a luck based challenge - "Looks like you guessed poorly!" - isn't hard, it's bad design. If you have no basis for making a decision that results in failure, then skill has no place. You could have no experience or skill at a task and do better than a highly skilled individual, if you're both faced with a luck based challenge.

The rational response to being faced with a decision where you have insufficient information isn't to guess - it's to *gather more information*.

[Menteith]

The rational response to being faced with a decision where you have insufficient information isn't to guess - it's to *gather more information*.

Absolutely. I'm not saying that the module was well built, and whether or not Gygax was responsible. I don't have that information. I'm saying that just because the module was Tournament level, that doesn't mean "random" deaths are acceptable.

[wumpus]

Has it occurred to nobody that this was a tournament game and thus utterly unrelated to home games whatsoever? Open-style tournaments are scored, based only on player skill (and the dice, of course), and basically have minimal role-playing because it's a waste of time...


To everyone complaining the module is unfair... this was a tournament. It's supposed to be hard.

I should point out that plenty of other tournament modules were sold by TSR as general purpose modules. G1-2-3 come to mind (I think D1-2-3 were as well but less sure about Q1), as well as the obvious T-series (tournament modules that included scoring methods. I think the A series (slave lords) were also from tournaments.

I think plenty of players are also familiar with B2 (keep on the borderlands, if not 5e should reintroduce it to you). This was also written by Gygax, and seemed lacking any type of "think of what the DM is hinting or DIE!". Gary Gygax could certainly scale dungeon difficulty to whatever he thought was appropriate.

It should also be known that since almost everybody seems familiar with the dungeon in question, it certainly has a place (if not for your most treasured characters). If it was for an early tournament, maybe it was a little hard or should have been more explicit about just what a Lich is and why you should be careful in his tomb. Anyone who walks into darkness will certainly fall to almost every other trap in this quest. And yes, disbelieving the air in this quest is probably something to think about, but make sure you have a backup air supply in case you succeed.

[ThiagoMartell]

The whoosh-thud effect is the equivalent of making a videogame hard by making the controls terrible. It's condemned in that medium, the equivalent should be condemned in this one.

I think you're giving way too much importance for a single bit of evidence coming from a second hand source. We don't even know the specifics of the trap. What if it was a pit with silence cast into it's mouth? All you'd hear is a "whoosh thud" effect. We don't have all the information, so before calling people incompetent, we should try to get more information or formulate other hypothesis. I think it's far more likely to have an unexpected element (such as the aforementioned silence spell in the pit) than to have 8 groups of incompetent players and 8 incompetent DMs.

[Matthew]

At the level Tomb of Horrors was written for you have plenty of access to "ask the deity" type questions. In short, augury should be used in that situation by any right thinking players.

[Tyndmyr]

....When you wake up in the middle of the night and have to pee, it's dark and you can't see. Do you jump up out of bed and, without turning on a light, dash off to the bathroom? Or do you pause and flip on the lamp?

Uh, I've gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night without turning on a light many a time.


There was no such thing back then.

Twenty years ago, there was no box text? This directly contradicts a number of modules I've read from that era. The "box o' descriptory text" was quite common. Plenty of modules even punished you for not paying sufficient attention to it.


And even if so ... what conclusions can you draw, other than "that was a poorly-written adventure."

Like I said, I suspect the anecdote is faulty.

-O

Poorly written adventure...at least, in that particular description, is quite likely. That said, one mistake does not make a person a bad DM. All of us have made mistakes at some point in time.

[Gravitron5000]

Most common factor: If almost every table failed, with multiple dms, the most likely explanation was that the module was the problem. Not the players.

I think it's more a question of expectations. If you set up a game of rugby, and have a rugby referee and all the players show up to play badminton, you can pretty much expect a farce. As others have said, a tournament game is a dramatically different beast than a game between friends, and it could be that the majority of players hadn't adjusted their approach to take into account those differences.

[Surfing HalfOrc]

Hmm. While I never met Gary myself, I did read his stuff over at Dragonsfoot.org. He seemed like a likable person, which usually is a good sign. This is a storytelling game, with dice rolls tossed in to keep it interesting.

Let me see if someone who DID play with Gary is willing to give an opinion: Tim Kask. Tim is DMing for Jim Wampler of Marvin the Mage (http://www.mudpuppycomics.com/) fame.

[Matthew]

Twenty years ago, there was no box text? This directly contradicts a number of modules I've read from that era. The "box o' descriptory text" was quite common. Plenty of modules even punished you for not paying sufficient attention to it.

The very earliest lacked boxed text (such as G1-3); it was an innovation of the early eighties.

[Tyndmyr]

The very earliest lacked boxed text (such as G1-3); it was an innovation of the early eighties.

S1 was published when, '78? It has notable box text.

Edit: Long story short, its not impossible that the tournament game relied on box text for description.

[obryn]

S1 was published when, '78? It has notable box text.
Nope.

It has a packet of actual pictures, not boxed text.


Twenty years ago, there was no box text? This directly contradicts a number of modules I've read from that era. The "box o' descriptory text" was quite common. Plenty of modules even punished you for not paying sufficient attention to it.
Twenty years ago - the early nineties - there was plenty! The first time I personally remember seeing it was in some B- and X-series modules of the early eighties.

-O

[Jarawara]

Whoa. Freddy came across from the dream realm to play D&D, instead of trying to kill teenagers?

Ha! I soooo need to do a photoshop of Freddy Kruger sitting at a table playing D&D with his buddies.

DM: "Roll your saving throw, Fred."

Freddy slices a d20 in half with his knives.

DM: "Uh... I guess that means you take half damage."

[Zorg]

The best part about this discussion is that the misadventures of that tourney were brought up to illustrate the gap between how Gygax envisioned playing his game (ie how he and his mates did it) and how other people were playing it (ie not in that way at all):


Gary and his players couldn't believe that the tournament players had been so incautious. But, to be fair, none of those tournament groups had played in Gary Gygax's game. They had learned the rules of D&D, but they had no experience of the milieu in which the book was written. Of those nine groups that had learned D&D from a book, only one played sufficiently like Gary's group to survive thirty seconds in his dungeon.

In OD&D, there's no guarantee that things are fair. One of Gary's and Rob Kuntz's favorite stories, says Mornard, was Clark Ashton Smith's The Seven Geases, in which the hero survives a horrible death at the hands of seven different monsters only to die meaninglessly slipping from a ledge. That was one of the seminal texts of D&D, said Mornard, and one of the stories it was designed to model. "The story that D&D tells," said Mike, "is the story of the world. Heroes aren't invincible."

The story is illustrative of the context OD&D was created with and its influences, but without easy distribution of such knowledge with things like the internet people were doing it 'wrong'.
It's easy for us to say to check around with a 10ft pole or whatnot, but if all your and your three friends had were the base rulebooks and never played outside your group you'd have your own interpretation of how things 'work' in the world - running into a GM who had an intsa-kill trap could legitimately be something they'd never seen before in this situation.

[Jay R]

Getting back to the topic, which, believe it or not, is "Was Gygax a good DM?"

Having read this thread, I now conclude that there is no agreement on what a good DM is.

[Matthew]

S1 was published when, '78? It has notable box text.

Edit: Long story short, its not impossible that the tournament game relied on box text for description.

As Obryn points out above, there was no boxed text in S1 Tomb of Horrors, at least as it appeared in 1978.



Getting back to the topic, which, believe it or not, is "Was Gygax a good DM?"

Having read this thread, I now conclude that there is no agreement on what a good DM is.

The first step on the path of wisdom, grasshopper! :smallbiggrin:

[Jarawara]

Poorly written adventure...at least, in that particular description, is quite likely. That said, one mistake does not make a person a bad DM. All of us have made mistakes at some point in time.


Now that is something I fully agree with!

What are the two most likely methods of becoming a good DM? One is to learn from others. The other, as the saying goes, it to first be a bad DM and learn from your own mistakes. So who is Gary going to learn from? He had to go route two like so many others have since then.

And the difference between Gary and most everyone else is that everyone else can hide their mistakes and quietly forget about them, save for a few laughs and remembering 'that time you totally screwed the pooch DMing that encounter. Gary's mistakes can't be quietly forgotten - they've all been published, marketed to millions, memorialized in tales for all time.

So he made a few mistakes. Maybe even a bunch. He also made a thousand good decisions and continued to provide a fun game to friends and family till the day he died. If his friends liked his game and continued to play, that's the definition of a good DM.

*~*

Another thought: He may not have been the best DM ever, but he was also a businessman. I am sure that as he was walking the halls at noon, the tournament already over, he *knew* he'd done something wrong. He was there to provide a day long game, and it was over by noon... he had disappointed his customers! He surely vowed never to make that mistake again.

[LeshLush]

http://i47.tinypic.com/14e8j2v.gif
Seemed relevant.

[Tyndmyr]

Nope.

It has a packet of actual pictures, not boxed text.
-O

Mine may be one of the later printings(I'd have to check)...but I could have sworn it had descriptory text for certain areas. It did also have some pictures, of which I'm quite fond, but I recall those mostly being for the more notable parts.

However, as this is not actually relevant to the issue of if box text may have been used for the tournament, I suppose it's only important to satisfy my curiosity.


Getting back to the topic, which, believe it or not, is "Was Gygax a good DM?"

Having read this thread, I now conclude that there is no agreement on what a good DM is.

A reasonable conclusion. However, it's also somewhat muddled by the age difference. There's substantially more agreement(even if not total agreement) on what constitutes a good DM today.

I think Gygax was a pretty good DM given the era he was in. Things have changed since then, and no doubt, Gygax made mistakes, but that shouldn't detract from what he did at the time.



Another thought: He may not have been the best DM ever, but he was also a businessman. I am sure that as he was walking the halls at noon, the tournament already over, he *knew* he'd done something wrong. He was there to provide a day long game, and it was over by noon... he had disappointed his customers! He surely vowed never to make that mistake again.

This is a sign of a good businessman, and also, I'd argue, of a good DM. You aren't so much defined by your mistakes as you are by how you respond to them. If your action is "deny it, and pretend it never happened", it probably won't help you improve. Admitting the mistake and finding out why it happened is definitely the way to go.

[kyoryu]

The story is illustrative of the context OD&D was created with and its influences, but without easy distribution of such knowledge with things like the internet people were doing it 'wrong'.

Yeah, this is one of my theories about how roleplaying has significantly changed. That, combined with the fact that a bunch of kids picked up rules for a game that wasn't really aimed at kids, and interpreted it in the only natural way for kids to do so. Myself included.

If I hadn't had the opportunity to play in a *real* old-school campaign, I probably wouldn't have nearly as much of a feel for how they differ.

[Stubbazubba]

This is a sign of a good businessman, and also, I'd argue, of a good DM. You aren't so much defined by your mistakes as you are by how you respond to them. If your action is "deny it, and pretend it never happened", it probably won't help you improve. Admitting the mistake and finding out why it happened is definitely the way to go.

Hear, hear!

[Synovia]

The rational response to being faced with a decision where you have insufficient information isn't to guess - it's to *gather more information*.

Of course, but how much information you can gather in an RPG is completely dependant on how much the DM is willing to give you.

[1337 b4k4]

Synovia

Do you often play with DMs that are that much of a jerk? It seriously seems like you have no trust for your DM and I can only hope that you are playing devils advocate and you don't seriously have this little trust and communication at your table.

[teslasdream]

I found this forum while searching for videos of Gary Gygax DMing (I don't think any exist on the internet, unfortunately), and I joined the forum as a result of seeing how much good discussion the topic churned up! Some good talkers and smart folks on here!

I know the thread is 6 years old at this point, but its still a good discussion and I wanted to give my two cents on the matter:

I don't know whether Gygax was a good DM or a bad DM. He innovated the concept of a DM as we know it today, so that's not really a great question. But I do see a lot of people laboring under some misconception that Gygax's D&D was somehow more authentic because it was "no-nonsense wargaming."

What?

You simply can't call Gygax a wargamer in his approach to early D&D. The wargaming movement has been defined by comprehensive KNOWABILITY from its very inception in 1898 when Robert Louis Stevenson published his naval warfare rules for all to read. The idea is that you and your opponent are playing a glorified, hyper-detailed game of chess in which both sides are well-informed generals who know what the enemy's capabilities are. Both sides have read the rules and are thoroughly briefed on how the wargame world works. The only surprises come from how your opponent chooses to behave in the situation... while bound by the same rules as you.

This central characteristic of wargames was still a defining feature in the 70's when Gygax created D&D. That had not changed. Rules and knowability were still the core of wargames.

What set early D&D apart from wargames and made it substantially different -- to the point that I would argue it was not a wargame at all -- is the very nature of the DM being unknowable and being given an infinite allowance for whimsy and even deceit. It would be like playing a game of chess where your opponent got to decide how his pieces moved and got to change that up every turn, Calvinball-style.

These days, D&D has moved closer to wargaming, I would argue, despite the much higher emphasis on roleplay. It's still a constipated game at its core, as I'll explain later, but it is closer to a proper wargame than it was under Gygax. DMs are held to account for providing a fair game now. Rulings are called into question. You swarm your party of level 1s with 30 goblins, they're going to groupwipe, of course, and then questions will be asked. "Was that fight winnable? What allowed the goblins to do this or that?" And if you can't defend your actions as a DM with anything beyond "I'm the DM, you joined my game, deal with it," then you've merely proven yourself to lack class, maturity, and skill as a DM. Games that are not fair are really not games, as they lack ... well, gamesmanship.

That said, this nostalgia for the old days when your DM would give you a 50/50 chance to choose a door of life or a door of death... that's very understandable. There is a very appealing sort of masochistic make-believe going on there, similar to what I still have for the old Choose Your Own Adventure books where you would die all manner of entertaining and appalling deaths until you got lucky and found the right solution. The mindless gotchas are very tickling, especially when you're among friends. But they aren't games. They're acts of imaginative domination/submission, an asexual, creative variation of Fifty Shades of Gray. Though again, even there... trust is paramount.

Now, I grant that one could argue that D&D was wargaming, just set in a highly unpredictable environment where terrain and objects carried severe and unplumbed risks. Sure. Like if your toy soldiers were transported to Pan's Labyrinth. Ok, I'd buy that. There's need to allow for caprice in order to establish veracity in such a setting. But Gygax also set the DM up to control the NPCs too, don't forget, and even with Monster Manuals, the DM was entitled to change whatever whenever on that front as well. And that's where the "Gygax was a wargamer" argument falls apart.

No, D&D's main competitor these days, Warhammer, is the true evolution of wargaming. It is defined by knowability and is truly a game with infinite possibilities yet defined by clear parameters.

Today, D&D is a commercial successful but highly conflicted game. It has an identity crisis. Clearly, roleplay and storytelling are its natural end, yet people still keep hanging on to the mechanical aspect, insisting that the game somehow can foster truly meaningful wargame play. This idea dies hard because they think they need it to legitimize their make-believe. To lend seriousness of some kind to the whole affair. But it's okay without it!

If D&D embraced its natural end as a vehicle for collective narrative interactions, it would scrap all of the silly mechanics like encumbrance, lifestyle expenditures, crafting, and even skill checks and just go with very simplified fight mechanics that foster smoothness and speed. Sand the "game" aspect out of it entirely and encourage people to just tell stories. Let them get their wargame fix elsewhere. An activity doesn't have to be everything. It can just be what it is.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

This is some hardcore thread necromancy. I didn't notice till I found a post by myself in the first page.

[Akal Saris]

Heh, I've had that happen before where I'm reading a resurrected post and think what I want to say, and then there it is, written by me 4 years ago :P

Maybe D&D is conflicted about what it wants to do, but I'd argue it fills a valuable niche with its cooperative team-based gameplay.

[Nifft]

I know the thread is 6 years old at this point

That's usually a good reason to not post in a thread.

You're new, so mods probably won't cut off your hand or anything, but I'd expect the thread to be locked rather than for more good discussion to occur.

I think the recommended behavior going forward would be for you to start a new thread and link to the old discussion -- but do ask a mod, I'm certainly not an authority about this forum's policy.

[FreddyNoNose]

That's usually a good reason to not post in a thread.

You're new, so mods probably won't cut off your hand or anything, but I'd expect the thread to be locked rather than for more good discussion to occur.

I think the recommended behavior going forward would be for you to start a new thread and link to the old discussion -- but do ask a mod, I'm certainly not an authority about this forum's policy.


I agree with this.

That being said, I have played in a game where EGG was DM and I thought he was solid.

[Mr Beer]

You're new, so mods probably won't cut off your hand or anything

Well not the namby-pamby Modern Mods that we get nowadays, the proper Old School Mods would totally cut off your hands back in the day and things were better for it.

[Nifft]

Well not the namby-pamby Modern Mods that we get nowadays, the proper Old School Mods would totally cut off your hands back in the day and things were better for it.


https://i.imgur.com/QMyhW6Z.jpg

[Roland St. Jude]

...I know the thread is 6 years old at this point, but its still a good discussion and I wanted to give my two cents on the matter:...
Sheriff: Please don't do that. Please review the Forum Rules on Thread Necromancy (and you might as well give them an overall read while you're there.)