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Sparky McDibben
2021-07-30, 10:34 PM
So I just got Worlds Without Number, and this thing might be a better DMG than the 5e DMG. Tons of random tables, exceptionally solid advice on how to set up social and exploration challenges (y'know, the other two pillars of the game), good advice on how to structure expeditions, run explorations of dungeons, and the worldbuilding tools. My God, the worldbuilding tools! It's set up so you just come up with a couple of descriptive tags (via a roll, or just on your own) and it gives you just enough to build everything else upon.

It's just damn good, y'all. Absolutely mind-boggling how so little of this is in the 5e DMG.

Anonymouswizard
2021-07-31, 01:39 AM
exceptionally solid advice on how to set up social and exploration challenges (y'know, the other two pillars of the game),

D&D 5e cares about more than combat? That's news to me, I heard that powerful noncombat abilities were considered minor 'ribbons'.

But to get to the topic, not everybody agrees on what should be in a GM's guide. To me random tables shouldn't be a primary feature, and instead there should be a focus on factions or the setting's metaphysics. Additional advice on handling character and setting creation is in my mind amazing, and ideally they will be a decent way to handle it collaboratively. A sentence of advice is worth a thousand random tables, especially when the advice reduces pointless rolling.

Trask
2021-07-31, 02:16 PM
There are well written sections and decent advice, but its all placed wrong. A DMG aimed at teaching one advanced techniques for running a game of D&D shouldn't start you off on the "Ok, what kind of cosmology do you want?" chapter.

Tanarii
2021-07-31, 03:06 PM
There are well written sections and decent advice, but its all placed wrong. A DMG aimed at teaching one advanced techniques for running a game of D&D shouldn't start you off on the "Ok, what kind of cosmology do you want?" chapter.
Agreed. For some reason, the first thing every DM needs to read, Running the Game, is Chapter 8.

Anonymouswizard
2021-07-31, 03:17 PM
There are well written sections and decent advice, but its all placed wrong. A DMG aimed at teaching one advanced techniques for running a game of D&D shouldn't start you off on the "Ok, what kind of cosmology do you want?" chapter.

I've seen it work, but it requires the first section to explain why the rules work the way they do throughout. But yes, this is why most games put the 'running the gasme' chapter before the setting information chapter(s), or just don't separate betwen player and GM setting stuff.

But D& isn't exactly an examplar of anything in the industry, why would a proper setup for a GM book be something it gets right.

Quertus
2021-08-02, 04:56 AM
I haven't read it, but it sounds like the 5e DMG was written attempting either a "top down" approach, or an "order of operations" approach. I mean, you don't normally play in a world before it exists, right?

Yora
2021-08-02, 05:32 AM
The Dungeon Master's Guides have consistently failed to be decent gamemaster handbooks. It's like they always make a new version of the older DMGs, but never bother to look elsewhere for what a useful bok for GMs could look like.

(The best GM book I've ever seen is the 1993 Gamemaster Handbook for Star Wars Second Edition. 100 pages of pure advice on running games, with no additional game rules that aren't in the normal rulebook.)

Anonymouswizard
2021-08-02, 07:50 AM
I haven't read it, but it sounds like the 5e DMG was written attempting either a "top down" approach, or an "order of operations" approach. I mean, you don't normally play in a world before it exists, right?

Oh how little faith you have. Many, many groups don't have a world that extends beyond the adventure, and one of the few good bits of the 3.X DMGs was recommending you build bottom up before top down.

Cluedrew
2021-08-02, 08:34 AM
Wow, Yora's story actually convinced me that a separate book for the GM might actually be useful. I had kind of discarded the idea actually figuring that a chapter at the end of the rule-book on running the game was really all you needed. But if you can create 100 pages of advice, maybe through in an idea generator or something, then yes, that could completely get its own book.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-02, 09:14 AM
Bad organization is not limited to this one book, it's a bit of a plague on RPG books in general.

Xervous
2021-08-02, 09:53 AM
What should a good DMG have then? In no particular order.

1. What is this?: an explanation of what purpose the system serves, hopefully echoing things that were stated in the PHB.

2. Why do we play?: an intro for session zero and setting a group for play. Set expectations, get player buy in, arrange for a functioning party as a matter of group consensus.

2a. Why does Jimmy play?: examples of different players and what pleases them in the game, how to ask the questions that might lead you to understand what the player wants.

2b. Different campaign formats and what sorts of players might enjoy them: Linear modules, hexcrawl, living open world, intrigue, etc. Talk about pros and cons of each, detail what players might enjoy or dislike about each.

3. Running the game: rules show up here, obviously. The important things most systems miss are details like ‘how do we deal with rules questions in session?’ Emphasize it is something for the table to agree on, provide a few example methods and discuss pros and cons.

4. Setting / system things not detailed in the PHB.

5. Supplemental information if relevant (tables)

6. Setting up interesting and meaningful social / exploration scenes.

KorvinStarmast
2021-08-02, 10:29 AM
Oh how little faith you have. Many, many groups don't have a world that extends beyond the adventure, and one of the few good bits of the 3.X DMGs was recommending you build bottom up before top down.
Greyhawk was built from the bottom up.
First game world I ever played in was built bottom up.
Blackmoor was kind of built bottom up and top down at the same time since DA had built a Napoleonic campaign setting (IIRC, hacking a Diplomacy map) before he built the campaign centered on Blackmoor.

My first major campaign, on the other hand, was as the GM for Empire of the Petal Throne. I had the top; what I had to come up with was local attractions, ruins, quests, tombs, cave complexes, and so on. I ended up with a top down campaign since Professor Barker had done such a nice job of world building for me ahead of time. :smallbiggrin:

Zuras
2021-08-02, 10:40 AM
Does anyone feel the 5e DMG shines as an exemplar of good organization? I’ve always thought it was easily the weakest of the three 5e core books. The guidance on running a game and setting up a campaign is great, but it is dispersed throughout the book.

Additionally, the core mechanical bits explaining the adventuring day and how 5e is built to be a war of attrition, along with guidance about setting skill DCs, both of which are key pieces of playing a specifically 5e game (and thus won’t be found in a generic GM advice tome) are not emphasized they way they should be.

Telok
2021-08-02, 11:12 AM
Does anyone feel the 5e DMG shines as an exemplar of good organization?

No. The new DMs I've seen using it all failed dramatically and the one experienced DM I know using it only uses some of the tables. I recall on my read-through some years ago thinking that there weren't things for hirelings, sages, aerial & underwater adventures, and advice on potentially problematic spells. I could be wrong and it could be in there, but I didn't find it.

One thing I've done in my DtD40k7e rewrite is add appendices directly relating to the skill checks, dice probabilities, and different types of series of rolls. It's not something I recall seeing anywhere since the old AD&D DMG. That and I added sections for some "this is a problem area we found during play, here's a possible solution" stuff for things like illusions, mind control, economics, followers, etc. Which are things I think I last saw adderssed in a CoC book.

Anonymouswizard
2021-08-02, 11:33 AM
Greyhawk was built from the bottom up.
First game world I ever played in was built bottom up.
Blackmoor was kind of built bottom up and top down at the same time since DA had built a Napoleonic campaign setting (IIRC, hacking a Diplomacy map) before he built the campaign centered on Blackmoor.

My first major campaign, on the other hand, was as the GM for Empire of the Petal Throne. I had the top; what I had to come up with was local attractions, ruins, quests, tombs, cave complexes, and so on. I ended up with a top down campaign since Professor Barker had done such a nice job of world building for me ahead of time. :smallbiggrin:

Oh yeah, a lot of my games are technically top-down because I'm trunning a game with an included setting. But even then I tend to employ bottom up principles, startng small and working upwards. The PC's criminal contact comes before the gang they're part of.

Top down is very very useful if your campaign is epic in scope right from the start, but most campaigns don't begin concerned with the fates of nations at stake.


No. The new DMs I've seen using it all failed dramatically and the one experienced DM I know using it only uses some of the tables. I recall on my read-through some years ago thinking that there weren't things for hirelings, sages, aerial & underwater adventures, and advice on potentially problematic spells. I could be wrong and it could be in there, but I didn't find it.

Another way to look at it is that the designers of D&D 5e don't see those as important. Given D&D's history they probably should have, but not doing so and thus not putting them in isn't a mark against the designers.

In fact, you can tell what people think is important by what tools are included. Chronicles of Darkness and Sigil and Shadow are both games about monsters engaging in politics and subtefuge, but while the former presents default factions with varying relationships the latter instead provides a default relationship map and asks you who the factions are (both also treat monster PCs differently).

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-02, 11:51 AM
I'm of the opinion that pure bottom-up or pure top-down is going to cause problems.

For example, without having at least a framework of the basic metaphysical, cosmological, historical, geographical, cultural, and political facts, there's nothing to build the parts at the bottom around, and trying to fit all the stuff at the bottom together and keep it coherent becomes increasingly hard as the setting grows.

We see this with a lot a serial fiction, with things starting out as "wouldn't it be cool if?" and "here are some characters the audience will like", and the whole thing becoming an increasingly-cumbersome tangle of new details and retcons and "oh you only though this" to fig-leaf the backpedaling and the changes.

Tanarii
2021-08-02, 12:17 PM
What should a good DMG have then? In no particular order.

1. What is this?: an explanation of what purpose the system serves, hopefully echoing things that were stated in the PHB.

2. Why do we play?: an intro for session zero and setting a group for play. Set expectations, get player buy in, arrange for a functioning party as a matter of group consensus.

2a. Why does Jimmy play?: examples of different players and what pleases them in the game, how to ask the questions that might lead you to understand what the player wants.

2b. Different campaign formats and what sorts of players might enjoy them: Linear modules, hexcrawl, living open world, intrigue, etc. Talk about pros and cons of each, detail what players might enjoy or dislike about each.

3. Running the game: rules show up here, obviously. The important things most systems miss are details like ‘how do we deal with rules questions in session?’ Emphasize it is something for the table to agree on, provide a few example methods and discuss pros and cons.
As far as I'm concerned 2 is part of 3. And should be after the core of 3, which should be a more in depth look at resolution. Both conceptually and core mechanics. If you can't do resolution, you can't run your first game. You absolutely can do that without a session zero, knowing what different kinds of players want what, or campaign formats.

Willie the Duck
2021-08-03, 09:56 AM
So I just got Worlds Without Number, and this thing might be a better DMG than the 5e DMG. Tons of random tables, exceptionally solid advice on how to set up social and exploration challenges (y'know, the other two pillars of the game), good advice on how to structure expeditions, run explorations of dungeons, and the worldbuilding tools. My God, the worldbuilding tools! It's set up so you just come up with a couple of descriptive tags (via a roll, or just on your own) and it gives you just enough to build everything else upon.

It's just damn good, y'all. Absolutely mind-boggling how so little of this is in the 5e DMG.


The Dungeon Master's Guides have consistently failed to be decent gamemaster handbooks. It's like they always make a new version of the older DMGs, but never bother to look elsewhere for what a useful bok for GMs could look like.

Preemptive disclosures: I don't overly like most DM/GM Guides, and certainly not 5e's. I also think there are (at least) two main thrusts a GMG can have -- resource for experienced GMs and training manual for new GMs -- which are not mutually exclusive but at least are competitors for page count and organizational attention, and my personal perspective is that the latter (training manual for new GMs) is a more important goal for a published core GMG (as experienced GMs generally can make their own rules and systems and at that level of experience playstyle and exactly what-is-needed will diverge wildly).

5e's DMG and WWN's GM section come from two fairly divergent gaming ethea -- both wings of D&D but very far apart.

WWN comes from the OSR community, complete with all the design assumptions and preferences therein. This is a movement that went back with a fine-toothed comb and poured over all the procedural nuances of early D&D/AD&D -- the dungeon exploration turn procedure, the rules for random terrain hex generation and the hexcrawl experience, the influence that gp=xp and morale rules and the reaction roll chart have on gameplay (and how the game could be, and theoretically was incentivized to be, more of a heist game in a dungeon than a straight slaughterfest), how the interplay of squishy magic users protected by front lines and dungeon walls and dungeon level-gated monster toughness transitioned to open-air defenselessness and any-toughness wilderness encounters as one levelled, etc. -- and formulated an image of the game (and from there the movement springboarded significantly to answering the question of, 'and what do we now want to do with it?'). For a game coming from that model procedures, systems, subsystems, and methodology are a primary focus and would almost have to be paramount.

5e's DMG comes, as Yora says, as a copy of a copy of a copy -- back to the AD&D 2nd edition DMG (I mean, obviously also farther back, but between 1e and 2e AD&D is where the divergence I'm about to discuss occurred). AD&D 2e is pretty arguable about what its main focus was (corporate mandated to be backwards compatible, surveys made to ask the customer base what they wanted being incredibly poorly designed, etc.), but at least part of the point was to clarify AD&D's arcane and convoluted system to something a little more streamlined while also tweaking it towards the way people actually used the system (inasmuch as they understood it). Now, there's no consensus on how people actually used D&D in '89 (or '74, '77, or any other time, particularly pre-ubiquitous-internet/social media), but there were certainly plenty of people (many, including 15 year old Ducks who never started with a wargaming background and who picked up the books at 8 and thus had attention focused more on the rules for spells and flaming swords than fidelity to systematic rules) who were not using the procedural rules. Whether the 2e Devs knew this or not, a lot of those rules either disappeared or simply did not get the prominent feature they got in previous versions of the game. Between that and the movement of things like the primary combat rules from DMG to PHB in 2e, the DMG kind of had an identity crises. Exactly what was supposed to be in it, other than things like the Magic Items that (theoretically) the players shouldn't necessarily know and stuff they probably don't need to have taking up their page space like rules for water travel or populating a village or building a castle (because it happens infrequently enough that the playgroup only needs one copy of it). 2e didn't quite have an answer and I don't think any of the DMGs that came after really went back to asking fundamental 'what is this product's purpose/goal?'-type questions.


(The best GM book I've ever seen is the 1993 Gamemaster Handbook for Star Wars Second Edition. 100 pages of pure advice on running games, with no additional game rules that aren't in the normal rulebook.)
Thank you for bringing to the discussion an example of my second type of GMG, and both you and OP for bringing examples of designers doing what you like, as opposed to just trashing of an existing system.

Eldan
2021-08-03, 10:02 AM
I'm of the opinion that pure bottom-up or pure top-down is going to cause problems.

For example, without having at least a framework of the basic metaphysical, cosmological, historical, geographical, cultural, and political facts, there's nothing to build the parts at the bottom around, and trying to fit all the stuff at the bottom together and keep it coherent becomes increasingly hard as the setting grows.
.

I mean, theoretically yes, but for a lot of groups I've seen, they don't really so much build those as just more or less say "Oh, it's just default D&D". There's planes somewhere, but they don't probably matter too much, most PCs don't get deeply involved in politics and history is relevant as far as where the BBG comes from or maybe who built the dungeon they are going into that week. (This is of course absolutely fine.)

Eldan
2021-08-03, 10:05 AM
I actually find the idea of, let's call it "division of rules" interesting. The idea that there are rules for the players and separate rules only the DM needs to know. It's not a terrible idea, really, I mean, most people can get along knowing only the rules that are relevant to their character most of the time, but does any system other than D&D and maybe a few systems derrived from it really do that? Almost all the systems I know other than D&D have one book, or if they have two, it's a setting book and a rules book.

HumanFighter
2021-08-03, 11:18 AM
I have really only ever read the Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D 3.5 and 4th edition. Both left something to be desired. The D&D 3.5 book for the DM was better than 4e's, but I was still left wanting more. Felt like I had to figure out a lot for myself as a DM, which was fine, I mean, improvising is an important skill for D&D. Improvisation is funny though, it can either go really well or really wrong, really fast.

For the system I have been designing for the past few months, I don't really plan to have a DMG, though. I have a handful of random tables written up, which are helpful (random encounters in wilderness, dungeons, etc.) However what I really struggle with is coming up with a table for RNG items and loot. Every time I try it, it comes out unbalanced or unfun. Then I resort to Pathfinder's random item tables. Still not great, but probably better than anything I can come up with :smallbiggrin:

Anyways, I won't deny that I have learned some things from the DMGs I read all those years ago. So thanks, WOTC, I guess. Though most of the GM advice I got came from youtube videos, and my own personal experience as a GM.

Willie the Duck
2021-08-03, 11:23 AM
I actually find the idea of, let's call it "division of rules" interesting. The idea that there are rules for the players and separate rules only the DM needs to know. It's not a terrible idea, really, I mean, most people can get along knowing only the rules that are relevant to their character most of the time, but does any system other than D&D and maybe a few systems derrived from it really do that? Almost all the systems I know other than D&D have one book, or if they have two, it's a setting book and a rules book.

For the most part I think of the distinction as not need-to-know, but whether the gaming table needs one copy of a given rule or would be better served by one copy per person attending. The idea that the DM would have proprietary information really was never more than a fantasy, as secrets are so fun to share (and of course anyone can just buy the DMG, and unlike buying the module in which you are playing to find out what happens or something, the gaming culture doesn't really poo-poo players owning DMGs).

It does seem to be rarer, as many other RPGs try to include the primary core rules in a single volume. The notable exceptions that come to mind right now are the very un-D&D-like GURPS 4e and Hero System 6e, which make the divide more clearly as volumes for Character Creation and General Rules, rather than books for the Players and GMs specifically. Mind you, after the core, plenty of systems produce something akin to 'the Advanced Player's Guide,' and 'Gamemaster's Secrets' or equally marketable titles.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-03, 11:32 AM
For the most part I think of the distinction as not need-to-know, but whether the gaming table needs one copy of a given rule or would be better served by one copy per person attending. The idea that the DM would have proprietary information really was never more than a fantasy, as secrets are so fun to share (and of course anyone can just buy the DMG, and unlike buying the module in which you are playing to find out what happens or something, the gaming culture doesn't really poo-poo players owning DMGs).


I remember when there was a subset of the gaming culture, strong in the D&D crowd, that DID take a dim view of "players" owning a DMG... there was almost this idea that someone would start as a player, and then some of them would "graduate" to being a DM, and that it was "improper" for someone who was "just a player" to own or read the DMG.

It was always utter nonsense, but it was there.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-03, 11:33 AM
I actually find the idea of, let's call it "division of rules" interesting. The idea that there are rules for the players and separate rules only the DM needs to know. It's not a terrible idea, really, I mean, most people can get along knowing only the rules that are relevant to their character most of the time, but does any system other than D&D and maybe a few systems derrived from it really do that? Almost all the systems I know other than D&D have one book, or if they have two, it's a setting book and a rules book.

Don't be fooled by lack of splitting the rules into two physical volumes - it's incredibly common for roleplaying games to have a separate section for the game master (or whatever a game wants to call a game master today - referee, narrator, storyteller etc.). They just manage to fit those rules in a single book.

Willie the Duck
2021-08-03, 12:00 PM
I remember when there was a subset of the gaming culture, strong in the D&D crowd, that DID take a dim view of "players" owning a DMG... there was almost this idea that someone would start as a player, and then some of them would "graduate" to being a DM, and that it was "improper" for someone who was "just a player" to own or read the DMG.

It was always utter nonsense, but it was there.

I am sure we can find individual anecdotes. I mean, the nonsensical gaming universe that satirical works like Knights of the Dinner Table lampooned had to exist to have some degree of truth for the humor to land (although a lot of that could be lampooning the imagined world created from E.G.G.'s and TSR's more imperious language). That, plus, well, nerds are downright awful to each other. Still, that kind of mindset (regardless of how much it actually happened) was subject to ridicule since as long as I've been paying attention.


Don't be fooled by lack of splitting the rules into two physical volumes - it's incredibly common for roleplaying games to have a separate section for the game master (or whatever a game wants to call a game master today - referee, narrator, storyteller etc.). They just manage to fit those rules in a single book.

That certainly is another general trend (although sometimes it's split up into 'making player characters' and 'running the game' instead, for whatever that distinction is worth). That one is interesting to me in that 1) obviously it means that none of it is secret, 2) everyone has paid for the section (and whatever side concepts there might be, like less is included in one or the other based on a notion of how big a book should be, etc.). I wonder if there is a functional, psychological difference for the GM section to be a separate (and/or separately purchased) book.

Anonymouswizard
2021-08-03, 12:14 PM
For the most part I think of the distinction as not need-to-know, but whether the gaming table needs one copy of a given rule or would be better served by one copy per person attending. The idea that the DM would have proprietary information really was never more than a fantasy, as secrets are so fun to share (and of course anyone can just buy the DMG, and unlike buying the module in which you are playing to find out what happens or something, the gaming culture doesn't really poo-poo players owning DMGs).

I find the idea of the group having more than maybe two copies of the core rulebook hilarious. Generally if you want to run a game you'll own the book. If it's D&D there might be as many as three copies if the game id D&D.


Don't be fooled by lack of splitting the rules into two physical volumes - it's incredibly common for roleplaying games to have a separate section for the game master (or whatever a game wants to call a game master today - referee, narrator, storyteller etc.). They just manage to fit those rules in a single book.

Yep, of all the games I own only D&D and Unknown Armies have more than one rulebook (mainly due to LotFP still not releasing the Referee's book).

To be fair, professionally RPGs now cost on average £40-50 per core rulebook, and if you don't have the grandfather clause of D&D people probably won't be willing to spend £80+ on a game, which I suspect is why most games include both the GM advice and a small bestiary in the core book. Some games do get away with two, I'll note that Nunemera 2e seems to have split into two core books, but I don't see anybody trying for three. If RPGs were a big enough market that you could still get decent profits selling books for £30 I suspect we's see more cases of core rules being split.

Weirdly, the smaller, cheaper games that could possibly get away with it tend to stick with either one or two core books (and in the latter case the second is generally a monster book or an 'official' campaign). At least in my experience.

Interestingly while Unknown Armies has three core rulebooks, the third is a pretty ignorable reference guide. In fact the pdf Book 4 is in my opinion much more important than Book 3, because instead of being a reference of lore it's all about the tone and what makes good inspirations (there's a very large list of media discussed, each with at leasst half a side of A4 dedicated to them).

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-03, 12:14 PM
Having a separate DMG works if
* the "player book" is already long enough that adding significant content to it will balloon printing costs (etc)
* the added "dm stuff" is long enough to be more than a chapter or so

Printing-related costs are non-linear with page length, and publishers and distributers have much harder times with larger books. So if your core rules/character creation (etc) are 100 pg and your "running the game" stuff is 50 pages, no big deal. If your character creation stuff is 300 pages and your DM stuff is 200 pages, big deal.

And that's really orthogonal to all the other concerns. Systems with more "pre-generated" content (monster stat blocks, character classes, spells, etc) need more space, where things like FATE (which is mostly DYI) don't need that at all.

Kvess
2021-08-03, 12:45 PM
No. The new DMs I've seen using it all failed dramatically and the one experienced DM I know using it only uses some of the tables. I recall on my read-through some years ago thinking that there weren't things for hirelings, sages, aerial & underwater adventures, and advice on potentially problematic spells. I could be wrong and it could be in there, but I didn't find it.
Most of what you listed is either in the Dungeon Master's Guide or the Player's Handbook. Hirelings are detailed under Chapter 4: Creating Non-Player Characters and the Recurring Expenses section of Chapter 6. Rules for underwater and arial combat are under Chapter 5: Adventure Environments.

There is some advice for adjudicating spell effects in the Using Miniatures section of Chapter 8: Running the Game, but I think that 5e is intended to have more rules explicitly inside the text of spells instead of relying on general rules for categories of spells like phantasms and images, as had been the case in previous editions.

YMMV, but as someone who started DMing with 5e I found it to be... fine? It didn't teach me how to be a DM, but skimming the DMG taught me the rules I needed to know or where to find them.

Worlds Without Number sounds interesting though. There is no one right way to play roleplaying games, and I think people who are interested in being better DMs are probably going to read and skim through multiple resources.

Telok
2021-08-03, 01:48 PM
There is some advice for adjudicating spell effects in the Using Miniatures section of Chapter 8: Running the Game, but I think that 5e is intended to have more rules explicitly inside the text of spells instead of relying on general rules for categories of spells like phantasms and images, as had been the case in previous editions.

YMMV, but as someone who started DMing with 5e I found it to be... fine? It didn't teach me how to be a DM, but skimming the DMG taught me the rules I needed to know or where to find them.

I wasn't talking about general rules for categories of spells (tho D&D seriously needs some for illusions & mind control), but actual advice on specific spells that goes beyond what belongs in the PH. Wish, miracle, sim, plane shift, teleport, summons, all those spells that cause DMs angst at the table. AD&D recognized those spells as game changers that warranted extra attention for the novice DM.

It's nice that you didn't need a DMG to help you start DMing, but it's not what I've experienced. People generally don't start as good DMs (I certainly didn't) and take their cues from the books. If the DMG isn't going to help new DMs... I dunno. I can't finish that thought now. Got to do other stuff.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-03, 02:03 PM
I could fetch the exact quote, but in 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide Gary Gygax spells out that a player who's read it ought to be treated as someone "less worthy of an honest death". :smalltongue: Less poetically, D&D was and is a game of imperfect and incomplete information, the DMG isn't a player resource, using information from the DMG as a player is cheating. There's you actual reason for the attitude you reminiscence of.



That certainly is another general trend (although sometimes it's split up into 'making player characters' and 'running the game' instead, for whatever that distinction is worth). That one is interesting to me in that 1) obviously it means that none of it is secret, 2) everyone has paid for the section (and whatever side concepts there might be, like less is included in one or the other based on a notion of how big a book should be, etc.). I wonder if there is a functional, psychological difference for the GM section to be a separate (and/or separately purchased) book.

1) That the game master's sections are theoretically public doesn't mean players read them or even get to read them (see below), and it has basically never prevented a game master from keeping secrets from their players where desired or necessary.

2) A lot of smaller systems don't assume every player at the table has a copy. On the contrary, they typically assume only one full copy of the book is present at the table - that's why they put all the rules in it, duh - and the book is owned by the game master, who then distributes the materials to the players as necessary. Typically, only the game master has unrestricted access to the book and is the only person who has read the entire thing.

Anonymouswizard
2021-08-03, 02:07 PM
I wasn't talking about general rules for categories of spells (tho D&D seriously needs some for illusions & mind control), but actual advice on specific spells that goes beyond what belongs in the PH. Wish, miracle, sim, plane shift, teleport, summons, all those spells that cause DMs angst at the table. AD&D recognized those spells as game changers that warranted extra attention for the novice DM.

It's nice that you didn't need a DMG to help you start DMing, but it's not what I've experienced. People generally don't start as good DMs (I certainly didn't) and take their cues from the books. If the DMG isn't going to help new DMs... I dunno. I can't finish that thought now. Got to do other stuff.

It's also important to understand that even a great GM can run a game terribly if it isn;t what they're used to.

I suck at running most of the games I originally ran, and am much better at running others. This is because I personally found that games like Unknown Armies and Fate explained how they wanted to be run much better, and it was easy for me to grok (but your mileage will vary heavily on if it was clear to you). Meanwhile no edition of D&D I've owned has explained what it wants, and sometime even claims the complete opposite (yeah 5e, claim that things unrelated to combat are important).

Does good GMing advice suddenly make a new GM a good one? No, but it helps somebody learn faster.

Kvess
2021-08-03, 03:29 PM
It's nice that you didn't need a DMG to help you start DMing, but it's not what I've experienced. People generally don't start as good DMs (I certainly didn't) and take their cues from the books. If the DMG isn't going to help new DMs... I dunno. I can't finish that thought now. Got to do other stuff.
Hey, I never said that.

I read the Dungeon Master's Guide before I ran games in 5e, and I thought it was helpful! It didn't teach me how to be a DM, but it did give me tools for my campaign.

What do we even expect out of a DMG? I think it's most accurate to look at the 5e DMG as a rules compendium mixed in with general advice. The rules have to go somewhere and someone needs to at least skim them. I don't think it's adequate for everyone by itself, but it's also not the only book in existence.

Tanarii
2021-08-03, 07:26 PM
There is some advice for adjudicating spell effects in the Using Miniatures section of Chapter 8: Running the Game, but I think that 5e is intended to have more rules explicitly inside the text of spells instead of relying on general rules for categories of spells like phantasms and images, as had been the case in previous editions.
It's worth noting that D&D 1e DMG's spells advice was actually addendum/errata to the rules Gygax snuck in as "advice" after playing with them for a year after the PHB had been published, and finding out the problems caused.

Telok
2021-08-03, 11:30 PM
What do we even expect out of a DMG? I think it's most accurate to look at the 5e DMG as a rules compendium mixed in with general advice. The rules have to go somewhere and someone needs to at least skim them.

Thats probably the issue. I expect a whole stand-alone book for the DM to be about how to run the game and have fun with it. Which will include things like common mistakes to avoid, best practices, different ways to do things, etc. The 5e DMG struck me as more a collection of optional rules, assorted mechanical tools, and random tables, in no specific order.


It's worth noting that D&D 1e DMG's spells advice was actually addendum/errata to the rules Gygax snuck in as "advice" after playing with them for a year after the PHB had been published, and finding out the problems caused.

Yeah, that was useful. So were the different hirelings, ships, and how to attack castles. There's probably no way to get a similar thing into a first DMG-type book these days with the pressure to release "core three" sorts of things as a package. Unfortunately DMG v2 sorts of books don't sell as well even if they could probably help DMs more, so its harder to get momentum on those. I see lots more "go watch someone's youtube channel to learn how to run the game" or suggestions to read people's blogs.

Glorthindel
2021-08-04, 04:16 AM
What do we even expect out of a DMG? I think it's most accurate to look at the 5e DMG as a rules compendium mixed in with general advice. The rules have to go somewhere and someone needs to at least skim them. I don't think it's adequate for everyone by itself, but it's also not the only book in existence.

I found the absolutely most useful section in the 2nd ed AD&D DMG (to the point that I still use it to this day, as later edition DMG's just didn't replicate it well enough) was the random treasure and magic item tables. Sure, not every day you are going to be statting up a Dragon hoard, but still, it was good to know what ballpark to put for the loot in say, a Wolf or Owlbear lair, or how much a goblin should have in his pockets.

KorvinStarmast
2021-08-04, 09:29 AM
It's worth noting that D&D 1e DMG's spells advice was actually addendum/errata to the rules Gygax snuck in as "advice" after playing with them for a year after the PHB had been published, and finding out the problems caused. Yes, there were also some errata published in Dragon Magazine that I have still got notes about in my DMG.

I could fetch the exact quote, but in 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide Gary Gygax spells out that a player who's read it ought to be treated as someone "less worthy of an honest death". :smalltongue: As this book is the exclusive precinct of the DM, you must view any non-DM player possessing it as something less than worthy of honorable death. Peeping players there will undoubtedly be, but they are simply lessening their own enjoyment of the game by taking away some of the sense of wonder that otherwise arises from a game which has rules hidden from participants. It is in your interests, and in theirs, to discourage possession of this book by players. If any of your participants do read herein, it is suggested that you assess them a heavy fee for consulting "sages" and other sources of information not normally attainable by the inhabitants of your milieu. If they express knowledge which could only be garnered by consulting these pages, a magic item or two can be taken as payment - insufficient, but perhaps it will tend to discourage such actions. Gygax, and a lot of DMs in that era, liked to try and invoke a sense of wonder that the process of discovery could create. Letting facts emerge through play is a part of the exploration pillar. I have noticed a powerful counter trend to that among WoTC era D&Ders, to the point that the above passage is often viewed as DM is Hostile to Players as EGG's default attitude. (Yet those who played in his games enjoyed them, so what are they missing?) The purpose behind not having everything known: it can set the conditions for evoking the sense of wonder and the joy of discovery. Arneson likewise tended to referee in this fashion (with his little black book of Blackmoor that he was always adjusting and retuning as a result of play).
The problem is, in the wrong hands, the above advice in the spoiler box can be seen as an endorsement for DM vs Players as the correct attitude, and it never has been the correct attitude.

Luccan
2021-08-04, 09:39 AM
Thats probably the issue. I expect a whole stand-alone book for the DM to be about how to run the game and have fun with it. Which will include things like common mistakes to avoid, best practices, different ways to do things, etc. The 5e DMG struck me as more a collection of optional rules, assorted mechanical tools, and random tables, in no specific order.


Different ways to do what things? What are the best practices a DMG should include? These aren't rhetorical questions; it's hard to conceive of what the DMG is missing with vague statements like that.

I will say, 5e doesn't make the DMG feel necessary, but maybe that is for the best. It has, if not the greatest, at least useful advice for pre-game preparation. But obviously more experienced DMs won't need that

Telok
2021-08-04, 10:29 AM
Different ways to do what things? What are the best practices a DMG should include? These aren't rhetorical questions; it's hard to conceive of what the DMG is missing with vague statements like that.

Advice on: Problematic magic, illusions & mind control have been problems in the player/DM tug-of-war for decades and there are solutions out there. Dealing with characters & parties that have serious defects (can't do anything but fight, can't fight, etc.) that are real or perceived. Fact vs perception on dice rolls. Iterative probability, not as in-depth math but in a non-technical "adding more rolls does..." style. How PCs relate to normal people in the default play style (chumps, normal, skilled, heroic, superheroes) and how the system deals with normal people. Different rolling schemes (one and done, opposed rolls, x success before y fails, x successful opposed, sum to a giant dc, opposed sum to a giant dc, etc.) and how they interact with different levels of bonuses. How often PCs should be succeeding at stuff and what they should be accomplishing with extraordinary rolls vs. regular rolls...

Stuff like that. For example, in DtD40k7e there's WH style skill-based spell casting with a chance of reality backlash that has a small but real chance of killing a character. And cue the wails of "oh what a terrible system that punishes the player". But there's a starting character build, with a 95% success rate at casting 2nd level spells, that only has a 1/100,000 chance of even rolling on the warp tables. Which then gets to roll 4 times on a table, with about 2/3 of the effects being temporary cosmetic special effects, and pick which roll to use. Even just one or two feat choices can reduce the "danger" to less than 1/2500 casts and still rolling twice for the effect. And you still get "oh what a terrible system that punishes the player". Even the player I had who didn't take any safe casting measures, regularly pushed spells to automatically invoke the warp, and chronically over-reported his bonus to the warp table rolls, took an entire year of weekly sessions (probable about 40ish) and casting lots of spells every time, to drive his character permanently insane and become an NPC. He did get the insta-death results twice too, but survived them.

And I still hear "oh what a terrible system that punishes the player" about it.

Quertus
2021-08-04, 10:34 AM
I remember when there was a subset of the gaming culture, strong in the D&D crowd, that DID take a dim view of "players" owning a DMG... there was almost this idea that someone would start as a player, and then some of them would "graduate" to being a DM, and that it was "improper" for someone who was "just a player" to own or read the DMG.

It was always utter nonsense, but it was there.

Not entirely nonsense - you wouldn't want the players reading the module, would you?

There's a difference to the experience when you've peeked behind the curtain. See also the sigma of metagaming.

Now, yes, most gamers were also GMs (at many of my tables, at least). But a lot of new gamers are missing out on the "learning about the world in-character" experience. And the loss of this mindset (and, obviously, the internet) share some of that blame.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-04, 11:56 AM
I will say, 5e doesn't make the DMG feel necessary, but maybe that is for the best. It has, if not the greatest, at least useful advice for pre-game preparation. But obviously more experienced DMs won't need that

"But obviously more experienced dungeon (game) masters won't need that" is the mindset why a lot of games have utter crap for game master's advice.

I'm not sure if Ville Vuorela, the designer for Praedor roleplaying game, wrote about this in English somewhere (like his blog, over at Burger Games website), but to paraphrase his experience and message on the subject: back in the early 2000s when he made the versions 1.0 and 1.1 Praedor, the game master's section were something of an afterthought. Vuorela, at the time, thought game mastering is the kind of thing everyone just can do naturally, so he found writing advice for it somewhat forced. 10+ years of game design and game mastering experience later he realized he'd been completely off, and indeed the lack of quality game mastering advice is one of those things that keeps people from getting into tabletop roleplaying games. Skilled game masters don't grow in trees, so where is a smaller game system going to get those if the game itself doesn't teach them?

So, Vuorela remedied the lack of game mastering advice with gusto in late 2010s supplements to Praedor and the new Version 2.0 of Praedor does indeed have separate volumes for players and game masters. I'd like to do a side-by-side comparison to show the difference, but it's a lot of work, since the game is not in English.

KorvinStarmast
2021-08-04, 12:53 PM
10+ years of game design and game mastering experience later he realized he'd been completely off, and indeed the lack of quality game mastering advice is one of those things that keeps people from getting into tabletop roleplaying games. Skilled game masters don't grow in trees, so where is a smaller game system going to get those if the game itself doesn't teach them? Bravo, and good on that author for choosing the make a difference.

Original B1 module had very good DM advice for how to run the game. I wish 5e had looked at that and put something like that into the first chapter of DMG and the Basic Rules for DM and the Starter's Set when the game was released.

I am reading through Svenson's original dungeon (in the Blackmoor campaign) that likewise has some solid 'how to DM/referee' advice, but that's a limited edition book.

IIRC, Robin Laws did the whole community a good turn with his book: Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-04, 01:16 PM
One thing about DM'ing--it's not entirely objective. What counts as "good" DMing (beyond certain rather obvious things like "don't throw physical objects at your players") is a matter of play style, table preference, as well as lots of intangible factors.

I, personally, strongly dislike systems that are "preachy", that assume that there is a "right way" to DM (usually being the designers' preferences). As examples, the entire PbtA system has very strong "DM this way" lines. Which are super confining and don't allow for DMs (and tables!) with different preferences. They encode taste as a matter of system fiat. Which makes me highly unlikely to use those products for anything.

Could the 5e DMG be structured better? Sure. But does it contain significant useful advice across the board for the type of games it's trying to promote? Absolutely.

Adding more tables? Useless (for me). Adding bunches of coercive "play this way" advice? Worse than useless. Adding "handle this spell that way"? Worse than useless, because it sets expectations that are table-dependent.

What really needs to happen for 5e DMs to be better is for them to actually read the DMG and understand what it's saying. No amount of shuffling the content will help those that won't/don't read in the first place, or those who only read the tables and skip all the explanations.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-04, 01:21 PM
Another interesting comparison point is Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

LotFP has made steady sales with its hardcover rules & magic book, but I got into it early with the Deluxe Boxed set and the bought the Grindhouse Boxed set as soon as it came out. I'm sort of sad I gave away my Deluxe set, because doing side-by-side comparison would've been really educational.

IIRC, the Deluxe set referee booklet was this really thing leaflet that began with "This book is compost". Basically, James Raggi, the author, didn't truly believe new players would be getting into the game, despite going through the trouble to actually copy B/X boxed set format, complete with a tutorial and sample adventures. Indeed, by his own admission he really just wanted to do adventure modules and the game system was devised just so you didn't absolutely have to own some old version of D&D to play them.

By comparison, the Grindhouse booklet was much thicker, meatier, with genuine ground level advice, a new sample adventure and while I'm too lazy to check, I don't think it opens up with "This book is compost" anymore. :smallamused:

A newer version of the Referee book was meant to appear close to the hardcover rules & magic book, but it's been in Development Hell for years now (but coming soon - pinky promise!). But the Grindhouse version has since been made freely available as PDF, to accompany the free artless core rules.

The point here is that Raggi, who wanted to do ultra niche hardcore horror adventures and didn't really have sights set on creating a new system, realized somewhere along the way that competently done basic rules and the advice on how to run the sort of adventures he wanted to make were selling points all on their own.

Telok
2021-08-04, 02:18 PM
Adding "handle this spell that way"? Worse than useless, because it sets expectations that are table-dependent.

What really needs to happen for 5e DMs to be better is for them to actually read the DMG and understand what it's saying.

I take it you've never gotten the:
Dm: evil priest casts Command and tells you to fall.
Pc: Save failed. I try to trip to evil priest and make it fall.
Dm: evil priest casts Dominate and tells you to protect it.
Pc: Save fails. I try to stuff evil priest in my bag of holding to protect it from wizard fireballs.
...or the illusion version of that. Thats the sort of crap I've seen forever (DMs & players, goes both ways) and could use some "handle this spell" type advice.

More importantly I don't know what you mean by "understand what its saying". Every DM I've known has read the DMG for their game and they're all native speakers of the language, so I presume then understood all the words. The were certainly all able to use random tables, cr guides, xp awarding, and monster building bits. But the new 5e DMs I've played with all had terrble times with adjucating basic stuff like climbing, jumping, cheracter social interactions, stealth... just basic running the game stuff. And every time it comes up on the forums I hear that they must not have read the DMG or something, when I've watched them reading from it. So there's an issue somewhere if they read the book, used it, and still run games contrary to what the internet says is in the book.

Easy e
2021-08-04, 03:25 PM
The Dungeon Master's Guides have consistently failed to be decent gamemaster handbooks. It's like they always make a new version of the older DMGs, but never bother to look elsewhere for what a useful bok for GMs could look like.

(The best GM book I've ever seen is the 1993 Gamemaster Handbook for Star Wars Second Edition. 100 pages of pure advice on running games, with no additional game rules that aren't in the normal rulebook.)

I recently re-read this and yeah.... it is amazing! I am so thankful I have a copy. It was Chapter 2 even!

Some highlights:
- Your Job
Make sure everyone is having a good time and things are resolved fairly

- The Gamemaster as Referee
- The Gamemaster as Storyteller
- The Gamemaster as Mood Setter

Each section had a lot of helpful hints for running a fun game too.

Tanarii
2021-08-04, 04:00 PM
like "don't throw physical objects at your players"
I've been doing it ALL wrong.

Anonymouswizard
2021-08-04, 05:11 PM
A newer version of the Referee book was meant to appear close to the hardcover rules & magic book, but it's been in Development Hell for years now (but coming soon - pinky promise!). But the Grindhouse version has since been made freely available as PDF, to accompany the free artless core rules.

I think part of the problem is that Raggi wants to redo some things about the game (the magic system sand making every class bar Gighter, Magic-User, and Specialist.optional), but doesn't want to publish it until the Referee book is out, which he doesn't actually want to work on. It's a shame, I'd like to see if he's got any updated advice (or tools(.

But he does actually subscribe to a philosophy I don't, so maybe I should just get the RECC if possible.

FrogInATopHat
2021-08-08, 02:03 AM
I take it you've never gotten the:
Dm: evil priest casts Command and tells you to fall.
Pc: Save failed. I try to trip to evil priest and make it fall.
Dm: evil priest casts Dominate and tells you to protect it.
Pc: Save fails. I try to stuff evil priest in my bag of holding to protect it from wizard fireballs.
...or the illusion version of that. Thats the sort of crap I've seen forever (DMs & players, goes both ways) and could use some "handle this spell" type advice.

At the very least, with the Command and Dominate spell examples, this is covered in the spell text.

Dominate says:

If you and the subject have a common language, you can generally force the subject to perform as you desire, within the limits of its abilities. If no common language exists, you can communicate only basic commands, such as “Come here,” “Go there,” “Fight,” and “Stand still.” You know what the subject is experiencing, but you do not receive direct sensory input from it, nor can it communicate with you telepathically.

Command says:

You give the subject a single command, which it obeys to the best of its ability at its earliest opportunity. You may select from the following options.
The list of 5 options you can select also include the specific results that should be expected.

The text is identical in PF1e.

So for at least 18 years, for either spell, no additional adjudication has been needed.

Tbh, I would see no need to keep at my table a player that insisted on such a contrarian view of the game to the point where they would try to insist that 'fall' and 'trip me' have the same meaning.

EDIT: And this also speaks to your second point because a player who could insist on such an interpretation but has read (or had read to them) the spell text in a language that they speak clearly hasn't understood it.

I get your point somewhat when it comes to illusions spells. But on the basis of 'what's good for the goose...' (by which any consistent approach to handling illusions has pros and cons for both sides of the table) I have to agree with PhoenixPyre that I don't particularly want the book to mandate a specific approach based solely on the preferences of whichever developer wrote that bit.

So, for multiple reasons, any text instructing me to handle particular spells or spell types a particular way is, to me, wasted space that could be put to better use, and also rubs me the wrong way and sours me on the system as a whole in any case.

Telok
2021-08-08, 02:43 PM
At the very least, with the Command and Dominate spell examples, this is covered in the spell text....

...I get your point somewhat when it comes to illusions spells. But on the basis of 'what's good for the goose...' (by which any consistent approach to handling illusions has pros and cons for both sides of the table) I have to agree with PhoenixPyre that I don't particularly want the book to mandate a specific approach based solely on the preferences of whichever developer wrote that bit.

So, for multiple reasons, any text instructing me to handle particular spells or spell types a particular way is, to me, wasted space that could be put to better use, and also rubs me the wrong way and sours me on the system as a whole in any case.

It's nice that you know two versions of spells in two games where it's not a problem when people don't have bad habits from previous experiences. It's nice that you're a good DM who doesn't need advice or guidance on adjucating illusions. Apparently you wouldn't be the target audience for that sort of advice.

Two things I'd note (beyond say, Suggestion, Charm, D&D phantasams, and all the other game versions): First is that I don't generally want to advocate "mandate a specific approach", but rather setting a baseline of common expectations and intent that tries to address the most common problems across the effects.

Second, text on handling the general problems of mind-control spells in D&D 5e has been moved into the spells themselves. Except of course that leaves any spells without the mandated uses back at "potential problem". For example, Command has a limited list of defined commands mandating that you can use it in that manner for those options, while leaving everything else back in "allowed to misinterpret" territory. So you already have the mind-control mandates in specific spells while leaving the more general issue unchanged.

FrogInATopHat
2021-08-08, 03:15 PM
It's nice that you know two versions of spells in two games where it's not a problem when people don't have bad habits from previous experiences.

If their habits are that bad, I just wouldn't play with them. There are, these days, no shortage of players. I don't even play 5e, I play PF1 and even with that tiny-by-comparison-and-shrinking pool, there is enough room to tell potential players with such weighty baggage to keep walking to a different table.


It's nice that you're a good DM who doesn't need advice or guidance on adjucating illusions. Apparently you wouldn't be the target audience for that sort of advice.

And this is exactly the problem with such advice. It is needed by a small (but admittedly no doubt significant) proportion of the market and is, as we can see from threads on the subjects, a likely source of disagreement even amongst its intended audience where likely half of the recipients still won't agree with it and will then need to specifically houserule against it.

This means that its inclusion in a rulebook (limited space, printing costs, all of the other issues with publication previously raised) is not necessarily a great idea.

If it is included, it then potentially serves to exacerbate the problems that your suggesting that it would fix.

A problem player or DM whose agreed interpretation is the one used by the books then has text to back up their furious assertions of the One True Way. And I refuse to believe that you might be suggesting that a player who would interpret the 'fall' command to mean 'trip me up' would even come close to not 'chucking a tanty' as the saying goes if a DM dared try to suggest that they disagreed with a specific suggestion in the DMG (or equivalent source for another game).


Two things I'd note (beyond say, Suggestion, Charm, D&D phantasams, and all the other game versions): First is that I don't generally want to advocate "mandate a specific approach", but rather setting a baseline of common expectations and intent that tries to address the most common problems across the effects.

How do you suggest that this is achieved without adopting, in the rule book and thus mandating, a specific approach?


Second, text on handling the general problems of mind-control spells in D&D 5e has been moved into the spells themselves. Except of course that leaves any spells without the mandated uses back at "potential problem". For example, Command has a limited list of defined commands mandating that you can use it in that manner for those options, while leaving everything else back in "allowed to misinterpret" territory. So you already have the mind-control mandates in specific spells while leaving the more general issue unchanged.

'The DM determines how the target behaves' is specific enough that the problem player you initially posited has not a leg upon which to stand, even if a dictionary near the table should also likely be sufficient in both of your suggested cases. That is very different from a rulebook saying that such things must (or should) be interpreted or played out in a specific way.

Back to the general point rather than the one spell, yes, that leaves us open to abuse by DM (although not by player because the player does not and should not get to decide how spells work in the game universe and there is nothing to support any suggestion that they do or should). But: (i) the DM has far more effective tools available to them for this purpose (ii) any DM who resorts to such chicanery should be pelted with clods of earth until they promise to never DM again (iii) there is plenty of room in the spell text itself for this to be fixed and it shouldn't fall to the DMG to fix oversights in the PHB, and (iv) (imo) the likely outcome should vary depending on the spell, with higher level spells (and not merely up-cast in that delightful 5e way) being more likely to force the casters intended effect and lower level spells allowing more... creative... interpretation by the target.

Bacon Elemental
2021-08-09, 05:17 AM
Yes, there were also some errata published in Dragon Magazine that I have still got notes about in my DMG.
As this book is the exclusive precinct of the DM, you must view any non-DM player possessing it as something less than worthy of honorable death. Peeping players there will undoubtedly be, but they are simply lessening their own enjoyment of the game by taking away some of the sense of wonder that otherwise arises from a game which has rules hidden from participants. It is in your interests, and in theirs, to discourage possession of this book by players. If any of your participants do read herein, it is suggested that you assess them a heavy fee for consulting "sages" and other sources of information not normally attainable by the inhabitants of your milieu. If they express knowledge which could only be garnered by consulting these pages, a magic item or two can be taken as payment - insufficient, but perhaps it will tend to discourage such actions. Gygax, and a lot of DMs in that era, liked to try and invoke a sense of wonder that the process of discovery could create. Letting facts emerge through play is a part of the exploration pillar. I have noticed a powerful counter trend to that among WoTC era D&Ders, to the point that the above passage is often viewed as DM is Hostile to Players as EGG's default attitude. (Yet those who played in his games enjoyed them, so what are they missing?) The purpose behind not having everything known: it can set the conditions for evoking the sense of wonder and the joy of discovery. Arneson likewise tended to referee in this fashion (with his little black book of Blackmoor that he was always adjusting and retuning as a result of play).
The problem is, in the wrong hands, the above advice in the spoiler box can be seen as an endorsement for DM vs Players as the correct attitude, and it never has been the correct attitude.

Personally, I always favoured the PARANOIA 2E approach. :biggrin:

(The book heartily encourages players to read the GM-only section [but not the sample adventure], and heartily encourages GMs to kill off the characters of any player foolish enough to openly display knowledge of said rules)

Kvess
2021-08-09, 07:46 AM
I don’t think there is a rule or guideline that will prevent a bad DM from purposely misinterpreting the intent of your spells, where there is room to do so. For any open-ended effects (illusion, charm, etc), you are relying on communication and good faith collaboration between the player and the DM to make that effect work.

If there is no room to misinterpret the intent of your spell, it isn’t open-ended.

Quertus
2021-08-09, 11:02 AM
, where things like FATE (which is mostly DYI)

I'm guessing that was supposed to be "DIY"? FYI (autocorrect won't even let me type it) would be… "does you itself"?

"But in Giant's Playground, Fate does **you**!" :smallwink:

(No, in all seriousness, was "DIY" what you meant? I spent far too long trying to parse your sentence, and even though I know that it's a sunk cost fallacy, I want to be sure I've got it.)


Gygax, and a lot of DMs in that era, liked to try and invoke a sense of wonder that the process of discovery could create. Letting facts emerge through play is a part of the exploration pillar.

The purpose behind not having everything known: it can set the conditions for evoking the sense of wonder and the joy of discovery.

I see you said what I tried to say, but said it better, and first. Kudos!

Playing Titan Quest, I'm *almost* going in blind - I checked online for "how many ranks to summon 3 wolves" (because "number of wolves" is sadly missing from the power's description), and am concerned that I might not be earning full XP for all minion kills, and that my poison poison poison bow might not be adding the poisons together (and, if I hand it and my ring of poison damage of to a Rogue, will I get poison x5? How do the stacking rules work?).

Anyway, point is, it's a lot of fun getting to *Explore* the game, trying to make experiments to test various hypothesis. But it's a flavor of fun so many gamers can't seem to comprehend. And it's possible because the game is so easy, most of the class abilities are just "extra" (as evidenced by "the gamer beside me" running through without choosing a class / taking any class levels yet).

Although oldschool meat grinder games weren't exactly *easy*…


I recently re-read this and yeah.... it is amazing! I am so thankful I have a copy. It was Chapter 2 even!

Some highlights:
- Your Job
Make sure everyone is having a good time and things are resolved fairly

- The Gamemaster as Referee
- The Gamemaster as Storyteller
- The Gamemaster as Mood Setter

Each section had a lot of helpful hints for running a fun game too.

Yeah, that *does* sound awesome.

I tend to focus on… duty and responsibility. From the ancient "what the GM's role" thread, I feel "make sure everyone is having fun" is everyone's responsibility, whereas generally *only* the GM can serve as the eyes and ears of the character, the interface between the players and the fiction. But yes, if you want to get across what *mindset* the GM should approach the game with, I suspect that there's few better or more concise answers than, "Make sure everyone is having a good time and things are resolved fairly".


At the very least, with the Command and Dominate spell examples, this is covered in the spell text.

I dunno, an *ally* could scream, "protect me!", and get shoved in an extradimensional space - I think it's poor planning on the caster's part (outside systems like, apparently, 5e) to give an open-ended magical compulsion of "protect me", and be surprised and upset to get shoved in a bag.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-09, 11:52 AM
I'm guessing that was supposed to be "DIY"? FYI (autocorrect won't even let me type it) would be… "does you itself"?

"But in Giant's Playground, Fate does **you**!" :smallwink:

(No, in all seriousness, was "DIY" what you meant? I spent far too long trying to parse your sentence, and even though I know that it's a sunk cost fallacy, I want to be sure I've got it.)


Oops. Yes. Yes it was. Sometimes my brain goes dyslexic[1] on character combinations. Not so much words, but things like digits in numbers or letters in acronyms. Especially when I'm tired or not focusing.

[1] colloquial meaning (ie character-pair reversal issues), not actual psychological meaning

Quixotic1
2021-08-09, 01:22 PM
I think that the most important thing a gamemaster's guide of any sort can contain is information on how to run a game.

I don't mean an explanation of the system or the rules within it. I'm talking about the foundation of storytelling. Talking about tone and pacing, about the objective behind different sections of an encounter/session/campaign, why the objective is what it is, how to get there and why the how is a better option than others.

The Angry DM has a wealth of information like nothing I've ever seen in this regard. I mean, "how to DM" in four steps? That on its own opened up a whole new perspective for me.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-09, 02:08 PM
I think that the most important thing a gamemaster's guide of any sort can contain is information on how to run a game.

I don't mean an explanation of the system or the rules within it. I'm talking about the foundation of storytelling. Talking about tone and pacing, about the objective behind different sections of an encounter/session/campaign, why the objective is what it is, how to get there and why the how is a better option than others.

The Angry DM has a wealth of information like nothing I've ever seen in this regard. I mean, "how to DM" in four steps? That on its own opened up a whole new perspective for me.

Doesn't that all presume (without foundation IMO) that there is a single, objective (for any system or game) answer to those things? Personally, I like games that are able to have a wide range of tones/pacings, encounters/sessions/campaigns with different objectives, different ways to approach those objectives, etc.

I hate when games tell me that there's only one way to play and then start throwing barriers when you deviate. And no, D&D (at least 5e) doesn't do that until you're way off the beaten path. I've had whole arcs with only a few dice rolls. I've had arcs that were basically back-to-back combat. I've had arcs with almost no conflict. All of those worked just fine. And honestly, I did that in 4e without significant issue, despite being a totally new DM who hadn't ever played a TTRPG before that.

One-True-Way-ism devolves into badwrongfun real fast. Systems should provide useful, optional frameworks, content, and language. They're there as a support for the content-creator (DM or module writer) to automate some of the labor-intensive (or otherwise annoying to manually implement) processes and uncertainty-resolution cases and provide a common language for the players to use as they need to. They should not (IMO) make demands about how they must be used.

Anonymouswizard
2021-08-09, 02:44 PM
The Angry DM has a wealth of information like nothing I've ever seen in this regard. I mean, "how to DM" in four steps? That on its own opened up a whole new perspective for me.

They're also a One True Wayist who promotes bad practices?

Like, his psionics article actively says you should throw people from the group for picking options you've offered. Because apparently wanting to play a telepath is a reason to boot somebody these days.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-09, 03:02 PM
They're also a One True Wayist who promotes bad practices?

Like, his psionics article actively says you should throw people from the group for picking options you've offered. Because apparently wanting to play a telepath is a reason to boot somebody these days.

I agree with the sentiment I heard expressed somewhere that AngryGM is good at identifying problems, but his solutions are pretty uniformly bad (as in maladapted to solving the problem and often counterproductive). And then he drowns it all in his torrent of "fake angry" marketing shtick which really just obfuscates the message and turns off serious readers.

Tanarii
2021-08-09, 03:56 PM
They're also a One True Wayist who promotes bad practices?

Like, his psionics article actively says you should throw people from the group for picking options you've offered. Because apparently wanting to play a telepath is a reason to boot somebody these days.
Citation needed.

Anonymouswizard
2021-08-09, 04:19 PM
Citation needed.


=htps://theangrygm.com/ask-angry-why-do-psionics-suck]
]Hell, I like having psionics as an option just so that I can use it to screen potential players. Anyone who asks to play a psionicist is just wrong for my game.[/URL]

Now his actual solution to the actual problem he has identified (element X is unsuitable for my games) and his solution (don't use element X) are both reasonable. But then he suggests implying that psionics is fine so you can boot anybody who takes you up on it.

At best he's suggesting to use a landmine to solve a problem that needs a scalpel.

Tanarii
2021-08-09, 05:51 PM
Now his actual solution to the actual problem he has identified (element X is unsuitable for my games) and his solution (don't use element X) are both reasonable. But then he suggests implying that psionics is fine so you can boot anybody who takes you up on it.No. He suggests that he personally uses it as a screen for his games, and he gives the reason. He doesn't suggest anyone else follow suit.

Furthermore there is nothing to suggest he allows the options then screens someone out for picking them.

Also a screen for accepting new players is not the same thing as booting people from an already existing group. Especially when you're a DM accepting applications to join a new campaign.

Anonymouswizard
2021-08-09, 06:44 PM
No. He suggests that he personally uses it as a screen for his games, and he gives the reason. He doesn't suggest anyone else follow suit.

Furthermore there is nothing to suggest he allows the options then screens someone out for picking them.

Also a screen for accepting new players is not the same thing as booting people from an already existing group. Especially when you're a DM accepting applications to join a new campaign.

His reason is based on a somewhat ridiculous exaggeration and is based on nothing more than interest in an official option.

Is it any different if a hypothetical GM doesn't want PCs to be doing illegal things, and so bans you if you indicate interest in the Rogue class? Presumably without saying that the class is banned. I mean, they never actually said that the Rogue class is banned.

My interpretation might be harsher than he meant, but to me the core is still 'punish players for showing interest in a class by excluding them'. It doesn't matter if the player is new or not, you're still punishing them.

Sparky McDibben
2021-08-09, 09:07 PM
Man, this has blown up. Personally, I really love the advice in WWN, and I love products that utilize random tables in an easy-to-use format with instructions. That's all I really wanted to say.


I agree with the sentiment I heard expressed somewhere that AngryGM is good at identifying problems, but his solutions are pretty uniformly bad (as in maladapted to solving the problem and often counterproductive). And then he drowns it all in his torrent of "fake angry" marketing shtick which really just obfuscates the message and turns off serious readers.

Seconded (thirded?). I used to really like the AngryGM, but holy cow can that cat be a douche.

Tanarii
2021-08-09, 09:24 PM
My interpretation might be harsher than he meant, but to me the core is still 'punish players for showing interest in a class by excluding them'. It doesn't matter if the player is new or not, you're still punishing them.
It's not harsher, it's a complete misrepresentation.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-09, 09:40 PM
It's not harsher, it's a complete misrepresentation.

"Anyone who wants to play a psionic character, even vaguely, is someone I don't want at my table" is bad enough of a red flag of a bad DM and someone not to take advice from. And I don't even like psionics.

Quixotic1
2021-08-09, 09:44 PM
Doesn't that all presume (without foundation IMO) that there is a single, objective (for any system or game) answer to those things? Personally, I like games that are able to have a wide range of tones/pacings, encounters/sessions/campaigns with different objectives, different ways to approach those objectives, etc.Allow me to clarify: I don't think anyone should be telling anyone what kind of story they should be trying to tell/game they should try to run (that there is a "single, objective answer"), but actual, digestible advice on how to tell stories/run games is rare and valuable.
Like, a discussion of the options, how to pursue them and what pursuing them means and does.

As far as The Angry DM himself, I absolutely, 100% agree that he is a difficult read at best. He makes absolute statements, which is abrasive, and covers them with this weird veil of faux-arrogance (that I think is just there to cover up his real arrogance, which is probably there to cover up some serious insecurity or other issues), which is abrasive as well.
But if you can get past all that, his dissertations on the problem with traps, on encounter building and more are some of the most sensible, well-thought-out and easily understandable available.

Badwrongfun is of course something to avoid. But I think there are a lot of elements that go beyond that. Like pacing. It's a basic aspect of storytelling. And your stories will benefit from your understanding of it, intrinsic or otherwise. If your pacing is terrible, either because you don't understand it or because you actively choose to ignore it, that doesn't mean your games can't be fun. But they could be better, could be more fun, if you did.
And I mean, I'll watch me some junk T.V. or read a lowbrow work of fiction. But I still recognize them as such and see how they don't hold up to some of the better examples of the medium.

Tanarii
2021-08-09, 09:44 PM
"Anyone who wants to play a psionic character, even vaguely, is someone I don't want at my table" is bad enough of a red flag of a bad DM and someone not to take advice from. And I don't even like psionics.
Thats fair. But that's not what it was claimed he wrote.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-09, 09:44 PM
I don't think it's a good GM or good person move to kick someone from a game or assume they're "a player you don't want" just because they asked about a RAW option that you don't like. Just say it's not part of the campaign, ask them to choose something else, and move on.

But that comment also doesn't come across as quite the total trap that some are saying it is, unless Angry isn't telling us about a hypothetical part where he lists Psionics as an option and then says "Gotcha!" to the player.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-09, 10:23 PM
Badwrongfun is of course something to avoid. But I think there are a lot of elements that go beyond that. Like pacing. It's a basic aspect of storytelling. And your stories will benefit from your understanding of it, intrinsic or otherwise. If your pacing is terrible, either because you don't understand it or because you actively choose to ignore it, that doesn't mean your games can't be fun. But they could be better, could be more fun, if you did.
And I mean, I'll watch me some junk T.V. or read a lowbrow work of fiction. But I still recognize them as such and see how they don't hold up to some of the better examples of the medium.

I'm going to disagree. Pacing is not universal. Pacing depends on genre, tone, style, and the desires of the players. What works in one style will not work in another. A DM is not writing a story. They're not even telling their story. They're discovering, along with the players, the world of stories around the characters interacting with the world. And that results in very different needs than traditional fiction. And ones that basically have to be felt, not studied or taught. Even such things as "beginning, middle, end" (with one of those being a climax of sorts) are not universal concepts. In fact, the only advice I'd give to DMs is don't try to force it. When the players get bored, do something else. As long as they're interested, keep spooling it out. It's a give and take, a push and pull. You're not writing a story in advance.

Telok
2021-08-09, 10:24 PM
Man, this has blown up. Personally, I really love the advice in WWN, and I love products that utilize random tables in an easy-to-use format with instructions. That's all I really wanted to say.



Seconded (thirded?). I used to really like the AngryGM, but holy cow can that cat be a douche.

There's some decent stuff in AGM but you need a cognitive shovel to get to it and some people don't like the smell.

One thing I've noticed, before and in this thread, is there's a sort of spectrum of how much advice and who the target audience of a DMG type book is. At one end there are those who want a DMG type book to be useful for the first time DM, help them run their first game smoothly, guide them around the pitfalls we hit when we started DMing 25+ years ago. At the other end there are those who sound like any sort of advice or 'how the game is intended to run' is bad because it stops them from running the game the way they like by cementing player expectations.

I think something is getting lost in the internet. I'm lousy at solving people problems, in person I can have a hard time convicing people that their own data says they're right. But my job is implementing systems of rules, and creating sets of rules that produce desired outcomes. It's easy for me to see where spots in the rule sets have repeatedly produced crappy outcomes for 30 years, and my tendency is to fix by writing a rules fix geared to produce a desired outcome. Because when I tell someone that they're DMing a double standard and screwing over a character, or that as a player their behavior is disruptive, it just doesn't work.

I wonder, if a DMG type book had sections; 'beginning dming', 'intended play & common problems', 'optional rules & variants', 'game resources'. Something where people wouldn't have to read advice they don't want. If that would help. Couldn't be worse than some of the semi-random jumbles of content in some of the DMGs.

FrogInATopHat
2021-08-10, 01:03 AM
One-True-Way-ism devolves into badwrongfun real fast. Systems should provide useful, optional frameworks, content, and language. They're there as a support for the content-creator (DM or module writer) to automate some of the labor-intensive (or otherwise annoying to manually implement) processes and uncertainty-resolution cases and provide a common language for the players to use as they need to. They should not (IMO) make demands about how they must be used.

This paragraph is excellently put.

Providing various options is a great idea, implying that 'Way A' is the only way some things should be handled is less great.

FrogInATopHat
2021-08-10, 01:10 AM
There's some decent stuff in AGM but you need a cognitive shovel to get to it and some people don't like the smell.

One thing I've noticed, before and in this thread, is there's a sort of spectrum of how much advice and who the target audience of a DMG type book is. At one end there are those who want a DMG type book to be useful for the first time DM, help them run their first game smoothly, guide them around the pitfalls we hit when we started DMing 25+ years ago. At the other end there are those who sound like any sort of advice or 'how the game is intended to run' is bad because it stops them from running the game the way they like by cementing player expectations.

I think something is getting lost in the internet. I'm lousy at solving people problems, in person I can have a hard time convicing people that their own data says they're right. But my job is implementing systems of rules, and creating sets of rules that produce desired outcomes. It's easy for me to see where spots in the rule sets have repeatedly produced crappy outcomes for 30 years, and my tendency is to fix by writing a rules fix geared to produce a desired outcome. Because when I tell someone that they're DMing a double standard and screwing over a character, or that as a player their behavior is disruptive, it just doesn't work.

I wonder, if a DMG type book had sections; 'beginning dming', 'intended play & common problems', 'optional rules & variants', 'game resources'. Something where people wouldn't have to read advice they don't want. If that would help. Couldn't be worse than some of the semi-random jumbles of content in some of the DMGs.

I think this could work, although I would note that (imo) the best advice for solving any problems (including how various spells are handled) is consistency of approach. At the very least within a campaign if not across campaigns.

While it takes up extra space (and it was raised before how that's a problem for physical publishing), it might be good for section 2 to list a couple of options for differing desired outcomes and explain how to achieve them, rather than assume everyone has the same desired outcome.

Boci
2021-08-10, 02:49 AM
It's not harsher, it's a complete misrepresentation.

Nope, that's what the angry DM said here:

"Anyone who asks to play a psionicist is just wrong for my game"

They are punishing players for being interested in psionics by not letting them play in his game. That's not misrepresentation, that's what he wrote. To argue they wrote anything else would be misrepresentation. Do you disagree that a DM not allowing a player into their group isn't punishment? Because that just seems to be arguing DMs can't punish players at all, if denying them entry to the game based on an interest they have for class (that they might not even have wanted to play in your game) is somehow not meant to be counted as punishment.

Glorthindel
2021-08-10, 03:44 AM
At one end there are those who want a DMG type book to be useful for the first time DM, help them run their first game smoothly, guide them around the pitfalls we hit when we started DMing 25+ years ago.

While I agree such a book would be a wonderful and helpful thing, I don't see why it should occupy the position of a system-specific book. Surely, having a D&D, Shadowrun, GURP, FATE, or whatever logo on the front is actively detrimental, because it excludes people who don't play the system that such a book has been painted in.

Personally, I want the system DMG to help me run the system, so include all the extra information, rules, tables, and clarification advice specific to that system, and I don't want this stuff pushed out of the pagecount by 100 rambling pages about how a particular person thinks a DM should be. And getting reprinted in every later edition of the game, and in every single system released.

Leave the system DMG to the system - if there is a need for a "Guide to being a Gamesmaster", and I agree there is, publish that as its own (system agnostic) thing. Everyone wins.

Glorthindel
2021-08-10, 03:53 AM
They are punishing players for being interested in psionics by not letting them play in his game. That's not misrepresentation, that's what he wrote. To argue they wrote anything else would be misrepresentation. Do you disagree that a DM not allowing a player into their group isn't punishment?

You have to remember that these things work both ways. Sure, you could say that him not letting the sort of player that he has decided he wont like into his game is a punishment, but I would argue its a blessing instead. If he knows the player is unsuitable for his style of game, surely if he let the player in, the player is going to end up miserable anyway. Sure, he's made the decision to axe them ahead of time, instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt, but there is a very real likelihood he has saved them both wasted time.

For all of you decrying Angry's comment, not one of you would want to play in his game because of the person he is, so surely his comment (and others like it) has done its job, because its filtered you both from each other.

Boci
2021-08-10, 04:03 AM
For all of you decrying Angry's comment, not one of you would want to play in his game because of the person he is, so surely his comment (and others like it) has done its job, because its filtered you both from each other.

Yes, I try not to play with elitist pricks. That doesn't change the fact that elitist pricks are generally considered to be bad.

There's are miles and miles between "I don't run psionics" and "If you like psionics you're not welcome at my table".

Anonymouswizard
2021-08-10, 06:02 AM
Nope, that's what the angry DM said here:

"Anyone who asks to play a psionicist is just wrong for my game"

They are punishing players for being interested in psionics by not letting them play in his game. That's not misrepresentation, that's what he wrote. To argue they wrote anything else would be misrepresentation. Do you disagree that a DM not allowing a player into their group isn't punishment? Because that just seems to be arguing DMs can't punish players at all, if denying them entry to the game based on an interest they have for class (that they might not even have wanted to play in your game) is somehow not meant to be counted as punishment.

It's also noted that he likes having psionics as an option so he can do this.

Him banning psionics and letting prospective players know this is fine, and at that point if they ask to play a psychic tlbeing told to leave, while arguably a bit harsh, is not actually unreasonable. Instead you tread on the landmine and get blown up without warning.


For all of you decrying Angry's comment, not one of you would want to play in his game because of the person he is, so surely his comment (and others like it) has done its job, because its filtered you both from each other.

Unfortunately he's got s platform and presenting this as a good thing to do. Of course I don't want to play in his game, he's presented a big red flag. I also likely wouldn't if he told me from the start ,'no psionics', because I have an urge to play a psychic character.

But if a GM follows his advice here I could join a game, ask if I could play an Aberrant Soul Sorcerer/Paladin of Freedom/Changeling/Authentic Thaumaturge and be asked to leave without getting a second chance because the GM didn't admit they didn't want to use them.

Although again, leaving is a plus. Who wants to play with a GM who doesn't listen to their players?

Willie the Duck
2021-08-10, 07:30 AM
I wonder, if a DMG type book had sections; 'beginning dming', 'intended play & common problems', 'optional rules & variants', 'game resources'. Something where people wouldn't have to read advice they don't want. If that would help. Couldn't be worse than some of the semi-random jumbles of content in some of the DMGs.

I certainly think there's merit to the idea. Much in the same way that some RPG books include a 'what is an RPG?' section and a dice nomenclature and such (potentially with redtext at the front saying if you've been playing RPGs for years to skip ahead to the next chapter).

Quixotic1
2021-08-10, 08:16 AM
I'm going to disagree. Pacing is not universal. Pacing depends on genre, tone, style, and the desires of the players. What works in one style will not work in another.Of course different stories have different paces. I certainly don't disagree with that, and I apologize if I gave you the impression that I did.
What I mean is, what *pacing* is, not the specific pace of a specific story, but pacing itself, the device that defines how quickly a story moves--that is something that will benefit games you're involved in if you understand it.


A DM is not writing a story. They're not even telling their story. They're discovering, along with the players, the world of stories around the characters interacting with the world. And that results in very different needs than traditional fiction.I mean. A DM isn't telling a traditional story, no. But are they the primary arbiter of a collaborative storytelling experience? I would certainly say so. You have to define the setting, provide a plot, set scenes, create dialogue, develop characters--those are all elements of storytelling.
I don't run my D&D games that much differently from my White Wolf/Onyx Path games, where the moniker of DM/GM is replaced with "Storyteller".
I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying, and I agree, but the conclusion that running a game isn't storytelling at all feels pedantic at best and contrarian at worst.


And ones that basically have to be felt, not studied or taught.Hard disagree, here.
This is why I've read so much of what The Angry DM put out there. Because he breaks down these processes that so many people dismiss as instinctual into very sensible, easily digestible bits of information for the rational part of the mind.

Running games can be taught. I believe this. I've seen it.
The game will be at its smoothest when the knowledge becomes instinct, but that doesn't mean the information can't be passed down at all. It's like music, I think.


While I agree such a book would be a wonderful and helpful thing, I don't see why it should occupy the position of a system-specific book. Surely, having a D&D, Shadowrun, GURP, FATE, or whatever logo on the front is actively detrimental, because it excludes people who don't play the system that such a book has been painted in.I mean...I guess? But...they could each just publish their own.
I mean, if I were a company that produced a ttrpg, I'd certainly think I'd benefit from providing my customer base with helpful information regarding my product.
And if there were already X such sources of information out there, well, I'd read them and see what I had to add and what I felt bears repeating and what maybe I think needs a counterpoint.

Storytelling is one of the oldest traditions around. The moment we were no longer focused only on our next meal, on surviving one more night, the moment that we began to form a human culture of any kind, we started telling stories. I am sure we can find quite a lot to say on the subject.

CapnWildefyr
2021-08-10, 09:50 AM
Back to the OP:
I don't use a lot of the DMG. I think it's a book you need for the 5e versions of magic items and it has some ideas sections, but a lot I just ignore. I use maybe a quarter or a third of it.

However, based on a vid of the designers that was posted a while back, I dont think that the DMG is at all intended to teach a DM anything. Their model is more about learning through hand-me-down knowledge, as in, who teaches you to use your smart phone? You either know or you ask someone as you go along. They literally rely on that: DMs are supposed to learn from being players, then talking to DMs, to learn how to DM. Thats how I learned and I suspect most of us.

Also the Dmg does not stand alone, some of the "dm" info is in the phb. Which gets back to only using 33% of it.

As for the manual content, I'm not a big fan of lots of tables. No matter how big the table, it feels like a limit to me, and then how do results from different tables meld? Not to mention when someone else has better ideas than me ;-). Id rather see that info in small supplements rather than in a book I feel compelled to buy because I need the magic item tables. Besides, I think they would rather sell world supplements rather than get into world-building plans.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-10, 10:07 AM
I'm going to disagree. Pacing is not universal. Pacing depends on genre, tone, style, and the desires of the players. What works in one style will not work in another. A DM is not writing a story. They're not even telling their story. They're discovering, along with the players, the world of stories around the characters interacting with the world. And that results in very different needs than traditional fiction. And ones that basically have to be felt, not studied or taught. Even such things as "beginning, middle, end" (with one of those being a climax of sorts) are not universal concepts. In fact, the only advice I'd give to DMs is don't try to force it. When the players get bored, do something else. As long as they're interested, keep spooling it out. It's a give and take, a push and pull. You're not writing a story in advance.

Exactly -- and this is why I cringe so much when the "all RPGs are storytelling" assertion is made... because IME that's almost guaranteed to then lead to assumptions about making the sessions and campaigns follow standard paint-by-numbers formulaic writing advice. It's bad enough when actual stories are forced into the prescriptive frameworks of extruded fiction product or Hollywood script guides... personally I don't need that stuff being crammed down the throat of my RPGs and somehow becoming the standard approach.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-10, 11:24 AM
I mean. A DM isn't telling a traditional story, no. But are they the primary arbiter of a collaborative storytelling experience? I would certainly say so. You have to define the setting, provide a plot, set scenes, create dialogue, develop characters--those are all elements of storytelling.


Walls, a roof, wiring, plumbing, etc, are all elements of a house. That doesn't mean I'm building a house if I build a sports stadium or a car dealership.

Liikewise, elements in common with a story don't mean I'm telling a story.




I don't run my D&D games that much differently from my White Wolf/Onyx Path games, where the moniker of DM/GM is replaced with "Storyteller".
I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying, and I agree, but the conclusion that running a game isn't storytelling at all feels pedantic at best and contrarian at worst.


White Wolf using "storyteller" was purely a matter of pretentiousness, and part of something of a false promise.

(I played Vampire for well over a decade, starting with the very first softback edition, and loved it, but damn White Wolf was full up on pretentiousness from start to finish.)

Tanarii
2021-08-10, 01:47 PM
I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying, and I agree, but the conclusion that running a game isn't storytelling at all feels pedantic at best and contrarian at worst.Thats a good summary of the insistence that all playing of RPGs are collaborative storytelling for everyone.

Quixotic1
2021-08-10, 07:11 PM
Exactly -- and this is why I cringe so much when the "all RPGs are storytelling" assertion is made... because IME that's almost guaranteed to then lead to assumptions about making the sessions and campaigns follow standard paint-by-numbers formulaic writing advice. It's bad enough when actual stories are forced into the prescriptive frameworks of extruded fiction product or Hollywood script guides... personally I don't need that stuff being crammed down the throat of my RPGs and somehow becoming the standard approach.I'm sorry that's been your experience. That's rough.
But it's not actually guaranteed, no matter how much it may seem like it. And if I ever hear anyone talk about how a campaign MUST follow this or that formula, I'll be right next to you, telling them that they're dead wrong.
Those formula exist as a guide, sure. But any great author, poet or story-teller knows when to break from the formula. Doing so (to good effect, anyway) is actually acknowledged as a sign of mastery over the medium, right?


Walls, a roof, wiring, plumbing, etc, are all elements of a house. That doesn't mean I'm building a house if I build a sports stadium or a car dealership.No, but that metaphor feels off. I mean, walls, a roof, wiring and plumbing--it's a building, right? They're all structures of some kind. That's what I'm getting at.
The difference between "The Odyssey" and "Twilight" is pretty big. The difference between those and a ttrpg even more so.
But...they're all *telling a story*.
At some point, at some time, some people did some stuff--they all do that. How they do it, and why, and what the effect is--those things all very pretty wildly. But I really don't see how it's at all strange or unreasonable to point to the very basic, fundamental purpose they all have.


White Wolf using "storyteller" was purely a matter of pretentiousness, and part of something of a false promise.Okay, yeah. I can see that. I feel like their work later on was less snobby.
The "Chronicles of Darkness" book from Onyx Path, at any rate, is worth a read for the brief discussion on horror at the table, comfort zones and disquiet.


Thats a good summary of the insistence that all playing of RPGs are collaborative storytelling for everyone.I apologize. I'm not sure I understand.

Tanarii
2021-08-10, 07:26 PM
I apologize. I'm not sure I understand.
Claiming that everyone that plays a RPG must be engaged in collaborative storytelling is fairly well summarized as "pedantic at best and contrarian at worst". And also possibly insulting to those that aren't doing that.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-10, 07:27 PM
The big difference: those were planned stories. A single storyteller (or a group collaborating via a script). A TTRPG produces, after the fact, multiple stories. But they're not necessarily planned, coordinated, or scripted. In fact, we call the ones that are scripted "linear" or "railroaded", and that's generally not so good.

So techniques revolving around controlling pacing, methods drawn from scripted works, etc aren't applicable to the post-hoc stories produced by TTRPGs. Unless everyone is living in author stance, which, yeah. Is not how most go, not is it desired by many people.

Quixotic1
2021-08-11, 12:35 AM
Claiming that everyone that plays a RPG must be engaged in collaborative storytelling is fairly well summarized as "pedantic at best and contrarian at worst". And also possibly insulting to those that aren't doing that.Wow. Well I certainly don't mean to be insulting. I've honestly never encountered this line of thought before. I mean, the Oxford definition of a story is "an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment". That certainly seems to cover ttrpg's. Even games I've sat in on or heard about with wildly different styles than my own seem to fit very comfortably in that definition.
What kind of a game doesn't do that?

And you know, I disagree. I don't think I'm hung up on little details at all. I'm looking at things in fairly broad, vague strokes. And I fail utterly to see how anything I've put forward could be considered contrarian; my original comment that sparked all of this wasn't an attempt to counter an existing point, it was my effort to get to the absolute foundation of what it is to run a game, and thus what would be most beneficial.


The big difference: those were planned stories. A single storyteller (or a group collaborating via a script). A TTRPG produces, after the fact, multiple stories. But they're not necessarily planned, coordinated, or scripted.Of course. But they're stories. That's really all I'm trying to say, here...


So techniques revolving around controlling pacing, methods drawn from scripted works, etc aren't applicable to the post-hoc stories produced by TTRPGs. I've found establishing a genre and tone to be profound helpful at session 0. An understanding of pacing keeps the players engaged and entertained. I mean, the list goes on.

But at any rate, this has all gotten pretty far off the subject.
My main point is: there are elements of running a game that are not part of a given system. Call them what you will--the hobby is what it is and I really have no desire to get bogged down further in words--but they are the singular most important part of running a game, period.
I've been doing this for over two decades, and I am still far more interested in techniques and tips regarding the actual running of a game than I am in anything a specific system has to offer. Those are the sections in every DMG and book like it that I find myself revisiting. Not optional sub-systems and certainly not random tables. I want my Dungeon Master's Guide to guide me in my pursuit of becoming a better Dungeon Master.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-11, 03:43 AM
There's several points of confusion there. Because they are commonly occurring points in discussion of roleplaying games versus storytelling games, I'll throw in my two cents:

1) the definition of a story as "an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment" is overbroad. By this standard, play-by-post Chess is storytelling. So is Twenty Questions and a whole host of other games. Or talking about the weather. Point being, characterizing roleplaying games as storytelling based on definitions such as this does nothing to explain what particularly sets roleplaying games as activities apart from other types of games.

2) You can give a functional definition of a roleplaying game without using the word "story" anywhere in it. For the record, it's "a game where a player assumes role of a character in a staged situation and decides what to do, how and why from that character's viewpoint". Similarly, you can give functional definition of a storygame without using "role", "character" etc. anywhere in it. For the record, it's "a game where players strive to generate a narrative of desired type". It should be fairly obvious that the former is much narrower than the latter. You could argue for set-subset-relation, for example that all roleplaying games are storygames, but in no way can it follow that all storygames are also roleplaying games. For comparison: you can (correctly) argue soccer is a ball game and that it is a team game. But nowhere does it follow that all ball games are soccer, nor is there any necessary connection between being a ball game and a team game.

3) Even different roleplaying games can be as or more different from each other as different ball games are from soccer. Would you call handball and soccer the same hobby? I wouldn't. So why insist on lumping various games together just on the basis that they all involve stories in them somewhere?

Quixotic1
2021-08-11, 06:51 AM
There's several points of confusion there. Because they are commonly occurring points in discussion of roleplaying games versus storytelling games, I'll throw in my two cents...Sorry, I'm not sure I get it. You make some interesting points, but I don't really understand their bearing on the conversation at hand.

I would say that the Oxford definition of "story" is extremely broad, yes. But I think that's because the ways in which we tell stories are so varied.
I'm not sure what the definitions you've offered have to do with anything here, and I certainly don't think that they are definitive; I'm sure we could come up with dozens of definitions for those terms that avoid the words you wanted to avoid. I don't really get what it achieves, though.

The difference between "story games" versus "roleplaying games" is interesting. What are some examples of story games?

And again, I really don't think "whether or not ttrpg's involve telling stories" is the heart of this thread, or even the heart of my original comment on it.
We've all had good DM's and bad ones. Good DM's might be better prepared or well-organized, have stronger improvisational skills, keep the game flowing more smoothly, deliver more passionate/theatric performances, etc. than their counterpart. Many of these things are in fact skills that can be honed. But there isn't much in the way of resources out there to help with that.
And once more, I don't mean to say that there are right DM's and wrong ones. Not at all. Some people want a beer and pretzels game, others want a game that is possessed of a serious and vital weight. And they're both perfectly fine, of course. But there are still good ones and bad ones. I've finally decided to stop showing up to one such bad one myself; the plot is dragging and dull, the combats are uninteresting, the NPC's have no personalities, the players have no opportunity to develop their characters--regardless of style preference, it's just not a good game. And I'm trying not to hold it against the DM. They're busy and hey, at least they're making an effort. But ouphe. I've wish I had the opportunity to sit down with them and actually discuss the nuts and bolts of running a game, or that there was some resources out there that they'd access.

Willie the Duck
2021-08-11, 08:01 AM
Wow. Well I certainly don't mean to be insulting. I've honestly never encountered this line of thought before. I mean, the Oxford definition of a story is "an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment". That certainly seems to cover ttrpg's. Even games I've sat in on or heard about with wildly different styles than my own seem to fit very comfortably in that definition.
What kind of a game doesn't do that?

There are nitpicks one can make or hairs one can split every step of the way. One would be whether the 'account of imaginary or real people and events' being told is for entertainment, or a byproduct of, as an example, the game one is playing (that is the primary activity) that is being done for entertainment. There's a spectrum of visions about what TTRPGs are primarily for or about, and some people get really worked up when a proponent of another position states that it's clearly or obviously that other position. Personally, I think a lot of it is perpetuations or arguments from the past where some other advocate once called people holding another position flat out wrong or even stupid, and as always that justifies today's umbrage (no one grinds axes like gamers with excess time on their hands).


And you know, I disagree. I don't think I'm hung up on little details at all. I'm looking at things in fairly broad, vague strokes. And I fail utterly to see how anything I've put forward could be considered contrarian; my original comment that sparked all of this wasn't an attempt to counter an existing point, it was my effort to get to the absolute foundation of what it is to run a game, and thus what would be most beneficial.

Of course. But they're stories. That's really all I'm trying to say, here...
Despite my position that I think a lot of it is just old bad blood, if gaming is really important to you, someone else saying it is for or about something to which you disagree and then pointing to a dictionary definition can be a little like calling someone's cultural ceremonies 'performances' (construe--an act) and when confronted, saying 'look at the definition -- "rites and actions performed in pre-prescribed ways...".'


But at any rate, this has all gotten pretty far off the subject.
My main point is: there are elements of running a game that are not part of a given system. Call them what you will--the hobby is what it is and I really have no desire to get bogged down further in words--but they are the singular most important part of running a game, period.
I've been doing this for over two decades, and I am still far more interested in techniques and tips regarding the actual running of a game than I am in anything a specific system has to offer. Those are the sections in every DMG and book like it that I find myself revisiting. Not optional sub-systems and certainly not random tables. I want my Dungeon Master's Guide to guide me in my pursuit of becoming a better Dungeon Master.
I certainly think that tips and techniques are the part I'd advocate for general DMGs/GMGs, because again I think the core books should be designed around what is important for beginners. Tools and tables are helpful for a different need -- mostly help with inspiration, or not accidentally leaning into ones biases (example: when left to my own devices making a hexcrawl map, I will overpopulate it with the unusual (strange old abandoned buildings, mystic-seaming grottos, ancient stone monoliths from forgotten civilizations), such that it ceases to be unusual. I think WWN did a great job for that goal. However, I think WWN knows its audience, and few beginning gamers will stumble onto it without either coming from D&D or from the general OSR crowd, and as such doesn't need as much beginner-skillbase-building material.

Quixotic1
2021-08-11, 08:37 AM
There's a spectrum of visions about what TTRPGs are primarily for or about, and some people get really worked up when a proponent of another position states that it's clearly or obviously that other position. Personally, I think a lot of it is perpetuations or arguments from the past where some other advocate once called people holding another position flat out wrong or even stupid, and as always that justifies today's umbrage...I guess so. It's been so long since I've talked to anyone outside my core group about this sort of thing. I can see that I may have touched a nerve.
Once more,I apologize if anything I've said has come across as hurtful or offensive. Such was not my intent.



Despite my position that I think a lot of it is just old bad blood, if gaming is really important to you, someone else saying it is for or about something to which you disagree and then pointing to a dictionary definition can be a little like calling someone's cultural ceremonies 'performances' (construe--an act) and when confronted, saying 'look at the definition -- "rites and actions performed in pre-prescribed ways..."I guess I can get that. It certainly felt that way when I seemed to be told (with surprising vehemence) that my perspective on something extremely important, bordering on sacred, to me was wrong/offensive/pretentious/etc.
But to be clear, while I certainly believe what I've said, I don't think any of the other views put forward regarding the purpose of ttrpg's are wrong. It's a rich, complex pursuit.


Tools and tables are helpful for a different need -- mostly help with inspiration, or not accidentally leaning into ones biases...Absolutely. I think that all the system and setting stuff is important and needs to be represented in a typical DMG-type book, once there's a proper foundation for a new player to set out with.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-11, 09:34 AM
Oh, there is definitely some bad blood, going back a ways.

What we saw first by a faction of Usenet posters, and then in places like the Forge, was a consistent argument technique that amounted to definitional bait-and-switch.

They'd routinely attempt to get people to agree to that RPGs were some form of "story" based on the broadest, vaguest descriptivist definition of "story"... and then switch to a narrow prescriptivist definition and insist that meant RPGs should be designed just so, and GMed just so, and played just so... and that because the other person had agreed that RPGs could be seen as "story" based on the most open and near-useless definition of "story" possible (the bait), they of course now "had" to agree that RPGs should follow the One True Way being pushed using that narrow and often very self-serving definition (the switch).


A bit of history and punditry on the matter...

http://whitehall-paraindustries.com/Theory/Threefold/rpg_theory_bad_rep.htm

"Into this enter one David Berkman (one of the authors of Theatrix). Berkman advocated a style of play based around 'what was good for the story', not what the 'mindless dice' or 'needs of simulation' would call for. 'Advocated' as is 'this is the best way, any other way is stupid' type of advocating."


https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games


So not only do some of us not set out to tell stories or craft stories when we sit down at the gaming table, and under all but the very loosest of definitions we aren't engaged in "story"... it became a matter of drawing a line and sticking to it... we are not doing story, our games are not about story and are not collective, collaborative, incidental, or any other kind of storytelling -- full stop. We're playing our characters, in the setting, and making decisions based on what they know, think, feel, and experience within that setting. "The needs of the story" or "what would make a better story?" can frankly take a flying leap...

I mean, it's fine that other people care about those things, but I really wish that I could go a week of reading gaming discussions without someone telling me that no matter what I think, feel, or enjoy, my gaming is inherently "collaborative storytelling".

Boci
2021-08-11, 10:34 AM
I mean, it's fine that other people care about those things, but I really wish that I could go a week of reading gaming discussions without someone telling me that no matter what I think, feel, or enjoy, my gaming is inherently "collaborative storytelling".

But by your own admission, it is a story. Its a broad definition, but not even that broad. Getting annoyed when people describe "playing our characters, in the setting, and making decisions based on what they know, think, feel, and experience within that setting" as a "story" just comes off as bizarre to some people who aren't privy to your bad blood with some other users on a forum they've never heard about.

Sure, bait and switch is annoying, but not everyone describing roleplaying games as collaborative storytelling is bait and switching. They could just be legitimately using that word to describe the character progression in roleplaying games.

Telok
2021-08-11, 10:38 AM
Thanks Max.

I'm weird in that I try to be an evidence based creature, so the only blogs I've ended up truely following are those who cite decent sources.

Something I realized is that I did have an experience like a ttrpg in a non-rpg setting, and it was storytelling. Back in... Long, long, ago. In a place far, far, away. Before the social anxeity became borderline crippling*. I was in a youth improv theater group.

Improv theater. A handful of people, no script, a short starting scenario, riffing off each other. Trying to get better at being beliveable, appropriate pacing for the situation, thinking about what the audience wants. Heck, set up a camera to record or stream ttrpg sessions and it will be pretty similar... Well, the action scene will probably be hideously slow and tedious for an audience that isn't emotionally invested for your chosen system. Heck, some of them are tedious for those involved.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that in this case the players are also the primary audience. So... self-improv-storytelling? Eh, defining a thing, especially a social construct people activity thing, gets messy. You can call it storytelling or not. I'm not married to anything on that subject. Just semi-random thoughts.

* I mean, these days an rpg table with half new faces is pushing it. Eurgh. Luckily my partner is more than happy to do all the RL party face stuff while I do heavy lifting, cooking, cleaning, fixing, tech, and dealing with spiders & bees. Feels like a fair trade to me. I like spiders and bees.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-11, 11:07 AM
But by your own admission, it is a story. Its a broad definition, but not even that broad.


Thank you for demonstrating my exact point.

"Ah ha! You ADMIT that an RPG is a STORY!"




Getting annoyed when people describe "playing our characters, in the setting, and making decisions based on what they know, think, feel, and experience within that setting" as a "story" just comes off as bizarre to some people who aren't privy to your bad blood with some other users on a forum they've never heard about.

Sure, bait and switch is annoying, but not everyone describing roleplaying games as collaborative storytelling is bait and switching. They could just be legitimately using that word to describe the character progression in roleplaying games.


Only, character progression isn't story. Neither are any of those other things.

All those things are experienced in first person in real life by real people... and real life isn't "a story", any more than brushing your teeth every night is "a ritual".

Boci
2021-08-11, 11:10 AM
Thank you for demonstrating my exact point.

"Ah ha! You ADMIT that an RPG is a STORY!"

And that's a big deal because? Its also a hobby, a way to socialise, and the collective creation of a story. Do you object to all those characterisations, or just the last?


Only, character progression isn't story. Neither are any of those other things.

They are if people say they are, that's how language works. And based on you complaining you can't go a week without hearing it being called a story, people have decided so.

Claiming that real life makes it not a story is...weird. The story Greta is a story, even if its just a factual retelling of a particular point of her life.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-11, 11:36 AM
And that's a big deal because? Its also a hobby, a way to socialise, and the collective creation of a story. Do you object to all those characterisations, or just the last?



They are if people say they are, that's how language works. And based on you complaining you can't go a week without hearing it being called a story, people have decided so.

Claiming that real life makes it not a story is...weird. The story Greta is a story, even if its just a factual retelling of a particular point of her life.


No, that is not how it works, and claiming that you get to define other people's preferences and experiences is only a short way down the road from claiming people who play D&D had brain damage inflicted on them. Never mind that overbroad definitions don't help discuss or analyze anything -- by the time you get to "yeah, sure, it's a story, by that definition", you've diluted "story" to the point of being a meaningless tag that doesn't tell us anything interesting or useful about the activity or why people do it.

No one -- not you, not the jerkoffs who ran the Forge, not anyone else -- gets to decide how or why someone else engages with RPGs -- what their intent is, what their approach is, what their experience is, what they get out of it, or why/how they enjoy it. There are plenty of us who aren't here for "story", we're not interested in author/director stance, we don't care about narrative arcs or themes or other story considerations, we're never going to make character decisions based on "what make the story better" or "what moves the story forward". We are never going to look at the game as a story or narrative. It is never our intent or desire to "create a story".

We are going to treat our characters as people-who-could-be-real in a world-that-could-be-real, and that's it. And treating them as just little actors in a play to be directed around the set to "make a good story" is actively counter to that approach and reduced engagement and immersion and enjoyment for us.

It is a big deal because you are literally telling us that we're "doing it wrong" and that our way of engaging with RPGs is flawed and badwrongfun, and that it can't be an RPG unless there's "story" involved.

It is a big deal because the "it's storytelling by definition" canard has actively driven a lot of what's published, including in backlash from another wing of the hobby, leaving those of us with the character-in-setting, verisimilitude please approach sifting through what's left after the narrative-focus systems and material, and the game-as-game (often OSR) systems and material, are set aside as at best a "take what we can get" and at worst "better off not playing" majority of the published works available.

And any GMing advice written assuming that everyone is here to "tell a collective story" is setting the GM up to make the game worse, even actively unenjoyable, for the player who isn't interested in author/director stance, narrative considerations, etc.

Boci
2021-08-11, 11:44 AM
No, that is not how it works,

That is how language works. All words mean what they mean because enough people they do, including the ones I just type. Without sufficient human concusses, they'd just be meaningless sounds/marks.


It is a big deal because you are literally telling us that we're "doing it wrong" and that our way of engaging with RPGs is flawed and badwrongfun, and that it can't be an RPG unless there's "story" involved.

Here's the problem: No I'm not, you're just imagining I did. You can't quote me doing that in this thread, or any other, because I'm and I never did.

Yes Max, I believe you and your friends are engaged in collaborative storytelling when you sit down to play a table top RPG together. But I don't believe you're having badwrongfun or doing it wrong, as long as you all enjoy it. Stories are broad and there are many ways you can go about constructing them as a group, no single one is right or wrong, but unless you are doing something truly unconventional, like refusing to communicate with human languages for the duration of the session, I believe you are telling a story over the course of the game.

You're assuming my "its a story" is a stepping stone to an further argument. But it isn't. Like i said, its the telling of a story the same way its a hobby and a way of socialise. It just is, there's no larger point being built up to.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-11, 11:49 AM
Here's the problem: No I'm not, you're just imagining I did. You can't quote me doing that in this thread, or any other, because I'm and I never did.


Every time you assert that I'm not playing an RPG if I'm not "telling a story", you do exactly that. I know that I am not engaged in "telling a story", so every time you tell me that RPGs are "telling a story" by definition, you're telling me that I'm "not doing it right".




Yes Max, I believe you and your friends are engaged in collaborative storytelling when you sit down to play a table top RPG together.


And that is the core of where you're wrong, and where you're trying to impose YOUR PERSONAL preferences and enjoyment on those of use who don't share them.

And you can object until you're blue in the face that you aren't, but as long as you're telling me that you know better what's going on in my head than I do, then you are doing exactly that.




But I don't believe you're having badwrongfun or doing it wrong, as long as you all enjoy it. Stories are broad and there are many ways you can go about constructing them as a group, no single one is right or wrong, but unless you are doing something truly unconventional, like refusing to communicate with human languages for the duration of the session, I believe you are telling a story over the course of the game.

You're assuming my "its a story" is a stepping stone to an further argument. But it isn't. Like i said, its the telling of a story the same way its a hobby and a way of socialise. It just is, there's no larger point being built up to.


"If you communicate with another person, you're telling a story" is postmodernist "everything is a narrative" nonsense, and again, making the definition of "story" so broad as to be useless in actually discussing or understanding anything.

Boci
2021-08-11, 11:58 AM
And that is the core of where you're wrong, and where you're trying to impose YOUR PERSONAL preferences and enjoyment on those of use who don't share them.

And you can object until you're blue in the face that you aren't, but as long as you're telling me that you know better what's going on in my head than I do, then you are doing exactly that.

{Scrubbed}

Lord Raziere
2021-08-11, 12:02 PM
Every time you assert that I'm not playing an RPG if I'm not "telling a story", you do exactly that. I know that I am not engaged in "telling a story", so every time you tell me that RPGs are "telling a story" by definition, you're telling me that I'm "not doing it right".




And that is the core of where you're wrong, and where you're trying to impose YOUR PERSONAL preferences and enjoyment on those of use who don't share them.

And you can object until you're blue in the face that you aren't, but as long as you're telling me that you know better what's going on in my head than I do, then you are doing exactly that.




"If you communicate with another person, you're telling a story" is postmodernist "everything is a narrative" nonsense, and again, making the definition of "story" so broad as to be useless in actually discussing or understanding anything.

{Scrubbed}

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-11, 12:04 PM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Thank you for continuing to demonstrate my exact point.

This exchange has become pointless, as far as I can tell, you're just going to continue to insist that you know more about how other people approach, engage with, and enjoy RPGs than they themselves do -- which is what telling them that they're "doing story" when "doing story" is actively detrimental to and counter to their reasons for playing RPGs and how they enjoy RPGs is doing -- and then act like you're the aggrieved party when called out on it.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-11, 12:05 PM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Sure, as soon as people stop insisting that I can't do RPG stuff without "collective storytelling".

Quixotic1
2021-08-11, 12:05 PM
Yikes. This got intense.

If I might go back to the point where this tangent began: when I said I think that a useful DMG should contain information on how to be a better storyteller, I did NOT mean to invoke all of this stuff that's been brought in. I was never involved in those discussions. And if any of those people tried to push their "One True Way" on anyone here, I'd be right on the opposing side, 100%.

What I meant with my initial comment was that I think a useful DMG should contain information on how to better run a game. Whether that game be focused on an elaborate narrative arc or on immersion and verisimilitude--and I've certainly run both--there are things I've learned that make the running of the game itself, not the system, not the combat, not any mechanical aspect within the game, but the *game itself* much easier and more enjoyable.

(Brief aside: I understand there's bad blood in the past, but I would really appreciate if people didn't reduce or dismissed narrative-focused gaming or insult those who enjoy it, directly or through subtext. It's really uncomfortable and honestly pretty hurtful. )

Boci
2021-08-11, 12:07 PM
Every time you assert that I'm not playing an RPG if I'm not "telling a story", you do exactly that. I know that I am not engaged in "telling a story", so every time you tell me that RPGs are "telling a story" by definition, you're telling me that I'm "not doing it right".

No I'm not Max. You're not doing it wrong, {Scrubbed} I'm not, enjoy the game the way you currently are. I just consider storytelling, and if me classifying the way you current play as stroytelling is somehow offends you, well, that sounds like a problem you need to deal with.

I'm not offended if you don't consider my RPG sessions the telling of a story, I'd just disagree with you.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-11, 12:08 PM
Yikes. This got intense.

If I might go back to the point where this tangent began: when I said I think that a useful DMG should contain information on how to be a better storyteller, I did NOT mean to invoke all of this stuff that's been brought in. I was never involved in those discussions. And if any of those people tried to push their "One True Way" on anyone here, I'd be right on the opposing side, 100%.

What I meant with my initial comment was that I think a useful DMG should contain information on how to better run a game. Whether that game be focused on an elaborate narrative arc or on immersion and verisimilitude--and I've certainly run both--there are things I've learned that make the running of the game itself, not the system, not the combat, not any mechanical aspect within the game, but the *game itself* much easier and more enjoyable.

(Brief aside: I understand there's bad blood in the past, but I would really appreciate if people didn't reduce or dismissed narrative-focused gaming or insult those who enjoy it, directly or through subtext. It's really uncomfortable and honestly pretty hurtful. )

People are absolutely free and welcome to approach RPGs from a narrative standpoint -- to create systems, to run campaigns, and play characters based on those considerations to the degree that they enjoy them. I want people to find the things and approaches in RPGs that they enjoy, and do them.

My disdain and disgust are reserved entirely for those who insist that this is the one true objectively right way, the only way, or the "you can't help it by definition" way of approaching RPGs.

Boci
2021-08-11, 12:11 PM
My disdain and disgust are reserved entirely for those who insist that this is the one true objectively right way, the only way, or the "you can't help it by definition" way of approaching RPGs.

The problem is I told you "continue doing what you're doing", and you interpreted that as an attack on your play style.

Just to be clear, I wasn't being sarcastic in a "Fine, be wrong", I meant it genuinely. If you and your friends are having fun, there's no reason to change anything, and if you aren't having fun, I don't think the storrytelling axis should be the first approach. {Scrubbed}

Xervous
2021-08-11, 12:12 PM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

By forcing your preferred interpretation of the phrase this is taking the sort of loaded leaning {Scrubbed}. Ownership of the definition gives you ammunition against the dissenters.

Boci
2021-08-11, 12:13 PM
By forcing your preferred interpretation of the phrase this is taking the sort of loaded leaning {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}. Ownership of the definition gives you ammunition against the dissenters.

No, that's different. That's about using a negative phrase vs. a more neutral one. That doesn't apply to storytelling, since I'm not insisting on an alternative. For that comparison to be true, I'd have to insist people who say they aren't telling refer to themselves as "art haters" or something like that, which I haven't.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-11, 12:14 PM
The difference between "story games" versus "roleplaying games" is interesting. What are some examples of story games?


I'm not naming specific products because I don't remember their names. I'll simply describe how they work. Examples of story games that aren't roleplaying games:

1) A card game where each card contains directions for a how a story ought to continue. Each turn, the player plays one card to influence the story being generated.

2) Sequential oral or written storytelling, where each player's contribution is graded by the next and only built upon if the next player likes it. So player A tells first part of the story, player B grades it and either begins a new story or tells the second part, so on and so forth.

3) Wargames meant to simulate known historical or fictional conflict. Each player moves their troops according to a script or their best guess of what happened, trying to replicate the known sequence of events.

A list of examples that are both roleplaying games and storygames would include majority of small-press RPG products of last 20 years and so I won't bother typing it out. Freeform also qualifies.

Identifying rules that exist to enforce storygame elements instead of roleplaying elements is easy to spot. Look at a decision being made by a player and ask: "does this decision involve things the player's character has no causal influence over?" Another, similar rule of the thumb is: "does this decision involve the player doing something that's reserved to a dungeon master in D&D?" Then ask: "does this decision involve asking and answering what kind of a story is being told?" If you got two "yes" answers in a row, that's a storygame rule.

Xervous
2021-08-11, 12:20 PM
No, that's different. That's about using a negative phrase vs. a more neutral one. That doesn't apply to storytelling, since I'm not insisting on an alternative. For that comparison to be true, I'd have to insist people who say they aren't telling refer to themselves as "art haters" or something like that, which I haven't.

To divert from the political detour, we’ve got little more than one opinion against the other here. Asserting otherwise is forcing a definition.

Boci
2021-08-11, 12:23 PM
To divert from the political detour, we’ve got little more than one opinion against the other here. Asserting otherwise is forcing a definition.

Not really. We also have the growling popularity of "collaborative/collective storytelling" as a way to measure perception of term. Not conclusive sure, but a little more than just my opinion. Max even acknowledge how frequently they run into the term, so its not just me.

Lord Raziere
2021-08-11, 12:28 PM
Sure, as soon as people stop insisting that I can't do RPG stuff without "collective storytelling".

{Scrubbed}

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-11, 12:28 PM
Not really. We also have the growling popularity of "collaborative/collective storytelling" as a way to measure perception of term. Not conclusive sure, but a little more than just my opinion. Max even acknowledge how frequently they run into the term, so its not just me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

(The core problem with purely descriptivist linguistics.)

Boci
2021-08-11, 12:32 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

(The core problem with purely descriptivist linguistics.)

Yeah, that doesn't apply to language, since that's how language works. Every single word in this thread exists and works the way it does because of popular thinking. Its strange to highlight a single phrase for it.

Tanarii
2021-08-11, 12:55 PM
Only, character progression isn't story. Neither are any of those other things.

All those things are experienced in first person in real life by real people... and real life isn't "a story", any more than brushing your teeth every night is "a ritual".
Exactly. The insistence that RPGs are collaborative storytelling is going to turn off some number of people that are playing a character interacting with a fantasy environment, just as they would if you tried to tell them they are living the story of their life.

Of course, a large number won't care or will even agree it's a form of collaborative storytelling. Especially in the face of movies and books as inspiration for fantasy characters.

Boci
2021-08-11, 12:58 PM
Exactly. The insistence that RPGs are collaborative storytelling is going to turn off some number of people that are playing a character interacting with a fantasy environment, just as they would if you tried to tell them they are living the story of their life.

Of course, a large number won't care or will even agree it's a form of collaborative storytelling. Especially in the face of movies and books as inspiration for fantasy characters.

Right, but that's just you speculating. More people could be brought to the tables by hearing it be described as collaborative storytelling, than were ever turned away by the phrase. And besides, its unlikely RPG is going anywhere as a term, collaborative storytelling is in addition, not instead, unless I've missed a major reclassification.

Willie the Duck
2021-08-11, 01:25 PM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}
I'm pretty sure it's what keeps him going. It takes all kinds.


I'm not naming specific products because I don't remember their names. I'll simply describe how they work. Examples of story games that aren't roleplaying games:

1) A card game where each card contains directions for a how a story ought to continue. Each turn, the player plays one card to influence the story being generated.

2) Sequential oral or written storytelling, where each player's contribution is graded by the next and only built upon if the next player likes it. So player A tells first part of the story, player B grades it and either begins a new story or tells the second part, so on and so forth.

3) Wargames meant to simulate known historical or fictional conflict. Each player moves their troops according to a script or their best guess of what happened, trying to replicate the known sequence of events.
I just played one of these at a party recently. Everyone had like 5-7 cards with lists of items, and someone turned over a card describing a situation. Each player then had to pick one of their cards and tell a tale about how they used their item to resolve/escape from the given situation. They are fun 'parlour games,' as I always thought of them.


A list of examples that are both roleplaying games and storygames would include majority of small-press RPG products of last 20 years and so I won't bother typing it out. Freeform also qualifies.

Identifying rules that exist to enforce storygame elements instead of roleplaying elements is easy to spot. Look at a decision being made by a player and ask: "does this decision involve things the player's character has no causal influence over?" Another, similar rule of the thumb is: "does this decision involve the player doing something that's reserved to a dungeon master in D&D?" Then ask: "does this decision involve asking and answering what kind of a story is being told?" If you got two "yes" answers in a row, that's a storygame rule.
You can even have vaguely storygame rules in a traditional TTRPG. GURPS has some luck advantages and a 'gadget' special ability (for supers campaigns) that allow the player to alter the gameworld rather than their character's actions (usually in a 'I just so happened to have packed shark repellant in my Batcopter in case of such an emergency' variety).


Right, but that's just you speculating. More people could be brought to the tables by hearing it be described as collaborative storytelling, than were ever turned away by the phrase. And besides, its unlikely RPG is going anywhere as a term, collaborative storytelling is in addition, not instead, unless I've missed a major reclassification.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to advertise RPGs as having the capacity for use as a form of collaborative storytelling. That helps sell it to those with that as a goal, without turning off those who feel that isn't what their gaming is about.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-11, 01:31 PM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}.

Stupid arguments and memes over whether a cheeseburger is a sandwich are not, as far as I've seen, representative of an ongoing effort to make cheeseburgers and/or sandwiches harder for me to get in a form that I enjoy.



To divert from the political detour, we’ve got little more than one opinion against the other here. Asserting otherwise is forcing a definition.

The major difference is, one position -- "RPGs can be collective storytelling, but aren't inherently" -- leaves room for other people's engagement with RPGs, while the other -- "RPGs are inherently and unavoidably collective storytelling" -- does not leave room.

I would rather not game at all, would rather never sit down at another table with character and notes and dice again, than take part in "collective storytelling".

Boci
2021-08-11, 01:38 PM
Stupid arguments and memes over whether a cheeseburger is a sandwich are not, as far as I've seen, representative of an ongoing effort to make cheeseburgers and/or sandwiches harder for me to get in a form that I enjoy.

Okay, but in order to have any effect on the situation, you need to be understood. I can't speak for other people, but I haven't been able to understand what you're saying other than that you hate the term collaborative storytelling. So I'm not left with any knowledge of how to accommodate a player like you at my group, other than not use the term collaborative storytelling, because that might set you off.

I can pars (spelling?) that you think it encourages a DMing style you dislike, but without further details I can't do much with that vague information.


I would rather not game at all, would rather never sit down at another table with character and notes and dice again, than take part in "collective storytelling".

But its just a term to use, and an opinion to have. How do you know you've never had a DM or player that considered what you were doing collective storytelling and just never voiced that thought?

Tanarii
2021-08-11, 01:57 PM
I think it's perfectly reasonable to advertise RPGs as having the capacity for use as a form of collaborative storytelling. That helps sell it to those with that as a goal, without turning off those who feel that isn't what their gaming is about.
That is reasonable.

Unfortunately there is a group of people that insist that "RPGs are about collaborative storytelling", as if it's a universal statement. And there are others that will insist that people such as myself and many of my players are engaged in collaborative storytelling when we tell them explicitly that No We Are Not. That's not even including people so wedded to the idea that they express disgust that my games must not have a plot, at the idea that my games must apparently be people "doing random things". All of which have been expressed on these very forums, and some of which stated (in exact or similar forms) historically by game developers.

In context of this thread, that makes advice in a DMG for D&D, a game that historically is about playing your character interacting in exciting ways with the fantasy environment (typically called "Adventures"), that is specifically about how to DM in terms of storytelling not necessarily helpful.

As it stands they talk about how to construct campaigns, adventures, and encounters. That's relevant advice either way, at least for D&D. Other systems, not so much. Narrative-based systems, possibly not at all.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-11, 01:58 PM
"Collaborative storytelling" is one of those phrases that seems more meaningful than it actually is. All it means is that there's more than one person contributing to a story and, as explained earlier, using broad definition of "story" means this includes everything from play-by-post Chess to conversations about the weather.

It fails at communicating what it is that you actually do when playing a roleplaying game as opposed to any other form of collaborative storytelling.

Boci
2021-08-11, 02:02 PM
That is reasonable.

Unfortunately there is a group of people that insist that "RPGs are about collaborative storytelling", as if it's a universal statement. And there are others that will insist that people such as myself and many of my players are engaged in collaborative storytelling when we tell them explicitly that No We Are Not. That's not even including people so wedded to the idea that they express disgust that my games must not have a plot, at the idea that my games must apparently be people "doing random things". All of which have been expressed on these very forums, and some of which stated (in exact or similar forms) historically by game developers.

In context of this thread, that makes advice in a DMG for D&D, a game that historically is about playing your character interacting in exciting ways with the fantasy environment (typically called "Adventures") specifically about how to DM in terms of storytelling not necessarily helpful.

As it stands they talk about how to construct campaigns, adventures, and encounters. That's relevant advice either way, at least for D&D. Other systems, not so much. Narrative-based systems, possibly not at all.

So you have a preferred style, that appears to be falling to the wayside in favour of a more collaborative storytelling.

But, is that bad? Things change, and not everyone will like these changes. Have I missed something, or is it just there's the newest "old school" is being created, and your that's your preferred style.

Vahnavoi
2021-08-11, 02:19 PM
Imagine a situation where there's a game called football. It involves kicking a ball with your feet. But then a loud minority comes around and starts insisting that football is actually a game where you mostly carry a shuttle-shaped object in your arms and tackle people at high speeds. Enough people buy into it that the actual game of kicking a ball with your feet has to be renamed, say, soccer. At the same time, there's a massive change in funding, with money being directed to this new football sport, because it requires more protective gear and there's more money to be made there than in soccer, and because of this, institutional support for soccer is stymied.

Imagine you don't actually care for soccer, you think this new football is much more interesting. So is this change a bad thing? :smalltongue:

Boci
2021-08-11, 02:26 PM
Imagine a situation where there's a game called football. It involves kicking a ball with your feet. But then a loud minority comes around and starts insisting that football is actually a game where you mostly carry a shuttle-shaped object in your arms and tackle people at high speeds. Enough people buy into it that the actual game of kicking a ball with your feet has to be renamed, say, soccer. At the same time, there's a massive change in funding, with money being directed to this new football sport, because it requires more protective gear and there's more money to be made there than in soccer, and because of this, institutional support for soccer is stymied.

Imagine you don't actually care for soccer, you think this new football is much more interesting. So is this change a bad thing? :smalltongue:

Regardless of which one I find more interest change isn't bad, which is rather my point. You don't have to like change, but its a bit self-centered to call it a problem just because you don't like it.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-11, 02:47 PM
Regardless of which one I find more interest change isn't bad, which is rather my point. You don't have to like change, but its a bit self-centered to call it a problem just because you don't like it.

Except that in this case, it's people re-defining (via assertion, not actual preponderance of use) words to mean other things, and then claiming that they always meant those things and your preference is not only invalid but is actually inherently impossible. And I'm much more sympathetic to story-based gaming than many of those most affected.

It's an argument by definition (define story to include everything, then of course everything's about story). It's not even a "hey, I prefer games to be about story, can we shift in that direction" and gaining popular support for it, it's "your games have always been about story and any attempt to say otherwise is an abuse of language and you can't do that and your preference is bad". And yes, that latter is exactly badfunwrong, which is a problem independent of whether someone likes story in gaming or not.

Boci
2021-08-11, 02:54 PM
it's "your games have always been about story and any attempt to say otherwise is an abuse of language and you can't do that and your preference is bad".

I don't know about other people, that's not what I said. I do believe all RPGs involve a story, because the actions of the characters form a story over the course of the game, from raiding a dungeon to travelling to a town (unless they're entirely random, which is not how most groups do it). How important that story is to the group is of course a matter of preference, but even if its not focused on, the sequence of events that I would consider a story still happened.

And I never characterized disagreeing with this as an abuse of language, I merely pointed to the rising popularity of the term "collective storytelling" to indicate the possibility that the word was changing to involve all RPGs. Which can happen, the meanings of words change overtime.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-11, 03:10 PM
Okay, but in order to have any effect on the situation, you need to be understood. I can't speak for other people, but I haven't been able to understand what you're saying other than that you hate the term collaborative storytelling. So I'm not left with any knowledge of how to accommodate a player like you at my group, other than not use the term collaborative storytelling, because that might set you off.

I can pars (spelling?) that you think it encourages a DMing style you dislike, but without further details I can't do much with that vague information.



But its just a term to use, and an opinion to have. How do you know you've never had a DM or player that considered what you were doing collective storytelling and just never voiced that thought?

I know because what they were doing wasn't in any way collaborative storytelling, even if the so-broad-it's-useless term "collaborative storytelling" was at some point in their head... not that I think ti ever was, they're not the sort to engage in online discussions of this sort of thing, I'm the one who digs into theory and discussion out of the group.

They didn't discuss or encourage author/director stance decisions, didn't favor narrative-control or disassociated mechanics, didn't bring up the needs of "the story", didn't put narrative considerations on the table let alone ahead of character or setting coherence and consistency, never answered questions with questions ("I don't know, what do YOU think caused this?") based on expecting the player to fill in details cooperatively... or otherwise show any signs of operating under a "collaborative storytelling" rubric.

Posted this earlier, nor sure if it was read:
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1545/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanic


If it's "just a term to use", then why use it at all? Why not just say "RPG" or "roleplaying game"? Clearly there's a point that's being made beyond just looking for new random terms for the same thing.

If everything is "story"... then nothing is. Words so broad they make no distinctions are functionally useless.

Boci
2021-08-11, 03:15 PM
If it's "just a term to use", then why use it at all? Why not just say "RPG" or "roleplaying game"? Clearly there's a point that's being made beyond just looking for new random terms for the same thing.

No Max, there really isn't. Not for me at least.

Why not just say RPG? Because its a complex activity and two terms are better than one. RPG also has to share with the computer game genre, and within the game with "roleplaying their character", which not everyone does to any significant degree, even when playing a roleplaying game. Can you see why a second term might might be useful after that sentence?


If everything is "story"... then nothing is. Words so broad they make no distinctions are functionally useless.

That's just not true. "Activity" is even broader than a story, and it still has its uses as a word. Ditto on "game". Plus, the term is two fold: "collective/collaborative storytelling", which is not how we typically imagine the process of a story being created. It is still relatively broad yes, but that doesn't actually make is useless.

Lord Raziere
2021-08-11, 03:47 PM
No Max, there really isn't. Not for me at least.

Why not just say RPG? Because its a complex activity and two terms are better than one. RPG also has to share with the computer game genre, and within the game with "roleplaying their character", which not everyone does to any significant degree, even when playing a roleplaying game. Can you see why a second term might might be useful after that sentence?


I think we need a term for the practice that isn't collaborative storytelling to better define what they do prefer since "not collaborative storytelling" isn't very helpful as a subset of roleplaying.

like there is clearly a backlash that likes the gambling aspect of roleplaying games IE, the risk. as well as want to see this naturalistic day to day interaction, that has no real path to it or anything.

so like.....fantasy life sandbox gambling? where you just go do whatever and whatever the dice roll they roll? its no style of roleplaying I've experienced but thats roughly what it seems to sound like: sandbox gambling, where you just in a setting, you do a thing and if it doesn't work out, too bad oh well, no real flourishes to make anything out of it other than what the players decide like someone going a random direction in Skyrim and seeing where they end up. maybe even tabletop roguelike gambling if the GM just generates randomly new things rather than use a prebuilt setting?

Boci
2021-08-11, 03:54 PM
I think we need a term for the practice that isn't collaborative storytelling to better define what they do prefer since "not collaborative storytelling" isn't very helpful as a subset of roleplaying.

like there is clearly a backlash that likes the gambling aspect of roleplaying games IE, the risk. as well as want to see this naturalistic day to day interaction, that has no real path to it or anything.

so like.....fantasy life sandbox gambling? where you just go do whatever and whatever the dice roll they roll? its no style of roleplaying I've experienced but thats roughly what it seems to sound like: sandbox gambling, where you just in a setting, you do a thing and if it doesn't work out, too bad oh well, no real flourishes to make anything out of it other than what the players decide like someone going a random direction in Skyrim and seeing where they end up. maybe even tabletop roguelike gambling if the GM just generates randomly new things rather than use a prebuilt setting?

Gambling is a very loaded term, and sandbox is very game-y already. Imagine telling someone new to D&D "the two major groups are "collaborative storytelling" and "fantasy life sandbox gambling". I can't help but think it going to sound like you're making fun of the second group. (And to me, that's still a story, the story of everyday life in a fantasy world, collectively crafted by group input.)

Tanarri used "adventure", (which again to me sounds a lot like a story), but if its different to them then that could be a useful term. "Adventure crafting" maybe?

"Old school roleplaying/adventures" could work too, though it might be a bit pre-mature for that, hard to measure the state of gaming as a whole.

Lord Raziere
2021-08-11, 04:00 PM
Gambling is a very loaded term, and sandbox is very game-y already. Imagine telling someone new to D&D "the two major groups are "collaborative storytelling" and "fantasy life sandbox gambling". I can't help but think it going to sound like you're making fun of the second group. (And to me, that's still a story, the story of everyday life in a fantasy world, collectively crafted by group input.)

Tanarri used "adventure", (which again to me sounds a lot like a story), but if its different to them then that could be a useful term. "Adventure crafting" maybe?

"Old school roleplaying/adventures" could work too, though it might be a bit pre-mature for that, hard to measure the state of gaming as a whole.

Yeah I can see that, I'm just trying to figure out what would work, sorry I'm not tactful in the ideas I throw at the wall, I just come up with as much ammunition as I can until something sticks.

Anonymouswizard
2021-08-11, 07:05 PM
So I'm not sure if I've really talked about it, but I tend to talk about things in terms of 'X Emulation'.

So Narrative Emulation cares about having a viable story structure with ups and downs and rising tension. Games do this in various ways, from metacurrency to reward mechanics. Character Emulation would be a focus on character arcs rather than narrative arcs.

World Emulation is where games like GURPS sit. It considers realism and consistency paramount, although not to the point of making gameplay unnecessarily unwieldy.

Now I don't claim that this is all encompassing, or even a proper theory of game design. But it's a model I personally find helpful, to begin with the premise 'all games emulate something, what is this system/campaign trying to recreate'.

But we're never going to find a set of terms that everybody likes. I thought 'fantasy life simulation sandbox' sounded like a great term for games on the extreme end of RPG openness.

Hytheter
2021-08-11, 09:13 PM
Tanarri used "adventure", (which again to me sounds a lot like a story)

If I loaded a backpack with supplies and went out into the woods in search of ancient ruins I would not be telling a story and it would be ridiculous to assert that I am. I might tell the story of my adventure when I get back, but the act of adventuring is not storytelling in its own right. Sure, there's a layer of separation in an RPG but you're still experiencing adventure rather than telling a story about it. A game of D&D is not inherently storytelling any more than a game of Minecraft is.

Cluedrew
2021-08-11, 09:17 PM
I would actually take the portentous advice even if its stupid (or just not my style) because it gives me a starting point from which to understand the system. And once I've figured it out and used it to figure other parts of the system out, I might decide the advice is stupid/not for me then don't use it.

For the storytelling stuff, I'm pretty sure this has more to do with what people mean by storytelling as opposed to how they approach role-playing games. And honestly I only actually want to know about the second. There are times when unpacking a term has helped me understand what people are saying (such as magic in caster/martial disparity threads) but this just doesn't seem like one of those times so why bother?

Lord Raziere
2021-08-11, 10:17 PM
If I loaded a backpack with supplies and went out into the woods in search of ancient ruins I would not be telling a story and it would be ridiculous to assert that I am. I might tell the story of my adventure when I get back, but the act of adventuring is not storytelling in its own right. Sure, there's a layer of separation in an RPG but you're still experiencing adventure rather than telling a story about it. A game of D&D is not inherently storytelling any more than a game of Minecraft is.

okay, to use videogame genre terms for this, that sounds like exploration/survival. like divorce DnD from any novel genre associations and you have turn-based strategy game in combat, a sandbox exploration/survival game when in the wilderness, roguelike elements if your rolling for loot and rolling for random encounters and random locations. That all checks out as "not a story".

its when you start getting into social encounters, intrigue and politics thats where the lines start to get blurry and you can't really say its entirely not a story, I feel. because the more people you include in a universe, the more story-based it is, its something weird I've noticed because if your playing like Antichamber there is no one around in this white void of puzzles and cube manipulation, its not considered a story, but if your playing Mass Effect full of characters and choices, that is considered a story, a plot and people feel emotions about how it ends. like to keep to videogames, visual novels where you do nothing but interact with characters through dialogue trees are considered entirely story based, while some a roguelike where nothing is explained and you just go, thats not considered story-like at all. so how much of a thing is a story might depend on how many people are around and how important interacting with people is. if your mostly using DnD for the exploration/puzzle/survival/combat aspect with little interaction with people, I think that would fairly not be a story.

its when you have to start caring about a kingdom and whether the vizier is evil or not and such and so forth, thats getting into something more storylike, because stories are inherently people-based.

so DnD at least I would term probably say.....a Proto-Videogame? not sure if any other ttrpgs would fit that classification though.

Melayl
2021-08-11, 10:35 PM
The point of an RPG is to have fun. However you and your group does that is right. However any other group does it is right, even if it is diametrically opposed to how your group has fun. Simple.

Hytheter
2021-08-11, 10:36 PM
its when you start getting into social encounters, intrigue and politics thats where the lines start to get blurry and you can't really say its entirely not a story, I feel.

{Scrubbed}

Lord Raziere
2021-08-11, 10:41 PM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

"My voters, of Generiplace, when I was but a boy....." *proceeds to tell life story to get votes, spinning it to make it sympathetic*
"Our founders of Generiplace when they..." *proceeds to tell story of how country was founded to back up their point to get more votes*
"We are at a time when...." *proceeds to tell a story about the present and how the future will end brighter if you vote for him*

Tanarii
2021-08-11, 11:12 PM
If I loaded a backpack with supplies and went out into the woods in search of ancient ruins I would not be telling a story and it would be ridiculous to assert that I am.
Exactly. Claiming otherwise is the same logic as "living the story of my life". That's fine if folks want to think that's what they're doing. But I certainly don't do that. I experience things, I don't live a story. And in RPGs, I experience the game, and I do my best play my character as if they are experiencing the fantasy environment, and when I run a game it is for the players to experience the game and I do my best to run the fantasy environment so their characters can experience it. Story has nothing to do with it.

Lord Raziere
2021-08-11, 11:19 PM
Exactly. Claiming otherwise is the same logic as "living the story of my life". That's fine if folks want to think that's what they're doing. But I certainly don't do that. I experience things, I don't live a story. And in RPGs, I experience the game, and I do my best play my character as if they are experiencing the fantasy environment, and when I run a game it is for the players to experience the game and their do my best to run the fantasy environment so their characters can experience it. Story has nothing to do with it.

Sure you can say that, and I can also claim that superpowers aren't magic just because they're not real. But people will still call them magic regardless.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-08-11, 11:21 PM
Sure you can say that, and I can also claim that superpowers aren't magic just because they're not real. But people will still call them magic regardless.

People can call anything anything. Doesn't make them right, or make those labels meaningful or useful. And to stretch "story" that far, you basically have to rob it of any real meaning and use.

Lord Raziere
2021-08-11, 11:34 PM
People can call anything anything. Doesn't make them right, or make those labels meaningful or useful. And to stretch "story" that far, you basically have to rob it of any real meaning and use.

Yeah but now your posing the opposite problem: you don't like how wide it is, but you lack any means to propose a way to limit it or define it better that won't step on the toes of someone who WANTS their thing to be telling a story, and just because they're not right, doesn't mean they're wrong. as for labels being meaningful or useful, well there are a lot of labels in our society that are not meaningful or useful because really a lot of them either refer to a spectrum of people that could belong to any number of sub-categories that they use as lingo to refer to each other, or refer to only one part of their life so you can't define people by it, while people are constantly questioning the labels and definitions of this and that, rewriting and renegotiating the boundaries to better suit their comfort. You act like these things are set in stone, when its constantly shifting. and whether is something isn't meaningful or useful to you, doesn't mean its not to others so your imposing YOUR subjective opinion on them by doing so.

Tanarii
2021-08-11, 11:52 PM
Sure you can say that, and I can also claim that superpowers aren't magic just because they're not real. But people will still call them magic regardless.
No. People don't get to tell me I'm living the story of my life. It's my life. I know how I'm living it.

Similarly, people don't get to tell me I'm collaboratively storytelling when I game. It's my game. I know how I'm running or playing it.

Don't tell me I'm doing either one wrong. Don't tell me I'm doing something I know I'm not. That's just rude.

Kraynic
2021-08-11, 11:59 PM
No. People don't get to tell me I'm living the story of my life. It's my life. I know how I'm living it.

Similarly, people don't get to tell me I'm collaboratively storytelling when I game. It's my game. I know how I'm running or playing it.

Don't tell me I'm doing either one wrong. Don't tell me I'm doing something I know I'm not. That's just rude.

Where did anyone tell you that you were doing either one wrong? Has someone told you in this thread that you are living your life wrong? And I guarantee you that anyone with any sort of writing skill could create a story from your life. Does that offend you somehow? If so, why?

Lord Raziere
2021-08-12, 12:12 AM
No. People don't get to tell me I'm living the story of my life. It's my life. I know how I'm living it.

Similarly, people don't get to tell me I'm collaboratively storytelling when I game. It's my game. I know how I'm running or playing it.

Don't tell me I'm doing either one wrong. Don't tell me I'm doing something I know I'm not. That's just rude.

And you can say that, its valid. I never said it wasn't.

Your just going to have to live with the fact that people aren't going to stop expressing the opinion that things are stories in general. All people can really do about that is not talk about it in your presence, and your going to have to say that to a lot of people if you think this is important enough to keep reminding them about it constantly. which seems like a lot of work for what is essentially "is a cheeseburger a sandwich or not?" but with tabletop roleplaying. expressing an opinion about it is one thing but forever kvetching about it until the horse is dead and beaten into the ground is another. there is a point where someone who thinks they're expressing an opinion against something only gets the responses they dread because they express their opinion so strongly and seek out situations to express that opinion on topics where its relevant and thus attract the very people that hold that opposite the opinion who are most likely to make the responses they don't want and even worse are new people who you have spoken to before and have to be explained to them all over again, and thus becomes more self-fulfilling prophecy than a coincidental defense. seems a bit self-defeating if you ask me.

Tanarii
2021-08-12, 01:23 AM
Where did anyone tell you that you were doing either one wrong? Has someone told you in this thread that you are living your life wrong? Every time someone insists that I'm collaborative storytelling when I play an RPG, or living my life is a story, when I'm very clear I am doing neither. They insist they can tell me what I'm doing, in the face of my very clear statements otherwise.


And I guarantee you that anyone with any sort of writing skill could create a story from your life. Does that offend you somehow? If so, why?
After the fact storytelling of experience is irrelevant to my point about the actual experience. That doesn't offend me.

Boci
2021-08-12, 02:10 AM
Every time someone insists that I'm collaborative storytelling when I play an RPG, or living my life is a story, when I'm very clear I am doing neither. They insist they can tell me what I'm doing, in the face of my very clear statements otherwise.

Because they have a different definition of storytelling to you. If they think "playing D&D" constitutes "collaborative storytelling", then yeah, you're not going to convince them otherwise by "nahuh, I'm not". But neither are they saying you're playing the game wrong, they just have a different definition of what "storytelling" entails.


A game of D&D is not inherently storytelling any more than a game of Minecraft is.

I disagree. Your character typically isn't named in Minecraft, and your actions aren't covered as sequence of events by group input. Those are two very important differences.

If a group of friend played minecraft with named characters and verbally mapped out their actions as a coherent sequence of events, I might consider that a form of storytelling.

Kymme
2021-08-12, 02:53 AM
I wish that the Dungeon Master's Guide had taught me to be honest and open with my players. For the longest time I felt like the proper way to run games was to do my dice rolls behind a screen, to steer the plot in secret, to respond 'yes, and..' to everything the players said while trying to shape things along the path I wanted rather than just... telling my players about the things I wanted. "Hey, I have an idea for this NPC, so I think it'd be cool if y'all talked to them." "Hey, I wrote up this cool dungeon today so I'd be super happy if the session today could be about exploring it." The approach I was conditioned to use was things like 'whichever NPC the players get attached to has this plot hook' or 'either road the players take leads to the set-piece you've written.' I think things like that contributed to some pretty toxic habits in my GMing.

I wish that the Dungeon Master's Guide had taught me to ask questions more. I wish that I'd learned to put more power in my players hands, to play by the same rules as them. To as them things like "Who was the person you hated most in your hometown?" or "Have you ever been here before?" or even gimmes like "What was the wizard who taught you magic like?" I feel like if I'd given my players more agency over the game, if that was something the DMG had normalized for me, then I wouldn't have ended up with games and groups collapsing due to adversarialism between me and my players, my friends.

Honestly, I never really needed those sections about adjudicating Death-From-Massive-Damage or Underwater Combat. I think I could have used more advice about how to communicate with my players. I know, now that I've read things like Masks and Mouseguard and Blades in the Dark, that those are things that could have been incorporated into the DMG, into the system of the game. But they weren't, and that's led to a lot of frustration and bad experiences for me.

Sometimes I think about the future, and get my hopes up that the DMG for 6th Edition might include stuff like Apocalypse World's MC moves and principles. Things that give DMs some rules to play by is the sort of thing that I bet a lot of future players would really appreciate.

Glorthindel
2021-08-12, 03:42 AM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

For someone claiming you aren't telling him he is wrong, you are spending a lot of time making posts, making sure to re-iterate in every one that you think he is wrong. That is trying to impose your preference.

Boci
2021-08-12, 04:11 AM
For someone claiming you aren't telling him he is wrong, you are spending a lot of time making posts, making sure to re-iterate in every one that you think he is wrong. That is trying to impose your preference.

Yeah, its annoying being baseless accused of something, so I will refute it. Its also fascinating how it can happen, despite never telling max to do anything differently, and repeatedly telling him to go on playing the game the same way he currently is.

So let me ask you then, what is my preference that I am imposing on Max? What exactly I am expecting of him that is unreasonable? Because remember, I haven't told him to do anything different, so....

Xervous
2021-08-12, 06:28 AM
By featuring a story does that inherently make the focus of an activity be storytelling? Being able to use a system for storytelling only tells us that storytelling is a subset of the functions a system can serve. Would it be a stretch to say a storytelling system is one that is overwhelmingly structured to provide for storytelling as a goal, rather than a byproduct of other modes of entertainment?

Boci
2021-08-12, 06:49 AM
By featuring a story does that inherently make the focus of an activity be storytelling?

No, and I never said otherwise. That's rather the problem, people seem to imagine any promotion of the "collaborative storytelling" must come with an ulterior motive, whenever in reality I just feel "Tabletop RPGs are a form of collaborative stoorytelling" has a nice ring to it.

Xervous
2021-08-12, 06:55 AM
No, and I never said otherwise. That's rather the problem, people seem to imagine any promotion of the "collaborative storytelling" must come with an ulterior motive, whenever in reality I just feel "Tabletop RPGs are a form of collaborative stoorytelling" has a nice ring to it.

So if it is not always the focus the better phrasing could be “Tabletop RPGs can be a form of collaborative storytelling”. Sprinkle in qualifiers like ‘are frequently’ to taste.

Boci
2021-08-12, 07:00 AM
So if it is not always the focus the better phrasing could be “Tabletop RPGs can be a form of collaborative storytelling”. Sprinkle in qualifiers like ‘are frequently’ to taste.

I didn't say not always. I said it didn't "inherently make the focus of an activity be storytelling" (or rather, you said that and i agreed), but whether its the focus of the activity or not, a D&D campaign is still a story in my books. No change necessary, keep playing however you play, I just classify it as a story.

Glorthindel
2021-08-12, 08:07 AM
I didn't say not always. I said it didn't "inherently make the focus of an activity be storytelling" (or rather, you said that and i agreed), but whether its the focus of the activity or not, a D&D campaign is still a story in my books. No change necessary, keep playing however you play, I just classify it as a story.

..........


For someone claiming you aren't telling him he is wrong, you are spending a lot of time making posts, making sure to re-iterate in every one that you think he is wrong. That is trying to impose your preference.

Boci
2021-08-12, 08:15 AM
..........

"I classify a D&D campaign as a story" is not me "impose your preference on someone else", unless of course you've redefined impose and/or preference to mean something else.

{Scrubbed}

Quixotic1
2021-08-12, 08:35 AM
I would rather not game at all, would rather never sit down at another table with character and notes and dice again, than take part in "collective storytelling". The last game of D&D I ran involved one member each of three nomadic tribes, brought together to look into a serious threat. There were elements of survival, exploration, diplomacy and puzzle-solving. At no point did any of the players have control over anything beyond their characters. At no point did they take any action due to motivations beyond their character's. At no point did I change events or present aspects of the game "for the sake of the story".

From what I understand, this game seems to fit your style of play, where you're interested in verisimilitude and not the plot arc, etc. Does that seem accurate? And if so, that would lead me to understand that you do not consider a game like the above to be "collaborative storytelling".
Did I get that right?

(Not trying to set up some weird logical trap here or anything. Genuinely want to understand.)

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-12, 09:04 AM
Yeah, its annoying being baseless accused of something, so I will refute it. Its also fascinating how it can happen, despite never telling max to do anything differently, and repeatedly telling him to go on playing the game the same way he currently is.

So let me ask you then, what is my preference that I am imposing on Max? What exactly I am expecting of him that is unreasonable? Because remember, I haven't told him to do anything different, so....


Yeah, it must really suck to be told over and over that you're doing something no matter how much you know you're not.

Boci
2021-08-12, 09:07 AM
Yeah, it must really suck to be told over and over that you're doing something no matter how much you know you're not.

Nice try, but an accusation and a definition are different. You're free to say you don't do storytelling, but I'm free to consider all RPG campaigns to fall under the blanket of storytelling as I understand the concept. And you accuse of enforcing my personal preference on others for having a certain understanding of term and requiring that I change then, then you are in fact the one enforcing your personal preference on others.

This could have been a productive discussion about difference in understanding of the term storytelling and how, if at all, that influence DMing and playing styles. {Scrubbed}

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-12, 09:17 AM
The last game of D&D I ran involved one member each of three nomadic tribes, brought together to look into a serious threat. There were elements of survival, exploration, diplomacy and puzzle-solving. At no point did any of the players have control over anything beyond their characters. At no point did they take any action due to motivations beyond their character's. At no point did I change events or present aspects of the game "for the sake of the story".

From what I understand, this game seems to fit your style of play, where you're interested in verisimilitude and not the plot arc, etc. Does that seem accurate? And if so, that would lead me to understand that you do not consider a game like the above to be "collaborative storytelling".
Did I get that right?

(Not trying to set up some weird logical trap here or anything. Genuinely want to understand.)


That is a fair assessment.


To give an example of the sort of thing I don't want, that I consider an example of actual "collaborative storytelling"... there's FFG's funny-dice Star Wars system. It features some abilities that are specifically what I'd call "player powers"... they give the player a specific "character thematic" way to affect the world entirely outside any action or awareness of their character. For example, one "class" has an ability to say "this technological thing fails, breaks, or malfunctions in X way, because of Y thing I'm adding to the world/'story', even retroactively."

So the player can fire off this ability, and say that the bounty hunter chasing can't get his ship to start, or the hyperdrive won't engage, because the bounty hunter decided to use dodgy refurb parts last time the ship was worked on. Doesn't matter what sort of character the bounty hunter is, doesn't matter what condition the ship is actually in, doesn't matter that this has nothing to do with the PC's knowledge or actions... the player gets to impose all of this incoherent retcon on the NPC, the ship, the parts, the people who did the work, etc.

Boci
2021-08-12, 09:21 AM
That is a fair assessment.

But what if people like me do consider what Quixotic1 described to be "collaborative storytelling"? If it possible that maybe they're not trying insult you then when they consider you doing "collaborative storytelling" when you play the game, because their definition is much broader?

Because I don't know what Quixotic1 considers it, but I would classify that as "collaborative storytelling".

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-12, 09:22 AM
Nice try, but an accusation and a definition are different. You're free to say you don't do storytelling, but I'm free to consider all RPG campaigns to fall under the blanket of storytelling as I understand the concept. And you accuse of enforcing my personal preference on others for having a certain understanding of term and requiring that I change then, then you are in fact the one enforcing your personal preference on others.

This could have been a productive discussion about difference in understanding of the term storytelling and how, if at all, that influence DMing and playing styles. {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}


If the accusation were baseless, you wouldn't keep doing the exact thing you're accused of.

You are vehemently insisting that people are doing something that they keep trying to explain to you that they are not doing, and then doubling down by acting like YOU'RE being wronged by having that pointed out to you.

Hiding behind "but it's just a definition" doesn't change that.



But what if people like me do consider what Quixotic1 described to be "collaborative storytelling"? If it possible that maybe they're not trying insult you then when they consider you doing "collaborative storytelling" when you play the game, because their definition is much broader?

Then you're wrong, and your definition is so broad as to tell us nothing and describe nothing.

And no matter WHY you're doing it, every time you call what we do "collaborative storytelling", you're being insulting, because you are insisting we have an intent and thought-process that we keep telling you that we do not have -- you are insisting that you know more about what is going on in our heads than we do.

You cannot simultaneously argue that your claimed lack of intent to insult us matters, while also claiming that our lack of intent to engage in telling/crafting/collaborating on story in our RPGs doesn't matter.

Boci
2021-08-12, 09:25 AM
If the accusation were baseless, you wouldn't keep doing the exact thing you're accused of.

Correct, and I haven't done it once. You keep claiming I have, but {Scrubbed} I've never told you to do anything different, so clearly I'm not enforcing any personal preference on you {Scrubbed}

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-12, 09:29 AM
Correct, and I haven't done it once. You keep claiming I have, but {Scrub the post, scrub the quote} I've never told you to do anything different, so clearly I'm not enforcing any personal preference on you{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

You keep telling us that we are doing something that we are not doing, no matter how much or how we try to tell you that we are not.

{Scrubbed}

Glorthindel
2021-08-12, 09:29 AM
So let me ask you then, what is my preference that I am imposing on Max?
You're free to say you don't do storytelling, but I'm free to consider all RPG campaigns to fall under the blanket of storytelling

Which is you saying "tough luck, your game is storytelling, because I say so". If you said "Every time I play an RPG, I am telling a story", that's all fine, because you are free to say you are doing whatever you doing, but the second you say "all", you are telling someone else they are doing something, which when they have specifically, catagorically told you they are not, is crossing a line.


This could have been a productive discussion about difference in understanding of the term storytelling and how, if at all, that influence DMing and playing styles.{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

{Scrubbed} your very first post in this thread was, "But by your own admission, it is a story" in response to Max saying "I really wish that I could go a week of reading gaming discussions without someone telling me that no matter what I think, feel, or enjoy, my gaming is inherently collaborative storytelling" {Scrubbed}

Boci
2021-08-12, 09:35 AM
Which is you saying "tough luck, your game is storytelling, because I say so".

No I'm not, I'm saying I consider it storytelling, I never claimed what I consider shapes reality.

Let's look at it another way: If you consider chess a sport, then that likely means other playing chess are also playing a sport, because that what your view entails. If someone doesn't consider chess a sport, you're not saying they're doing wrong, you just disagree with them on whether or not its a sport.

Or Lord Raziere's "Is a cheeseburger a sandwitch?"

Same with storytelling and RPGs. We can agree to disagree on whether or not all RPGs can be consider storytelling. There's no need for one side play the victim.


You keep telling us that we are doing something that we are not doing, no matter how much or how we try to tell you that we are not.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}.

No its not Max, its how a personal take or definition works. See the chess example above. Two people can just have different takes on the scope of a concept.

Max_Killjoy
2021-08-12, 09:47 AM
Except that in this case, it's people re-defining (via assertion, not actual preponderance of use) words to mean other things, and then claiming that they always meant those things and your preference is not only invalid but is actually inherently impossible. And I'm much more sympathetic to story-based gaming than many of those most affected.

It's an argument by definition (define story to include everything, then of course everything's about story). It's not even a "hey, I prefer games to be about story, can we shift in that direction" and gaining popular support for it, it's "your games have always been about story and any attempt to say otherwise is an abuse of language and you can't do that and your preference is bad". And yes, that latter is exactly badfunwrong, which is a problem independent of whether someone likes story in gaming or not.




Which is you saying "tough luck, your game is storytelling, because I say so". If you said "Every time I play an RPG, I am telling a story", that's all fine, because you are free to say you are doing whatever you doing, but the second you say "all", you are telling someone else they are doing something, which when they have specifically, catagorically told you they are not, is crossing a line.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote} your very first post in this thread was, "But by your own admission, it is a story" in response to Max saying "I really wish that I could go a week of reading gaming discussions without someone telling me that no matter what I think, feel, or enjoy, my gaming is inherently collaborative storytelling" {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}


Thank you both for trying explain more eloquently than I can right now.

{Scrubbed}

The basic principle here is that they don't get to decide what my internal experience is, no matter how much they insist their own personal definition lets them.

{Scrubbed}

truemane
2021-08-12, 10:22 AM
Metamagic Mod: thread permanently closed.