over 40 years as a GM. I reduced the character sheet to a 3×5 index card. I am running a mixed version of D&D (Ad&d, 3.5 and 5e). 6 months into the campaign and I have yet to bring a single rule book or module. and NO - I don't have the rules memorized. simply make a decision and keep playing!
Haha, good old SPI - by the time you played Terrible Swift Sword and North African Campaign, you had earned your master's degree in War-gaming. D&D can easily at that point for me. The nice thing is that if you have a good group, everyone is responsible for their own skills and abilities and the GM is responsible for the overall flow. I think having a good grasp of Combat is essential.
Great video, K.R.. I run a lot of "Intro to" games for players new to a TTPRG system (as you know), and in those cases I feel like I should know most of the basics of the game, because the new players will ask me questions and I don't want to have to stopp and look up every answer. But I don't know all the rules, and ultimately i'll make reasonable rulings in games to facilitate the flow of the story.
'Pretty much the only rules a player needs to know are:' Modifiers & how they are created by the stat system your DM uses, the different Dice used & how/when to roll them, their character's racial benefits, and the general Social Contract rules. 'As a DM:' You just need to know those same things I mentioned above and the general/basic details of the campaign. Everything else as long as everyone is having fun & being respectful then there aren't any other rules that need to be truly known.
@@DDHomebrew Yep; years ago in High School me and a couple other people I sort of knew tried to play D&D 3.5e, we just had the Player's Handbook and some Dice from Yahtzee and some notebook paper. We ended up "playing" the game but without any real rules or structure. Yet it was still fun.
Great vid sir Totally agree I came back to the hobby only in the last 3 years and due to the shear amount of games to look at and not really too keen on 5e i decided to write my own game. This helped me to refresh rules from my og game of adnd, and help me memorize my own games rules, very light comparatively, but still helped. Even still, i do have to have references to my own game guide as even durimg a game i may gap and forget something. Part of the fun of playing. Cheers Keep em rollin
So glad you are back playing RPGs and very impressed you've developed your own game! And it interesting that you have to check your own rules once in a while.
@@DDHomebrew ty its not that impressive lol, simple rules for my old brain, basically all of my homebrew re-organized with my own dice mechanic mods, i can send ya a copy if yer curious, nothing fancy :)
A Player should know the mechanics and rules for playing, specifically including those for his character. The GM needs to know the rules enough to run an encounter, resolve things and make rulings that apporximate the intent of the rules. Outside of a simulation or tournament, the rulings should be enough, the narrative and immersion at the table more vital than looking for a rule and its precision.
And that is so much less than having to know every rule off the top of your head. And it could be argued that not knowing every rule helps with role play and immersion.
i had a player once complain there was too much reading on just dnd beyond to make his character (hes just pure lazy),, so i told him well if you wont read that then unfortuanlty im too lazy to prep a game for you
his only excuse was 'but i dont like reading' so i told him, this is a reading based game you moron, your knew all of this before you joined (he did ,hed been asking to join for months, had flicked throught the books and been asking consantly that he wants to join he argued about almost every rule but would read the book to check. we send 45 mins arguing over a fireball radius, he was deteremed it was too big, even though we were using officalmaps and offuical spell templates you dont want to do a small amout of reading but you expcet me to bu reaqd and learn all this stuff, ( he would alwasy say stuff like, you need more minis and more maps etc, it would look cool if ive spent a fortune and time on this for you then you'll read EVERYTHING I BLOODY TELL YOU TO eventually i shut donw that whole campaign, mostly becaue of that one player
The average rule book of modern wargames sit between 25-40 pages. The only thing that makes the rules stick is playing the same game over and over again. You will eventually pick it up. Do you need to know them when you first get started? No but you should be picking them up after several plays. As far as TTRPGs go you absolutely need to know how the game works otherwise the game isn't going to function. You should know the ins and outs of the core mechanics of the game to run it. Obviously its nice if you know obscure rules that cover swimming or underwater combat but if you never do either you won't know that. I expect the game master to have a good grasp of the entire system and if not I am seeking another game.
I get it. I have a "basic mastery" of what I think is essential to play. But if you're looking for an expert to be the GM or forget it I understand. Just don't forget; they could be looking for expert players only and not want anyone else at their table!
@@DDHomebrew I'm the forever game master. Either I know the rules or I do not. I try to learn the system to be able to run the games. As far as wanting expert players goes I would rather have a group of players who are there to have a good time, won't bicker with each other, and doesn't bring in outside baggage to ruin the game over expert players. I address all of that in a session 0 and whoever doesn't agree never gets asked back. Expertise comes with playing.
@@nordicmaelstrom4714 As I said in the video, I love having players who know the rules better than me playing when I GM, but I probably should have added that I have to know them enough to run a game with players who only have a basic knowledge.
RAW, rules as written. Yeah, back in the day of AD&D dealing with people, if there aren't written stats for a creature character class you can't do that. Along with limitations on multiclassing and non-human class levels. Even Ed Greenwood and Gayxz said/printed in the DMG, the rules are mere suggestions. I blame in on the Usa school system and religion, the book can only be interrupted a given way. If you are not doing this way, then you are wrong and can't play. Then WotC 3e D&D/Star Wars came out. Lol, how long does it take for a PC to gain 7levels or reach a 9th-level PC ? 4years for Luke Skywalker to become a 2nd-level Fringer/7th-level Jedi guardian. But his green lightsaber shows he is more a Jedi councilor than a guardian in nature. Problem from AD&D that went into WotC and now current D&D. Old editions had limitations on nonhumans in class development. If you do away with those limitation what makes humans .. special .. in the campaign setting. Or current problem as now everything is just a human with a video game skin throw on top of it. I blame it on religion, B.s. patriotic borderline nationalism and snowflake culture of everyone is .. special .. What makes being an American special than the rest of the world. Or the B.s. cancel culture where if you are not in this or that group with their group think, you are not .. special. It carries over into gaming involving .. rules, .. CANON .. limitations what you can or can't do. What .. FITs .. the campaign setting. AD&D, players couldn't Role play giants because there were NO printed books on rules for RPG giants. WotC3e everything nonhuman took hard hit to their skill points/ranks. To a point giants had no skill craft talent to create their own equipment. " Thats not how giants are listed in the monster manual, you can't do that ! " Gate keeping players to DM or back and forth. D&D or any RPG is abstract dice game, being a tactical wargame or not. In regard to tactical wargaming, over the years getting to hear, .. " .. THAT ... IS .. NOT .. HOW .. PHYSICS .. WORK ..!" Or the current Official edition .. canon .. book of the game setting doesn't allow spaceships to be built that way. So I just tell people, " I don't play games with teenagers under thirty years of age. I just turned 48 this month. How did I get .. old .. ? Hope you had a good weekend.
Very knowledgeable history of the game here. It has been fascinating to watch the culture of RPGs change with the culture in general. More players means more points of view and being accommodating to those views. The "rough and tumble" world that we grew up in is gone, and I used that phrase because that's what my Dad used to say about the world he grew up in compared to mine! Every generation feels the same way. So you adapt or get out of the way I guess.
main easy thing for a new dm, to thinkof most time all you need to do is pick a skill and think of a number conice someone lets go 14 sokmekind of soial skiil combat, just pik a number for enemys defense (Ac) or probably the most usefull thing ive learnt froim any ttrpg, . Blades in the dark we donty even need to say waht skill to use, more often than not instead of saying, ' Give me an Athletics check' ill say sure just roll for it and you tell me what skill your using, as long as it make sense why not, often i have aplayer use perfomance instead of acrobatics or deception,s and the=ir reasons was 'circus performances coud do the same , or acting is lying, so perfrormace would work sure, makes sense to me
The rules exist to support your roleplay. Really if you’re using rules it’s because you have run into something which can’t be determined through roleplay. Even in combat though roleplay should come first.
You can make combat way more interesting if you include elements of role play, instead of just the "roll initiative, hack until one side is dead" approach.
@@DDHomebrew initiative in D&D is unfortunately one of those rules that immediately breaks immersion. If you dump it and wait for players to decide what their characters are doing first it makes a lot more sense than tracking initiative. Most roleplaying games actually don’t have any equivalent especially second gen roleplaying games.
@@WhimsicalArtisan It's always interesting when you see a system (Shadow of the Demon Lord, Dungeon World, Burning Wheel, etc.) that doesn't use conventional intiative. Of course, that alone doesn't make them perfect, but they do give a different perspective.
Initiative in 5e is especially worthless as it’s really just there so players without much roleplaying experience can have board game like “turns” they can take. It’s hard to explain what I mean but the combat in D&D is basically a mini game where you get your players to behave. If you listen to a real roleplaying troupe like red moon you’ll notice that when playing 5e combat encounters are short often lack initiative rolls and always involve roleplaying the actions of the characters not just calling out what spell you cast. Games that came after D&D don’t have this problem.
@@WhimsicalArtisan I think it comes from the miniature wargames that the D&D orginators played, where one side moves, then the other, then one side shoots and so on. There might have been rounds of reactive fire, but you still always had the "you shoot at me, resolve damage and morale effects, now I shoot at you" system. Then it became part of the DNA of the RPG system, but certainly doesn't have to.
Dungeon Master since 1984 here. You need rules for consistency, yes. You just don't need A LOT of them to play what is essentially make-believe aided by dice. A complete RPG you can campaign with for decades can easily fit into a 32 or 64 page book. Look into OSR.
I only GM rules light games nowadays. I like them more and learning them is less investment and therefore it’s easy to try something new.
I think it's where RPG's are headed.
over 40 years as a GM. I reduced the character sheet to a 3×5 index card.
I am running a mixed version of D&D (Ad&d, 3.5 and 5e). 6 months into the campaign and I have yet to bring a single rule book or module.
and NO - I don't have the rules memorized.
simply make a decision and keep playing!
I love this kind of story. An old master at work.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, you bring a pragmatic wisdom that I appreciate so much. Thanks for another excellent video!
Glad I can help your game!
Haha, good old SPI - by the time you played Terrible Swift Sword and North African Campaign, you had earned your master's degree in War-gaming. D&D can easily at that point for me. The nice thing is that if you have a good group, everyone is responsible for their own skills and abilities and the GM is responsible for the overall flow. I think having a good grasp of Combat is essential.
I do as well, and fortunately it's not that hard to pick up, as compared to every nuance of every character, spell and monster.
Great video, K.R.. I run a lot of "Intro to" games for players new to a TTPRG system (as you know), and in those cases I feel like I should know most of the basics of the game, because the new players will ask me questions and I don't want to have to stopp and look up every answer. But I don't know all the rules, and ultimately i'll make reasonable rulings in games to facilitate the flow of the story.
💯 Exactly.
'Pretty much the only rules a player needs to know are:' Modifiers & how they are created by the stat system your DM uses, the different Dice used & how/when to roll them, their character's racial benefits, and the general Social Contract rules.
'As a DM:' You just need to know those same things I mentioned above and the general/basic details of the campaign.
Everything else as long as everyone is having fun & being respectful then there aren't any other rules that need to be truly known.
Agreed. You have to know some, but not all. And don't get upset if the group can't find a rule. Just make a ruling and move on.
@@DDHomebrew Yep; years ago in High School me and a couple other people I sort of knew tried to play D&D 3.5e, we just had the Player's Handbook and some Dice from Yahtzee and some notebook paper. We ended up "playing" the game but without any real rules or structure. Yet it was still fun.
@@morrigankasa570 Amazing how much fun we had knowing only a little bit. Loads of imagination!
@@DDHomebrew Yep, as usual this was a nice video & keep up the good work.
@@morrigankasa570 I will!
The rules are a guideline
As long as everyone is happy and having fun, it’s all good
There you go. My video in a nutshell!
Great vid sir
Totally agree
I came back to the hobby only in the last 3 years and due to the shear amount of games to look at and not really too keen on 5e i decided to write my own game. This helped me to refresh rules from my og game of adnd, and help me memorize my own games rules, very light comparatively, but still helped. Even still, i do have to have references to my own game guide as even durimg a game i may gap and forget something. Part of the fun of playing. Cheers
Keep em rollin
So glad you are back playing RPGs and very impressed you've developed your own game! And it interesting that you have to check your own rules once in a while.
@@DDHomebrew more like old age makes me check lol
@@swordsnstones Me too.
@@DDHomebrew ty its not that impressive lol, simple rules for my old brain, basically all of my homebrew re-organized with my own dice mechanic mods, i can send ya a copy if yer curious, nothing fancy :)
@@swordsnstones Sure. The email is in the channel description tab.
A Player should know the mechanics and rules for playing, specifically including those for his character. The GM needs to know the rules enough to run an encounter, resolve things and make rulings that apporximate the intent of the rules. Outside of a simulation or tournament, the rulings should be enough, the narrative and immersion at the table more vital than looking for a rule and its precision.
And that is so much less than having to know every rule off the top of your head. And it could be argued that not knowing every rule helps with role play and immersion.
i had a player once complain there was too much reading on just dnd beyond to make his character (hes just pure lazy),, so i told him
well if you wont read that then unfortuanlty im too lazy to prep a game for you
@@lanxreedalenlum3706 Problem solved!
his only excuse was 'but i dont like reading'
so i told him, this is a reading based game you moron, your knew all of this before you joined (he did ,hed been asking to join for months, had flicked throught the books and been asking consantly that he wants to join
he argued about almost every rule but would read the book to check. we send 45 mins arguing over a fireball radius, he was deteremed it was too big, even though we were using officalmaps and offuical spell templates
you dont want to do a small amout of reading but you expcet me to bu reaqd and learn all this stuff, ( he would alwasy say stuff like, you need more minis and more maps etc, it would look cool
if ive spent a fortune and time on this for you then you'll read EVERYTHING I BLOODY TELL YOU TO
eventually i shut donw that whole campaign, mostly becaue of that one player
The average rule book of modern wargames sit between 25-40 pages. The only thing that makes the rules stick is playing the same game over and over again. You will eventually pick it up. Do you need to know them when you first get started? No but you should be picking them up after several plays. As far as TTRPGs go you absolutely need to know how the game works otherwise the game isn't going to function. You should know the ins and outs of the core mechanics of the game to run it. Obviously its nice if you know obscure rules that cover swimming or underwater combat but if you never do either you won't know that. I expect the game master to have a good grasp of the entire system and if not I am seeking another game.
I get it. I have a "basic mastery" of what I think is essential to play. But if you're looking for an expert to be the GM or forget it I understand. Just don't forget; they could be looking for expert players only and not want anyone else at their table!
@@DDHomebrew I'm the forever game master. Either I know the rules or I do not. I try to learn the system to be able to run the games. As far as wanting expert players goes I would rather have a group of players who are there to have a good time, won't bicker with each other, and doesn't bring in outside baggage to ruin the game over expert players. I address all of that in a session 0 and whoever doesn't agree never gets asked back. Expertise comes with playing.
@@nordicmaelstrom4714 As I said in the video, I love having players who know the rules better than me playing when I GM, but I probably should have added that I have to know them enough to run a game with players who only have a basic knowledge.
RAW, rules as written.
Yeah, back in the day of AD&D dealing with people, if there aren't written stats for a creature character class you can't do that. Along with limitations on multiclassing and non-human class levels. Even Ed Greenwood and Gayxz said/printed in the DMG, the rules are mere suggestions. I blame in on the Usa school system and religion, the book can only be interrupted a given way. If you are not doing this way, then you are wrong and can't play.
Then WotC 3e D&D/Star Wars came out.
Lol, how long does it take for a PC to gain 7levels or reach a 9th-level PC ?
4years for Luke Skywalker to become a 2nd-level Fringer/7th-level Jedi guardian. But his green lightsaber shows he is more a Jedi councilor than a guardian in nature.
Problem from AD&D that went into WotC and now current D&D.
Old editions had limitations on nonhumans in class development. If you do away with those limitation what makes humans .. special .. in the campaign setting. Or current problem as now everything is just a human with a video game skin throw on top of it.
I blame it on religion, B.s. patriotic borderline nationalism and snowflake culture of everyone is .. special .. What makes being an American special than the rest of the world.
Or the B.s. cancel culture where if you are not in this or that group with their group think, you are not .. special.
It carries over into gaming involving .. rules, .. CANON .. limitations what you can or can't do.
What .. FITs .. the campaign setting.
AD&D, players couldn't Role play giants because there were NO printed books on rules for RPG giants.
WotC3e everything nonhuman took hard hit to their skill points/ranks. To a point giants had no skill craft talent to create their own equipment.
" Thats not how giants are listed in the monster manual, you can't do that ! "
Gate keeping players to DM or back and forth.
D&D or any RPG is abstract dice game, being a tactical wargame or not. In regard to tactical wargaming, over the years getting to hear, ..
" .. THAT ... IS .. NOT .. HOW .. PHYSICS .. WORK ..!"
Or the current Official edition .. canon .. book of the game setting doesn't allow spaceships to be built that way.
So I just tell people, " I don't play games with teenagers under thirty years of age.
I just turned 48 this month.
How did I get .. old .. ?
Hope you had a good weekend.
Very knowledgeable history of the game here. It has been fascinating to watch the culture of RPGs change with the culture in general. More players means more points of view and being accommodating to those views. The "rough and tumble" world that we grew up in is gone, and I used that phrase because that's what my Dad used to say about the world he grew up in compared to mine! Every generation feels the same way. So you adapt or get out of the way I guess.
main easy thing for a new dm, to thinkof
most time all you need to do is pick a skill and think of a number
conice someone lets go 14 sokmekind of soial skiil
combat, just pik a number for enemys defense (Ac)
or
probably the most usefull thing ive learnt froim any ttrpg, . Blades in the dark
we donty even need to say waht skill to use,
more often than not instead of saying,
' Give me an Athletics check'
ill say
sure just roll for it and you tell me what skill your using, as long as it make sense why not,
often i have aplayer use perfomance instead of acrobatics or deception,s and the=ir reasons was
'circus performances coud do the same , or acting is lying, so perfrormace would work
sure, makes sense to me
This is the direction that many modern systems are going.
The rules exist to support your roleplay. Really if you’re using rules it’s because you have run into something which can’t be determined through roleplay. Even in combat though roleplay should come first.
You can make combat way more interesting if you include elements of role play, instead of just the "roll initiative, hack until one side is dead" approach.
@@DDHomebrew initiative in D&D is unfortunately one of those rules that immediately breaks immersion. If you dump it and wait for players to decide what their characters are doing first it makes a lot more sense than tracking initiative. Most roleplaying games actually don’t have any equivalent especially second gen roleplaying games.
@@WhimsicalArtisan It's always interesting when you see a system (Shadow of the Demon Lord, Dungeon World, Burning Wheel, etc.) that doesn't use conventional intiative. Of course, that alone doesn't make them perfect, but they do give a different perspective.
Initiative in 5e is especially worthless as it’s really just there so players without much roleplaying experience can have board game like “turns” they can take. It’s hard to explain what I mean but the combat in D&D is basically a mini game where you get your players to behave. If you listen to a real roleplaying troupe like red moon you’ll notice that when playing 5e combat encounters are short often lack initiative rolls and always involve roleplaying the actions of the characters not just calling out what spell you cast. Games that came after D&D don’t have this problem.
@@WhimsicalArtisan I think it comes from the miniature wargames that the D&D orginators played, where one side moves, then the other, then one side shoots and so on. There might have been rounds of reactive fire, but you still always had the "you shoot at me, resolve damage and morale effects, now I shoot at you" system. Then it became part of the DNA of the RPG system, but certainly doesn't have to.
Why buy a book then? Just make stuff up
Dungeon Master since 1984 here. You need rules for consistency, yes. You just don't need A LOT of them to play what is essentially make-believe aided by dice. A complete RPG you can campaign with for decades can easily fit into a 32 or 64 page book. Look into OSR.
@@rayortiz313 most actual rules fit in that limit. Pathfinder 2e is 60 pages of actual rules. I don't like this notion you don't need the rules
You do need some. You just don't have to worry about knowing everyone.
And we did it years ago.
And I use those rules. People get intimidated by the other pages.