Professional DMs Suck, and it's Our Fault
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ก.พ. 2023
- We suck.
That's right. I'm going pro. Daddy needs a new pair of backdrop lights, and a real camera... and an anti-pop mic.
And I gotta pay for this hoppin' new computer my wife bought for me because marriage is funny that way.
Wanna play D&D with a Grumpy Old Grognard? Here's your chance!
startplaying.games/gm/grumpyo...
Anyway...
Click bait titles aside... Let's talk about professional DMs, the damage they're doing to the hobby, and what we as players and DMs can do about it.
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The most valuable strategy I learnt as a player is to keep the GM entertained. If they are on board with what you want to do you will succeed pretty much all of the time.
I still remember when I first encountered this concept. Dragon Magazine issue 177, January 1992. In the letters column under the title "DM's dilemma: Fee or free?" The author's suggestion of charging "$2 or $3 per person" for running games was seen as so controversial that the editors withheld their name! Needless to say, the official response to the letter was polite, but scathing. Equally scathing was the reader response in subsequent issues. I also thought it was absurd at the time and never imagined it would make such a comeback all these years later. I'll play for the love of the game alone or not at all.
There's 2 parts to the fun I get as a DM. 1) Like you said I get to build a world 2) I get to discover what my players will do with it and see their story unfold in front of my amazed eyes. ☺
Damn, I'm so mad I'm night shift. I need an old school game in my life.
If it's in the monster book it doesn't have feelings and it eats babies.
Very insightful. Agree with pretty much all of it. We need more grognards.
Your game is going to be awesome! All the best to you.
Some really really really good points in this video. Very even keeled in presentation even when being a bit grumpy. Though that is in the name of the channel so fair game.
This was an awesome watch. 👍
I agree with his analysis of "pro DMSs" and people who try to emulate "Critical Role." A good DM is using the players to tell a story and the story is told TOGETHER. The players are the heroes of the game and the DM provides the plot against them, the setting, the NPCs in that setting and all the window dressing. The players are the heroes of their own story and are telling story together. No one knows the outcome, just like no one "wins" the game. It is a cooperative table-top game where the players get together to engage in a story where the DM spurs them on to perform better than they thought they were able to be. A great GM is one that listens to his or her players and pulls them into the story by engaging them. The story is long and time consuming and interspaced with dice rolls, rule lookups, snacks, breaks and other time wasting events. The real story evolves slowly and in bits in pieces. That is why watching an RPG is boring, it takes too long. I am sure "Critical Role" is a great performance, but that is what it is, a performance.
I just found this channel a couple days ago. Your videos are really cool.
That was fun to listen to! Good luck getting your game up and running.
Thank you so much for this video. I'm getting back into gaming and I'll ask my players to watch this video.
I started with 1st edition and 2nd edition. I miss it a lot. Lost all my stuff through multiple moving. I just might sign up just to re-live the experience and the way you put how you handle triggers, I love it. 👍
I never watched Dead Poet’s Society, but I bet it was trying to give poets the same feeling I am getting about being a Dungeon Master. This reminds me of the first time I played AD&D with a friend’s older brother-in-law. Luckily when my friend group got into 3.0, our table’s DM managed to get a lot of this innately. He loved building the world, and we loved surviving it. Getting back into gaming with this new online stuff is wild. Thank you so much for putting this out here for those of us who want to really grok what this game was before the world ended in Y2K 😂
I used to think I liked TTRPGs. I now realize it was just the gamescience dice and Erol Otus’ art that I liked.
About the opening text your right to an extent... As I've seen games more like entertainment and books, movies and TV shows that are more like games... Star wars is by far the biggest example and thought out it's history is most consistent at bringing the viewer into the media and having the feeling of being there like though out my life time I was there to expernice the Clone wars go from a cog in a big bads evil plan. To a major fleshed out war to an awesome fnale. Where you had to be there to expernnce living though the 20 years of IRL time and been their for all the issues. Where as the vast majority of light RPGs tend to be quite limited in the game they provide... Like you play them for flavor not substance so yeah while vary true the line can get blured some times.
Yeah... Introducing new characters take priority. I had a friend who really wanted to join. So I'm like OK let's get your character ready and we'll get this train rolling! When making his character things were diecy but we got it worked, but when do we introduce him? We're a session in at this point and he was meant to be here session 0. So I let one of my other players help him, but I also wanted to know what was happening, but the other player said "I got this". I trusted him and it was agreed upon they would meet my friend's character when they got back to base. Downside is we had to get the characters to agree to go back to base. In character that didn't happen. First time dealing with this kind of thing I didn't know I had to try to get my friend's character in ASAP because my friend was fine with waiting. He must have been giving me a white lie because he didn't want me to feel bad. Because of that experience he was turned off. Now, the next time we had a new player, it was just me and the new player. Can't have too many cooks in the kitchen. He made his character, and we agreed on a backstory and how to introduce him. Since we were in a open wilderness area, it was perfect to introduce his character. My lesson to you all is to 100% be involved or else you will get the first situation I mentioned in this comment.
Agreed 👍 GMs are not storytellers and that mindset is problematic. I tend to agree with Professor Dungeon Master's take that GM's are are far closer to conflict designers than storytellers. How the PCs resolve the conflict tells a story and helps remove the GM from preconceived notions on what the exact outcome of everything will be.
"...marriage is funny..." just got me :D you´ll earned a like just for that.