10th Anniversary Classic Rant: Discovering the Alchemical Secret to DMing

(answering a set of questions presented by Levi Kornelsen) 

1. Is there anything you want to tell us about your name, age, how long you've been playing, anything like that?

RPGPundit, far too old for this, gaming for an astounding 19+ years now.



2. How would you describe your style at the gaming table?

DMing focused very heavily on characters first (PCs and NPCs), with emulation of genre being the principal goal, as God intended RPGs should be.




3. Do you think of yourself as any specific kind of gamer - powergamer, immersion-lover, storyteller?
I'm the RIGHT kind of gamer.

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4. What was one moment of gaming, during play, that was a really great for you?

There have been so fucking many of them. But really the best ones have all been ones where I have drawn my players to going in some direction with their character that was beyond anywhere they'd been before.




5. What about that moment was so great?

That it wasn't just me showing off "ooh look what a cool scene i can do"; it was a situation where the scene itself was cool, but was made cooler because of how the player got into it and transcended his previous definitions of his character.




6. If the way that the social dynamics of your group work (being formal, informal, competitive, whatever) helped make it great, how did they do that?

I don't know much about this "social dynamics" bullshit you're talking about; but if you mean "how does your group work"; it works like this: I'm in charge; but I'm fair (or try my damnedest to be).
If the DM isn't in charge of the game, the game goes all to hell.
If the DM isn't fair, you get Storyteller games, or other kinds of situations where the players might as well not show up and the DM might as well be talking to himself.




7. If the game that you were playing helped make that happen because of it's rules or setting, how did it help?

The rules and setting do not help your game work.
Game rules and setting can help of hinder emulation; they can do fuck all to help or hinder player group stability. That's something you theory boys really have to get through your head; and no amount of gimmicky mechanics are going to help a group be "more cohesive" or whatever the fuck you're talking about.

A couple of lines of good advice in a game book, like, say: "don't bitch at the DM just because you didn't get your way", and "Occasionally buy pastries for your players", are probably worth shitloads more than all the gimmicky methods to create "group satisfaction" in the fucking universe.




8. Have you had moments before or since this that were similar, and about how often?

I have those kinds of moments all the time. I can think of a couple from very recent games: Jong's debate with Tertulianus or Federico's rhetorical philosophizing with Titus in the Roman campaign; or the way the entire squabbling Warhammer party went from being a group of argumentative individuals into being an actual real Party when they were sent to recover the Bronze Skull of Chaos and they had to bring out the best in each other or end up dead.




9. What do you think you could do to help make something like that happen again?

There's nothing artificial that can be done to "Make" those things happen. They happen naturally, and happen more frequently when a DM gains in experience.
I'm a 17th level Dungeon Master. Fear me, bitches.

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10. What was one moment of gaming, during play, that was a really awful or boring for you?

The only moments that are really "boring" to me as a DM are when a player is caught up dithering getting stuck in something that isn't really important, either to his character or the plot of the game. Worse still if its not even really very important to the player. Then no one is doing anything that interests anyone.




11. What about that moment was so bad or dull?

See above.




12. If the way the social dynamics of your group work (being formal, informal, competitive, whatever) contributed to making it that way, how'd they do that?

Its got nothing to do with social dynamics. Its got to do with players occasionally getting too fixated on minutiae; sometimes because the GM isn't thoughtful enough to give them something meaningful to do (or because he can't give them anything meaningful to do without breaking emulation in a very gross way).




13. If the game that you were playing partly made that happen because of it's rules or setting, how did it do that?

Nope. Quit looking for the answers to these things in "rules or setting". It won't happen. Goddammit, no one is hiding the magic pixie dust from you! There's no super-secret alchemical combination of game rule and setting that will let you instantly create a functional game! You are looking for a philosopher's stone that doesn't exist. You're trying to derive velocity from a sausage. You're not even looking in the right places.




14. Have you had moments before or since this that were similar, and about how often?

Bah, I am sick of answering your pointless questions that are meant to give you the wrong information to try to find an unfindable answer to the wrong question to be asking in the first place!




15. What do you think you could do to stop something like that from happening again?

Fuck's sake, Man! There's no such thing as the perfect game! Get that through your head first of all.
Second: the near-perfect game is not to be found the way you're thinking its found.
There's no easy way out; its found by being a DM with balls, and having the experience to slowly run better and better games every time.
That's it! The will to have the courage to be in charge, and consistent hard work and practice. There is no "secret key".
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16. What's the single best piece of gaming advice you've ever been given, or that you've ever given out?

Hmm. Best I've ever been given: "Don't try to think it all through beforehand; instead, just make sure you make it LOOK like you've thought it all through beforehand". That's paraphrased from Erick Wujcik.
Best I've ever given: "Fuck's sake, Man! There's no such thing as the perfect game! Get that through your head first of all.
Second: the near-perfect game is not to be found the way you're thinking its found.
There's no easy way out; its found by being a DM with balls, and having the experience to slowly run better and better games every time.
That's it! The will to have the courage to be in charge, and consistent hard work and practice. There is no "secret key"." -me, about five seconds ago.




17. Since you've put all this effort into answering these question, and you've got our attention, is there anything else you'd like to say here?
Yeah: if you spent one-tenth of the time and energy you do trying to find the alchemical holy grail of game theory to make the mythical "better game" or the legendary "better group" into just making sure you had a group of people who show up every week and are socially tolerable, and ran more games, you would get much farther at the "Being a better GM" business, which is what I assume is your goal in all this.
And hell, if you spent one-hundredth of the time and energy you devote to theory to listening to me, you'd already be a fucking genius GM by now! I AM the philosopher's stone, motherfucker!



RPGPundit

(Originally posted July 22, 2006)