Gygax's Seven Principles of the DM's Function

[ripx187]

Howdy, I wrote a new article on my blog that might be of interest to you. In it I examine what Gary Gygax believed that the DM should be working on to increase his skill, I hope you enjoy it. You can find it here. Tell me what you think. Are there more skills that you feel are important? Maybe your list, or interpretation is different?

[Admin Pete]

I look forward to reading that later (hopefully today), thanks for the link.





Edit: still looking for time to really dig into it.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

I'm going to give that a thorough read but I'm digging on a quick glance through.

[tetramorph]

ripx187, thanks I did read though that when it came through my reader!

[ripx187]

Is this article just too long? I struggle with length, I can write for days. Looking at it again, I could had cut it down more.

[tetramorph]

Dec 2, 2016 9:22:33 GMT -5 ripx187 said:

Is this article just too long? I struggle with length, I can write for days. Looking at it again, I could had cut it down more.

That's an interesting point.
Interweb writing is its own thing.

I think it could have been a series of 7 posts.

[Admin Pete]

I think it is a really good post, I agree that it could have split up in several posts. It covers things that I usually don't think about, but probably should. I hope that I am improving over time and that the best is still yet to come.

[ripx187]

7? Now that is just crazy talk

It is funny how we all use the internet. I always hate those broken up posts. I typically try to limit my page count to 4-5. I think that that first category could be cut down some. The Law of good editing is to find all of the stuff that got you interested in writing an article, and delete them.

[Mighty Darci]

Mayhap two or three posts instead of one or seven.

[Bandersnatch]

Dec 2, 2016 17:23:31 GMT -5 ripx187 said:

7? Now that is just crazy talk

It is funny how we all use the internet. I always hate those broken up posts. I typically try to limit my page count to 4-5. I think that that first category could be cut down some. The Law of good editing is to find all of the stuff that got you interested in writing an article, and delete them.

I think you should make seven posts out of this article and add about 10,000 words to it through links to another dozen complimentary articles.

I don't understand this, why would you delete all of the things you found interesting?

The Law of good editing is to find all of the stuff that got you interested in writing an article, and delete them.

[ripx187]

It is practically impossible to edit your own work, you get sentimental, or read text that you believe is there but really isn't. I can edit the work of others much easier, but when getting things published, it never fails, you turn it in and the editor always finds that one thing which you absolutely love, the very sentence that you feel sums up all of your feelings about what you are writing about, or the paragraph that you couldn't wait to write, and they say that it has to go. I've done it to others, it is just what always seems to happen. My blog is self-edited, so I keep all of that stuff that I like. I might rewrite a piece 4 or 5 times, but I typically enjoy the results.

In my defense, as related to length, 48% of my readers are spending at least 15 min. on the site, which is really good. I think that if I were to break it up into several posts, I'd end up making it 7x the length that it had to be. That and I post once a week, and I am really digging my book reviews. I can always go back to this in the future, there is stuff there that is really interesting. Thanks for reading and commenting Bandersnatch!

[Admin Pete]

I am in touch with your pain and experience it myself. When it comes to self-editing, I am happy if I can catch the typos, misspelled words and at least some of the punctuation errors. I am living proof that you can read just fine (within the limits of my vocabulary - which is not nearly as extensive as I thought it was 45 years ago) and yet be woefully deficient when it comes to grammar and punctuation. The whole thing of the older and wiser you get the more you realize that how little your really know, another 30 years and I will be convinced I am completely ignorant.

I would love to get 48% of my blog readers up to 15 min or more, I am currently at 24% on the blog for 15 min or longer. I would be quite happy to double my readers. I will have to take a closer look at your blog.

[ripx187]

I am a total cheater. After everybody here at home went to bed I went on Utube and found a guy named Talking About Gaming who is making very thoughtful reviews about gaming products, and not just the new OSR stuff either, he'd go back further and review older products, but he wasn't just saying if they were good or bad or not, or what was in them, he talked about what he really thought of them. How they made him feel. I loved watching them and I found that my favorites were when he was talking about the books in my own collection. It was cool to see somebody's opinion on them. There are a couple of other reviewers, but I think that Talking About Gaming is the best.

I also noticed that many of the 2e products weren't ever given much attention: there are cold lists, even reprints of product description, or little tiny reviews, but nothing thoughtful.  Why not review them? Pick them up and reread them with fresh eyes, do a bit of history, compare how I used them in the past and how I use them now. It's been interesting because I have different needs now than when I originally bought them. Books that I remember hating, I find to be better than what I gave them credit for, books that I loved can kind of suck now.

Many people still have these old books, and they enjoy reading about them; just to see what somebody else has to say. Total click candy, but they're fun to write, and I'm properly cataloging them. Eventually I'll move it all to a website so that it is easier to reference.

[Von]

Dec 2, 2016 9:22:33 GMT -5 ripx187 said:

Is this article just too long? I struggle with length, I can write for days. Looking at it again, I could had cut it down more.

It's mostly fine, but the first entry - the Moving Force - is about twice as long as it needs to be and it spends too much time telling you what a moving force is not.

The effort to distance yourself from railroading and modules is not necessary; the tips on how to deal with railroading are not necessary. Don't talk about railroading at all until the very last line of that section and then only as a "by the way - this isn't a licence to railroad. You push the players into movement in any direction - not the one in which you want them to go." Bosh.

Strip that one down to the couple of paragraphs to which the others extend and the feeling of bloat will lift from the piece as a whole. I wouldn't worry about that "no blog post should be longer than 750 words" crap. Web content 'thought leaders' (blech! blech! wash out your mouth sir!) are coming around to the truth: people will read 2000 word essays on the Net if they're formatted carefully.

Keep sentences and paragraphs short and clear. Organise with subheadings (actually use the Heading 1, 2, 3 etc. formats) and keep each one to 300 words or so. Stay on topic (I'm not too great at the last one). Long web content works if it's comfortable for people to read, if it has visual handholds for the hard of reading - and that doesn't mean jamming irrelevant pictures in between every third paragraph.

You're already pretty good at this - you just lost control of that first section, I suspect because you felt the need to virtue signal that you weren't a Filthy Railroading Swine.

[mormonyoyoman]

You say Filthy Railroading Swine as if there was something wrong with that.

[robkuntz]

Dec 13, 2016 3:50:07 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

You say Filthy Railroading Swine as if there was something wrong with that.

I like railroading swine.

[Admin Pete]

Dec 13, 2016 6:21:36 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

Dec 13, 2016 3:50:07 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

You say Filthy Railroading Swine as if there was something wrong with that.

I like railroading swine.

I do too, the thought makes me hungry: bacon, sausage, ham, porkchops!! Yumm!! I grew up on a farm and butchering swine was something we did about every six months and of course we sold a few. My uncle did that on a bigger scale and sent hundreds to market where they did indeed ended up being railroaded.

[mormonyoyoman]

I never sausage a derailed thread. Reminds me of most games I GM'd.

[Admin Pete]

Dec 13, 2016 14:01:19 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

I never sausage a derailed thread. Reminds me of most games I GM'd.

Seriously derailed??

[robkuntz]

Dec 13, 2016 16:17:22 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

Dec 13, 2016 14:01:19 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

I never sausage a derailed thread. Reminds me of most games I GM'd.

Seriously derailed??

Methinks he was talking about "meat grinders."

[Admin Pete]

Dec 13, 2016 18:40:45 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

Dec 13, 2016 16:17:22 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

Seriously derailed??

Methinks he was talking about "meat grinders."

I thought as much, I was just looking to see where he might take it from that comment, as it was an ambiguous remark.

[mormonyoyoman]

As Patrick Henry said, Give me ambiguity or - - something else.

[Deleted]

You need to write an article on what YOU think is important, and why, instead of spending a great many words talking about what you think a dead guy you never met thought.

[robkuntz]

Dec 14, 2016 10:15:19 GMT -5 @gronanofsimmerya said:

You need to write an article on what YOU think is important, and why, instead of spending a great many words talking about what you think a dead guy you never met thought.

True, but that doesn't further a very important sub-hobby for many of today's RPGers:  consensus-building... 

[Admin Pete]

ripx187, well there you have some feedback, you got a couple of suggestions on tightening up your writing and encouragement to write about your own ideas. Seems like a win-win to me and I look forward to your forthcoming essays.

As an aside I did read your review of the PHBR5 The Complete Psionics Handook and I was curious as to what you would do to improve the areas where you feel it is lacking. In addition, do you have ideas about how you would run a rules light take on Psionics?

[ripx187]

Von, I feel exactly the same way. I think that some defense mechanism kicked in there. I should had re-written the first part, which is a basic editing point that I ignore all to often.

@gronanofsimmerya an original thought or idea, on the web? That is usually what gets one placed on government lists! In all seriousness, I've had my moments, but they are far and in-between. They can't be forced. I stumbled over a quote and it resonated well with what I was thinking myself. I could had taken all credit for it, but I didn't; instead I dropped the biggest name in the industry. If we don't know what you guys discovered, and take it to heart, aren't we just reinventing the wheel anyway?

Admin Pete

As an aside I did read your review of the PHBR5 The Complete Psionics Handbook and I was curious as to what you would do to improve the areas where you feel it is lacking. In addition, do you have ideas about how you would run a rules light take on Psionics?

I have gotten a lot of feedback from that, and have rethought how I feel about psionics. I really respect this book because it is packed full of options, you take what you want and you cut the rest. That is great! I, personally, am not a fan of spell points, but this is a viable system, it is different from everything else. People complain that it is over-powered, however the people that have truly sat down and really play tested this stuff at their table have said that it isn't powerful enough. One burns through their PSPs really fast, which I think works.

I would had liked to see this fact brought to the readers attention, you read some of the abilities and they sound like game breakers, but one quickly forgets the costs of using such powers. This cost is what makes the class acceptable, I want a cooperative game where the players have to work together to achieve their goals, and I want to see at a glance if this functions as I expect it to or not. Basically, I don't feel that it sold itself well to resistant Dungeon Masters who had been jaded by over-powerful class ideas before.

The biggest change I would had made, which I mentioned in the article, is to add that role-playing section. Again, the class isn't well-represented, it gives us ideas of modern people in a Medieval setting, but it can be much more. I think that a magic-based oriental fighting monk would work better using this system than clerical spells. Perhaps add an element of conflict between wizards and psionics as they vie for power. There is lots of things that this system can do, even if all you need it for is to break up the monotony of play  once in awhile.

In regards to a rules light take on it, it introduces a completely unique system that functions differently than anything else. The most difficult part is the extra bookwork caused by turning psionic abilities on like a switch, which costs PSP that must be tracked, and linear play at the table isn't something that happens all that much. I think that the only solution would be to get rid of them, else figure out an alternative system for defensive costs. It is something that I really need to playtest. Who knows, this system probably functions just fine once one knows what the hell they are doing with it.

[Mighty Darci]

Why don't you start a thread on psionics, I have never played with them and I would like hear to from those of you who have.

[Deleted]

Dec 14, 2016 18:09:11 GMT -5 ripx187 said:

I stumbled over a quote and it resonated well with what I was thinking myself. I could had taken all credit for it, but I didn't; instead I dropped the biggest name in the industry. If we don't know what you guys discovered, and take it to heart, aren't we just reinventing the wheel anyway?

"I stumbled across this quote, "quote," and it made me think...." is a fine beginning for an essay that is a riff of your own take on something.

[jmccann]

I read a couple of paragraphs but it seems like a bait and switch. Is there anything of Gygax in the post? The ebook doesn't quote Gygax and neither does the beginning of the article. Gygax had a strong authorial voice and I don't hear it in this. It seems like you just slapped Gygax's name on to get some hits.

[ripx187]

Dec 23, 2016 22:43:35 GMT -5 jmccann said:

I read a couple of paragraphs but it seems like a bait and switch. Is there anything of Gygax in the post? The ebook doesn't quote Gygax and neither does the beginning of the article. Gygax had a strong authorial voice and I don't hear it in this. It seems like you just slapped Gygax's name on to get some hits.

The categories were Gygax's, I found them to be helpful in finding the chinks in our armor, and wrote about what I thought of each principal.