Rating my subscribers' DnD hot takes 

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I'll back up the first fella. Its tough the community really expects the DM to do some serious work.

I didn't actually realise my mild take would make its way into a video! For context, it's based on my frustration as a 5e DM looking for help online. But I don't want to overstate the problem either, the community is fine for the most part. Still glad you thought it was at least mildly spicy :p

A character's backstory should be a jumping off platform, not an instruction manual

7:01 I think when Gary Gygax said that, it needs to be remembered that D&D was *the rulebook* that was published practically. There was almost nothing else at that point. So I think to him, at the time, when he said "they don't need any rules" he was thinking about how him and others sort of just made up consistent-ish rules as they went along. That other people could make up their own systems rather than using rules someone else had made. He was recognizing *RPGs as a concept* vs. D&D as a system.

Thanks for sharing my comment, Ben!

"Lore is like a manure" is just brilliant.

I totally agree about the lore dump bit. It's like when someone spends 30 minutes explaining a board game to me, but the whole time I'm just wanting to play and figure it out.

The way I always took Gygax quote was that you don't need to spend money on his rules, you can make up your own. Not that there shouldn't be any rules.

Fun video, definitely would watch a part 2. Ok here's an idea, ask the same question but to a less OSR community so that the takes are "more spicy" to our OSR palate

Regarding the 'I rolled a 13 and did 7 damage' vs 'in character, heavy detail' combat, over the years I've come to prefer the GM (if comfortable) to handle that kind of detail, especially in something tactical like D&D, where combats can already be long. GMs generally have a better sense of pacing, manage to keep the scene more 'consistent', and are normally more conscious of the group and time as a whole. A GM can quickly describe the action with appropriate detail and brevity, something along the lines of "you take a swing at his leg, which he successfully blocks, but opens him up to your short sword, leaving a fresh scar on his face', which takes a few seconds. A player viewing it as a time to shine (potentially just realising it is their turn and deciding what to do), making their rolls, and then going with something like 'with my movement I come running from around the tree, blindsiding the monster, and sliding between it's legs, slashing at his Achille's tendon as I pass, drawing his attention, and forcing it to take a knee to keep track of me. As I spin around, I wink over at my party, and sink my short sword into his back in one smooth, barely perceivable motion, creating a fountain of blood, as the cleric swoons at my skill... dealing 13 points of damage". The ol' Critical Role "how do you want to do this" is the perfect time for a player to get over the top, and makes it incredibly feel far more meaningful and impactful, as opposed to every 'basic' attack being described as an anime with a multi-episode Kamehameha.

Combat usually means characters die. It's stilly to think the other party isn't just as lethal, much less a dungeon-dwelling monster.

My neighbor’s kid was talking my ear off over the weekend about the D&D-like game he runs for his friends at school… it was an insane level of details and more impressively he was keeping basically all of it save the world map in his head. I politely suggested he should have his players at the very least be responsible for keeping track of their gear and backstories so he can focus on building out the world. He’s not using dice and that seems to be working fine for them so I didn’t proselytize that as heavily 😁

I have GM'd adventures with only one rule. When you try to do something, or there is something with an indeterminate outcome, I decide the chances of it happening. Then the PC rolls 1d6: - impossible (no roll) - very unlikely (6) - unlikely (5-6) - 50/50 (4-6) - likely (3-6) - very likely (2-6) - automatic (no roll) The "character sheet" has no numbers on it. Only narrative descriptions with various questions. When making this judgment, I take into account the player's background, experience, training, interests, etc. The player is also free to say, "Oh but what about the year I spend with the archeologist mentor?" and so on, to remind me or ask me to take into consideration.

You should do this more often.

There seems to me to be a tension in the answer to the last take ("A GM is not a voice actor, storyteller or a writer. He is a referee first and foremost"). The distinction that Ben seems to be drawing in his answer, is between GM as a scriptwriter (i.e. railroading, deciding on the outcomes before they happen) and GM as ORS-style referee cooly and objectively laying out improvised or randomised results, and maybe that is what Griselame meant? But if the overall goal is to experience the world of play as a real place, what on earth is wrong with voice acting the NPCs..? Surely, doing silly voices is as valid a technique for creating immersion as giving layered descriptions of what the PCs are seeing, hearing and smelling in the fictional world (a celebrated part of much OSR-dungeon writing). And doesn't writing all those dungeons/settings, including Ben's own excellent publications(!), make Ben and the other OSR luminaries writers? I would argue that running published modules or settings is an ingrained part of the OSR play culture as well as in mainstream D&D spaces. Unless you're improvising everything (not very OSR...) someone needs to write something in advance! Why would acting out your character, or your NPC's, make you more likely to railroad? The, unstated but repeatedly implied, idea of D&D players/Critical Role fans/Voice actors/half-LARP'ers having somehow missed the point of the rpg medium (that anything can happen), seems to me as equally bad a strawman, probably unconscious, as the conception of OSR-players as out-of-touch grognards, with reactionary politics. Both are obviously gross simplifications of a much more varied group of players and ideas. I suspect nearly all roleplayers, of any but the most extreme play culture, appreciate that some things happening in RPG session are preplanned, some are randomised and some are improvised by the GM and players in tandem. The idea that OSR people are rebelling against a prevailing, capitalist RPG mainstream that loves railroading and 'play acting' (which is a rather loaded term), seems thoughtlessly reactionary and frankly unfounded. p.s. I love a great number of OSR games, modules, theories, blogs, etc. (including this channel!), but I wish we would all be more like Adam Chafe: "[Everyone] are playing the game equally well as long as everyone are having fun".

My next campaign was going to be with 4 new players who don't know the rules and I was planning on keeping them in the dark until rulings come up so that they fill their toolboxes with ideas rather than rules.

I’m a big fan of soliciting some worldbuilding from my players as it relates to their PC. Oh you want to be a Monk from an order of assassins? Tell me about them. They give me their take and then I tweak it a little and boom I have a whole new organization thanks to some input from my players.

Wow. Your discussion of the alignment grid as being less about character personality and more about a faction and allegiance thing is fascinating. Perhaps you could do a video where you discuss that at more length

I don’t know how many D&D game play groups I’ve skipped because one character is created solely for that player to “use a voice” (one of them even said “I’m playing a female goblin so I can use a voice!” Which apparently meant for said person (I didn’t know how they identified) screeching for the next amount of time… next!

I once ran a game where I experimented with two things: 1) Players never touched dice, I rolled everything and just informed them of success/failure. 2) They never saw their character sheets. I asked them to prioritize stats and asked what skills they wanted to be good at then just gave them a summery with no numbers, just abstract ratings like "Expert swordsman," "Average Rider," "Lock-picking novice," etc. It was agreed to be interesting but we went back to the old way for the next campaign. A fun experiment but the players liked having more direct control.

13:50 you read my mind about how why/how I like to get new players into the game. They have more opportunity to be creative when they don’t view the rules as ‘allowing’ their character to do something.

Hi Ben, Just wanted to say you have a consistent and clear message as to the values and strengths of old school role TTFRPGs , and are able to present them in a measured and thoughtfully objective manner. Appreciated by a crusty , dusty and rusty old DM from way back. I hope your work can convince the "newer" generation of gamers to try a game in the "old" style - I honestly believe the game played that way is more fun , and has more peripheral value to the participants. Only my opinion.

I never thought of OG alignment being more of who you ally with. Thats super interesting and cool. It makes me think of Elric. None of my players really bother with alignment now-a-days, but i always like to use it when i build characters :)

The #1 thing that Alignment has added to RPGs is arguments about whether someone's character is or isn't playing their alignment.

Question #1 is 100% true - mild take but 100% true. I have ran into this personally which made me drop 5e altogether. There was a debate between me and a player about horror and 5e, I said grit doesn’t work because player super powers ruin it but he you establish horror with tone. I seen the argument the GM used tone to make the PC feel challenged in certain situations.

I once had a player quit my game because I wasn't catering to their absurdly prewritten backstory (absurd in the length of time not the content). I was starting a campaign around the kernel of an idea for a game that was inspired by shows like The Librarians or Warehouse 13. Basically monster of the week but magic item of the week instead of monster. As I was getting players together I was explicit in informing all of them that I didn't want them to come up with ANY character concepts until we are all together and I can tell them about this world and the idea I was striving for. Also I informed them that I wasn't intending on having their individual backstory be highlighted through play, if anything it would be off screen. This was, at the time, my most ambitious homebrew setting I was putting together and many of the character options they were used to were not going to be available. Many of these were honestly because I was finding it way too hard to find a place for them in my world. Important to this story is that were two specific races among these options that were being removed or restricted, Tieflings and Drow. A friend of a friend was invited to join. She was super nice and seemed like she knew her stuff. So we didn't have to worry about onboarding a new player, nice. In order for my idea to work I figured it would require a bit more buy in from the players than normal. I could be wrong, but I thought I was still rather liberal by saying the only thing that was important was there needed to be a reason why this character (that was born and raised in the city we were playing in) would be selected for an elite clandestine operation, while also considering the post-Tasha's options I was limiting. Outside of that it didn't matter to me. She was very much present for my brief primer of the city and the world around it, and she had seen the discord post where I detailed what options are available and which aren't (I took a long time on this). As I'm having everyone introduce their characters to each other she casually mentions she will be playing one of her characters she had made over a year ago. Then direct messages me with this four page long backstory about her Drow that is seeking revenge on the Tiefling that murdered her clan, and is now leaving the Underdark for the first time. Just a few problems with that. The only races mentioned were ones I was clear about not being options. The Underdark, which she managed to make integral to her backstory, didn't exist in this world. There was no where for it to be. The whole of the plane was a single city contained within a snow globe on the fireplace mantle of an inactive god. There was no mention of how she could have possibly been selected for this group, she was new to the city after all. I bring these issues up with her and she was incredibly resistant to changing any of it. She had been having a hard time finding a table to play at and I was having difficulty finding players for our unusual time slot, so I was just wanting to move on and get to playing. I managed to talk her into agreeing to some minor compromises while I changed a several major aspects of the world lore to accommodate this character. A few months go by and I wouldn't say she was a problem player. Only thing I remember standing out was that she was oddly reluctant to get involved in combat (something I was clear about being a focus of the game). Then I get another message the night before we are to play again, we're talking less than 12 hours. It's this huge message about how she's not having fun and is very disappointed her backstory that she worked so hard on isn't being used in the story. Then immediately leaves the server and has her account set to not allow messages unless you share a server so I couldn't even attempt to talk to her about it. I would have been willing to hear what her exact expectations were and do what I could to meet them. Because prior to this I was unaware she was waiting for that. Oh well.

As a long time 5e player who has recent started playing and running PF2E the learning curve wasn't too steep, one or two sessions to learn the majority of combat and character build mechanics. In comparison PF2E definitely has much more crunch than 5e, but the most striking difference is the varied actions/action economy and the much wider set of possibilities for characters. Want a heavy armor, tower shield wielding Rogue with a rapier? You can do that in PF2E.

1:14 I have a friend who is exactly like that. He claims that the system has no problems and the DM just needs to adapt. It’s because he plays in a game run by a dedicated GM who does a good job homebrewing things to make all the characters feel cool and useful and is good at thinking on the fly.

The value of character backstory is directly related to the amount of agency players have. In a tightly-planned, linear game, it has limited use or can even get in the way. But in more sandbox games, it’s critical: it provides guidance for players to determine wtf their character will do next when there isn’t a clear, overriding goal pulling them forward.

I have to agree with the players not knowing the rules hot take. My least favorite people to play with are players who are also DMs. A lot of them struggle with disconnecting with the DM mindset and even challenge the person who IS the DM because that's not how they would do it, how they understand it, or whatever. Players should learn the rules that they need for playing their character, beyond that the information gets in the way, and if you're a DM who is not DMing, you've got to let go, it's not your game, you're not the DM, it's not your world or your story.

I played both AD&D and Exalted for years without knowing the rules, not because the GMs did not want us to know the rules, but because I trusted them. I do not feel the need to know the minutiæ of each system to enjoy a game session. “BuT yOu CaNnOt PlAy OpTiMaLlY wItHoUt ExPlOiTiNg ThE rUlEz” - I don’t care about optimal play, and that was never the vibe of the games I played

I 100% agree with the first guy. For years my most hated question was "can you run it in 5e?" because some people simply refused to play anything else. And if I said "no" people just wouldn't play it.

New players tend to not metagame. Players should know the rules to save time - at a minimum, they should be very familiar with their character's abilities. DMs are most certainly storytellers. They create the entire world and tell the players what is happening and how it reacts to their actions. The only thing they don't do is decide what actions the character's take.

A character's backstory should be: Where they were born/grew up Family bonds/statuses (ex: Parents dead, raised by grandmother) Their early profession What drove them to adventure? A hook that the GM can tug on if they feel like it

8:58 very true, play acting is very different than role playing.

On the topic of "the GM being the rulebook", the most fun games I have ever participated in, both as a player and a GM, have been of this style. My very first gaming group called it "playing an ultimate's game" because generally it was very, very OP compared to hard, well-defined rules. We played these styles of games with D&D 1e/2e, Rifts, Star Wars d6, and even completely rules-less games over email. When rules systems were "in play" we used the rules mostly to get a sense of what our characters were but never actually used the combat rules as written. In fact, we rarely used dice at all. These games were the most fun because nobody felt like they were being cheated as the GM was generally giving characters more "power" than rules as written. In one Star Wars game, we blew up a planet without anything resembling a Death Star. Thank you, come again. In a D&D 2e game characters mostly did stuff while exploring "the map" and I've had players tell me that was their most favorite game of all time. Everybody talks about the time the druid changed a tree into a boat and the drunken dwarf that dreamed of being a pirate and "sailed the open sea" on that tree boat. My very first gaming group ran a combined D&D/Rifts/Shadowrun/etc game where the GM allowed characters from any system and the GM "magically" combined everything we were doing to make it plausible in our fiction. In that game I played a Predator character and killed a xenomorph queen while we had a D&D "fire mage" and a Rifts Juicer attempting to control environment systems on a spaceship. The most fun game I have ever played as a player. In all cases, the "rules" basically simplified to we told the GM what we wanted to do and the GM either decided what happened or had us roll dice, mostly a d20 but not always, to determine if we succeeded or not. The GM never told us what target number we were trying to role over or under. This style of gaming certainly isn't for everyone but I would encourage everyone to disconnect from the rules more in general. Don't use your character sheet and your chosen rule system as a straight jacket on what you can or cannot do. In my experience, this kind of thinking nearly always leads to arguments over rules interpretations or a lack of satisfaction and search for a "better" rules system. I suspect we all collectively forget the "rules" are there to serve us, to serve play, to serve fun. When the "rules" no longer lead to fun, it is time to change how we interact with the "rules" instead of which "rules" we use. Again, while this style of play is not for everybody and certainly benefits from GM's with 15+ years experience, don't diss it until you've tried it. You might be missing the best time you've had playing a table top role playing game.

Lets also settle something else : The personal time investment/work that players have to put into a game are NOT COMPARABLE to what it takes to be a Dungeon Master -- at all. Be that preparation or in real time (as the game is being played). Theres a VERY good reason why a game can go on w/o a player but that it collapses entirely w/o a DM. A DM is a real time open world generator, from environment, to encounters.... to the personality of EVERY NPC you decide to engage within that world. Players are 1 person, their character. There is NO COMPARISON of these game roles.

@12:58 extremely spicy take. Mountain Dew and charcuterie boards do not pair.

I like to players to add inconsequential details I haven't thought about, random NPC's names, city names, what they get for breakfast, they family business and relatives, etc, those might become important later but don't matter really in the specifics

About the descriptions; I tend to be fairly theatrical about them, especially as a GM. For me it's better for engagement as a good descriptive moment can enthrall a group. There's this one moment in a Starfinder AP where a spacedock crashes near the party and my group were almost slackjawed during the moment. I don't require my players to describe everything to the last detail but I do try to encourage them to add more flair because I feel it keeps the energy high. Just my two cents o7

I ran a game once without rules at first, we built a rulebook as we went along, because once we made a ruling it had to be put in a book so we could stay consistent, though of course we gave ourselves license to change a rule later if we felt it needed tweaking or was incorrectly drafted. It was a fun exercise and I wish I knew exactly where I put them LOL

the advice for worldbuilding to start small and broaden out as the campaign progresses is good - I had a campaign that started out with a humans only PC rule that broadened to include nonhuman classes once relations were established with those groups. All I had to go by it at first was "I want my elves and orcs to feel alien" and once I had established that, it seemed to do a really good job for the players to get a sense of the kind of cultural history those other races have been brought up on and made for some great RP.

That last point is rather apropos at the moment. I just had what I figured would be a long term villian go out like a total chump due to a string of something like 6 fumbled rolls on my part. I could have fudged numbers to make it work out for him to escape, but it would damage the players' experience (all the players', even my own) to do so. So he's dead and now I have to figure out how the world moves on in light of that. I will admit there was probably 10 to 15 seconds of dead air when I saw the damage total and fumbled save and realized the tide of battle had just turned.

6:45 My habit, mostly unintentional, is to default to "lore dumping" when the players seem to be unsure of what to do, especially at the very start of the first session. I lore dump until the players feel they've heard enough, or hear something that hooks them, and then pick up from there. It's almost like the loading screens in video games that feed you flavor text while you're waiting.

It just occurred to me that OG alignment of law vs chaos is more like Alliance vs Horde in WoW, but we've turned it into some Jungian psychology quagmire.

Hot take: It's incredibly limiting to have tieflings all just be the same generic "pop culture imp" body plan. I know there's a variant appearance table in Xanathar's, but the way it's written sort of implies it's meant for the variant tiefling pseudo-subrace only. Tieflings should reflect their specific fiendish parentage, even if it's several generations removed- let your players come up with something fucked up and evil so long as it doesn't imply a direct mechanical benefit (unless you wanna let them have that).

Law vs Chaos is enough to think about. The addition of a Good vs Evil axis has just been a useless can o’ worms.

Here's a spicy take related to the OSR. 5E is D&D's nod to the OSR. Starting at peak-complexity D&D 4E, it simplified many overly complex systems, innovated to replace modifier bloat with advantage and disadvantage, and only the economic imperative to produce more player facing material with more classes and subclasses with their additional rules complicated it past the average OSR game.

Alignment as a quick and dirty summary of a character's values can be useful, but the character should determine the alignment and never the other way around. Law vs Chaos is Rules vs Freedom. Good vs Evil is Altruism vs Self-Interest. A Lawful character prefers the stability of a government, whereas a Chaotic character prefers the freedom of anarchy. A Lawful Good character might see government as a way to protect the rights of the oppressed, whereas a Chaotic Good character might see government as imposing undue restrictions on their ability to serve the common people. A Lawful Evil character might see government as a way to accrue power and wealth through corruption, whereas a Chaotic Evil character might see government as a limitation on their ability to pursue their own interests. Sometimes a character may act "out of character" with their alignment due to some values being more important than others or due to time-frame restrictions. Princess Leia organized a rebellion, which seems chaotic, but her purpose was to reinstate the Republic, making her Lawful Good rather than Chaotic.

3:50 Regarding backstories, i like to write more detailed backstories(not to the point of it being excessive, but still) with an upbringing, life before adventure, friends, family, etc. and that helps me actually know who and what i'm playing. At the end of the day, I don't really see the point of playing in a campaign and telling a story with my firends together at the table, without characters and an impact to the world. Tho it is true that players can have toxic relationships with DMs and backstories, that is a problem with the individual and not backstories as a consept

I ran a sizable campaign with my players only knowing very limited rules, and some players knowing nearly nothing, and I would say it added a lot in the way of roleplay. Not saying it's a required way to play, but I can see the appeal. I never forbade players from knowing rules. It was more that I was the nerdy kid who owned all the books and I was trying to get my more "normy" friends to play with as little a barrier to entry as possible. It wasn't like today where people have generally heard of D&D and there are tons of resources online, so letting my friends come in and just be like I want to do X Y Z, without any concern for how the rules accounted for that really freed them up to just focus on the world and their characters. "Oh you want to do that move you saw on Naruto yesterday, ok well um sure, roll with a -3 penalty and if you succeed it works." "You want what power? Oh ok, well that sounds a lot like this spell" etc. Basically the players just played their role and I as the DM fit their actions into the rules. This also made it super easy for my girlfriend at the time and other people who didn't play games but liked reading fantasy like LOTR to join in as well.

I thumped the air with your comments on character backgrounds.

Playing with a group that doesn't care about learning the most basic rules after 5 sessions and needs the same explanations over and over again makes your job as a DM a nightmare, so I definitly disagree with that hot take. Hearing "which die do i use for an ability check again?" for the 100th time really took all the fun out of the sessions for me, because I was working hard to make things cool, and they didn't even try and just wanted to be entertained by me.

I hope the phrase "inflicting your OC" sticks.

I do think making up canon with your players is great for a lot of games, but stuff like D&D I feel like isn't the greatest for that. More narratively focused games run wonderfully when the gm lets players add (with in reason) to the canon.

The issue with alignment is many players use it as an excuse to act like an idiot. and are unwilling to change their alignment based of their actions. I had a player once do something horrible and I said their alignment SHOULD not had to but should change to chaotic and they flew into a fit. as they felt being True Neutral meant they could just be bipolar and do whatever they pleased and it still made sense for their alignment.

Its refreshing to see someone talk about DnD OSR stuff cuz like... I do get kind of tired of modern "Fluffy" ideas of DnD. I want to get into a game that feels like it hates me, not the DM hating me, but the world. I want to get into a Dark souls like experience or something.

11:46 It all really depends. If they are doing something that requires a description like how they want to use a rope to do something I want at least some detail on how they are using it, not just "I rolled a 13" because depending on how to use said rope like if you tie it around yourself or an object could matter greatly.

Hot take, "If D&D wants you to do social stuff, they need to put in social rules." In college we bought all the 3.5 books and by character sheet space and book page count, it's 99% combat. So we assumed D&D was some tactical wargame. We ran our game like Diablo 2 with more paper work because that's what we thought the books were telling us to run.

"When someone just tells me lore, I can't figure out how all the pieces fit together... which parts are gonna be important." 6:45 This is EXACTLY how I feel when I read a new game/adventure/module/setting that I'm planning to GM. The lore is just one massive dump. It isn't only a problem for players, but GM's are just expected to deal with it.

As regards players "not knowing the rules", in one of the best campaigns I ever played in the GM was running his own homebrew of MERP but not set in middle earth and he went one further than the players not knowing the rules, he literally didn't let us have access to our full character sheets. We basically had a sheet with our name, gear and social contacts etc, he handled 100% of the rules including advancing our characters skills stats etc after sessions. When we were wounded he would never mention hit points etc, but rather describe our wounds and how we felt. And though at first it felt weird it was also amazingly engaging.

11:00 My most recent campaign is using the 2e alignment definitions, though I probably should go back to earlier versions to see if I like them better. When I was looking back at it, it very much had a 'good is not nice' feel. As an example, the alignment for people who think that it is best for the few to be sacrificed for the benefit of the many (like eugenicists) are lawful good.

As to lore, I prepare a big handout of 20 pages of background before we actually start playing. They can read it or not and keep it to look things up during play if they like. Seems to work well. They are as informed on the backstory as they care to be. The only thing I insist on is if they are playing a cleric-like character they should be familiar with the religions, a nobleman character should have a vague idea what's going on politically, etc. Again, this comes down to player choice.

1. 100% agree, 5e has a lot of problems fundamental to the system that make it difficult for the DM, although I wouldn't use darkvision as an example of that (even though I agree that way too many player races get darkvision, it's more of a "this isn't special anymore" than a balance problem). I think the biggest problem on this front is CR (which is just about useless) and the encounter building rules, it's concerningly common to go from the party curbstomping an overleveled boss monster to almost TPKing on an "easy" mook fight. 2. 100% agree, 5e is not simple. It is only comparatively simple compared to 3e/3.5e/P1e. It is more complex than 4e and only slightly simpler than P2e (and P2e is a lot more consistent/balanced which more than makes up for that slight increase in complexity). And when you compare it to many other systems it does not come off as simple at all. 3. Eh, in some ways agree. Worldbuilding is great, but over planning a campaign can cause a DM to get frustrated when the player inevitably derail the entire thing. Also letting players contribute to the worldbuilding with their character backstories is an excellent way to get them invested in the world. 4. No, just no. It is not exploitative to have a deep and well thought out backstory. DMs have veto if they feel that something doesn't fit in their setting, use it, don't whine about how some player's backstory compromised your canon. 5. Lore dumps _can_ be fun if done right. 6. No, TTRPGs involve a social contract, and a huge part of that social contract is the rules of the game. Making a ruling contrary to the established rules of the game (either official rules or homebrew for the group) is a good way to burn your players. If you disagree with the official rules in any way (and if you're playing 5e, you should) make homebrew and make certain all players know it ahead of time (and extremely preferably agree). 7. Agree, if your character is not affected by the world they inhabit, you're playing wrong (with an incredibly small number of exceptions). 8. Yes, and the fact that someone considers this a hot take is concerning. Alignment is fundamentally important to the metaphysics of the settings. 9. Yes, some people play the game to play the game, that is not a wrong way to play. 10. Hard NO. Players need an understanding of the rules to play the game, otherwise they're just blindly doing actions without any real understanding of what to expect. 11. Eh, ~50%. Being a referee is a very important duty of the DM, but so is worldbuilding and setting up/writing scenarios.

Players not knowing the rules can be traced back to some of the earliest wargames to use referees. The idea of these military games was to train officers, and they wanted them to think like they would in the field and not think about it as a game, so the referee had full authority to decide outcomes using whatever method seemed right.

I wonder if the no rules take would like Paranoia

Re: The players not knowing the rules - in a game like Paranoia, it's actually treason for the players to know the rules... And it's a lot of fun!

Belated hot take: The DM is simultaneously the most and least important PLAYER at the table.

2 Hot takes, one in-lore, and one meta: -If elves are so in touch with Nature, they should be attuned to the natural day/night cycle, and sleep like basically every other creature under the sun. Dwarves living underground, and being used to rhythm their life and work around artificial lighting, should be the ones immune to sleep, with the ability to trance for rest when it's convenient for them. -Some level of meta gaming should be rewarded and encouraged, as long it's not used for cheating. (Judgement here left for the individual DM to decide what constitute cheating or not.) A player having meta knowledge means they care enough about the game to look up the lore in their free time. This behavior should be nurtured, not penalized.

The one that is the Gygax quote. I'm a grognard (I wonder where that word came from?...), so I've been familiar with it for years. I always took this less like a papal bull (this is how the world works, all stop) and more like a wink that is Gygax prophetically anticipating the Old School slogan that says More Rulings Less Rules. Gygax gave every GM permission to wing it at will. To look at it from another perspective: without at least SOME rules it is not a game. Take away every rule, every dice throw, every crunchy number, and you just end up with improv theater. Improv theater can be diverting, but there is precious little "game" to it.

There's too much here to comment on, except that this is a wonderful way to break from all the OGL drama. In broad strokes, every table has it's own needs, from levels of story telling, to in character role-play. Are we mostly refs or are we storytelling? It's both from my persepctive---the story we are telling however requires the DM, the players, and the dice. The dice always get a vote and can radically change outcomes in ways you can't anticipate. No one at my table is an actor or a voice actor or anything remotely close--that said, the more players stay in first person with their characters the more powerful the play becomes, even if you're at more of a problem solving remove. You have a character who comes across as emotionally distant--and their excitement shines out in planning and developing tactics for unique situations. That's never possible at all times and there's a lot of above game talk, because....well there's ironic distance too, and we're there to have a great time. So I'd say I encourage first person play--it's not something I demand.

I'm not sure about the players not knowing the rules, but I do like the idea of the players not having access to certain parts of the rules. First the traditional stuff like monsters and magic items, but also things like spells and advancement options. I think you could create a sense of wonderment and excitement even amongst experienced players if you hide the character advancement options from them until they level, and provide new unique spells that they only discover through play.

I find it weird when people act like telling a story and being an impartial referee are mutually exclusive. Stories are told as a collection of scenes, GM's job is to set up scenes, and in an RPG the players resolve the scenes through a combination of their choices and how the rules determine the outcomes of those choices. But the GM is the one who sets the ball in motion and the one responsible for the initial content of those scenes. If you want a general story arc you make sure the info is there and compelling enough that the players choose to do so. Call of Cthulhu and related games like Gumshoe (theme not system related btw) can teach you a lot about how to do that and once you get the hang of it its definitely applicable to other types of games (Gumshoe even just released a Sword and Sorcery game that demonstrates using those ideas for non-mystery/intrigue games)

"The first couple of adventures are the backstory." That is exactly it. New characters should be something of a blank slate, so that they do not conflict with the campaign. Even the idea of having a pre-determined "build" involved is unwise, since maybe the campaign does not support it. And I don't mean the DM is inflexible, just that certain abilities may be more useful, such as survival because there is a lot of wilderness travel, or stealth because there is a lot of sneaking around. I also agree with the idea that the player does not need to know the rules, although I guess what I really think is that a good game does not rely on complex rules. Players should understand the basics, but I think the game is better if the rules are firmly in the background.

for me alignment is just a loophole for players to kill and loot anything that is suppose to be evil without having to think about the situation. In other words, it is a way to kill without any weight or internal consequence.

If you do a part 2, it'll get plents looks-n-likes, Great stuff as usual!

These were great 👌 @12:00 how to tell you're a HeroQuest player without telling me you're a HeroQuest player 😁

3rd edition has "the great wheel" it's pretty awesome as far as inter planar relationships. It looks cool, it's in an understandable format. 4th and 5th screwed it up.

12:48 Not knowing any of the rules can be incredibly frustrating, like if you are a rogue and don't understand why your longsword is so ineffective or what the point of a wizard is if all you do is whack 'em with a stick. If that example is too silly for you, I was in a game where the DM had lots of secret houserules and I often wasted my turn because of it.

There's a reason why Gary didn't want players to know the rules that were in the DMG. Most of the problems with ivory tower D&D exist solely because players have been shouldered with more responsibilities that exist because of an overly expanded/bloated system that most DM's can't be expected to memorize, 5e just inherited more player-facing rules defect from 3e without really needing to.

6:50 yes "seeing is believing" can apply to a lot of things even outside of DnD. A lot of people will simply not believe something can occur unless they experience it themselves. It's a very selfish notion, but in a game setting it's quite reasonable to allow people to experience the world before reading about it. Good advice for a game, worrying if heard in real life lol.

The most fun I have had playing D&D is when I was first learning the game decades ago. I've been chasing that high ever since, and having a great time doing so, but it still stands that the most fun was when I was figuring out how things work, what my character could do, what the monsters were and their capabilities, and all of the rest of the game that goes with these. "Knowing the rules" has actually taken something away from that.

14:40 I love the idea of the DM or GM being a referee, instead of having a vested interest in a particular outcome, or railroading players. I've had a DM brag about wanting to party wipe us, and get petty and punitive if we beat a boss without dying - even if the battle took two sessions and left us scarred.

Absolutely agree on the last one, I was never a fan of the "scriptwriter" type GMs, their job is to make a world, fill it with npcs, give the players a few hooks and then kickback and let them do their thing, making a whole ass storyline and expecting players to follow is futile, this goes for dnd and for other games like Vampire who, despite being a wholly narrative system, works largely on the same principle, it should be the players who shape the story.

I think Gygax's point was that all that was really required was the mechanic and the players, at least, didn't need to know the rules. The DM was the rules. With a good DM - this works well. With an OK DM - it's a disaster that just turns into hack n' slash. I haven't played 5e - but I do keep up with forum talk. 5e is obviously different - but players are still better off only knowing the basic parameters and letting a good DM shape the game.

Players can know the rules if they want to, but i wouldnt want them to know everything in the monster manual and DMG off hand

I'd recommend the last take. I'm a player in a game with not player facing rules, and the gm predominantly uses a 2d6 method for adjudication. The key to it is digetic description, nothing breaks the 4th wall, it's a bit tricky to get the hang of the language, but I've never had more fun in a campaign.

IMO best D&D hot take from history comes from the Old English hero RPG from and for folks of that age: "Those who would play this game would know well the rules. They are not so complicated as those the Wealh like, for the Wealh like all things complex and subtle, and the way of the western coast are not the ways of the middle land." - Ser Kevin of Crawford, in his translation for Wolves of God. Nice.

I really like the second take, but it depends on the type of campaign you want to do. I love to let players add their takes to the world, often they became naturally interconnected in surprising ways and make the players feel more invested in the world they co-created. But there are also story-driven ideas that demands a more structured basis.

I absolutely agree that many players are downright selfish with their backstories expecting entire campaigns to be designed around the tragic murder of their parents despite what the GM has planned or what the other players might be interested in doing. As far as written rules, yes, there should be a known set of rules for basic things that everyone agrees to from the beginning. But as a GM, the game runs more smoothly when unexpected things happen and instead of you pouring over books for 45 minutes trying to figure out if there's a rule that makes the suggested action possible, just come up with something and stick to it in the future. I extend this to problem solving to some extent too. I rarely create a fixed solution to puzzles, I want to see what the players come up with, and when something feels like it fits well enough, that's the solution (though they could still fail their roll if there is one.) Also, player agency is a blessing and a curse. Some groups gravitate toward chaos just to try to beat the GM, ruin everything he had planned, and go off to start a Bulette farm instead of engaging with any attempt to send them off on adventure. Others can gleefully nudge the story along with the GM just reacting with whatever seems appropriate. And in the middle there's the flowchart/decision tree GM who tries to work out every possible course of action ahead of time. This rarely works, because 3-4 brains that aren't yours are going to come up with some weird stuff that blasts your expectations to bits. Could be a Bulette farm, could be a heroic self-sacrifice.

My hot take is that too many players use the Chaotic alignment to excuse poor roleplaying. You're not Robin Hood, you're just a murder hobo.

I agree with the alignment guy. Alignment is a good tool, but no one understands alignment.

You can obviate the need for the alignment system by having clearly defined creeds for the various deities in your game world. Pathfinder does this pretty well.

I think a lot of the problem with alignment is the terminology used. D&D and Pathfinder are probably the most guilty of this where alignment at least feels like it's about characters' morality rather than a cosmic alignment. In Level Up, they switched alignment to be more of a cosmic thing and specifically said that PCs do not usually have an alignment. I think that's a much better way to think about it (and more in line with what you were saying about law and chaos), but they still use the same terms like lawful, good, and evil. And I think for most people, those still imply morality. Instead, I think using terms like order vs chaos and holy vs demonic (or infernal or diabolic or something) would do a better job of distinguishing alignment from morality.

As a DM, I generally start a players alignment based on their backstory or if nothing there sticks out then leave it up to the player. However, it is not frozen there. I treat it like knights of the old republic does light and dark side. Depending on how the players acts/behaves, if their actions are in line with their posted alignment they are fine. But, if they act against their alignment on a major decision/choice this can lead to their alignment shifting.

This video is awesome advice and great interaction.

Rules are what give a 'group of people chatting play-pretend' the distinct flavour of a TTRPG. Rules, rulings and everything in between is a reflection on how the game group likes their fantasy flavoured.

As a game designer and player of many rpg systems and being used to playing open ended systems with actual adults, most of the D and D community really sucks hard at RPG's and should stick to computer games, and the system has been pushing in that direction of supporting these bad players since 3rd ed started releasing supplementary material. Theres your hot take. Id rather stare at a white wall than GM or play in most D and D groups. I doubt ill ever meet another group that makes rpg's better than doing chores. Pigs love manure and there is nothing I can do about that anymore.

I have always preferred the approach to alignment used in Palladium Games.