I used to work at a startup. The founder of the company was very much into applying what he had learned doing an MBA, and one of his big interests was translating tacit knowledge and know-how into formal rules, processes, "playbooks" and so on. Because I was deemed to be "good at what I do", I was his test case, and we spent many a long afternoon sitting down trying to transform my know-how into a series of documents that others within the company could use to improve. That experience, I can see now in retrospect, sparked a long-standing skepticism of mine towards all such attempts to formalise the knowledge and skills that professionals develop through practice. Let me put it another way: if you're good at a profession or craft, most of what makes you good is learned unconsciously and practiced without deliberate thought. And the exercise of trying to extract all of that and transform it into a set of procedures, guidelines, processes and so in is not only largely doomed to failure but actually can very frequently be detrimental to the practitioner himself - it certainly made me second-guess myself a lot more than I had done when I was just blissfully being good at my job.
(This is why most books on "How to Write/Draw/Write Songs" and so on completely suck, by the way, with the only useful information ever imparted being "practice a lot" - something which one day I will write a blog post about in itself.)
Nothing new here if you've read your Polanyi or Oakeshott or for that matter ever watched a genuine craftsman (using the term broadly to include teachers, doctors, engineers and so on) do anything. But an important observation for me at that time.
It applies very strongly to GMing. You can learn to be a good GM. And there are certain rules of thumb which will help. But by and large you get good at it from experience, and the know-how of a good GM tends to be tacit and untheorized. Good GMs don't think about what makes a good GM and put that into practice. They just do it. What skills they learn they learn "on the job" - and, it's worth adding, from social interactions as they go through life, GMing being a social activity.
It is important, of course, not to confuse the necessary and the causal. It is necessary to wear a suit to a job interview, but that won't cause you to get the job. Likewise, it's necessary to study medicine if you are going to be a doctor, but that won't make you a good one. You need to know some rules if you are going to be a GM, but they won't make you good at it.
And it's important, too, not to discount the je ne sais quois of talent; some people do have natural gifts (and natural disadvantages). But I very much believe that good GMing comes from just going ahead and doing it - frequently - and letting your brain's natural propensity for trial and error and unconscious learning to get into gear.
The baby is being thrown out with the bathwater here; id quibble with the 'single source extrapolation' point you made but not enough that id feel comfortable fighting you on it, but if you were to broaden the scope of where you can source a how-to manual, i think you can easily jumpstart a total newbie gm from zero to something approaching hero. Por ejemplo, i havent been invovled in a game for years, and then i havent gmed for years before that, but id say im about up to snuff on best practices and have a bunch of fantastic tricks in my toolbox that i gleaned from scraping the cream off 100 or so blogs and personalities that are out there discussing the craft.
ReplyDeleteOf course, really integrating theory into unconscious, reactive 'natural practice' takes time and effort but i think the amount that you can actually improve just through immersing yourself in the form itself is significant.
And im in the 'no such thing as talent camp' also just to complete the 'angry internet contrarian' bifecta haha though i think this may be a specificity problem as opposed to anything actually ideological.
Regardless, good food for thought
It would be really hard to carry out a proper randomised control trial to see whether it's possible to go from newbie zero to hero, but it would be fun to try.
DeleteDefinitely agree with you. All my friends ask ‘how I learned to DM’ and my only reply is practice. I just dove into it. Reading everything online is great for brain food... but I only got ‘good’ when I started running 3 games a week for 8-10 players at a time. Improv is necessary, and you can only learn it by improvising.
ReplyDeleteYes, improvisation is almost impossible to theorise. Again, I may write a blog post about that - although I have a feeling I did once upon a time.
DeleteHad to do a similar thing in my old job, write up texted that formalized what I was doing. Weren't the best for others since what I was doing was based on my personality and others weren't too good at following it even if it worked great for me.
ReplyDeleteHowever some of these formal structures can help newbies or mediocre GM a lot to keep them from flailing around wildly. They're like crutches, great if you need them, a real pain in the ass if you don't.
"They're like crutches, great if you need them, a real pain in the ass if you don't."
DeleteNice turn of phrase! Never heard that one before.
Came from an old old old rpg.net thread about FATE IIRC.
DeleteWhat it comes down to is that there's a lot of people who I'd rather play with if they were running an Indie game than an OSR game since, well, they're nice people but they need some crutches for their GMing. For really good GMs running an Indie game just gets in the way.
One element that may confound this a bit is that good DMing is so directly tied to storytelling ability and social skills. If are an engaging speaker and have the ability to read people/facilitate happy group activity you are about 80 percent of the way there.
ReplyDeleteThose two abilities are not really specialized skills like doing heart surgery or rebuilding a carburetor. They are something that a large percentage of people practice constantly, and also something that we are constantly exposed to, so we're super discerning about the skillful vs. the less skillful.
I'm not totally sure that any amount of DMing practice can really make up for a (comparative) deficit in these abilities because some people are just so incredibly proficient in them as a result of practice in other settings. I guess it probably can, but it would be a long, hard road!
I agree with you Ivan. I started GMing relatively late, but as a teacher, I was surprised by how much overlap there is between teaching and GMing. Communication and facilitation skills are indeed transferrable, but I think that there are elements of GMing that can be improved dramatically through use. Practice related to system mastery alone can reduce wait times and allow GMs to use their limited cognitive resources to employ more immersive systems, or to simply throw yourself into description or wait time.
DeleteRight, also with both teaching and GMing an important part is knowing when the shut up and let students/players take the lead instead of blathering on. A friend's 1ed campaign really left an impression on me in just how laconic he was, only talking when he absolutely had to and keeping it short while saying everything that needed to be said. Him taking a lot of his own personality out of the equation helped make the world feel more real.
DeleteSocial skills, yes. Storytelling... not so sure, having had some experience with storytelling GMs who think an RPG session is basically a long monologue where the GM showcases his adventure to an audience of players. The first time you might have a good time, but after multiple sessions boredom sets in.
DeleteI think it's less about 'storytelling' in the sense of knowing how to narrate a whole story - which, as you note, would leave the players with nothing to do - than about knowing how to efficiently and effectively narrate an event, or describe a scene, in a way that allows the players to feel immersed in the unfolding fiction and confident of their ability to interact with it.
DeleteOne of the key skills of this sort of storytelling is, precisely, the ability to avoid long monologues. Communicate your concept as quickly and efficiently as possible and then shut up. A game in which the GM is doing most of the talking is almost always going to be a bad game.
Nice points made by everybody. Often it's knowing that less is more and that's also something you learn from experience!
DeleteI think Ivan is right that there are a very small minority of people who are deficient in those important social skills but I think that might fall into the necessary/causal thing. It doesn't matter how hard I try or how much I practice - I will never be a professional basketballer or Miss Universe. There are certain base requirements that have to be fulfilled and which no amount of practice will overcome.
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ReplyDeleteI'm sympathetic to your argument - but I would say that a "good" manual can be very instructive in principles. Sun Tzu comes to mind, etc.
ReplyDeleteIs Sun Tzu all that instructive though? Not being facetious - I've just never fought a war!
DeleteI think Sun Tzu's aphorisms are not very useful at all unless you already have a military command mindset. Whereas Clausewitz or Machiavelli can be instructive to the general reader.
DeleteBeing able to articulate WHY what you do works can make you better at what you do, because you can do those things consciously rather than unconsciously. This allows you, for instance, to identify when something that ordinarily works does not work, and to recognize why it does not work and what might work instead.
ReplyDeleteYour conversations with your boss did not function to help you articulate what you do because it was a conversation between a person who is good at a thing and a person who is not. When two people who are BOTH good at a thing discuss that thing, they tend to develop a common language to articulate to each other what they do. Common principles can be identified from such a dialogue. Those common principles are best understood by those who already have experience, but they can also be of use to those who are learning the skill, because (a) the individual techniques can be practiced in isolation, and (b) the epiphany of suddenly understanding a principle can let you know you are on the right track.
There is no question in my mind that reading certain DM bloggers has made me a better DM. As an example, there is a common language around agency that allows us to identify and make conscious decisions regarding the impacts our decisions have upon players. I can read the difference between bloggers who discuss “railroading” in a purely instinctive manner, and those who are able to articulate why certain techniques grant agency while others do not; I invariably find the latter generally give advice and provide examples that are more consistent with what my own experience is telling me.
That's probably a fair point actually.
DeleteI've been thinking about this post (and your "Writing" one, proceeding it) for the past few days. It's hard to disagree with your thesis statement--"There's no substitute for good GMing"--but it also feels as if it inappropriately de-emphasizes the role of curiosity.
ReplyDeleteMy degree is in writing. I'd actually argue that "Good writing is good reading." Read a lot about what you want to write about. Yes, you have to put in the time, but the way you learn what is delightful to you, what good writing sounds like, how stories are structured, what is cliche vs what is surprising--all that is done by reading.
Similarly, with GMing (or professional development, since you mentioned it) you have to be interested in the subject. That means practicing. But it also means talking to people about it. Work with a mentor you respect. Solicit and earnestly desire feedback. Use retrospectives with your peers and players. Play in other games. Read other games. Read blogs.
All of that gels together into a gestalt experience.
Yes, it is definitely a gestalt thing. Well put.
DeleteWhile I total agree with your premise that GMing is an art form that not everyone is well suited I would suggest the following:
ReplyDelete1) It's a skill that can be learned.
2) It takes a lot of work and thought.
3) It is often better is the DM is a quasi-authority figure---holds himself/herself a bit apart from "the gang" either by virtue of age or habit.
4) The original DM's Guide Gygax wrote struck me as a bit of a jumble when I first read it as a player (1970's). Only decades later, as a DM, did my appreciation grown for it. It is much more a collection of tips to help you out of the difficult questions you face as a practicing DM, than in any way a book on How To Be a DM.
Not sure about #1 and #2.
DeleteMy 11 year old son has been playing D&D for 6 years or so, he's always been a clever and skilled player. He's made several efforts at GMing, with pretty mixed results. He has a friend of the same age, who has only just started playing D&D and is now starting a game with his friends. I rather hate to say it, but I get the impression that my son's friend has the GM instinct and is probably already a considerably better GM than my son. Le *sigh*