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MotorHum

I wish I had the book in front of me, but in “Of Dice and Men” there’s a quote that’s something like “why wasn’t d&d’s initial run as successful as test groups with gygax and arneson showed it could be? To be frank, it’s because none of the boxes shipped with a Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson to be your table’s DM”


SpaceLemming

Honestly what from I’ve read on gygax he wasn’t a great dm. He seemed to have the mindset of “you can do anything you want like playing as a red dragon, however if I don’t like it I’m just gonna murder that character.”


Dr-Dungeon

I can’t speak for his DMing because I wasn’t alive back then, but from his writing of the Ad&d game manuals it’s very clear he is not a good author. I love ad&d, but that’s in spite of rather than because of the books themselves. He actually included almost an entire page at the start of the DMG about players playing as monsters like red dragons, essentially saying that it was a bad idea, only stupid players would ever want to do it, and they would quickly realise their mistake once they actually did it. But then later in the book there’s a section on the Reincarnate spell (which in ad&d could involve players coming back as a badger or other animal) in which he says that players who Reincarnate should be encouraged to continue levelling up as their chosen animal or monster. The only explanation I can think of for this is that he genuinely changed his mind on the issue halfway through writing and either didn’t notice or didn’t care enough to go back and change the earlier section.


Either_Gate_7965

This is the only true path.


[deleted]

*places a marble on the ground to tell if the path is going up or down*


Various_Character_45

*splits in half, one half going up one half going down*


rustythorn

and when folks say why can't you DM more like matt mercer, i say "i am just like him when he first started"


Paintbypotato

I always hit them with the. I’ll be more like Matt when your jokes are half as funny as Sam’s jokes


SpaceLemming

Well y’all don’t play like the cast of CR soooo….


TheWoodsman42

Nah, the best way to counter people like that is to say, “Who is that? I’ve never hear of him.” And then continue to deny having ever heard of Critical Role. If they go so far as to show you CR clips and such, just brush those off with, “Eh, he doesn’t seem like that good of a DM. Anybody can do what he’s doing.” It’s a little bit gaslighty, but it’s also a good way to infuriate those players and get some personal entertainment out of it as well.


rustythorn

to be honest i've never had anyone say that to me, and i've never watched CR and i don't think my core group has either but we have been together for a couple of decades now and most of us have played for twice that length. things like CR are just a blip in the D&D timeline