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Person_Man
2010-09-28, 10:02 AM
Interesting article (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/10/04/101004fi_fiction_lipsyte?currentPage=all) about a group of teenagers who play D&D. Thought it might be interesting to post and discuss our "bad DM" and childhood D&D stories. Discuss.

dsmiles
2010-09-28, 10:17 AM
Interesting article (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/10/04/101004fi_fiction_lipsyte?currentPage=all) about a group of teenagers who play D&D. Thought it might be interesting to post and discuss our "bad DM" and childhood D&D stories. Discuss.

Very interesting article.

I can't say that I've...wait, there was that one time, but he was a bad DM in the other direction. We walked all over him. Mostly to show him he didn't have what it takes (yet). I don't know if he ever got better, though, since he never DMed for us again.

As far as childhood DnD, my sister taught me to play after I bugged her nearly to death at the ripe old age of 7, I think. We played with her DMPC (a grey elf thief) and her boyfriend (a human cavalier) and me (a half-elf fighter/dual-classed-into-ranger), and the human magic-user who hired us (NPC). She now works for a successful gaming company, which shall remain nameless. (Note I said 'gaming company' so WoTC is right out. :smalltongue:)

Postmodernist
2010-09-28, 11:14 AM
The Jaundiced Chimera is the best name for an inn, ever.

Starbuck_II
2010-09-28, 11:33 AM
Interesting article (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/10/04/101004fi_fiction_lipsyte?currentPage=all) about a group of teenagers who play D&D. Thought it might be interesting to post and discuss our "bad DM" and childhood D&D stories. Discuss.

The DM was doing Nintendo-Hard style. I mean, instant kill from the dragon?

Killed by a butter knife? :smallbiggrin:

dsmiles
2010-09-28, 11:37 AM
Killed by a butter knife? :smallbiggrin:

That could be funny under the right circumstances.

OMG PONIES
2010-09-28, 11:41 AM
Wow, that was way different than I thought it was going to be. An intense read.

I, unfortunately, don't have any stories about playing D&D as a child. My mother was like the one in the piece, clipping articles about how games steal your soul and making me watch Mazes & Monsters or somesuch. I did have one brief prepubescent flirtation with the game, however.

I went to summer camp for exactly one summer, despite my wails to the contrary. Most of the time, it was as hellacious as I expected: rock climbing, canoeing, and all that other humidity-soaked slavery nobody in their right mind would subject themself to. However, there was an hour after lunch where the nerds ruled. We dispersed to our various indoor activities, escaping the cruel heat and giving the more jaded counselors a break from us. The junior counselors were the kings of indoor hour, and they taught us the true gems in life. Computer programming, model rockets, and yes, Dungeons & Dragons.

Now, my mother had made me promise not to join the Dungeons & Dragons club when I foolishly asked for permission. I was too young to discover the art of lying, but my third-grade brain could compute the logic of toeing the line. She made me promise not to join, not to play, but she didn't say anything about spectating. So I went, leaned against one of the planks holding up the pavilion, and watched. Mostly, it was an excuse for the junior counselors to play. Every so often, they would allow one of the 6th or 7th graders to join--usually when they needed a character to mercilessly belittle or kill. These junior counselors, hulking behemoths of 8th and 9th-graders, were the kings of the land.

One day, somehow, they allowed a 7th-grader to serve as their Dungeon Master. They began in a crowded metropolis, with cryptic instructions to locate a particular temple. The players looked to each other, wondering what this twerp was getting them into. One of them shrugged and says, "Whatever, we look for the temple." The neophyte DM smiled and said, "You see a shadowy figure emerging from the shadows, smelling vaguely of Jell-o. As he approaches, you see that it is Bill Cosby. He shakes his head and mumbles, 'You should have gone to Temple,' before slaying all of you with a greatsword made of Jell-o." The 8th and 9th-graders were dumbfounded, dethroned. The 7th-grader took off running.

The players caught up to him and beat him pretty badly (presumably to teach him that some things, like games, should be taken seriously). However, that 7th-grader was a hero to all of us. He bravely faced and defeated a pack of giants. A decade passed before I left for college and actually had an opportunity to play Dungeons & Dragons, but I still credit that strange, scrawny middle-schooler and his murderous Bill Cosby impression for sparking my interest in roleplaying. He showed me a world where your imagination, no matter how twisted or disjointed, is the only thing you need to bend reality.

Greenish
2010-09-28, 11:44 AM
The DM was doing Nintendo-Hard style.Not really. When the player's input doesn't have any effect on the character's survival, "hard" isn't the term I would apply. :smallamused:

dsmiles
2010-09-28, 11:47 AM
"You see a shadowy figure emerging from the shadows, smelling vaguely of Jell-o. As he approaches, you see that it is Bill Cosby. He shakes his head and mumbles, 'You should have gone to Temple,' before slaying all of you with a greatsword made of Jell-o."

This, however, is funny under any circumstances. I sincerely hope he did his best Bill Cosby impression with that. :smalltongue:

Seatbelt
2010-09-28, 11:58 AM
That was an interesting bit of fiction. But I'm not really sure it's "about" D&D. I think D&D is just the setting the story takes place in. I've also never really had that situation. Of the three of us who DM now I think I'm the "worst" - I like to role play. I think I make a good character. But I'm both too lazy to craft a really good story and not fast enough to adlib NPC interactions. I'm really more interested in creative combat encounters. I think I do those pretty well. But I do OK and my general lack of DMish NPC ability kinda makes the players RP with each other more. They generally seem to have fun. It helps that I let them do cool stuff.

"This one time.." one of my players wanted to play an astromech type droid, in a campaign about fighter pilots. So I let him rig up a mount on one of the y-wings to shoot himself out of and worked up some rules for him to crash land on larger ships and sabotage them. He was instrumental in taking down a dreadnaught's shields, and the rest of the players got to blow up something otherwise out of their league (and therefore epic).

Our worst DM was actually a pretty good DM. He was really good at adlibbing the craziest stuff and it was a ton of fun. But he's got the shortest attention span ever so they never go anywhere. Thats why he's our worst DM.

My worst DM experience ever was at Gencon. This guy sets up a Ravenloft game for us. Not only is my character a fighter in an RP heavy setting, with -cha and int, but he's broken (lucky I have some books with me so I rebuild him on the spot to be both more interesting to RP and more interesting in combat). Literally missing like 4 feats and his numbers are wrong. Then, the DM designs the characters so that party conflict is inevitable. The archer broke every magic bow the party had because she kept rolling 1s and he couldn't think of anything better to have happen. I ended up sending dirty txts to my fiance and only barely paying attention because even combat was set up poorly - our bard and monk wanted to be our frontliners and the rogue at one point actually refused to let me get past her because she wanted to kill the guy with her 1d4+1, instead of my 1D8+12+8 for power attack. Ug. But other than that I've never really played a *bad* campaign.

dsmiles
2010-09-28, 12:03 PM
That was an interesting bit of fiction. But I'm not really sure it's "about" D&D. I think D&D is just the setting the story takes place in. I've also never really had that situation. Of the three of us who DM now I think I'm the "worst" - I like to role play. I think I make a good character. But I'm both too lazy to craft a really good story and not fast enough to adlib NPC interactions. I'm really more interested in creative combat encounters. I think I do those pretty well. But I do OK and my general lack of DMish NPC ability kinda makes the players RP with each other more. They generally seem to have fun. It helps that I let them do cool stuff.


Honestly, I'm the exact opposite. Maybe we should tag-team a game, :smallbiggrin:

Paladineyddi
2010-09-28, 12:12 PM
Quite a fun read :)

I never had trouble with DM's since i do most the dming of my group up until i joined another group and the DM there is awesome

Unrest
2010-09-28, 01:32 PM
Even if it's fiction, I know there has to be stories like that - which on a regular basis unnerves me and spoils my day. But that's an aside.

As for bad DMs, well. Pretty much anyone in our group DM'ed, that's 5. I always get jumbled with improvising (and the players always make sure I'm busy with that), the clever roguish guy is great at improvising but it gets out of control with the events quickly, the quiet, grim guy concentrates on all the wrong things, the guy that's always the most detached and can't grasp what's going on as a player is downright great.

And the regular DM, well, as you have put it, he's Nintendo Hard. It's winnable, but in general survivability is low, with TPK-95%-in-progress situations ending every second or third session of the game? When he's the DM, we never get past level 2 as a team. Seriously. Once only me and the roguish guy were the PCs - we had to be very careful, but we were, and felt satisfaction as survivors after several sessions. The session the rest of the regulars came to play, everything crumbled. Realized that the games are simply hard, and you had to play them that way. The other people just rushed in, not thinking. The dumb thing we did is we never talked about the way we would want to play the games (that perhaps having something to do with the fact that I'm the only person there actually game-savvy, especially after coming to the Playground). </yadda yadda>

tl;dr: What's a middle-tracker?

Reis Tahlen
2010-09-28, 01:48 PM
Why these stories never tell of fun gamin groups, where people have REAL fun, gather real experiences, and players are human beings?

Unrest
2010-09-28, 02:16 PM
Happy doesn't sell. Turn on your TV and local news.

El Dorado
2010-09-28, 02:26 PM
Definitely a character piece. D&D was just a context for events. Could have as easily used sports or work or whatever to provide insight into the characters.

GoatToucher
2010-09-28, 02:43 PM
Many American schools work on the "track system" wherein the top third of a grade is placed into the gifted track, the lowest third into the remedial track, and the middle third... you get the idea.

It is not the best thing for students' self esteem, and lowered expectations for the lower two tracks can undermine the students' education, in that teachers are often disinclined to "waste" effort challenging non-gifted children.

Unrest
2010-09-28, 04:44 PM
Thank you!

Further agreed on the 'character piece' thing. Bullying and its variations are strangely common in e.g. US TV series. I mean, have you ever seen a high-school TV series where bullying wasn't there?

Katana_Geldar
2010-09-28, 05:56 PM
This just convinces me to begin my novel about gamers.

Radar
2010-09-29, 01:47 AM
Some time ago I stumbled upon the play Of Dice and Men (http://www.criticalthreattheatre.com/Critical_Threat/Of_Dice_and_Men.html). For geographical (too far) and chronological (learned about it after the fact) reasons I haven't seen it tough. It is however a play written by gamers about gamers (at least partly so).

As for the article: a good read, but I think, that it might produce "RPGs are for weirdos and make you mentaly unstable" reaction - intentioned or not. I still can't figure out, why did they play with this DM. A one-shot where everything is lethal twice over might be fun, but killing PCs on a whim is wrong. That and humiliating PCs for fun.

DwarfFighter
2010-09-29, 02:42 AM
Interesting article (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/10/04/101004fi_fiction_lipsyte?currentPage=all) about a group of teenagers who play D&D. Thought it might be interesting to post and discuss our "bad DM" and childhood D&D stories. Discuss.

This article reminds me a lot of a collection of "tales from the table" I read a few years back. These stories featured a cast of purported real-life persons that exhibited the worst stereotypical gamer traits. The style of writing was remarkably similar to this article...

My Search skill fails me, however, and I've been unable to find the relevant articles.

-DF

Psyx
2010-09-29, 06:32 AM
Happy doesn't sell. Turn on your TV and local news.

Ironically I don't watch the news or read papers because I don't like being depressed and told to live in fear.

Thrawn4
2010-09-29, 07:17 AM
Ironically I don't watch the news or read papers because I don't like being depressed and told to live in fear.

Good point. Though I wonder whether this was the actual intention. Still, a depressive story.

OMG PONIES
2010-09-29, 07:32 AM
Why these stories never tell of fun gamin groups, where people have REAL fun, gather real experiences, and players are human beings?

I think that this story paints every character (except the narrator's sister) as fully human, complete with quirks and taboos. This group did gather to have fun, as an escape from their own separate tragedies. Later in the piece, the narrator joins a "fun" gaming group at school, and hates it.


Ironically I don't watch the news or read papers because I don't like being depressed and told to live in fear.

So instead you fear the fearmongers? :smallbiggrin:

mint
2010-09-29, 08:07 AM
I thought it was kind of a haunting read.
Made me sadface.

Tengu_temp
2010-09-29, 08:36 AM
I expected an article, not a fictional story. That's not the same thing.



As for the article: a good read, but I think, that it might produce "RPGs are for weirdos and make you mentaly unstable" reaction - intentioned or not. I still can't figure out, why did they play with this DM. A one-shot where everything is lethal twice over might be fun, but killing PCs on a whim is wrong. That and humiliating PCs for fun.

Seconded.

Person_Man
2010-09-29, 09:23 AM
This just convinces me to begin my novel about gamers.

My never to be written or published novel involves a group of teens who play D&D, violent video games, do drugs, extreme sports, use racist and sexist language, have sex, talk openly about homosexuality, spend too much time on the internet, attend dog fights, and are seeking to uncover a conspiracy by the Catholic Church. It doesn't actually have a plot - I just want to gin up as much controversy as possible so that I can go on Oprah.

molten_dragon
2010-09-29, 09:33 AM
“The Varelli kid,” my sister says. “Isn’t he the one who flashed those girls at the ice rink. And set his turds on fire in the school parking lot?”

I couldn't stop laughing at this.

dsmiles
2010-09-29, 09:45 AM
My never to be written or published novel involves a group of teens who play D&D, violent video games, do drugs, extreme sports, use racist and sexist language, have sex, talk openly about homosexuality, spend too much time on the internet, attend dog fights, and are seeking to uncover a conspiracy by the Catholic Church. It doesn't actually have a plot - I just want to gin up as much controversy as possible so that I can go on Oprah.

Oprah? You might get a movie deal about that...:smalltongue:

OMG PONIES
2010-09-29, 09:52 AM
Oprah? You might get a movie deal about that...:smalltongue:

Sorry, but they've already made The Social Network.

kamikasei
2010-09-29, 10:05 AM
Why these stories never tell of fun gamin groups, where people have REAL fun, gather real experiences, and players are human beings?
Unlike the kids in the story, because of course troubled kids aren't human beings? :smallconfused:

I expected an article, not a fictional story. That's not the same thing.
Agreed that the OP was a bit misleading in that respect.

Seconded.
Eh. The story is about some kids with problems who game. It's not suggesting they have problems because they game or game (in general, as opposed to playing that specific game with that specific screwy dynamic) because they have problems. I'd say it's pretty neutral on the horrors-of-gaming scale.

Mando Knight
2010-09-29, 11:06 AM
So instead you fear the fearmongers? :smallbiggrin:

Fear and disgust are two different things.

OMG PONIES
2010-09-29, 11:28 AM
Fear and disgust are two different things.

Aye, well said.

Tengu_temp
2010-09-29, 01:15 PM
Eh. The story is about some kids with problems who game. It's not suggesting they have problems because they game or game (in general, as opposed to playing that specific game with that specific screwy dynamic) because they have problems. I'd say it's pretty neutral on the horrors-of-gaming scale.

That's its intention. But the actual reaction? Someone who's not familiar with RPG, and especially someone who thinks RPGs are <Spoony>OMG TEH DEVIL</Spoony>, will most likely interpret it as "only messed-up people play these games".

kamikasei
2010-09-29, 01:29 PM
I don't know about "people who aren't familiar with RPGs" - if you're coming at it without your Satan Goggles on, the gifted track kids' game serves to show that it's not the exclusive province of the emotionally unbalanced, for one thing. And overall, I think it's a bad idea to criticize an individual work for what biased readers will take from it. Given that this doesn't even show the game itself as messed up - basically, the DM is just bullying the kids by dangling achievement in front of them and snatching it away, there's no "zomg they're becoming lost in a fantasy world of madness!" hysteria - I'd say it's the sort of story gaming should have if it's considered a normal thing for people to do. We just need more positive stories as well to counterbalance the historical hysteria, but this story didn't have a duty to be that.

Tengu_temp
2010-09-29, 01:41 PM
I'm not criticizing this story for delivering a "wrong" message, I'm saying that it might give anti-RPG people some fuel to their fire. Which has nothing to do with its quality.

I am, however, disappointed that it wasn't an actual article. If I knew it's a fictional story, I probably wouldn't read it, so even though it wasn't bad I feel like I wasted some time.

Gametime
2010-09-29, 02:39 PM
...So why did you keep reading it after it became clear it was fictional? :smallconfused:

I doubt this article will stir up much opinion one way or the other. Though there are still groups that get all worked up over this sort of thing sometimes, by and large the anti-D&D hysteria died down years ago. I doubt the sort of people interested in keeping it going are likely to scan the New Yorker for proof of their convictions.

Tengu_temp
2010-09-29, 02:53 PM
Because I'm obsessive-compulsive and when I start reading something, I have to finish or else it will haunt me in my nightmares.

kjones
2010-09-29, 05:20 PM
FWIW, my mom vastly preferred my D&D playing to my video game playing. She figured it's better for me to play games with friends than alone.

I think most parents nowadays would feel the same.

nihilism
2010-09-29, 06:08 PM
brilliant short story, thanks for the link

Kingweasel
2010-10-01, 06:42 PM
I kind of enjoyed it. I've read the author's most recent book, and it came off the same way to me: Interesting in parts, but what's the point?

Lipsyte is well-loved by those who love him. They think he's a genius.

Me? I don't get it. Maybe I'm just not into character stylings or slice-of-a-mediocre-life stories, but I was actually a little bit annoyed and wanted that time I spent back (kind of like after seeing Ep 1 of Star Wars:smallmad:)