Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Addendum to "Certifying Dungeon Masters"

This is a follow-up to this post over here.

I feel like I touched off a bit of madness with my last post, and that I need to add some clarifying remarks.

Here's the short and sweet:

  1. I've been reading a lot of old (ancient, really) Dragon magazine articles.
  2. I found an interesting one about awarding "experience points" and "levels" to both players and Dungeon Masters based on particular actions they've taken. I thought it was kind of fun.
  3. It got me thinking/remembering an idea I had about certifying Dungeon Masters. This comes back to...oh, a bunch of jumbled theories/ideas in my head. Stuff like: the confusion amongst new DMs about how to run a game/campaign, the lack of information, training and teaching, the lack of coaching, and the problem that some folks who might otherwise be interested in playing the game get utterly turned-off based on bad experiences with poorly run games.
  4. I then muddled #2 and #3 because I lack the patience to do systematic posts and was in a rush to puke all my ideas onto the internet as quickly as possible.

That's what that post was all about. Here's what I could have/should have/would have said if I'd been a bit more thoughtful and measured:

I believe it would be a good thing to have a hobby full (or mostly full) of competent Dungeon Masters. Good Dungeon Masters would be preferred, great Dungeon Masters would be awesome...but I'm willing to settle for competent.

[normally, I'd insert an essay-and-a-half attempting to define "competence," but I'm trying to be measured and systematic, so I'll leave that for a future post]

So when I talk about "certifying" individuals as Dungeon Masters, what I'm getting at is finding a way to qualify a person as "objectively competent" to run a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Because anyone can call themselves a "Dungeon Master," even a person who's never cracked the book to read the rules. I know there are folks who, in fact, have done this very thing.

[my buddy, Steve, told me about his introduction to D&D in elementary school: a neighbor kid "ran" a game using nothing but a Monster Manual. All the players had to pick a monster out of the book to be their character. How they accomplished anything is beyond me...Steve didn't remember, but he still referred to the kid running the game as his "Dungeon Master" and said he (the DM) would tell the players what they needed to roll; I get the impression the PCs of this game mainly fought each other for their treasure]

Even owning the necessary rulebooks is no guarantee of an individual knowing the rules; I've owned rulebooks that I've never bothered to finish reading and fully integrate into my game (The Dungeoneers Survival Guide comes to mind). And even reading the rulebook might not make some individuals competent to run the game...they might not even be adequate, depending on the level of expectation from the players at the table.

Now, before I go any further, please allow me to say that I'm NOT trying to excise DMs from the table based on inadequacy. My goal is to bring every would-be Dungeon Master "up to snuff;" my whole idea of having a certification process is in aid of that goal. It's not about exclusion...it's about elevating the level of play, in order to provide a more enjoyable experience AND help sustain and grow the hobby.

OKay...so, HOW does one go about achieving certification? I don't know. That's the part where my romantic pipe-dream always falls down. I don't have an idea, and I'm not proposing one. This is the bit that got confused in my prior post. The idea that popped into my head (upon reading Jon Mattson's article) is that, hey, maybe there are some objective ways to measure a person's ability to act as Dungeon Master...and objective measurements are the first step towards certification.

[I've never been a doctor, but I assume that there is some sort of testing of knowledge and skill necessary before an individual can be licensed to perform medicine...it's not simply a matter of paying a fee like you're picking up a permit to fish during the season]

Subjective measurements...like how many players show up to your table and whether or not they have "fun" (as written on some sort of feedback/evaluation form)...are not good means of certifying anything. And I wouldn't leave such a thing in the hands of the industry that publishes the game (for profit)...that's like putting the FDA in the hands of private pharmaceutical companies. But actually coming up with objective measurables...and finding ways of assigning weight and ranking to those measures...is a tough chore. What I found interesting and exciting about the Mattson article was that someone had taken the time to put together SOMETHING that wasn't just based on subjectivity (see DeAnn Iwan's article "How Do You Rate As A DM" in Dragon #43 as an example of a subjective...and poor...means of evaluating skill). I found it interesting and exciting...but I did not see it as an answer to the question "how can we certify DMs." I just see it as opening the crack of potential for the possibility.

Does that make sense? While the level titles make me chuckle, and it's fun (for me) to tabulate my "XP" with regard to Dungeon Mastering, I'm not saying one needs to achieve 12th level (or whatever) in order to receive some sort of diploma or certificate. Levels are fun because I think there ARE tiers of experience when it comes to some professions/skills...and Dungeon Mastering is one. But certifying competence is something on a much different scale from what Mattson's proposed "leveling" system. My apologies for confusing the two things.

Over the next few days I'm going to be very busy with a bunch of things and...for my own mental health...I'm going to be limiting my posting. However, I do plan on thinking about this more; maybe I'll come up with some of my own "objective measures" that I think would apply towards basic DM competence.

Later, Gators.

How about some sort of
"official cap" instead of a certificate?


  1. Not related to certifying DMs but related to giving DMs XP, have you ever tried the Rune RPG?

    1. Never even heard of it. Do you mean Rune Quest?

    2. Nope, Rune RPG http://www.atlas-games.com/rune/ was an attempt to make a fully competitive tabletop RPG. I'm reading it right now and am planning on trying it out soon.

  2. The idea of certifying DMs brings to mind a particular conversation I had with my son. We both play in a campaign with a pretty terrible DM. He doesn't know the rules, is rarely prepared, and has other issues not worth going into. The singular qualifying characteristic he has that makes him our DM? He's willing. That's it.

    Neither my son nor I are willing to DM, because while we know the rules better, we aren't willing and/or able to put in the necessary preparation time. In addition, I'm bad at playing it by ear, and I think my son believes he is, too.

    Neither of us is willing to be a bad DM, even though we each think we'd be better than the current DM. So we're stuck with a poor DM who is willing to do it anyway.

    1. @ Pythor:

      Thank you for this comment. It gives me a lot to think about.

    2. Jumping off the previous poster, I seem to recall a bloggy discussion about the Dunning-Kruger effect in DMing... was that on your blog, or is my fuzzy memory pointing me in the wrong direction? Maybe it was Trollsmith... iunno.

  3. We definitely need to give more power to far-off elites who should be allowed to pass judgement on our otherwise private and personal gaming decisions. Definitely. How the hell would I know whether I’m enjoying myself or not without someone who has never met me and doesn’t share my values deciding for me?

    1. GOD it just occurred to me: what if I am enjoying myself, but in a problematic or toxic way? If I had a license to maintain, some sort of certification, I could be banned for enjoying myself in a badwrongfun manner.

      This is obviously a social good and must be enacted immediately.

    2. @ Scott:

      As I wrote, EXCLUSION is not the object.

      As for "far-off elites"...um, what? I don't believe I suggested any such thing.

      My suggestion would be to use objective measures to establish objective (baseline) competence or "knowledge level"...so that it wouldn't matter whether I (or anyone else) "knew" you or not.

    3. Scott is describing self-appointed jerks who write endlessly on blogs about how some people who don't do the work don't deserve as much as people who are just trying to have fun.

  4. The biggest problem posed with evaluating DM competency has to do with keeping track of knowledge. There are DMs who move around a lot and get to play with a large number of groups over a large number of campaigns, but I don't find it unfeasible that the 'best' DM in the world is some Russian in the Siberian wastes who's been running the same campaign for the past 35 years in a place with constant sub-20kbps network connection. Likely? No. Does it stretch the imagination? By no means. But while this specific scenario might not reflect reality, it does bring up the issue of missing information.

    In the same light, players making reports, or DMs making self-reports, will be likewise missing information. This is before the problem of taste (i.e. Hargrave's Arduin was so impressive that people would cross states to meet up for the games, but the degree of gonzo and lethality are enough to boggle the minds for many of those who read over the campaign stories; in like fashion, Greyhawk and Blackmoor are both spoken of as amazing to have been involved in, but both were very different games; further, not every convention story of Gygax is entirely positive).

    If we assume (a) that exceptions like our hypothetical Siberian grand-master are not statistically significant, and that (b) taste and player experience will be mitigated by a large enough sample size, then one could perhaps move to an aggregate data collection. Review websites like Rate my Professor or Yelp could be considered, though the former is perhaps more appropriate (user tags account for personal taste). But then that poses its own set of issues: While students can remain anonymous, it's much harder for players to do so in this context; further, while one particularly salty review won't be harmful to a professor with 200+ students per year, a DM who might not play with half that number in their entire life would be much harder pressed, thus requiring much stricter account restrictions to help deal with defamation. And this is of course not without its own social hazards, since you're creating what, given the nature of the internet, is more likely to be a house of complaints than it is critically useful. And this is all without considering the matter of personal privacy - at the bare minimum, if you're doing non-anonymous accounts, you have a lot of personal information put on servers which will almost certainly be insufficiently protected.

    That would, at least, answer the question of gathering data. Certification is harder - a large enough pool of reviews, with a high enough average? I haven't any good ideas on that one. But ultimately I also find the idea, though interesting, something that's ultimately aimed at the wrong direction. What would be more informative, for example, might be surveying players and DMs in large numbers on what 'works' and what 'doesn't work', why it does or doesn't; then, sifting through for recurring patterns; again, surveying, now asking more exacting questions; then, having GMs experiment in other areas; then, acquiring a final set of data based on questions over that data, and putting it back out. Unfortunately the only ones with the power to manage that sort of experiment are WotC, and there's no incentive for them to do anything other than find what moves the most product. The simpler and more personalized version is to read over play reports, but that's what most of us do anyways, isn't it?

  5. First, Steve's GM sounds awesome. Where is this cat? I wanna hang with him.

    I would say this idea is great for the kind of oppressive, totalitarian regim...I mean...ahh...coordinated play events and the like but really it does nothing for me and most of the people I game with.

    It does make me happy that I'm not into D&D. I am GM, not a DM. Therefore I can do what I like.

    Freedom! Power to the people!

    1. @ Adam:

      Steve's DM was in my brother's high school class. He wasn't a bad cat, but wasn't all that interesting (to me). Probably would have been MORE interesting if he'd still gamed, but he didn't after elementary school.

      Steve I was able to entice back into gaming...with Rifts. Decades later, I would get him to play D&D with me...it was only then that he related his earlier experiences to me.

      I know you like different RPGs from D&D. I'm not sure how or if any of this "certification" stuff would or could or need apply to non-D&D RPGs. I haven't really thought that far ahead.

      But I really don't think I'm postulating anything like "regulation" or some sort of "DM Registration Act."

      People play a lot of different sports. Some sports have avenues to higher levels: collegiate or professional. Others (like, say, Frisbee Golf) don't. But even the most prestigious "pro" sports have smaller scale versions: PeeWee football, Flag football, backyard or school yard pickup games, etc. Having codified standards doesn't ruin a game or negate its potential to be played in a casual fashion.

  6. In psychology or in teaching, there is something called criterion-based assessment. I think this could be an avenue that would avoid the subjective nature of the review system that Rosenritter describes. I don't know exactly how you would develop the criteria, but once established, they could be an objective measurement of skill. This could even be self-administered, self-reported, which would prevent exclusion but could help foster growth, particularly if the criteria were widely publicized. One could convene a panel of experts, makes surveys for GMs, figure out some descriptive statistics of GMs, compare that with subjective descriptions to find generally positive traits that are accessible to the larger community but correlate with good subjective responses. Take the resulting information and make a checklist for different GMing skills. It would require continuous revision and testing and of course there would be exceptions, but it sounds possible.

    1. I like the idea, Andrew. If only some criterion existed.

    2. Criteria would have to be developed but you suggested some interesting ideas in your recent post about GMing at speed. Simple knowledge checks, like what are the HD and AC of various common creatures could be one criterion. Some minimum number of sessions could be another. Being able to adjudicate a given situation might be another criterion. One could receive full marks for know a rule and partial marks for making a ruling that closely fits the situation or RAW. As a self-report I'm assuming this would something that could stir the GM to reflect on their own practice and as a measure of improvement, not as some final arbiter of authority or legitimacy.

      Then again, I'm not a master GM, so I'm sure there are other, perhaps better ideas out there for what sort of criteria could be used.

  7. I would think that gaming companies would have a vested interest in good GMs. What better way to sell a game? Curiously, I don't feel like any of them really invest in this.

    I feel like GMing requires a certain personality type. But a novice GM can get up to speed much faster by playing with or watching a good GM.

    I'd rather see an emphasis on recording or broadcasting good GMs so that there are more examples of the craft in action.

    1. A capable DM doesn't need new modules, new systems or encouragement to join a gamestore's group to get players. All things the company's business model depends on.

    2. What I'm wondering, Alexis, is why gaming companies aren't doing stuff like your "How to Run" book, or promoting specific examples of good GMing and directing that info at new GMs?

      Encouraging people to give GMing a try, and giving them the tools to excel seems like it would sell more product to happy players.

    3. I agree with you Keith; but I think it would sell a product to the customer that would be very difficult to sell to the company's masters, Hasbro. Imagine being in a boardroom with a bunch of people who know absolutely nothing about the game, explaining that you're going to raise the academic level in a way that means it won't be played by children. It simply wouldn't fly.

      "Games" are played by children, which is the fixed belief of so many mundane, middle-of-the-road non-imaginative adults. The company's hands are somewhat bound by the perception that, while a few adults might play the game, surely most of the players must be children. And this is reflected in the articles that the mainstream press puts out every once in awhile, such as the famous New Yorker article, or the perceived audience of the Big Bang Theory.

    4. I'm not sure if the current "renaissance" of D&D has real legs, or if it's just a blip. But I feel like it centers around adults playing the game.

      I don't have any sales or player data, but I wonder if the audience has skewed older. Anecdotally, a GM friend of mine has two young teenage sons who took up D&D when their dad got back into it a few years ago. The boys have since lost interest and moved on to other things, while dad is still playing. Is it a kid's game?

      I really believe it's the quality of the GM that sells the game. Whether it's me as a player looking for a good game, or me as a GM looking for ways to improve, I think I'd get more from products and broadcasts that showcased good GMing than from a rating or Yelp-like reviews.

    5. I don't believe it's a kid's game. But I will bet you Hasbro does.

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  9. I think the whole certification idea has the issue that yes, you would put something that was independent and free into the hands of companies to decide what they think is good DMing.

    On the other hand one does hear a lot of stories from people who just suck at DMing and often as people in general, and players have to put up with them because, well, they are the ones willing to DM.
    Sometimes I think it might be better to have some basic guidelines that people can use as orientation.

    Maybe some people could just start giving out certificates for certain things. Like the publisher of a game puts up a a presentation and test for DMs (and maybe one for players) to check if they have basic rules knowledge, and if they manage to pass the test they get a shiny certificate and can tell people "oh look, I am now have basic/advanced/expert rules knowledge in Game X."

    I imagine it would be about as meaningful as all the e-learnings I have to do for work, which are mostly markers that I have a passing knowledge of whatever technical or managerial topic they want me to know at any given moment.

    But you know, stuff like that might be a neat way to keep track. Just some meaningless diplomas and certificates that nevertheless will tell people that you at least have some passing familiarity with whatever the topic in question was. I could imagine someone doing a workshop or seminar on DM style, and giving out a small diploma that person X has taken part in this. I could imagine stuff like that for worldbuilding, specific kinds of gaming styles, dungeon building. Maybe one could give out a small diploma to players after they manage a campaign. Just as a commemoration that they finished the adventure/campaign.

    (in fact, that would be kind of cool and I wonder why this isn't done more often. Why not print up some small certificates to give out to your players when they e.g. manage to clear a famous module? "I hereby certify that [insert player name] (survived/died in) [strike as needed] Castle Ravenloft.")

    Hmm. Ok, now I got an idea for my own games to mull over.