Criticism

I used to play Advanced Dungeon and Dragon (AD&D), rarely as a player but very often as DM (Dungeon Master) and I always found fascinating the mechanism of the game - having a quest, and a party listening to a made-up story and interacting in that invented place.

There were warriors, lost cities, thieves and magic ... and somehow we found a way to have fun, but this had a price, the DM had to learn and be fluent with the game's rules -- and that took times. I remember the first party when I had to flip several pages of the DM manual, and check a few tables during a particularly challenging situation with a lot of suspense ... it killed the buzz.

But overall, the more you played the better you became at enjoying the game, what pissed me off though, was some people trying to enforce the games rules, and cheat, the point of the game was to have fun -- and the buzz was killed by those players who had to be reminded of the rules, inevitably discussions ensued, and sometime bad players were banned... and it was a pain.

Or some parties were boring, sometime because the DM took too much time preparing his campaign and wanted to have the players follow a certain path.

Anyway it was a good game (probably still is .. I don't know never played the later editions), and has many benefits for teenagers, we learned to speak to a group, to entertain peers, and we developed our imagination sky high.

And the place for criticism in that ? it was a good thing, taking feedback along the way by interacting with the players -- for a DM it was the best.

It was like writing a short notes, and with the help of the players transforming it into a full book. And the DM had fun too, since even if he had prepared (as he thought) every eventuality - he would always be surprised by the (crazy) players and their strange ideas.


Forbidden visions...: You Get What You Give: How To Deal With Criticism: "After all you ll always have to do with people not just numbers, screen-names or machines, and people live by rules, right?"