Is it just me, or is "Talk to your players" the best advice I've seen for 99% of the questions on here? I think there's a culture that started with Gygax in which DMs are supposed to keep their craft secret, "Dungeon Masters Only," a culture that persists today. But the best games I've run and played in, whether dramatic or silly, hack-n-slash or RP-heavy, lethal or punch-pulling, all have one thing in common: they're collaborative and communicative. Just a thought. Has anyone else experienced the same thing?

I think the 2 most common things advised here are "talk to your DM" in the general forum or "talk to your players" in the DM forum.

I don't think it has anything to do with Gygax or "old school" D&D culture. If that were the case, we wouldn't be saying "talk to your DM" as much as we do, either. "Old school" also doesn't explain why it is mostly the old school people who are saying "talk to your DM" or "talk to your players."

I think sometimes DMs are reluctant to tell players too much for fear of campaign spoilers. For new DMs, it's hard to know where the balance point is between holding info back to keep the right secrets and avoid spoilers, and telling people outright what your thinking is. Also, some game groups may prefer more or less amounts of information. Maybe the players want to be surprised in a particular group, and others don't. For example, some groups make up characters together at the table in session 0, but in other groups the players keep their PCs secret from each other (but not the DM of course -- I hope!) and surprise each other with their characters in session 1, kind of like a D&D version of Christmas morning. It all depends on what the gaming group likes.

I think also some of this may be caused by the various D&D "TV shows" out there. These shows don't always depict the "table talk" that normally goes in on a game group -- that stuff is off-camera or behind the scenes. So anyone trying to emulate what they've seen from YouTube D&D would have a distorted sense of the relationship between players and DM -- because those shows only show you the during-session stuff, and cut out all the prep work, emails to each other, and pre-session table talk that goes on before filming starts.

I once thought if they pinned a thread about talking to your players/DM to the top, half the other threads would disappear. I think, as biowizard notes, its the old time players saying to have the conversations, because we've been in groups that dissolved largely owing to a lack of communication.

Its one thing when you're playing with your friends from middle school, and you all known each other for all (11 years of) of your lives, so the group members have a lot more information about each other as people out of game, that they are more willing to just roll with things that happen in game. But now, there are many groups forming specifically to play D&D (as opposed to pre-existing friendships that then start to play) and when you've got a group of strangers playing a game together, its really important for them to agree on the rules and boundaries.

Add in the video games that so many players are used to (not ragging on computer RPGs, I love them myself), where there is an "optimal" build for each character, which simply doesn't work for tabletop, since the games will all be different from one table to the next. That ends up leading to frustration because someone looked up the best possible monk on reddit, but then in this world its not effective because the DM does things a little differently than the FR standard. So the player thinks the DM is cheating him, and its just a mess. I think with new players especially, they don't realize how many shapes tabletop D&D can take. So they really benefit from hashing things out beforehand. Its why I'm glad Tasha's had that chapter on Session 0 (Which ideally would have been in the PHB, but hey, better late than never). Some people really need some help in figuring out what's best for their table.

Add in the video games that so many players are used to (not ragging on computer RPGs, I love them myself), where there is an "optimal" build for each character, which simply doesn't work for tabletop, since the games will all be different from one table to the next. That ends up leading to frustration because someone looked up the best possible monk on reddit, but then in this world its not effective because the DM does things a little differently than the FR standard.  So the player thinks the DM is cheating him, and its just a mess.

Or even worse, heaven forefend there is an optimal race/class combo, but the DM doesn't have that race or that subclass in their world for concept reasons. And now the player thinks again that the DM is cheating them by not allowing them to play whatever the uber-perfect combo is.

Even with my oldest friend, who I have known all (way more than 11) years of my life (or well, most of those years), and has played D&D with me since B/X days... tried to uber-max out his sorcerer and when I told him this or that was not allowed he got kind of frustrated, as if his sorcerer "needs" this perfect combo to survive. Several times I had to calmly remind him to trust his DM... that this is not a CRPG which is run by a heartless computer and programmed by a bunch of strangers meant to cater to the widest possible audience. It is a campaign for 4 people custom built for them by the DM. You don't need to optimize under these conditions. 

The DM is providing the player with a custom-built, personalized experience... the DM can tailor the game to the PCs, so the PCs don't need to tailor themselves to some generically defined world with an "optimal" build.

It's hard as heck convincing players from the video game pedigree of that, though.

Quote from NaivaraArnuanna >>

Is it just me, or is "Talk to your players" the best advice I've seen for 99% of the questions on here?

 Yes yes yes. So true. I have even considered adding to my signature "got a question? Here's my answer: talk to your players"

It's a balance. Certain things you do want to keep behind the curtain, or it's not magical.

Here's an example of a couple borderline cases.

My rogue was quitting the game. Since he is one of those oh-so-original edgy rogues who has a compulsion to steal, I suggested that as he go he try to steal the McGuffin for the current mission my players are on. I made him make a Stealth check. I made the players make a Perception check to catch him. They didn't. I gave them Survival checks to track him and Insight checks to validate tips provided by NPCs. They had every fair chance to apprehend him. He slipped through their fingers. They wanted to murder him. Later he decided to rejoin the game, so I got them together. There was player-on-player combat. The rogue did get rendered unconscious. But another player healed him.

I thought it was great drama. The players seemed to like it. But I've heard the advice that you should not allow intra-party conflict unless you discuss with the players that it's going to be that kind of game. But that would have spoiled the surprise. If I'd thought to ask that in session 0, that might have been fine, but I just came up with this idea on the spot.

Later, I did something maybe a little more questionable. I deliberately gave different players conflicting secret goals. But actually nothing came of it, since one of them Insight checked through the questgiver and realized theirs was a false goal. So they ended up not really pursuing it.

And those stories are why in addition to "Talk to your players," the second piece of advice is, "Know the players at your table." If you know your players are up for things because you know them well, and have gamed with them a lot, you can pull off lots of things without talking to them that normally would require a conversation.

This type of advice is even more valuable when short campaigns and one-shots are in play.

Mini-adventures are a perfect opportunity to work through and troubleshoot issues in a low stakes environment. In-game disagreements are inconsequential when the character is only going to exist for a few hours anyway. "This is what worked and what didn't work this session. What can we do differently for the next adventure?"

I think new DM's and players in particular, who ask more questions, are wired to expect mechanical answers for their problems because the nature of the game when you're just starting out seems very complex and mechanical. They expect answers like "oh if you take this feat and tweak your character here..." rather than "yeah it sounds like your DM is nerfing you, maybe talk to them about it", and new DM's expect answers like "here's this obscure lore thing that leads to a forgotten cave with an artifact that'll change that player's tune" and stuff like that. 

I think this is born of the preconception that this game is again, complex and mechanical at heart, before people realize that the game is in fact, above all, social first, and crunchy second. 

Quote from CharlesThePlant >>

I think new DM's and players in particular, who ask more questions, are wired to expect mechanical answers for their problems because the nature of the game when you're just starting out seems very complex and mechanical. They expect answers like "oh if you take this feat and tweak your character here..." rather than "yeah it sounds like your DM is nerfing you, maybe talk to them about it", and new DM's expect answers like "here's this obscure lore thing that leads to a forgotten cave with an artifact that'll change that player's tune" and stuff like that. 

I think this is born of the preconception that this game is again, complex and mechanical at heart, before people realize that the game is in fact, above all, social first, and crunchy second. 

 Just to add to this, a lot of new players might not fully understand the nature of the relationship between DM and player. A lot of them assume it's completely antagonistic - after all, the DM controls all the opponents. There aren't a lot of other games that have that same balance of collaboration and conflict, and between tables you can vary a bit on where you fall on that spectrum.

Talk to your players/talk to your DM are both techniques that solve the biggest problem in many TTRPG groups- antagonism between DM and players. Sometimes this antagonism is less than what people think of when they think antagonists- sometimes it's just mismatched expectations that make neither side have fun. Players and DMs fully communicating makes D&D much much better.