Comment on “Starting at 1st”

Of course it has to be central. No question about it. One who doesn't want to put in the work will not do any work in any form -- they won't question the rules, they won't build up houserules and precedent, they won't need somewhere to organize any of that stuff.

One possible reason for this lack of desire to change/edit/evolve things is that D&D is popularly conceived of as taking a lot of work to play BY THE BOOK, multiply by ten if one is DMing. Average Joe looks at the stack of rulebook(s) and says, "holy shit, you dudes do this for fun?" and gets the fuck out of there. Joes who stick around put in the "work" to learn the game and get used to it, but unless they're the kind that is really committed to playing the game, they're just gonna get frustrated by rules changes and stuff piling up. They're gonna wish for the beer and pretzels game. And you need more gumption than that to arrive at the Tao of D&D.

So it takes a certain person to learn to play D&D well. And it takes a certain-er person to learn to DM well, which is what I was getting at before. It looks and sounds obvious -- but how many awful games have you played in where everyone is oblivious to the quality?

(I want your advice on substantive non-real worlds because I DO satisfy my own requirements and I'm putting in work every day -- but I know you weren't questioning that.)