The DM says the campaign is set in the world of the fantasy novel series he writes

Well, I wasn't really trying to start a debate over the definition of talent, or whether it is a thing or anything, and your opinion regarding which qualities are necessary to be a good writer doesn't really seem very relevant to OPs situation.

I am of the opinion that there is a great deal of shitty fantasy and sci-fi in the world. I know because I've read a shameful lot of it.

Now, a story that makes shit-tier literature can still make for funny and engaging ttrp, but the quality of the story and the depth of the RP-expectations sort of have to go hand-in-hand.

If you are writing your heart and soul into a setting as a GM, and people want to goof around and kill baddies, and don't really care that inns are called "Heimskarffs" and always include a basement with a shrine to Maerkod because of deep cultural traditions or something, then you'll probably get upset and butthurt.

On the other hand, if you can chill about the whole thing and have good storytelling skills / talent , then there's no reason it should be a problem.

Only if he makes you read his book. Or if the setting sucks. Or his characters take precedence over you guys. Or he doesn't let you do something because he doesn't want you breaking his oh so precious world.

I'm going to assume you only mean mental things such as math when you say this.

>I'm going to assume you only mean mental things such as math when you say this.
Yes and no. If you don't have any physical disability, you can reach the same level of skill as anybody else. That isn't to say that it won't take becoming fitter, or that you'll have the same amount of ABILITY (say if someone is taller in basketball or has more reach in boxing) but that's a combination of skill and other factors.

So if I have a predisposition for playing the piano (say, long nimble fingers, natural sense of rhytm or absolute pitch), and I advance far quicker than anyone in my piano-class, you've just decided that we aren't allowed to call natural predispositions for stuff talent.

Also be careful if your DM tries to railroad you away from drastically altering his "master plan" for the world.

I once had a DM who set our campaign in the setting of his novel a few years before a major plot point happened (generic fantasy war). Out party was put into a position where we could have reasonably postponed the war for at least a short time (worst case scenario) or prevented the war entirely (best case scenario).

However, due to how events transpired in his novel, nothing we did was going to be allowed to change how his already written story occurred. We didn't exist in his novel, so we weren't allowed to change anything.

Then again, this might have been revenge for me playing a diplomancer. Using the standard DC table on the dungeon master screen, I couldn't fail a hard diplomacy check unless I rolled a 1 or 2.

is that who that is?
I thought it was Steve Irwin...

depends on his skill at world-building

Depends. Is the setting/story good? And is the campaign going to be full of important book character that show up just to show how important they are (so important that no, you can't beat/kill/affect them in any way)?

No. It would be a case of checking out his work to see if he's any good at worldbuilding.
GMing skill is separate from worldbuilding.

Talent does indeed exist, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

>natural sense of rhythm
You probably learned that.
>absolute pitch
Learned.
>and I advance far quicker than anyone in my piano-class
Probably the above learned skills combined with a passion for piano.
The vast majority of people who are actually good at things don't consider themselves "talented." But okay. What do you think it means?

I'd consider it a red flag based on my own experience; if a two-bit GM thinks that they're hot shit enough to write a fantasy novel SERIES, they're probably too self-absorbed to run a good game.

Most likely.

Crafting a story is very different from Dungeon mastery.

In my experience DM's who say "I DM because I want to tell a story," don't give shit about your characters and railroad way too much.

Depends. Generally, I would say that this hints that the story will probably be good, role-playing will be good, but mechanics might be crap.

Having a ton of worldbuilding done already is good because it allows the players to get answers immediately and give more free choice. A GM should always have more lore than the players could ever possibly need to know, and then not tell it all. Even in writing, there should be secrets and lands beyond the story's scope just so that the writer gets into the habit of making a fully fleshed out world and has all the mechanics of their tale covered.

But if their book is crap or they do things like this you're in trouble.

Can they not railroad? That's about the most important thing I can think of.

As am aside, would you play in a game with Brandon Brandon Sanderson as GM?

is it sad that I know exactly where this is from?

Speaking from semi-personal experience on the GM side, kind of. It could mean a very railroady experience because he may have a specific story to tell, or he's too emotionally invested in the setting and doesn't want the players to "mess it up."

I say "semi-personal experience" because I'm pretty sure that's how I'd end up with a game in the setting in which I'm trying to write books, and why I've avoided it.

It's not a guaranteed situation, though. Some GMs may be better about it than I would.

>novel series he's writing

Has he published any of them? Does he have a track record of publication by someone other than himself ? If not, he may be running short of ideas and in need of others' ideas. You may be alright with helping him. You may be on a railroad vanity exercise.

t. guy with three books published

>food doesn't exist, it's just miscellaneous objects that you eat.
this is how stupid you sound

"Talent" is used to refer to something innate. Skill is something you get through work. The best people in the world at basically anything are that way because they worked their asses off, not because they were born good at basketball or chess or painting.

I figured that you didn't know what the word meant.

or they just like writing

It is if he tries to force you to read his shit

> Talent doesn't exist
This is what talentless hacks actually believe.

depends is it good?

Absolutelly. He won't let you do shit because it'd ruin his precious world. Abadon ship. Take your loli and leave.

Depends. Is he Ed Greenwood? 'Cause that's all kinds of red flags.

But if they're, like, M.A.R. Barker? Fuck, man, can I take your place?

Other authors depend on the setting(TM) - if they're good authors chances are that they're alright with others having some manner of creative control in the campaign if nothing else, and if they're bad authors they might be good DMs anyway.

All them using the novel setting for the RPG really means is that they spent a bunch of time making and detailing a world and want to reuse some of that work for other purposes. And possibly nick your PC antics for future novels. Or maybe they're interested in seeing how people react to the world when in a more interactive setting than you get when you read a book, so they can adjust things according to that.

Who knows, there's way too many articles. By all accounts there's been good authors who are bad DMs, bad authors who are good DMs, and everything in-between.

I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Talent, is in fact, Predisposition/Passion, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Predisposition plus Passion plus Skill. Talent doesent exist unto itself, but is rather another component of a fully skilled GM made useful by the Skill corelibs, Passion utilities and vital system predisposition comprising a full GM as defined by user.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

Sure it does, For example, I have a talent for fucking your mom

That depends on if he wants to railroad you along his novel's plotline or if he wants to let you go nuts playing around in a setting he's already got pretty fleshed-out.

It probably is if it sounds like rehash of D&D or Tolkien. Easy to way to check this is to ask whether elves exist in his world.

How is that different from any GM's original setting?

you're a spook

>Talent doesn't exist.
"Talent isn't the defining factor of performance."
There you go, fixed.

"Natural" in this case means innate and inborn, as opposed to something that can be gained or lost. OR's distinction still stands.

Well, it's probably more rigid and defined (for bettet or worse) than typical GM pulling stuff out of his ass setting. I have to say that in my experience asspull-settings are more fun.

Depends strictly on whether or not this is prequel to his book or otherwise has his story depending on you getting the right result. Though it's fun in its own way in that situation when he realizes he has no legitimate way to stop you anymore and wants at least an appearance of fairness. I still think fondly of how our group rendered an author self-insert inordinately attractive half elf stillborn in his own story.

Ask him what is the fantasy novel about. If it sounds just like another dragonlance/drizzt/lotr/whatever ripoff yes it's kinda a red flag.

If not, give it a try if it sounds interesting enough.

It's a caution flag. It might be good in that he's spent a lot of time on this setting and is prepared to run a good game in it. It might be bad in that if he's not careful he might consciously or unconsciously have one way things should "go" in his head that must be forced at all costs.

Proceed, but proceed cautiously and be ready to bolt

>talent doesn't exist
>the question is if he's skilled at

Hm.

In a more broad sense, as a relatively new player, what are some red flags to look out for in general when finding/looking for a new group?

Watch the fuck out for anything remotely magical realm.

If you join a game that is explicitly magical realm, you will be forced to go along with it till you either like it or leave it. There is no inbetween, and the DM will force his shit on you.

You have been warned. Especially watch out for furfag DM's. Always give them a fair chance, but be ready to fucking bolt the instant something happens.

Other red flags include:
>Gm's GF is playing the game
>A female is playing the game and the Gm is acting weird
>Too much world building before the actual game. Not bad in and of itself, but some shit DM's will take the prelim work for one game, bolt, and use it in another campaign.

Aside from these, its all about personal taste and judgment.

>Aside from these, its all about personal taste and judgment.
Thanks for the advice! I'll keep it in mind. Especially about the magical shit, I'd much prefer less-to-no magical settings I think.

I played a game with some friends at one point, it was fun, but the DM believed there was only 2 game "modes": Combat, and railroading to more combat. His world was cool, but he only knew how to throw combat at the players. And I ran one game with some friends, but we were ALL new players, so I've no clue if I did it "correctly" or "well".

Anyways, thanks again for the advice. I'm hoping I can find a group soon.

>learned
People do advance in skill at differing rates, whether due to differences in learning ability, physical differences or otherwise.
This is often referred to as talent.
People can also have above average ability. This is also often referred to as talent.

>don't consider themselves "talented."
People of all levels of skill can be humble or not. Especially if it also took them a lot of effort to reach that level.

user, i'm hoping to god that you understood that i meant fetish-shit there. Please tell me you did.

Wait, magical = fetish shit? I missed that. I thought you meant, like, magic.

No, magic is part and parcel with Tabletop. You can have low magic or even no magic settings and in comparison medium to high technology settings, but its usage is regulated fairly well. use of magic in and of itself isn't a flag at all, let alone yellow or red.

No, i mean if the DM is obviously pushing his fetish and you ain't comfortable with that, leave. There are plenty of stories of characters being put into stupid fetish situations because its the DM's thing. It can happen, it does happen, and if you don't like that, don't deal with it.

Magical realm is the coined term for DM's introducing you to their personal "Magical realm". Its something of a sarcastic misnomer.

>Magical realm is the coined term for DM's introducing you to their personal "Magical realm". Its something of a sarcastic misnomer.
Okay, yeah, I completely missed that. Thanks for the clarification. And I have no interest in putting up with that bullshit!

That said, there are funny stories where it more or less works out.

is an interesting example.

Basically, know where to draw the line.

Did your DM recently attend a seance whereupon the spirit of Pratchett took possession of his body to continue writing Discworld novels?

what do you work your ass off at things for? to become... talented at them?